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Biden to Announce $150 Million in Grants as Part of Cancer Moonshot Program; Police Investigating Break-In at Trump Campaign Office; NASA Study: Vast Amounts of Water May be Beneath Surface of Mars. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 13, 2024 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: President Biden arrived in New Orleans just a few moments ago. He and the first lady are there to promote the Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative. It aims to cut the nation's cancer death rates by at least half over a 25-year period.

The White House saying President Biden will announce $150 million in research grants this afternoon at Tulane University. CNN's Kayla Tausche is in New Orleans for us. Kayla, what more can we expect?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jessica, the president and the first lady are going to be touring the cancer facility here at Tulane that is set to receive some $23 million of that $150 million award that will be given to eight different organizations. It is part of this Cancer Moonshot that President Biden has prioritized most recently in the last two years since he became president, though he first launched it in the immediate aftermath of the death of his son, Beau, from brain cancer back in 2016.

So certainly this is a cause that is near and dear to Biden's heart, and that is one of the reasons why it is toward the top of his policy shortlist as he eyes what he wants to do during his final months in office to cement his legacy as president.

Now, that shortlist, I'm told, also includes proposing reforms on guns, climate, and the Supreme Court, which we saw him roll out just a couple weeks ago. Also, lowering costs for Americans, bolstering alliances overseas, and notably implementing legislation that Congress passed and he signed into law over the last three and a half years.

So far, the government has provided about $560 billion toward various government agencies and state and local authorities for signature infrastructure, semiconductor, and clean energy legislation that has been ushered in in recent years.

And a part of that legislation aims to save the government tens of billions of dollars by negotiating prices for drugs under Medicare. President Biden and Vice President Harris, in their official capacity, are going to be discussing that very issue together on Thursday in their first appearance together.

[15:35:00] Certainly, that is going to be something that Vice President Harris discusses on the campaign trail, as well as she is set to unveil her own economic narrative in the coming days. But certainly, President Biden is trying to cement his own legacy with policies that he can highlight, even as Congress is likely to continue making it difficult for any new legislation or new policies to be enacted. His aides say that he still wants to put a stake in the ground on what matters most to him -- Jessica.

DEAN: All right, Kayla Tausche for us in New Orleans. Thank you so much -- Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: For a closer look at President Biden's Cancer Moonshot program, let's bring in CNN medical correspondent Meg Tirrell. So, Meg, tell us about the details in Biden's initiative.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Boris, it's really been focused around five priority areas where they've been putting funding and resources. One is to expand access to cancer screenings. Another is to understand and prevent toxic and environmental exposures that can lead to cancer.

A third is prevention, particularly through things like reducing smoking rates. A fourth is innovation, where they have put $4 billion of funding into a new agency called ARPA-H, which is focused on health care innovation, turning things into new medicines and technologies, for example. And the fifth is support of patients and caregivers.

I was talking with Dr. Ron DePinho, who's the past president of MD Anderson, who is saying it is too soon to measure the progress of the Cancer Moonshot. This is something that has 25-year goals. But he said even just formulating them in this way and articulating them is helpful.

He thinks, in particular, the creation of that new agency will be a really important part of this legacy, as well as trying to close the gaps in terms of access to health care in this country and earlier detection of cancer and that support of patients and their caregivers. Those are the things he really focused on here.

And, of course, this is deeply personal to President Biden, but it is deeply personal to so many Americans. Cancer is still the second leading cause of death in the United States right now. According to statistics from the American Cancer Society, 42 out of 100 men will get cancer in their lifetime, according to current statistics, and that's 40 out of 100 for women. And that goal that the Cancer Moonshot has is to reduce the death rate from cancer by 2047, by about 50 percent.

Now, this has already come down by more than 30 percent since 1991, where it hit its peak. A lot of that is because of reduction in smoking, also new technologies and earlier detection of some cancers. Now it's declining by about 2 percent per year, maybe a little bit more on average.

It needs to pick it up a little bit to meet that goal. And, of course, a lot of people hope that this Moonshot has a long-lasting legacy, guys.

SANCHEZ: And, Meg, in terms of improving cancer outcomes, where do things stand now?

TIRRELL: Well, things are getting a lot better. We are seeing some incredible technologies coming. So it's both in the prevention stage and also in the new technology stage. So we are seeing that get better.

But we also just had that kind of shocking report yesterday that predicted that cancer deaths and cancer cases among men are going to increase dramatically over the next few decades just from population growth alone. So a lot more needs to be done to prepare our workforce for that and to make sure that people all have access to the care that they need to help them with this.

SANCHEZ: Meg Tirrell, thanks so much for breaking down those numbers.

Still to come, do you recognize this person? Police say this is a suspected burglar that broke into one of Donald Trump's campaign offices. But was anything taken or potentially left behind? That story next.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Police are investigating a break-in at Donald Trump's campaign office in Ashburn, Virginia, some 30 miles outside of D.C. Officials say that surveillance cameras captured these images of the suspect, and investigators are now trying to figure out who this is and what, if anything, was taken.

At the same time, the FBI is investigating the apparent hack and leak of Trump campaign documents. Sources tell CNN that investigators think hackers tried to gain access to the campaign by first breaching the personal e-mail account of longtime Trump operative Roger Stone.

CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez is following both of these stories. Evan, it's interesting that Roger Stone still appears to be connected to the Trump campaign in some way. Do we know what, if any, campaign materials were compromised?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know that some news organizations are saying that they've received documents that were from the campaign that are now believed to have been from the campaign, that, you know, in one case appears to be some kind of document related to a vetting document about J.D. Vance, the vice presidential nominee on the Republican side.

And look, I mean, this was a campaign, according to the people we've been talking to, investigators believe that this has been a campaign that targeted both the Democratic campaign, both the Biden-Harris campaign, and the Republican campaign. And, you know, in this case, it appears what they did is they went to -- they got to Roger Stone, they got Roger Stone to click on something and then use that to impersonate and be able to get to their targets, refine their targets, in this case, actually getting inside the campaign.

So the question is, what else did they get? And, you know, what kind of damage could come from that?

[15:45:02]

Of course, we all remember 2016 when the Russians did exactly the same thing. They tried, actually, to get into a Republican site. They also tried on the Democratic side. They were successful with the DNC and managed to weaponize a lot of the documents that they were able to get.

SANCHEZ: Now, Evan, when it comes to this physical break-in in Virginia, this wasn't Watergate, right?

PEREZ: No, not quite. Not quite, not what we know right now. And look, Watergate really wasn't what seemed like a very small thing when it happened as well. So, you know, look, we're going to wait and see.

But at this point, it appears that this person got into this office, the Loudoun County Sheriff says that this is the person there who they've seen on surveillance camera. They're asking for tips. They say they've gotten a lot of tips. And one of the concerns there is whether that person left behind something, perhaps a bug, some kind of surveillance device in the office. It's not clear that they took anything.

So, again, we're not sure what this was about, but they obviously want to try to resolve this. The obvious comparisons to the Nixon era are there. And, you know, we keep reliving 2016, it looks like, right, with Roger Stone and all this whole thing. So maybe we're going to relive that one too.

SANCHEZ: Oh, goodness. Well, let's see what comes of it.

PEREZ: At least there were cameras there. They got the images of the guy. We live in a weird time loop right now, so I'm not sure what we can expect next.

SANCHEZ: Evan Perez, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

So a man in Michigan is facing 558 days of jail time after repeatedly shouting expletives at the judge overseeing his trial. Daryl Jarrell was in court for a simple misdemeanor trespassing charge, but he got upset after he was unhappy with the date of his next court appearance, and that led to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DARYL JARRELL: You don't (BLEEP) me.

HON. J. CEDRIC SIMPSON, JUDGE: OK, that's contempt. That's 93.

JARRELL: (BLEEP)

SIMPSON: That's another -- JARRELL: (BLEEP)

SIMPSON: That's another 93.

JARRELL: (BLEEP)

SIMPSON: That's another 93.

JARRELL: Did you ever (INAUDIBLE).

SIMPSON: That's another 93.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: I think we're all the gentlemen on the bottom left with his mouth open. The back-and-forth exchanges happened a total of six times. That means 558 days.

If you were wondering what other defendants in the Zoom thought of that tirade, here was that next defendant's face.

The judge, Cedric Simpson, proceeded to the next case telling that defendant that he shouldn't be concerned about the other man's outburst. Of course, that judge has overseen some interesting stuff lately, a story we will continue to keep an eye on.

Next, there's new evidence that water is on Mars. We'll break down where researchers think they could find it and what it would mean.

[15:50:00]

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DEAN: An amazing potential find on the red planet. Groundwater nestled 7 to 12 miles below the surface of Mars.

SANCHEZ: And get this. NASA scientists believe there may be enough water trapped in the crevices of rocks to cover the entire planet at least a mile deep. CNN space and defense correspondent Kristin Fisher joins us now.

Kristin, take us through this discovery.

KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE AND DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT: So, the idea that liquid water may be buried deep beneath the Martian surface, that's an idea that's been around for decades. But this is the first time that you have real data backing that up. And it's a big deal because, you know, the saying on Earth, where there's water, there's life. Scientists are excited that, you know, the same principle may hold on Mars.

So, this was discovered using data that came from NASA's InSight lander, a little lander that landed on Mars back in 2018. You can see it right there sitting on top of the Martian surface.

And what it found, these scientists found was that there is data trapped in that water-saturated fractured mid-crust right there. 7 to 12 miles beneath the surface, water trapped in tiny cracks and pores of rocks right in the middle of that Martian crust, enough to where, if it all came out, it would fill the surface of Mars about a mile deep. That's the theory.

Now, you may be wondering how on Earth did this little lander figure all of this out. It can't even move, right? It just landed there.

Well, this lander was attached to a seismometer, something that measures seismic waves, earthquakes, here on Earth. On Mars, it found the world's first Mars-quake, the first time any seismic activity had ever been detected on another planet. And so you can see right there, you've got the lander on top of the Martian surface, and it sent out those, when a seismic wave or a Mars-quake occurred, that seismometer was able to watch it and detect those waves.

And scientists on Earth two years later have now been studying all of that data and found that the speed of the seismic waves changed depending on which type of rock those waves were going through. And they matched it up with the types of rocks on planet Earth that matched it best and found that it was volcanic rock filled with liquid water. So that's how they came to this conclusion.

They've got the data, but they haven't actually touched, seen, felt the water yet.

DEAN: OK, so quickly, do they go do a mission now to try to get the water out?

FISHER: I know everybody is saying now you've got to bring in Bruce Willis, right?

Like, I get it, but in order to actually get this water out, you need a big drill that can drill down 7 to 12 miles.

DEAN: You do need Bruce Willis.

[15:55:00]

FISHER: Or Elon Musk's Starship rocket. That's the only thing that would potentially be big enough to get a drill of that size on Mars, at least right now.

SANCHEZ: I thought you were going to say Steve Buscemi. He was also in that movie, and I thought he was better than Bruce Willis.

DEAN: OK, see, any of them would work. Ben Affleck, me. Sure. Kristen, thank you.

SANCHEZ: Thanks so much.

DEAN: It is still sweltering out, but some companies are already offering their fall-flavored treats. They're planning to get you to spend more money. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) DEAN: Pull out that cardigan. Grab a cozy blanket. Light a candle. Apparently, it's officially fall.

SANCHEZ: No. No, it's not.

DEAN: No, no. It's part of the new marketing strategy at Krispy Kreme. This is going to spark some serious debate.

The donut chain is offering its seasonal menu much earlier than usual. Well, as of yesterday, you can buy a pumpkin spice donut and a pumpkin spice latte from your nearest Krispy Kreme.

[16:00:00]

SANCHEZ: IHOP, apparently also kicking things off early. Rolling out pumpkin spice pancakes and coffee starting September 1st. All part of a plan to get consumers excited and willing to shell out some cash.

DEAN: And here's the thing, the data shows Americans spend half a billion dollars on pumpkin spice products every year.

SANCHEZ: They love their pumpkin spice, but this is offensive. Summer isn't over.

DEAN: That's the thing about August.

SANCHEZ: It's not over.

DEAN: People want to rush it. You have to savor August.

SANCHEZ: No, you have to savor summer because you know what comes after fall. Winter. Nobody likes winter.

DEAN: Winter is coming.

SANCHEZ: Thanks so much for being with us today. Great to see you as always, Jessica.

DEAN: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts in just like five seconds.