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The Lead with Jake Tapper

At Least Six Dead In Catastrophic Hawaii Wildfires; Georgia Prosecutor Expected To Seek More Than A Dozen Indictments In Trump 2020 Election Case; Source: Georgia Prosecutor Has Extra Security Protection Ahead Of Expected Indictment; Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Is Interviewed About Child Care Crisis; Man Killed During FBI Raid In Connection To Threats Made Against President Biden; World Bank Suspends New Loans To Uganda. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired August 09, 2023 - 17:00   ET

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

[17:00:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN NEWS ANCHOR: In Maui County, violence and explosive wildfires have torn through the island of Maui, destroying homes and businesses. The fire is being fueled by a hurricane 800 miles away. It erupted so suddenly people had to run into the ocean to escape the fire and then later be rescued. CNN's Derek Van Dam is with us now. And Derek, we just heard from authorities in Hawaii. They say the fire is still burning.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And -- and it's likely to continue as well. Jake, I mean, we still have the indirect impacts from Hurricane Dora and high-pressure system to the north. So what it's doing is it's putting the squeeze right on the Hawaiian Islands and allowing those winds out of the east to gust. Well, we just checked, over 40 miles per hour in some of those locations. That's going to obviously complicate fire efforts.

But look at the aerial video that you're seeing on your screens right now. This is imperative because the -- the fire that impacted the west side of Maui, the -- the location, the economic hub of Miami where all the resorts and businesses are generally located, where people go as tourists to visit. Well, the fire ran out of room to burn, literally moving into the ocean as it literally had nothing else to char. But it was just incredibly harrowing moments. There were adjectives used like dire and apocalyptic and you can see exactly why with some of these first aerial visuals that we are getting.

Now, everyone in Hawaii knows how to handle a hurricane, everyone knows how to handle a volcano as well, as difficult as it can be. But this caught people off guard. As a meteorologist, we were watching Hurricane Dora slide well south of the island chain. It wasn't a concern for us. We thought it was fish food, literally not impacting land. But the fact is that it created a phenomenon with the winds that no one could have foreseen and it caught people off guard in the middle of the night when people were sleeping.

So you can imagine just how terrifying those moments were overnight when we started to see those little flashpoints, the little hotspots on satellite imagery that meteorologists look at, we started to see those flare up and that was a concern and we immediately started to recognize that there was a problem. Social media videos start pouring in and then we start to learn about the communications going down, 911 not becoming available for residents over the western side of the island of Maui. Think how concerning and how terrifying those moments must have been for people not being able to reach out for help. Well, that's what people had to endure. Jake, it's terrifying.

TAPPER: All right, Derek Van Dam -- Derek Van Dam, thank you so much. Joining us now, Quentin Koch is the President of Blue Hawaiian Helicopters, a helicopter tourism company. And Quentin, you suspended operations to use your helicopter fleet to help get food, water, and other supplies into areas of Maui that are the hardest hit. Well, tell us what your staff is seeing in these hardest hit areas.

QUENTIN KOCH, PRESIDENT, BLUE HAWAIIAN HELICOPTERS: Aloha, good afternoon. Yeah, it was a devastating night. I don't think many people slept across the state. We canceled all of our tourism operations and just really partnering with the state in focusing on taking care of the people at need. We got authorization to find one of the other airports near closer to Lahaina where we can bring in food and water and support. Good thing about, you know, helicopters, they do have the versatility to land, you know, on different locations, like a golf course or this smaller airport over on the west side.

But seeing it from the air and seeing the pictures just don't do it justice. It's just absolutely tragic, devastating. Several coworkers have lost their homes. We have business partners that have, you know, their complete businesses in Lahaina have burned down. And it's just tears just keep pouring and pouring from people's faces as we kind of work through the morning and all wake up and realize what we have in front of us.

TAPPER: Tell us about how your own staff has been personally impacted by this. I know you're trying to help locate some of your teammates in these impacted areas who might not have even had electricity or coms [ph] since yesterday.

KOCH: Anybody that's been to Hawaii -- been to Hawaii knows Hawaii. I mean, we're all Ohana, we're all family. We all love and care for each other so much. And it's this hard and it's just devastating. And not being able to get a hold of some of your co-workers, it's just -- you can't stop thinking about it. We actually had -- have a friend that's a runner, has gone through in -- in the areas that you're able to access, gone and knocked on doors and got some verification that people are okay, but the fires are still going, the winds are still there. There's still ashes and hot spots. So we just have to be careful. It's very limited.

The road from the airport, the main airport in Maui, the Kahului Airport, they call it the Poly Road [ph]. It's just a two lane road and that has been closed. And so there's limited access in and out, limited cell coverage, no internet. They haven't had power in 24 hours. So it's just really hard, and it's going to take, you know, probably days before we know everybody's okay.

[17:05:05] TAPPER: Helicopters can land in just about any terrain, although obviously it's -- it's dangerous. These are particularly dangerous conditions. Have -- have you ever seen anything like this as a helicopter pilot?

KOCH: I'm specifically not a pilot. And I'm the president of the company. But what we do is we're landing a couple of an airport and safety is our number one priority. We do a full risk assessment. We evaluate the winds. We evaluate everything safety and we will not go if it is not safe. So safety is just our number one priority. We'll never put our employees or anybody at risk before we do that. And that's why we're landing at the designated airport versus some of these other spots as of now, just because it is the safest thing to do.

TAPPER: Quentin Koch, thank you so much. Let's go now to meteorologist Chad Myers for the latest forecast. And Chad, when do you think these horrible conditions are going to get better? I know you said earlier that the winds, these devastating winds from 800 miles away from that hurricane, you hope will alleviate this evening.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Because the hurricane is moving away. So as the hurricane moves away, so will the wind. What happened here and -- and Derek really hit a good deal here. The high pressure to the north, and it was blowing like this. The low pressure and or hurricane down to the south, it was blowing like this. And so all of that wind funneling through the islands and we had the hotspots and the hotspots showed up. And then all of a sudden we had video and pictures and it is a devastating event. Block after block of the homes just gone, reminding you -- reminding me of something from Southern California. 82 is the highest gust that we saw. That's just an enormous amount of wind when you consider how far away the hurricane actually is. At this point in time like 800 miles away.

So, yes, I mean, there are hurricanes can hit Hawaii and do, and we do have winds of 60, 70, 80 sometimes. But boy, this was just a dry event. There goes the hurricane, category four. Look how far away the Honolulu Islands are. So it is going to be a brutal afternoon and evening. And some of the pictures we're seeing now finally coming in are -- are devastatingly painful, they really are.

Jake -- Jake, I mean, when you see the dark pictures that we only had this morning, and we thought that they were just hopefully burning trees. But in fact, they weren't. They were burning homes. And they were just hotspots of what was left of the home. So there goes the storm. It is going to be a much less impressive storm in a couple of days. And the more it moves farther and farther away, tonight winds will be 40. Tomorrow they'll be 30. And then by the time we work into the weekend, the winds could be ten. Just about exactly what you'd expect from the trades.

TAPPER: All right. Chad Myers, thanks so much. Let's go now to Jeff Hickman. He's the Director of Communications for Hawaii's Department of Defense. Thanks for joining us. Tell us the status of what the National Guard is focusing on right now as these fires continue to burn out of control in Maui. JEFF HICKMAN, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, HAWAII'S DEPT. OF DEFENSE:

Hello, Jake, for having me. Yes. The Hawaii National Guard is assisting both Maui County and Hawaii County, the two islands. So on Maui County, we have about 39 personnel assisting the Maui Police Department with traffic control and roving security. But right now, the number one goal for both counties and the Hawaii National Guard is to protect lives. And by setting up these roadblocks, that's right now one of the best ways we can do it.

So the National Guard is assisting both police departments who have been working 24 hours and are running out of personnel to do it. So the Hawaii National Guard is assisting them, and I think they're even requesting more personnel for the very near future. The Hawaii National Guard is also sending two Chinook CH47 helicopters to Maui. They're on the ground right now getting their assignment to head to their upcountry area of Maui on the slopes of Haleakala to assist with the fire suppression up there.

They'll be carrying 4,000 gallon water buckets and be able to do drops about four to five an hour. And then on the big island, we have about 30 personnel also assisting with traffic control and checkpoints. And the active duty army is assisting with fire suppression on Hawaii Island.

TAPPER: Hawaii's Lieutenant Governor, who is acting governor because the governor is traveling right now. The Lieutenant Governor has called on the Whitehouse to declare a federal emergency. Do you second that call?

MYERS: And I think that's a -- a great call. She's my boss right now. And so the --FEMA and the Federal Government have stepped in during our major disasters. This by far is one of the worst hurricane Iniki in '91. We've had lava in 2014 and 2018. But this fire is by far more devastating and quicker. I mean, my goodness, in two days, the destruction it's caused.

This morning when the sun came up, that was the first time Maui and the big island of Hawaii could actually see the damage and start to make assessments. So any help we can get from the federal government is a plus.

[17:10:00]

TAPPER: Thank you so much, Jeff Hickman. We appreciate your time. Let's bring in Kimo Falconer, a resident of Lahaina who has a 500 acre coffee farm, Maui grown coffee.

Kimo, thank you for joining us. You say that at around 3:00 a.m, you went to check on your factory. You could not get there. Tell us what you saw, tell us about your experience.

KIMO FALCONER, RESIDENT OF LAHAINA: Yes, good morning. Well, its morning here. Not -- I was trying to get down to where our processing plant is. I still have not been able to get down there. It was pretty much Bedlam [ph], as much as you can say Bedlam. We watched the fire move all day yesterday into town and went north and went south to every single area where they (inaudible) and from the south side all the way to the north is completely -- as I went through this morning, I couldn't get as far as I wanted to. There weren't roadblocks but there was telephone poles across the highway that were burning so, you know, I couldn't go passed that.

I'm looking for a couple of personnel who are heroes in my mind that I haven't been able to locate them. I know they were in the middle of fighting this thing last night and that's the last I've heard from. So unfortunately I can't leave where right because I'm not at my house which is about 2 miles away. I'm looking at Lahaina right now and because if I leave then the police down at the end of the street are going to escort me out of here. So I'm just -- just hanging loose up here and I get phone calls from friends and neighbors and people who, you know, give me the information I need.

TAPPER: You say -- well, let me ask you, the Maui Mayor says the number of businesses impacted is going to be very high. What sort of resources will be needed to rebuild do you think?

FALCONER: I mean it's hard to say. Well, let's put it one way. So Lahaina is with most of the people that work on West Maui and a lot of people even work on the other side. They don't live in Lahaina. I've been -- I'm guessing maybe 25,000 to 30,000 people are going to be homeless because of this fire. And -- and that's just a wild guess just because I've lived in this neighbor, you know, I've lived in this community for over 40 years.

Hotels haven't been, you know, North of us in Kaanapali. I don't believe they've been impacted in terms of fire but there's definitely the ones in Lahaina are gone. They're just gone. In fact, our family owns one a -- of the oldest hotels in Maui and in Lahaina, in the state, right there in Lahaina town and it's completely ashes today. So it's heartbreaking. We haven't been able to -- I mean, honestly get our -- get our thoughts around this thing because we haven't personally gone to see what happened yet.

But I mean, you know, it's crazy. All these anecdotal stories about people jumping in the ocean and I thought that was kind of not to hear that. But I see National Guard helicopters going up and down shoreline right now looking for people, I think. I guess that's the reason why they're don't -- they're not dumping water on fires.

TAPPER: Kimo Falconer, thank you so much, really appreciate your time today.

FALCONER: Yeas, you got it. No problem. Thank you.

TAPPER: Coming up, will Donald Trump be indicted for a fourth time? CNN has learned that more than a dozen people could be indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, in connection with the President and his ally's former effort to overturn the 2020 election. What we're learning about the indictments that could come as soon as next week. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [17:17:26]

TAPPER: We're back with our Law and Justice lead with stunning news out of Fulton County, Georgia. Sources telling CNN that District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek more than a dozen indictments next week on her investigation into Donald Trump and his ally's attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. Trump expects he will be one of those indictments, we are told, as do a number of his close acolytes.

You might remember this investigation started in early 2021, when Trump made this call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger pressuring him to, "find enough votes to flip the state from Biden, who had legitimately won, to Trump, who had not."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FMR. U.S. President: So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: He had not won the state. CNNs Sara Murray joins me live. Sara, what do we know about these potential charges?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, we know that she is going to go before a Grand Jury next week. She's going to seek charges, and we expect her to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals who are involved in this sprawling investigation. You know, she's been looking at a racketeering and conspiracy case, which allows her to sort of craft this narrative about what happened around the 2020 election and how not just Donald Trump was involved. But all these other folks were involved whether it had to do with the fake elector scheme, whether it had to do with pressuring election workers there, or whether it had to do with the voting systems breach in rural Coffee County.

And a number of people who were involved in all of those different schemes are concerned that they could be on the list of people facing charges next week, Jake.

TAPPER: So next week you say, walk us through the possible timeline and how soon we could learn about any actual indictments.

MURRAY: So there are two Grand Juries that are meeting regularly in Fulton County. One meets Monday and Tuesday, the other meets Thursday and Friday. And again, Fani Willis has lined up these witnesses that she wants to call before this Grand Jury to create this narrative about what happened. Those witnesses have been told, we'll give you a 48 hours heads up about when you should show up to testify. So we should get a little bit of lead-time that gives us a signal of, is this going before the Grand Jury on Monday, Tuesday, is it going before the grand jury Thursday, Friday. We expect her to take about two days to present her case so we should get a sense, you know, by next week. TAPPER: And we're told that she, the District Attorney is under extra

security protection now.

MURRAY: She is, she has extra security protection. My colleague Ryan Young has reported. I mean, obviously she's faced number of threats. She's a black Democratic District Attorney in the south. We've already seen the ramp up, of course, around the courthouse. We've seen the barriers go up and we've seen them close the streets. But there are, of course, concerns about her physical protection. She has long said she feels comfortable with the security around her. But clearly they're beefing this up as we get into this period where she will make her charging announcements.

[17:20:21]

TAPPER: All right. Sara Murray, thanks so much. This is not the only major development today in Trump investigation. A newly obtained court filing shows that Special Counsel Jack Smith who's in charge of the federal investigation, obtained a search warrant for Trump's Twitter account. CNN's Katelyn Polantz broke this story for CNN. Katelyn, what exactly were prosecutors looking for?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Jake, we're a little thin on exact details there. But we know that prosecutors believed that they would find evidence of a crime in Donald Trump's Twitter account, Real Donald Trump, the account that was shut down after January 6.

They believed that. They said it to a Judge. A Judge agreed. And then they were, at the beginning of this year, able to get the documents from Twitter, the records of Trump's Twitter account. Ultimately, we did see several tweets, more than a dozen Trump tweets in the indictment against the former President that was filed publicly in court last week. We're now seeing what happened in this sealed proceeding that was taking place before that indictment was filed.

And those tweets largely are from the time around January 6. They're public tweets but we still don't know the full story because what is in the court filing, it's not specifying exactly what they were looking for.

They're using very vague language about this, that it's records related to Trump's Twitter account. We don't know if they were looking for other things like direct messages, other pieces of data or metadata that Twitter might have. But at very least, they were looking for the tweets themselves so they can get them as evidence now in the indictment.

TAPPER: And Twitter officials were given a gag order. They were not allowed to tell Donald Trump about the search. Twitter fought that decision. They lost in Court. Why did prosecutors think it was so important for Twitter to not tell Trump what was happening?

POLANTZ: Yes. This is a really intriguing ripple of the story that we also don't have a full explanation of. But what we have in this Court filing is that we have the Judge saying and the court, appeals Court reciting what the Judge found was that there was reasonable grounds to believe that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation by giving him an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, or notify confederates. So there was concern they could chill the investigation. T witter, at a hearing that was sealed back in February, said, Guys, the cat's out of the bag.

This Special Counsel's investigation, everyone knows about it. We know they're looking at Trump. Why can't we tell Trump that you're seeking this search warrant? And the Justice Department at that time said Twitter doesn't have the full story. They're not presenting the whole story and there's still information redacted here about what they were looking for.

So I -- we just don't know how to put that together right now. But we do know that there was real fear that this search warrant would somehow set off Donald Trump back in January and February of this year.

TAPPER: All right. Katelyn and Sara, thanks to both of you. Let's discuss with Sara Fischer, a senior media reporter at Axios, as well as former Federal Prosecutor Renato Mariotti. Sara, when it comes to Georgia, we're talking about a potential fourth Trump indictment. This does sound as though it could be more sprawling. At least twelve indictments expected. At the end of the day, do you think that this is going to play out any differently than the previous three indictments?

SARA FISCHER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: Well, it could possibly. And as it pertains to Twitter, one of the things I'm really curious about, Jake, is drafts. Remember, one of the things that they're looking for is trying to understand when Donald Trump was making comments, when he was potentially looking to say things that could quell, dissent, and the riots going into Capitol Hill, et cetera. Those are the types of things the metadata that Katelyn spoke about that could be within his account, that if Donald Trump was tipped off, he could go in and potentially delete it. So you could see why they would want to keep that quiet.

In terms of what's coming next for the fourth indictment and what could be different, I'll say on the media front, one of the things we've been tracking a lot is the public's attention to all of these different legal challenges and indictments. And one of the things we found is that it just continues to wane. And that's also reflected in Donald Trump's finances.

CNN and others have reported that this, you know, Trump campaign is bringing in less and less money every time a new indictment or a new legal challenge is brought forth, just because there seems to, you know, indictment fatigue at this point.

TAPPER: Renato, are you surprised by the scope of what we're expecting to see in Georgia, at least a dozen indictments, dozen people indicted?

RENATO MARIOTTI, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: You know, I'm not entirely surprised by that, Jake, given the length of time that there's been an investigation ongoing in Fulton County, we've seen Fani Willis and her team investigating over the course of many months. There is a lot of court filings around, for example, immunity deals being given to specific fake electors and so on. So I think she's been building a case for quite some time. And really, just from my perspective, I'm sure there's indictment fatigue in the Trump defense team at this point trying to deal with now it looks like potentially a fourth indictment at the same time, that's very challenging situation for any Defense right now.

[17:25:20]

TAPPER: And Sara, Twitter was fined $350,000 because it delayed turning over the records to Jack Smith's team. What do you make of that back and forth?

FISCHER: Yes, it's interesting because as we know, Elon Musk has said he would vote for a Republican president. He seems to have sided with Republicans in some cases, although he has also brought Democrats onto the platform to do Twitter spaces, et cetera. And so you can imagine that he might feel uncomfortable bringing Twitter into an investigation against the former President.

The one thing I want to note about that, though, is this is a very serious request for personal data of an account. It's very different when a government is trying to request that you take down a post or you hide or limit account's ability to author a post, asking for the actual data, private user data of a direct message of drafts, et cetera. That's a very different type of request. And you can imagine why Elon Musk and the Twitter team would kind of proceed with caution there, because being a part of that one could potentially worry might politicize the platform even further.

TAPPER: And Renato, Trump seems to be claiming that this search warrant violated his First Amendment rights. Is there a legitimate legal argument there, even if you don't agree with it? Is there a legitimate argument?

MARIOTTI: No, there's no legitimate argument. Search warrants can be executed. In fact, that's what we expect law enforcement to do. We expect them to go to a Judge and to obtain a search warrant, if there are records to be seized. That's what government, you know, and prosecutors should be doing. And so this wasn't a request, just to be clear. I want to clarify that from a moment ago. This was a lawful order.

And I will just say, Jake, as somebody who represents many large companies, it is very unusual for a company to spend resources and hire lawyers to try to fight an order preventing, you know, disclosure of materials that are being produced in a lawful -- as a result of a lawful search warrant, very unusual for a company to do that.

TAPPER: Renato, Sara, thanks to both of you. Appreciate it. Is there a disconnect between what the numbers show and how Americans feel about the economy? Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren will join me live next to discuss that and some other issues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:32:06]

TAPPER: We're back with our Money Lead. While President Biden is out west touting his economic and climate plans, the White House and Wall Street are bracing for a highly anticipated inflation report due tomorrow. That data could decide whether or not the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates yet again, meaning you would pay more for credit card bills, mortgages, car loans, and on and on.

Joining us now to discuss, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Senator Warren, I have so many questions for you about the economy, but I do want to ask you about these new developments. Out of Georgia, we are expecting Donald Trump to face his fourth indictment next week. He is expecting that as well. And yet in most 2024 polls, he's tied with Joe Biden. Or it's at least within the margin of error. Why?

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): Well, look, I'm not a great political pundit here, but Donald Trump is going to do what Donald Trump does. And there are people who know that they're going to cheer him on over the indictments and everything else. But at the end of the day, Joe Biden is the leader our nation needs, and he's delivering. He's delivering on the economy. He's delivering internationally, and he makes America a stronger, safer place.

And I think come November 2024, there were 7 million more people who believed that Joe Biden would be the right leader. And I think it's going to be even back in 2020, I think it's going to be even bigger than that in 2024.

TAPPER: So there are good economic numbers. But in addition to those good economic numbers, gas prices sharply climbed in the recent weeks. Americans credit card debt just hit a record $1 trillion, which I'm sure you're concerned about. More people are now tapping into their retirement accounts because of financial struggles. These are clear signs that at least some of the Democrats economic plans are not working, don't you think?

WARREN: I see it as whose side are you on in this fight. So, for example, what the President has got and done is he's gotten us $35 insulin for seniors. We're about to watch in 2024 click into a cap on how much seniors pay on prescription drugs. President has been out there fighting to get rid of junk fees, and there are a lot of them that have fallen away. The most recent one that I've been talking about is that we need to make sure that we've got enough money to keep kids in child care.

There are a lot of economic issues that are ones that touch people right where they live, and they recognize, you know, they got to be able to hold it together until the end of the month. President Biden makes it clear he's out there fighting for those people every single day. He's out there fighting to keep those costs low.

WARREN: The Republicans are fighting the President every inch of the way. And I think when the economics get ground into the politics, people are going to pay a lot more attention to the question of Republicans who just want tax cuts for billionaires. They want to help out giant corporations. They're all for monopolists. And President Biden, who's doing his best every day to lower costs for hardworking American families. That's what it's all about.

[17:35:23]

TAPPER: You talked about child care. And let's talk about that, because you and Democratic Senator Tina Smith in Minnesota have a CNN op-ed today titled America's child care crisis is about to get a lot worse, you say, because pandemic funding for care centers is set to expire next month, it's about to get worse. So what exactly is going to happen if Congress doesn't do anything and the program ends?

WARREN: So if our support for child care, our nationwide support goes away, about 3.2 million children are going to lose their child care spots. There are going to be child care centers across this country that just closed. And that's going to have a terrible economic consequence because that's a lot of mamas and daddies who can't go to work, who can't work a full shift because they can't get adequate child care.

So we are urging Tina Smith and I and others to say, as the President is talking about emergency funding for Ukraine, emergency funding for the various problems that we've seen so far, the key one that we should also be focused on in our economy is child care. We need to make sure that care doesn't just fall over a cliff, and we need to put in the kind of federal resources to support that. That's what we need to do in the short term.

But I just want to say, Jake, long term, America needs to make an investment in child care. This is early childhood education. This is investing in our children. You know where America stands among the 37 richest nations in the world, we're number 33. Think about that. Mexico spends more per child on their children than we do in the United States. Romania spends more on their children than we do in the United States.

We want to build a strong future. We need to invest in child care. We want parents to work. We need to invest in child care.

TAPPER: I confess I find it fascinating and distressing how ignored children are in general by Congress when it comes to funding childhood cancer studies, when it comes to child nutrition, when it comes to daycare, and on and on. And I don't quite understand why. Honestly, I know Democrats are more in favor of social program spending than Republicans in general, but this problem doesn't go away when Democrats control all three branches.

It consistently goes on. And as you noted in your op-ed, the United States is 33rd out of 37 and spends 13 billion on child care, compared to 712 million on defense. Why?

WARREN: Yes. You know, I think it's because children just don't have a voice. They don't vote. They don't have political action committees. They don't have lobbyists. And yet investing in our children is how we build a future. You know, we understood this once as a nation. We started investing in public schools and we started at kindergarten because we believed back then that kids zero to five weren't learning anything.

But we made that investment in public schools because we believe that's how America will build a future. We'll have a better educated workforce. We'll have more people who will be more creative, who will invent more things. What we've now learned is those babies zero to five, they are learning. And they need to be in places with lots of well trained teachers and bright colors and big words and playing with each other so they're ready for school.

We have learned that every dollar we spend on a child in those preschool years saves us $7 later on that we don't have to spend because children are struggling in school or having trouble when they're out of school. Those are investments we need to make long term. Investing in our children is investing in our future. And by golly, it's time for us to stand up and say so.

TAPPER: I want to ask you, this is not the kind of child you want to talk about, but the adult child, the adult son of President Biden, Hunter Biden. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee say that they have identified more than $20 million in payments from foreign sources to the Biden family, including Hunter Biden and their business associates. So far, we haven't seen any direct evidence pointing to Joe Biden, President Biden, doing anything illegal. And I don't necessarily know what everything that's in this.

[17:40:10]

But I do wonder, on a broader level, the 30,000 foot view of this, people close to Donald -- I mean, people close to Joe Biden or people close to Donald Trump, but I'm talking about Joe Biden making tens of millions of dollars because of their closeness to him. That can't be something that you like. That can't be something that you're comfortable with as a phenomenon.

WARREN: Look, I always worry about the influence peddlers in Washington, regardless of party affiliation. One of the things, as you know, I've spent a lot of my time in Congress working on is how we bring just more ethics and more oversight in general to everything that we do in government.

Look at, we've got a United States Supreme Court where people take gifts and don't even report them, even though the law requires them to report, and that they somehow think that is all right. It is not all right. But we don't have a set of ethics that apply to the Supreme Court. We have a problem with the revolving door. People who come into government from industry and then they write regulations for the people they used to work with, and then they leave government and go back to working for that same industry and cashing in on their time in government service, selling off their access to our elected officials.

I understand that it is hard for Republicans and Democrats and Independents to say, we've got to have a set of ethics that apply to everyone. And that means we've got to be willing to say to our friends and people who are not our friends the same rules apply across the board. And we got to shut down the revolving door. We got to have ethics rules that apply to everyone. That's what we got to do, both to make government function better, but also so the American people can have confidence in their government. I think that is really a crucial challenge for us in the next few years.

TAPPER: I agree. And I think when people see Hunter Biden being paid thousands of dollars from Kazakhstan or Ukraine's energy companies, they understandably get skeptical about how this town operates. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it.

WARREN: Thank you for having me.

TAPPER: A deadly FBI raid in Utah just hours before President Biden arrives in the state. Why they tried to arrest the man before the President's visit. Stay with us.

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[17:47:11]

TAPPER: FBI agents shot and killed a man in Utah while trying to serve him an arrest warrant after he allegedly posted threats online against President Biden ahead of Biden's trip to the state. Let's bring in CNN's Josh Campbell. Josh, investigators noted in their criminal complaint that the suspect, Craig Robertson, appeared to own a sniper rifle and several other firearms. Tell us what happened this morning.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jake. So, the shooting occurred in Provo, Utah, early this morning as agents were trying to take this man into custody. He was under investigation for allegedly threatening a protectee of the U.S. Secret Service. We're now learning that was President Joe Biden. I'll read you part of a disturbing post the suspect allegedly wrote. He wrote, I hear Biden is coming to Utah digging out my old Ghille suit, That's a reference to a tire, a camouflaged attire worn by snipers, and cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle.

Now, Biden is indeed expected to be in Utah this afternoon. Of course, that type of post very concerning for federal law enforcement. This investigation actually began back in March when a social media company saw a concerning post online regarding Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in New York. They contacted the FBI. That's when this investigation got started.

One of those posts the suspect allegedly wrote, heading to New York to fulfill my dream of eradicating another George Soros two-but political hach DA. I'll be waiting in the courthouse parking garage with my suppressed Smith and Wesson 9 millimeter to smoke a radical fool prosecutor that should never have been elected.

Now he goes on in graphic detail to talk about killing Bragg. We're not going to bring you those wild details. It's interesting, Jake. The FBI at one point had approached this suspect. He was under surveillance. They described him as wearing a dark suit. He had a Donald Trump hat on. He had a lapel pin of an AR-15. They confronted him about these concerning posts, and the suspect allegedly told them that, look, this was all a dream.

He told FBI agents, you come back when you have a warrant. That they did this morning, showing up at 6:15 a.m. The shooting occurred. That suspect now dead. The circumstances of that FBI shooting very much under investigation at this hour, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Josh Campbell, thanks so much.

Coming up next, the controversial law that just cost an east African country some major financial aid. Stay with us.

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[17:53:31]

TAPPER: In our World Lead, Uganda's harsh new law criminalizing homosexuality is provoking more than just worldwide condemnation and backlash. The World Bank just announced that it is suspending new loans to Uganda. CNN's Larry Madowo joins us now from Nairobi, Kenya. First of all, tell us about Uganda's anti-gay law. What exactly does it say and when exactly was it enacted?

LARRY MADOWO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, this law passed in May, very popular across the country with religious and political groups. And the White House has described it as one of the most extreme anti-LGBT plus laws in the world. This is why, the three main penalties here, just for the offense of promoting homosexuality, that gets you 20 years if convicted, the act of homosexuality, so same sex acts that takes you to jail for life.

And for the offense of aggravated homosexuality, that gives you the death penalty. That's why it's getting so much criticism. So this, like I mentioned, is very popular in the country. Listen to the MP, the lawmaker that brought this to parliament, reacting to this pause by the World Bank.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASUMAN BASALIRWA, UGANDAN PARLIAMENT: Unless they want to tell us that each time we want to make a law, we should first consult America or World Bank and IMF, please, we are consulting you. Will this law be acceptable to you? Then if they say it is acceptable, we bring it back to parliament and debate it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[17:55:00]

MADOWO: So, Jake, you can see the rhetoric there that conflates the U.S. and the World Bank in this decision.

TAPPER: Will the World Bank's action change any minds among Uganda's leadership? Is it not possible that it might just make other problems in Uganda worse? MADOWO: I'll take the second question first. It's possible. The World Bank says its commitments to Uganda were about $5.2 billion by July 18 last month. So President Museveni just responded to this in a handwritten letter that he posted to his Twitter or X now, I want to read a section of this for you. I want to inform everybody, starting with Ugandans, that Uganda will develop with or without loans. It is therefore unfortunate that the World Bank and other actors dare to want to coerce us into abandoning our faith, culture, principles and sovereignty using money. They really underestimate all Africans.

And that word sovereignty is what you've heard a lot every time Uganda has been criticized of this law. But I've been in Uganda twice, Jake, this year, reporting before the law passed and after the law passed. And I met people who've had to go into hiding, who say they were fired or evicted or even suffered assault because of this.

TAPPER: Yes, the law's horrific, of course. Larry Madowo in Kenya, thank you so much.

We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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