Susan Bro Speaks about Biden Invoking Charlottesville
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When we heard the words of the president of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscious of this nation.</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, joining us now is Susan Bro. She's the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed during the Charlottesville protests. She's also the president and chairman of the Heather Heyer Foundation. Susan, nice to see you again.</s>SUSAN BRO, OTHER OF CHARLOTTESVILLE ATTACK VICTIM: Thank you. Good morning.</s>CAMEROTA: So tell us about your morning yesterday when you -- how did you discover that former VP Biden had made the story of Heather's death one of the focal points of his campaign launch?</s>BRO: I started getting phone calls at 20 after 7:00 in the morning from the press saying, how do you feel about this? I rolled over and looked at my phone and said, feel about what? I was sound asleep.</s>CAMEROTA: And how, once you figured out what they were talking about and gathered your thoughts, how did you feel about it?</s>BRO: I guess I'm not surprised. It seems like Charlottesville has been a defining moment for a lot of people. I don't think we've seen him in town. I don't think he's ever been here. Or maybe he has in the past, I don't know. It was just sort of a feeling of, well, here we go again, because it's referred to so often in news articles, stories. It will show up at the most unexpected moment. I'll be watching something on TV and there it will be again.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>BRO: So it happens a lot.</s>CAMEROTA: And, of course, it's never far from your mind and your heart. Did you -- did former VP Biden call you about this?</s>BRO: I got a call from him yesterday at 4:30 in the afternoon. That was the first time I had ever spoken to Joe Biden or anybody related to his office or anything.</s>CAMEROTA: What did he say?</s>BRO: He's -- I was trying to remember how the conversation started. I remember we talked a lot about bereavement because, you know, he's lost a son and a wife and daughter, and we talked about how forming the foundation helps you survive. But that's really all the kinds of things we talk about. I think he said something about I would have reached out sooner but I wasn't sure how you would feel. And I commented, yes, I noticed you didn't mention her name because you hadn't contacted me. So we sort of acknowledged that -- that much.</s>CAMEROTA: Do you wish that he had mentioned her name?</s>BRO: Not particularly. It's not about her. The issue is about the hate. It's not about Heather.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes. And so was he calling for your approval, or to make sure that you were OK? I mean what was the upshot of his call?</s>BRO: Probably to make sure I was OK. Apparently there were rumors swirling that I was devastated and traumatized and none of those things are true. I think it was traumatizing for some other people in Charlottesville --</s>CAMEROTA: Like who?</s>BRO: To just suddenly have that thrown up at them on the screen. And I did mention that to him, that that probably had triggered some other people. But, no, I was OK.</s>CAMEROTA: But meaning who? Like Heather's friends or who are you referring to?</s>BRO: Survivors. People who were there on the ground both times for those actual living scenes and not just the video.</s>CAMEROTA: When -- when you and I last spoke, it was right after the conviction of Heather's killer. And you were talking about the foundation and you were talking about your life mission. And you felt that you didn't want Heather's voice and her message to be silenced.</s>BRO: Right.</s>CAMEROTA: And -- and you felt that -- that you wanted to fight against hate. And so I wonder today, now that you've had a chance to process it a little bit, do you feel that the vice president has done you a favor in some ways by amplifying her message, or do you wish that this weren't part of the political dialogue?</s>BRO: I think it has to be part of the political dialogue because this is a very serious problem in our country. Not only do we deal with hate crime, we have to deal with the reporting of haste crime. I'm not sure that most people are aware that none of the 40 that were injured that day when Heather was killed, none of that was reported in the FBI statistics as a hate crime for 2017.</s>CAMEROTA: Why not?</s>BRO: There are loopholes in the reporting, and the way the system is set up, the vast majority of hate crimes are not reported. So I do think it is something that needs to be discussed. We're obviously not allocating enough resources to deal with the problem because we don't even know what the problem is. I recently spoke to a Virginia advisory board on hate crimes at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and I said, a doctor cannot diagnose or treat a patient unless they know all the symptoms.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes.</s>BRO: Our country cannot properly deal with a hate crime until we know how many and how large the problem is.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes. Well, Susan, we appreciate and applaud you for keeping this front of mind for people, that there are hate crimes out there and what constitutes a hate crime. Thank you very much for sharing your personal reflections on all of this with us.</s>BRO: Thank you so much for having me.</s>CAMEROTA: John.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, students and staff at two California university campuses are under quarantine because of measles. The latest on the record outbreak, that's next.