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EARLY START

Jury Begins Deliberating In Derek Chauvin Murder Trial; Biden Administration Pressing Guatemala Ahead Of Harris Visit; Putin Accepts Invitation To Virtual Summit Amid Navalny Crisis. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired April 20, 2021 - 05:30   ET

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


[05:30:00]

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone, this is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christine Romans. It is Tuesday morning and it's almost 30 minutes past the hour.

The nation waits as the clock ticks. Jurors resume deliberations this morning in the trial of former officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. Both sides made their case argument -- their closing arguments yesterday, but one of the most eyebrow-raising moments came after the jury left the courtroom.

CNN's Josh Campbell, who will be in that courtroom today, joins us live this morning from Minneapolis. Josh, what happened?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning to you.

We had those closing arguments yesterday -- the prosecutors and the defense wrapping up their case. We're now in jury deliberation.

But as you mentioned, it was at the end of yesterday's trial day there was that moment that none of us were expecting, and that is the invoking of the name of a Congress member, in her words. What the defense did was actually motion for a mistrial in the case, asking the judge to dismiss this case on the grounds that the comments from California Congress member Maxine Waters were prejudicial.

Now, she was here in Minnesota meeting with some protesters. Those comments really irking this judge. Take a listen to what she said and then the judge's response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MAXINE WATERS (D-CA): I hope that we're going to get a verdict that says guilty, guilty, guilty. And if we don't, we cannot go away. We've got to stay on the street and we've got to get more active, we've got to get more confrontational, and we've got to make sure that they know that we mean business.

JUDGE PETER CAHILL, HENNEPIN COUNTY, MINNESOTA DISTRICT COURT: I'll give you that Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned.

I wish elected officials would stop talking about this case, especially in a manner that is disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch and our function. A congresswoman's opinion really doesn't matter a whole lot.

Anyway -- so, (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: Now, the judge denied that mistrial motion, obviously, but not before really blasting Congresswoman Waters and her comments.

Now, for her part, she said that the judge agreed with his motion to deny that her words didn't really even matter. We know she's actually -- obviously been a very vocal supporter for racial justice and an end to police brutality.

But nevertheless, a moment there that none of us were expecting. The judge really going out of his way to tell lawmakers that their comments have no place in this trial and they should basically keep their mouth shut, is what he was saying.

Now, as far as what happens here as we wait for this verdict, the downtown area remains in a state of high security. There are members of the National Guard and law enforcement in and around as we wait for that verdict.

I spoke last night with a senior member of the National Guard who said that their role here is to protect, property, and protesters. They have a number of personnel in and around the downtown area. They said that they will actually be working under the direction of law enforcement with, in his words, a limited ability to actually detain people. He also said that the National Guard will not be deploying any type of less-than-lethal munitions, saying that those capabilities are squarely with law enforcement.

But a large presence here of military personnel, as well as the governor calling on others from outside the state to come in and help as this city awaits a verdict in this trial -- Christine and Laura.

ROMANS: Yes, Josh, just remarkable -- that commentary there from that judge about the comments from the Congresswoman. Even as you have state and local officials and the White House trying to figure out how to lower temperatures here -- that's what they've been trying to do -- that judge blasting her.

Thank you so much for that, Josh. I know you've got a lot of good reporting today for us.

Errol Louis, by the way, has an interesting --

CAMPBELL: Thanks.

ROMANS: -- op-ed on CNN digital right now -- "What the Chauvin judge got so wrong about Maxine Waters." It really ties together a lot of what's happening in the last few hours. Worth a read this morning.

Josh Campbell, again, thank you so much -- Laura.

JARRETT: All right, to immigration now.

Two hundred children found clinging to an island surrounded by powerful currents -- thankfully, rescued by border patrol agents from the Rio Grande, but others not so lucky. They don't make it.

So when we talk about a crisis at the border we aren't talking about numbers here. We're talking about children like these two. More than 20,000 children are now in HH custody -- HHS custody, I should say, for the first time, and another 2,200 more are being held by Customs and Border Protection -- many of them making the trek from the Northern Triangle countries -- Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador.

This morning, CNN has learned the Biden administration is considering pressing Guatemala on a range of issues ahead of a visit by the vice president.

Priscilla Alvarez covers immigration for us. She joins us this morning.

Priscilla, what do we expect? I mean, obviously, the vice president has been working on this. We know she reached some sort of a deal with the Northern Triangle countries. So, now what happens?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN IMMIGRATION REPORTER: We're really starting to get a glimpse into the broad range of options that the administration is considering ahead of this high-stakes negotiation for Vice President Kamala Harris.

[05:35:04]

So behind the scenes, the White House is tasking federal agencies and departments to collect information on issues like combating, smuggling, and corruption, increasing humanitarian assistance, and setting up migrant resource centers in the region. But they're also considering what asks to make of these countries like Guatemala and increasing -- I should say considering legislative reform to improve conditions in the country and bolstering border security.

So all of this really falls under that umbrella of the administration's pledge to address root causes of migration in the region to stem the flow. Reduce the number of people coming to the U.S. southern border.

You'll recall that Biden tapped Harris to lead this effort. She has since talked to the presidents of Guatemala and Mexico and is soon expected to visit there where they'll consider what issues to really broach with these countries to, again, reduce the flow of migration, Laura.

JARRETT: But, Priscilla, U.S. immigration agencies have also been ordered to stop using certain terms in their work. It's a move that's both symbolic but also practical. So tell us about that. ALVAREZ: That's right. Yesterday, the leaders of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, two federal U.S. immigration agencies, issued guidance changing terminology. So, as an example, the term alien, which you may have seen in press releases before, will not be non-citizen. Assimilation will now be integration.

Now, all of this may sound familiar because President Biden, in his immigration bill, actually proposed changing alien to non-citizen in U.S. immigration law. Now that bill has not been passed.

But the administration is clearly taking symbolic steps here to acknowledge the importance of language in talking about immigrants in the United States. Advocates happy with this move, though noting that it is symbolic. But they have, before, criticized terms like alien for dehumanizing immigrants.

So all of this really happening now in succession. We've seen it happen in other immigration agencies before as the administration starts to change the way we talk about immigrants in the United States.

JARRETT: Yes, a big change -- that's for sure.

All right, Priscilla, thanks so much -- appreciate it.

ROMANS: All right, to the pandemic now -- stashing money away in a crisis. Households around the world have been saving an enormous amount since the beginning of the pandemic. It could unleash a global spending boom.

Consumers built up an extra $5.4 trillion in savings by the end of March. That equals about six percent of global GDP.

North America and Europe saved the most. It's also where lockdowns and help from the government were the most significant. That stimulus helped struggling businesses. It paid wages, helping people stash money away through the economic downturn. As restrictions ease, the warmer weather, and more people become vaccinated, consumers are expected to spend nearly $2 trillion of that surplus cash.

Could all that extra spending stoke inflation? Some fret that central banks will have to raise interest rates to ward it off but so far, Fed officials have said they expect inflation to remain benign.

That's a lot of money -- people stashing it away. You can see -- like, you know, when there's uncertainty in the --

JARRETT: Yes.

ROMANS: -- economy, people were saving money --

JARRETT: Yes.

ROMANS: -- to protect for the future.

JARRETT: Yes, you just don't know what's going to happen.

All right, 173 million miles away, ten feet off the ground never felt so high.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:42:42]

JARRETT: New overnight, the U.S. ambassador to Russia will return temporarily to the United States this week, days after Russians recommended John Sullivan leave.

At the same time, the Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin will participate in the virtual summit on climate, hosted by President Biden this week. It makes it that much more apparent what happens in the coming days with opposition leader Alexey Navalny now in the hospital after three weeks on a hunger strike in prison.

CNN's Sam Kiley joins us live in Moscow. Sam, assuming Navalny survives -- hopefully -- then what happens?

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, that is not a given at all I'm afraid. As you say, he was moved to a hospital within a penal colony. He was briefly visited by his lawyers yesterday.

But he's demanding access to independent medical care because, of course, you'll recall he suffered an attack with a poisoning by a nerve agent in the summer of last year and not fully recovered from that. He's reportedly got problems with his legs and hands feeling and very high levels of potassium. His doctors have told us that could mean renal failure and heart failure.

So, Germany is the latest country, alongside the European Union, the United States, and others who have expressed extreme concern over the future health of Mr. Navalny.

Of course, if he is still alive, then engagement on the levels, particularly from the Biden administration's perspective on climate change, will go ahead. That is something that both the United States will want to see and Russia will want to be seen to be doing, not least because Russia has got a very large number of problems much closer to home.

Not only are they involved in a diplomatic spat with the United States, they've also thrown out 20 diplomats from the Czech Republic in response to the expulsion of 18 intelligence agents identified allegedly by the Czech administration just in the last few days. And, of course, there's been expulsions also from Poland and 10 from the United States.

So, Russia wants to come in from the cold diplomatically but it does have a very explosive problem in the form of the future health of Alexey Navalny.

[05:45:00] JARRETT: All right. I know you're watching this closely for us, Sam. Thank you.

All right, now to a record coronavirus surge in India with huge global consequences. In the last seven days, India reported nearly 1 1/2 million new cases -- six consecutive days of more than 200,000. The city of New Delhi is now under weeklong lockdown, hospitals are becoming overwhelmed.

Big picture perspective here, there are more cases being reported now than at any time during this entire pandemic. And because of its own surge, India is now holding on to vaccines that were supposed to be exported elsewhere and using them domestically instead.

ROMANS: All right, let's take a look at markets around the world this Tuesday morning. You can see -- if we look at Asian shares quickly and the European markets have opened for the morning. Europe down, Asia closed pretty much mixed.

On Wall Street, giving back a little bit here. You know, it was a quiet start to the week for investors. The Dow closed 123 points lower after ending last week at a record high. The S&P and the Nasdaq also down a little bit.

Earnings reports from Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, and Netflix today. Netflix expected to remain a pandemic winner even as restrictions ease and people start going outside again.

New regulations may be on the way for the tobacco industry. Altria's stock fell six percent Monday after reports the Biden administration is considering requiring cigarette makers to reduce the level of nicotine in their products to the point they won't be addictive. This could potentially cut down the number of younger people who begin smoking and get hooked.

Altria said any action taken must consider the real consequences, including the loss of jobs and the rise of, it says, illegal markets.

Don't blame autopilot. That's what Tesla mogul Elon Musk is saying after a crash left two people dead in Texas on Saturday. Local police say no one was in the driver's seat when the car hit a tree and burst into flames. But, Musk says data logs show that Tesla did not have autopilot enabled and it couldn't have worked anyway -- autopilot -- because the street the car was on didn't have lane lines.

Two federal agencies are investing -- investigating that crash.

Peloton is refusing to recall its Tread Plus treadmill, even after 39 accidents, including the death of a child and an urgent warning from the government telling customers with small children and with pets to stop using the machine immediately.

Peloton's stock fell seven percent Monday.

Peloton called the agency's notice inaccurate and misleading. Its CEO said it has no intention to stop selling the treadmill and it's working on a new software update for that machine.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:52:13]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NASA EMPLOYEE: Landing, touchdown, and spindown.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: That's NASA celebrating a Wright brother's moment on Mars. Video captures the Ingenuity helicopter's historic first flight on another planet. It shows the robotic aircraft lifting off for a brief flight at a height of about 10 feet before turning and landing in almost the same spot. Just amazing engineering.

And here's what it looked like from the helicopter itself. Ingenuity's navigation camera sending back this black and white image of it hovering over the Martian surface. Taking a photo of its own shadow on Mars.

Let's talk more about this amazing first flight with Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist and professor of the City University of New York. He's also the best-selling author of the "God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything."

You know, we can now say human beings have flown the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet. Tell me the significance of this moment and what it opens up in terms of exploration on other planets.

MICHIO KAKU, THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, PROFESSOR, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, AUTHOR, GOD EQUATION: THE QUEST FOR A THEORY OF EVERYTHING: (via Skype): Well, you know, the Wright brothers, back in 1903, sent an object heavier than air 12 seconds. For 12 seconds it changed world history. It changed the way we view flight. It changed the way we have transportation or how we transport goods and services all around the planet Earth.

Now, the Ingenuity flight was 30 seconds long and is equally significant. And so now we're talking about for the first time in history on another planet we have powered flight. Imagine for the moment a fleet -- a fleet of these drones one day scouring the surface of Mars. That boggles the imagination.

ROMANS: Talk to me about how difficult it is for an aircraft like this to fly on Mars. I would imagine there's not a lot of gravity to move through there. But what can these flights do that the rovers cannot? How hard is it to get them in the air?

KAKU: Yes, it's an engineering marvel given the fact that the atmospheric pressure of Mars is one percent -- one percent that of the earth. Therefore, the rotors -- the rotors have to spin five times faster than a typical rotor on the planet earth.

But think of what you get for that. The rovers cannot go to the polarized gaps but that's where you may find evidence of frozen microbial life.

ROMANS: Yes.

KAKU: Rovers cannot go to areas which have rocky -- with canyons, with volcanoes, but these drones can. So the drones can go where the rovers cannot and that's a game changer. It's going to expand what we can do on the planet Mars by many-fold.

ROMANS: It's so exciting. We certainly applaud all of those engineers who have been working for so many years to make this happen and have been so patient waiting to see those pictures.

[05:55:02]

Where would you like to see our space missions take flight next?

KAKU: Well, we have a helicopter on Mars and one day we're going to have a submarine -- a submarine on a moon of Jupiter called Europa. That's right.

There's an ocean -- there's an ocean underneath the ice cover of the moon of Jupiter and there's liquid water ocean there. And one day -- we don't when -- one day NASA is going to put a submarine down there to see if there's maybe aquatic life on another ocean on another celestial body.

So, I'll tell you, all these are game changers. Helicopters and submarines, that could be the future.

ROMANS: That's so exciting.

All right, Professor Michio Kaku, of the City University of New York. So nice to talk to you early this morning. Thank you, sir.

KAKU: Thank you.

ROMANS: All right.

As the country braces for the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, the controversial anti-riot bill is now law in Florida. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the measure Monday touting the protection it provides for police. Critics, though, call the legislation racist at its core.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R), FLORIDA: And it is the strongest anti-rioting, pro-law enforcement piece of legislation in the country and there's just nothing even close.

SHEVRIN JONES (D), FLORIDA STATE SENATOR: Governor DeSantis' actions today goes to show that he's not concerned about the lives of black and brown people who so happen to be citizens of this diverse state that many of us call home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: The ACLU says under the new Florida law, police will have broad discretion in deciding what constitutes a demonstration versus a riot.

President Biden plans to nominate Vice Admiral Linda Fagan to be the Coast Guard's first female four-star admiral. Fagan currently commands the Coast Guard's Pacific group, overseeing operations from the Rocky Mountains to the east coast of Africa. If confirmed for the Coast Guard's number-two position, she would replace Adm. Charles Ray.

A dramatic water rescue in Southern California. Fourteen people saved from a boat that was sinking fast off the coast of -- this is Newport Beach. The Orange County sheriff posted video showing the boat being towed by a Good Samaritan, taking on water as the harbor patrol and lifeguards arrived. All 14 passengers jumped from the boat into the choppy waters. We can report they were all pulled to safety.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, GUEST HOST, "JEOPARDY!": To be on this stage where Alex Trebek hosted "JEOPARDY!" with such grace and intelligence for so long is really amazing and it's very humbling.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: All right. That's, of course, our friend and colleague, CNN's Anderson Cooper in his debut as guest host of "JEOPARDY!" which he says is a dream come true.

What could make it even better? How about this. Anderson sharing a photo of his son Wyatt seeing him on television for the very first time. "JEOPARDY!" is on one hour before Anderson's show, so I think he just gave away Wyatt's little bedtime, didn't he?

Wyatt, by the way, turns one a week from today. Happy birthday.

All right, thanks for joining us. For Laura Jarrett, I'm Christine Romans. "NEW DAY" starts right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Brianna Keilar alongside John Berman on this new day.

A nation awaits the verdict as a jury decides the fate of the former police officer who kneeled on George Floyd's neck. Plus, an unexpected twist in the trial as the provocative words of a Democratic congresswoman become an issue in court.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The cause of death is revealed for the Capitol officer who died after the insurrection. Will this impact some of the charges?

And, Americans wiped down their mail and let it sit for three days. But a year later, the CDC says that whole surface contagion thing -- never mind.

KEILAR: A very good morning to viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Tuesday, April 20th.

And in just hours, deliberations will resume in the Derek Chauvin murder trial. Twelve jurors now have the former police officer's fate in their hands in the death of George Floyd. One of the three charges they're examining, second-degree unintentional murder. A guilty verdict could mean decades behind bars.

BERMAN: Overnight, protesters on the streets demanding justice. State and local leaders pleading for calm. Two hundred fifty members of the D.C. National Guard have now been called up as the nation's capital braces for possible unrest.

For more on the charges and the hard questions confronting the jury, let's bring in Laura Jarrett, anchor of CNN's "EARLY START." She's also an attorney who covered the Justice Department for years, so overachiever.

Laura, what did the judge tell the jury to consider when it comes to finding Chauvin guilty or not guilty?

JARRETT: All right. So, John, the jury now has their marching orders. The problem is you're about to see the rules of the road are dense and they are not written in plain English.

So let's start with the most important legal phrase in this entire case, substantial causal factor. What does that mean? Well, the jury has been told in order to find Chauvin guilty.