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Tonight: Biden Delivers High-Stakes State Of The Union Address; Biden Allies Push For Fiery State Of The Union Speech; Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) Discusses About Laken Riley Act Bipartisan Support Ahead Of President Biden's State Of The Union Address; Soon: Uvalde City Council To Release Report On Police Response To Robb Elementary Shooting. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired March 07, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: President Biden now preparing for what is likely his biggest chance to address the American people before this summer's conventions, what he needs to do for a strong State of the Union address tonight and how some allies are working behind the scenes to push the President to own the big stage.

And within the next few hours, the city of Uvalde, Texas is expected to release its findings of its report on the botched police response to the Robb Elementary School massacre. We have a closer look at what we can expect.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And we're learning more about last year's train derailment in Ohio and how the response that followed was based on a bad call.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

The stage is set for tonight's big speech from President Joe Biden, perhaps the biggest of his presidency. In just a few hours, he is set to deliver a State of the Union address that have to navigate some pessimism about the economy, anxiety over record immigration frustrations with the Israel-Hamas war and growing concerns about him personally, about his age with those hurdles complicating Biden's path to reelection and a looming rematch with former President Donald Trump. Dozens of top Biden allies want him to unleash his inner hulk to start being more aggressive on camera when he makes the case for a second term.

Let's start this hour at the White House with CNN's MJ Lee.

MJ, Biden is facing huge policy implications, huge political implications tonight. What should we expect from his speech?

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Boris. Without a question, this is going to be one of the most pivotal speeches that President Biden delivers as president. And so much of that, of course, has to do with timing and the moment that he is in, in terms of the huge issues that he is confronting both abroad and here at home and we definitely expect that throughout the speech, he is going to for one look back on his accomplishments over the last three years and also try to paint a picture of what a second term of the Biden presidency would look like. And he's going to use a lot of these policy ideas to make that point.

We know that he is going to be talking about, for example, the situation in Israel. The state of the economy, of course, is expected to be a big feature of this speech. He'll talk about other things like reproductive rights and the situation at the border. Another critical issue that his base very much cares about and the rest of the country, of course, has been critical about him - with him on.

And the White House has, we should mention teed up a number of announcements that will be unveiled in tonight's speech as well, including, for example, raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent. And one way in which we are going to get a pretty good sense of the top policy and political priorities for this White House and this president is by looking at the guests who the First Lady has invited to join for tonight's speech, including, of course, Kate Cox.

This is the woman who was denied an abortion in the state of Texas. We'll see Shawn Fain, the head of the UAW. Just goes to that base that we were talking about and part of that key coalition for the President. And also a woman named Jazmin Cazares. She is the sister of someone who was killed at a school mass shooting. Of course, gun violence is a domestic priority that the President has talked about a lot over the course of the first term.

And keep in mind, this is going to be us hearing President Biden deliver this important speech, but also presidential candidate Joe Biden as well. And to that end, we do expect to hear a good amount of finger pointing at Republicans when it comes to policy issues and just a lot of drawing of that contrast between the vision for - vision that he has for this country and the vision that he says is broken that Donald Trump has for this country as well, Boris?

SANCHEZ: MJ, we understand the White House was hoping that another Israel-Hamas hostage deal would have been finalized before tonight's speech. Obviously that didn't happen. So how might that issue specifically about what's happening in Gaza factor in tonight?

LEE: Yes, we are told by senior administration officials that the President will be addressing the situation in Israel in a very meaningful way. Of course, this is an issue that has consumed the President and this White House for the last several months.

[15:05:03]

The announcement that we're going to see the President make on this front is the U. S. Military setting up a port in the Mediterranean in - off the coast of Gaza, so - as to allow more humanitarian aid to enter the strip. The context here, of course, is exactly what you just mentioned. CNN reported just this morning that the hopes of getting that hostages and temporary ceasefire deal by the start of Ramadan, which is set to begin this weekend, that those hopes have very much dimmed. That certainly means that we don't expect to see that kind of deal announced before tonight, and that is going to make the tone that the President strikes in talking about the situation in Israel so important because he is obviously cognizant of the frustration and the anger that people are feeling across the country on that issue.

SANCHEZ: MJ Lee live force at the White House. Thanks so much, MJ. Brianna?

KEILAR: For more on the behind the scenes, strategizing and also some of the hand wringing in the White House and beyond, let's bring in CNN's Isaac Dovere.

Isaac, you spoke to a lot of Democratic insiders who want to see more fight from Biden, what did they tell you?

ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes. That's right, Brianna. A number of people saying to me that they are getting a little tired of hearing that the President is cursing about Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu behind closed doors or that at fundraisers where there are no cameras, he really rips into Republicans. They want that Biden out there.

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, really top Biden allies saying to me, you got to hear it from the candidate himself. That's what the question is here. It's about showing the - is Biden tough enough that he needs to answer that question, not just in tonight's speech, but overall, as we head into this campaign year.

And, of course, it's all about calibration. Brian Schatz, another big Biden supporter, a senator from Hawaii said to me, you can't be at 11 out of 10 on the alarm scale for the next eight months. But on the other hand, there needs to be this sense that Biden is there, is engaging, is showing that there is the enthusiasm for reelecting him and also, of course, answering some of the questions that are there about his age and whether he's up to the job.

KEILAR: Is he open to this? This sort of feedback that he's got coming in?

DOVERE: Well, look, Joe Biden knows politics. He knows that he's in this campaign. He does seem to have a very clear sense of the importance of the speech at this moment when there are all these questions about him and his candidacy. And what we've seen out of the White House today is people like Jeff Zients, his chief of staff at the White House saying you're going to have an energetic Biden and energized. Those are the words that are coming out from White House officials today.

We will see what this actually comes to. But, of course, last year, Joe Biden had a pretty good speech from the view of the White House and that moment where he engaged with the Republicans when they started jeering him and got them to, it seemed like, jeer the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare, which had been part of some Republicans' proposals and then said, I enjoy conversion. That was a really good moment in the minds of the White House aides and of the President himself. They are hoping that they'll get another moment like that tonight. My sources tell me that they looked for a couple of places where they could trap Republicans into that. We'll see how it all goes down.

KEILAR: All right. Isaac Dovere, thank you so much.

And just hours before the speech, the House passing a new piece of immigration legislation, the Laken Riley Act, named after the Georgia nursing student who was murdered while jogging along a path on the University of Georgia campus last month. Authorities say the man charged in her death crossed into the U.S. illegally.

We have CNN's Melanie Zanona joining us live now from Capitol Hill with the latest on this.

Mel, what can you tell us?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Yes. Well, this bill did pass. It was bipartisan. Every single Republican voted for it and just 70 Democrats supported it. Of course, this comes on the eve of the State of the Union address, where Republicans are hoping to make the border a big issue. They were even seen passing out buttons beforehand that said, say "her name, Laken Riley." The House Republican Conference was also passing out buttons that said, "Biden border crisis."

So clearly, they are trying to time this vote in conjunction with the State of the Union address tonight. But Democrats said this was just a way to sort of exploit a death that happened. And that is why you saw so many Democrats ultimately vote against it. But I talked to Marjorie Taylor Greene. She is a member from Georgia, where Laken Riley is from. And she said that all of her Democratic colleagues in the state delegation voted against this bill, and that she is going to make sure that voters in the state remember it.

So clearly, Republicans planning to make this issue in the campaign in November and this is really a starting point as we look ahead to the general election.

KEILAR: All right. Melanie Zanona on the Hill, thank you. Boris?

SANCHEZ: We're joined now by Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez of South Florida.

Congressman, great to see you. Thanks for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

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I do want to ask you about this Laken Riley Act, the fact that it passed with a degree of bipartisan support. What's your reaction to this news?

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): Well, I think that the bipartisan support tells it all. I mean, if we had had this kind of vote, say a year, year and a half ago, it wouldn't have been bipartisan. But now more and more Democrats are realizing that we have a crisis at the border. And while they won't admit it, that crisis was caused by the President of the United States and his actions. He took 64 different actions that actually created this crisis, this mess that we have at the border and we need to fix it. And he needs to fix it.

And so I expect today when he speaks that he's going to somehow blame that the Republicans haven't given him the resources needed in order to fix the problem at the border, which is completely false.

Look, his first day in office, he issued executive orders rescinding a lot of the executive orders of the Trump administration that actually had the border under control. He's taken 64 different actions on the border and this is what we have as a result.

SANCHEZ: I think describing as the border being under control under President Trump isn't exactly precise. The issue of immigration has been a problem now for generations. I am curious to get your perspective on the approach from some ...

GIMENEZ: Well, let's - hold on a second - no, wait, hold on.

SANCHEZ: Sure.

GIMENEZ: So, wait, hold on a second. Okay. No, no, no, the border is completely out of control right now and so, yes, we always had an immigration issue.

SANCHEZ: I'm not saying that it's not.

GIMENEZ: Yes, but it's completely out of control in a scale we have never seen in American history and that's what's causing the problem in America.

SANCHEZ: I don't refute that the numbers show that there is a huge crisis at the border. I am curious about the framing of the issue coming from some in your party, because obviously what happened to Laken Riley is a tragedy, and it should never happen to anyone. The data, though, when you scale back doesn't show that immigrants, whether legal or not, are more likely to commit murder or more likely to commit violent crime than American citizens.

And the way it's described by folks like former President Donald Trump, who's now the Republican nominee ostensibly for president, is that Hannibal Lecter is crossing the border. The folks that are coming into the country are out just to kill and maim and rob and destroy. Being someone that comes from an immigrant community, being someone who is an immigrant yourself from an immigrant family, does that concern you that that rhetoric damages what is supposed to be one of the key parts of the American dream that you can come here from anywhere in a legal fashion and find success?

GIMENEZ: There you go, you said it, the - in a legal fashion that you can come from anywhere in a legal fashion, not in an illegal fashion and I'll tell you what's really happening. The problem that we have now is that immigration used to be - pardons used to be issued on a case by case basis. It's not being done on a case by case basis done on a mass basis. And in there, in that mass, there is a criminal element that's entering the United States.

Look, in Miami, we had a former Venezuelan police officer that was kidnapped, arrested, and taken and murdered by gang members of something called Tren de Aragua, which is a gang that originated in a notorious prison in Venezuela. They're being let loose. They go, they cross the Darien, they get into the United States. And that's just one example of what's happening here in the United States.

We're not saying that every immigrant coming in the United States is a criminal. I know that I've spoken to them, that most - the majority are coming here for the American dream. They need to be doing it in a legal fashion. But in that mass of millions of people, there is a criminal element. And yes, that is putting American lives at risk, Laken Riley is just an example of that. That poor former police officer from Venezuela in Miami is another example of that.

And they wouldn't have been killed, they wouldn't be dead, if the government had done its job and issued parole on a case by case basis.

SANCHEZ: I do want to point out it is legal for asylum seekers to claim asylum once they have crossed the border, just to point that out.

GIMENEZ: Absolutely, but that ...

SANCHEZ: I want to get to something else, Congressman.

GIMENEZ: Wait, hold on a second. Hold on, oh, no, no, no, no, no, I can't let you go on that one either ...

SANCHEZ: (Inaudible) ...

GIMENEZ: ... because then they are released into the United States on a parole basis and that's supposed to be done on a case by case basis. Not on a mass basis.

SANCHEZ: Congress, I'm not sure what it is you think I said, but I didn't ...

GIMENEZ: Okay.

SANCHEZ: ... I didn't try to get away with anything. I do want to ask you about your guest at the State of the Union tonight. It's an activist, a human rights activist from Cuba, Rosa Maria Paya. According to the Inter-American court, her father Oswaldo Paya was killed by the Cuban government.

[15:15:02]

Murdered by the Cuban government for his desire to bring free and fair elections to Cuba, to bring free expression to Cuba.

GIMENEZ: Right. SANCHEZ: You have some colleagues in the House that recently visited the island who are pushing for Cuba to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terror. I don't doubt for a second that you're trying to send a message to them and to the Biden administration by having Rosa Maria there at the State of the Union tonight.

GIMENEZ: Oh, no, it's a message. It's a message to my colleagues in the House that went to Cuba, supposedly on a secret mission to have conversations with the Cuban government, Rep. Jayapal, Rep. Omar, to try to lift them from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a country that is actively sending soldiers to Russia to fight against Ukraine and a country that is actively supporting Hamas and then also to lift the embargo against Cuba to keep the regime in power.

Look, this regime has been oppressing the Cuban people for 64 years, 64 years. There's no free election, no freedom of expression, no freedom of religion. You've got thousands of people that are political prisoners. You've got 10s of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people that maybe have perished in the Florida straits and trying to cross to reach our shores in the United States to find freedom. And then you have two members of Congress that want to be apologists for them.

And yes, it's a clear message to them and it's a clear message to the Biden administration that, hey, we should be the defenders of freedom and democracy in this hemisphere. And it starts right there, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba is the heart of it all. It's the head of the snake that's actually infiltrating and corrupting and trying to bring their revolution, their brand of revolution, to the rest of Central and South America and, frankly, the rest of the world.

So, yes, we need to be stronger with Cuba, not lift the sanctions on them.

SANCHEZ: Congressman Carlos Gimenez, very much appreciate the perspective. Look forward to having a conversation again soon.

GIMENEZ: Yes, me too.

SANCHEZ: So the city of Uvalde, Texas is releasing its report on the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting when a gunman murdered 19 students and two teachers. What that report could reveal.

And there's a new report finding that the controlled burn that came days after the Ohio train crash not only released more than a million pounds of toxins into the environment, it was completely unnecessary, so why they do it?

Those stories and much more next on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: City leaders in Uvalde, Texas, are expected to release the results of their investigation into the deadly school shooting at Robb Elementary. There's already been a report. People will remember it. It was the Justice Department report that found cascading failures in the way that police responded, including waiting more than an hour to confront the gunmen who killed 19 students and two teachers.

SANCHEZ: CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is live for us in Uvalde. He's been inside that city council meeting.

Shimon, walk us through what you're learning about the report.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: So, Boris, it just started. We're about, I don't know, 15 minutes or so into this meeting. This is the private investigator, the investigator that was hired by the city of Uvalde back in July of 2022 out of concern that there was a cover up here by the Department of Public Safety, the DA that they were not getting enough information.

And so the mayor at the time decided that he needed to start his own investigation, and he hired a former police detective from Austin, Texas, a man by the name of Jesse Prado. He's a 25-year veteran of the Austin Police Department. He did this investigation. And now nearly two years later, we're starting to see the results of it.

And finally, today we are getting our first indications of what he found. And certainly so far already, he's been testifying at the city council hearing that there were failures. We know that there were failures, but we've not gone into any of the intricate details of exactly how the officers of the Uvalde Police Department failed in their duties that day.

What we do know, based on body camera footage and other evidence and other information that we have reported on, is that three of the Uvalde police officers, a lieutenant, a sergeant, another police officer, were some of the first officers on scene that day. They were in the hallway as the gunman was shooting. And as they were in the hallway approaching the classroom, the gunman was firing through the walls and they retreated and then basically went back again and then retreated again.

And they've been criticized by other investigators, certainly by the Department of Justice and by the Department of Public Safety in their investigation, for not going in that classroom, for retreating. And sort of how they had described it was that the momentum had stopped. In those first few minutes when they got to the scene, those officers should have kept going and should have gone inside that classroom to try and stop the gunman. And we know they didn't, and ultimately officers would wait for an hour before they went in.

The other thing obviously that we have heard a lot about from the Department of Justice report, and now what's happening inside, is the lack of leadership that day. The chiefs that were on scene that day, from the school police chief to the acting police chief with the Uvalde Police Department on that day, that didn't take any kind of leadership role to insist that their officers go inside, that they form a team and that they go inside.

[15:25:07] So that is some of what we are starting to hear, that there was a lack of leadership, that there was failures that day. We've not gotten any indication into exactly what each of the officers from the Uvalde Police Department did that day or how, if at all, they're going to be held responsible for their actions that day.

Important in all of this, obviously, is the families. They are here today. There's a number of them inside. They are expected to speak at some point. They want accountability. They want some of these officers fired, disciplined and it's not entirely clear at this point if any of that is going to happen. So certainly as this day progresses, this is something that the families are going to be speaking about.

But certainly to have this report finally, nearly two years later, from the Uvalde Police Department, from their investigators, is going to be significant.

KEILAR: Yes, 77 minutes, it's two years later and it is no less heartbreaking.

Shimon, thank you so much for bringing that to us and keeping an eye on this very important meeting. We appreciate it.

It turns out a controlled burn after that toxic train derailment in Ohio last year was completely unnecessary. Why officials say they did it.

And the maker of a popular weight loss drug has a surprising new warning. Maybe not everyone should be buying its product, at least, that's the message in their newest ad.

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