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Jill Biden: Pres. Biden Immediately Knew He Messed Up In 2024 Debate; Inside The "Red Zone" Ebola Ward In The DRC; Experimental Drug Offers New Hope For Pancreatic Cancer Patients. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired June 02, 2026 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:31:35]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Six states holding primaries today, sure to shape the midterms ahead. We are following several races in the Senate specifically with the primaries. This week, will give Democrats a good look, a first look at the candidates who will be fighting to help their party win back that chamber come November. So what message are voters going to send? CNN's Harry Enten running the numbers for you. And he's here with us now. Hello. Democrats are hoping to win control once again. How does the party feel about Democrats right now?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yes, the Democratic base is very much divided. Take a chap right down the middle, and they are very dissatisfied with the direction the party is going, and you can see it right here because this is, I mean, hello, Democrats who are satisfied with the Dem party in 2026. It's only about 46 percent, 52 percent are dissatisfied. They're dissatisfied. This is Democrats. This is Democrats who are dissatisfied with their own party. The majority.

Now I want to put this into some context for you, which was Joe Biden back in 2024 put in arguably the worst presidential debate I have ever seen, ever seen. And yet 53 percent of Democrats were actually satisfied with Biden as the nominee. After that debate, the majority were satisfied, and yet today a lower percentage, 46 percent, are actually satisfied with the party. So the Democratic Party, according to Democratic voters, well, their pissed offness, if I could say that, has never been higher.

BOLDUAN: That is a fascinating, fascinating comparison. That really is. Yes.

ENTEN: It really puts it into context just how upset Democrats are right now.

BOLDUAN: OK, so how upset are they? How do Democrats feel about Democrats in Congress specifically?

ENTEN: Yes, I feel like we're turning in "The Tonight Show" here. OK, how upset are they in Congress, right? So you see this 46 percent who are satisfied with the party, the majority who are dissatisfied with the party. Again, this 46 percent lower than they were satisfied with Biden as the nominee after the worst debate performance of all time. And you can just see it right here. I mean, Democrats, net approval of congressional Democrats.

Look at this. In October of 2025, right, during that shutdown, that first shutdown, plus 22 points on the net approval rating. So Democrats, OK, fairly satisfied with Democrats in Congress. Today, though, look at that. That is an over 30-point drop, a decline right into the ocean right there, minus nine points. And I will note it had never been negative. Democrats have always had a positive net approval rating of their own party in Congress in every Congress before this one. But now what we're seeing is consistent numbers across the board where Democrats are underwater. Congressional Democrats are underwater with their own party.

And that's why I think these primaries are going to be so interesting, because they're going to tell us, OK, which way do Democrats want their party to go? How upset are they?

BOLDUAN: But that's the question. Is there -- are there signs of -- that this reflects, we want you to be more left or more center or more right?

ENTEN: Yes, this is the big problem, which is Democrats aren't sure what direction they want their party to go. Democrats want their party to move left, 28 percent. Not move at all, 18 percent. Move center, 47 percent. This is a party divide where they're not actually giving a clear message of where they want their party to go.

The one thing I will say is 61 percent of all voters want their party to move to the center. So if all of a sudden Democrats are actually going to move to the left, which is not what their party wants, that will actually upset the rest of the electorate. The only thing that really unites Democrats right now is they are very upset with Donald Trump.

[08:35:03]

And I think the candidates who are able to actually capture that, that's the candidates who are going to advance the general election.

BOLDUAN: Very interesting. Thank you, Harry.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So if you're listening closely there, you heard Harry mention President Biden's debate in 2024. You had to be listening carefully because Harry was whispering. There is news on that front this morning. Former First Lady Jill Biden is talking about the pressure from the Democratic Party on former President Biden to drop out of the race in 2024 after that disastrous debate performance. She now claims that when that debate was over, the second it was over, that President Biden said, "that he knew he screwed up." (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JILL BIDEN, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: Right after he got off of stage. I mean, let's face it. He -- Joe knew that this was not a good performance. I mean, as we walked off the stage, he whispered to me, Jill, you know, I really put it nicely, screwed up, didn't I? And I said, yes, Joe, you did. And so he knew.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: With us now, CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston and CNN political analyst from Axios, Alex Thompson, who also happens to be the author of the book "Original Sin," which covers President Biden's decline in 2024. Alex, I got to say, whenever I hear something like this, I think of you and Jake, who you wrote the book with immediately.

So the former first lady this morning saying, you know, she and the president, they knew how bad it was right away. How does everything she's saying and writing now comport with your research and all your reporting on this?

ALEX THOMPSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I can tell you a lot of former Biden aides just simply don't believe her. And part of the reason is if they knew they had screwed up so badly, then why that next weekend did they, you know, go to Camp David for a big family retreat? Why wasn't there a bigger sense of urgency? I can tell you a lot of former Biden aides believe that Biden probably could have survived as the nominee in retrospect, but they actually didn't seem to think that it was as big of a disaster as they are now saying.

You know, I feel -- I mean, I've talked to many, many former Biden aides that were around at the time, and they feel that a lot of this book is an attempt to really rewrite history in a more complimentary light than maybe the Bidens -- than maybe the reality is.

BERMAN: Mark Preston, how much excitement did Democrats today in 2026 who might be running for office or looking to retake the House and the Senate, how excited do they get when they see former First Lady Jill Biden out there selling a book and telling stories from the 2024 campaign?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, John, I mean, at this point, we're seeing it within the parties where we have, we call it the anti-establishment trying to take on the establishment, the grassroots trying to take on the establishment. Basically, the younger generation wants to see this old generation to go away, leave, let the party, you know, be taken over by those who are going to be around for the next 30, 40, 50 years.

Let us be the ones who are able to take it into the next direction. That's why we're seeing, you know, all these fights in this midterm election within the Democratic Party, also within the Republican Party, which is having the same reckoning, but they don't want to hear from Jill Biden. And Alex is right. I do think we're seeing a bit of rewriting history right now. I think that Joe Biden walked off that debate stage. He didn't think it was that bad, quite frankly.

And I also think that Jill Biden, I mean, if you look back on history, thank God that we don't write the history. Historians do. If you look back on history, you're able to see things with a little bit more clarity. And I think that's what we're seeing right now from Jill Biden. We're no longer in that crisis situation. She's looking back. She's trying to make sure that history paints her husband in a good light, their administration in a good light. And a way to do that is to at least try to acknowledge what was pretty apparent during that election.

BERMAN: Alex Thompson, a writer of some very, very good, relatively contemporaneous history. And we were always very appreciative of the work he's done. Alex, I want to shift gears now to what's happening in Washington. It's an unusual week there. And it's an unusual moment in this second Trump term. Maybe, honestly, any moment in either Trump term, when he's having to retreat on several fronts politically, the latest of which has to do with this $1.8 billion fund that was going to go to potentially, you know, political supporters who feel like they've been wrongly investigated or prosecuted.

Senate Republicans, including powerful Senate Republicans, more or less telling him, you can't do this. We're not going to take it. If you continue to push this, we can't get the rest of your agenda forward. Where does that leave the White House this morning? And what impact will it have over the coming months?

[08:39:58]

THOMPSON: It leaves the White House without a reliable Republican Senate ally any longer. And, you know, part of this is a consequence of Trump's own actions. I can just tell you in my conversations with Republican sources that Trump essentially undermining two Republican incumbents, that would be Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn, in recent weeks in their primaries and basically sending them to the exits, has really caused a chill across the Republican Senate caucus when it comes to, you know, some of these, you know, Trump apps that in the past maybe they would have gone along with, but no longer.

The fact is that Donald Trump no longer has three votes, the necessary votes for Republican Senate. There are only 53 Republicans. And many are, you know, disposed not to necessarily go along with Trump. And now he has John Cornyn, Bill Cassidy, Thom Tillis, Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski. That gets you at 47 votes. So Donald Trump no longer has a reliable Republican Senate caucus for at least the next eight months.

BERMAN: So, Mark, I want to shift gears to the elections that are being held today, primaries in six states. Without specifically getting into which candidate is running where and who will win or lose, what do you expect that we will learn by tomorrow that we don't know today? In other words, the results of these six races, broadly speaking, will tell us what?

PRESTON: Well, I think, look, I think you can just look at California just in general and it will give us an explanation of everything that's going across the country. We're seeing primary challenges that are happening in congressional districts up and down the California coast. We're seeing the reality star Spencer Pratt jump into an L.A. mayoral race. We'll see where the power of celebrity is.

And we'll see where money is, because Tom Steyer, who's running for governor in California, has spent over $200 million. I didn't stutter, $200 million to try to win this primary. So I think if we can look at California really as a, through a microscope of what's happening across that state, we're going to have a better idea, as Harry was talking about previously, about what the sentiment is between anti- establishment, grassroots, and will that also bleed over into the Republican side, as Alex is saying, is Donald Trump's power starting to wane a little bit?

BERMAN: Alex Thompson, thank you very much. Mark Preston, thank you very much. And congratulations to you, sir, on A.J. Brown. This is a joyous day for America. Thank you very much.

PRESTON: Great to meet you, pal. Sara?

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: It's good to see Mark Preston happy, isn't it? All right. This morning, CNN has gained extraordinary access to the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We're taking you inside the red zone of a hospital that is treating suspected Ebola patients as doctors work around the clock struggling to contain this virus. CNN's chief international correspondent, Clarissa Ward, takes us to the front lines of this life-or-death battle.

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CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is a surreal, but now all too familiar ritual. Healthcare workers painstakingly disinfect the coffin of the latest suspected victim of the Ebola virus at Bunia's General Hospital. As family members look on in anguish, unable to get close to their loved one. Torn apart by grief and consumed by fear.

Oh my father, why God, this woman cries. Oh God, this is my only father.

As the dead are carried out, new potential cases are arriving. At the entrance to the hospital, everyone's temperature must be taken.

WARD: So this is the room where they take people who are found to have a fever. There is a woman in there now. Obviously, they don't know if she has Ebola or not, but they're going to keep her here until they do more tests and get a better sense of what's going on.

WARD (voice-over): At a makeshift coordination center inside the hospital, Dr. Richard Kojan and his team are working round the clock to keep up with an outbreak they say is out of control. They agreed to show me and photojournalist Alex Platt what they're up against.

WARD: We are now getting ready to go into the so-called red zone of this hospital. That is the area where all suspected Ebola patients are put and there is a lot of protective gear, unsurprisingly, that one needs to wear to go inside.

WARD (voice-over): Bundibugyo is a strain of the virus that few were expecting. There is no vaccine and no cure. The doctors write our names on our backs so they can recognize us and then it's time to go in.

At the moment, patients are treated in hastily constructed tents. Thirty-year-old Gloria is a lab technician, one of dozens of health care workers believed to be infected.

[08:45:08]

WARD: (Speaking in Foreign Language). She says it's difficult to breathe.

WARD (voice-over): Earlier, we met her sister waiting outside for news.

WARD (through audio translation): I saw your sister. She's waiting for the moment she can hug you again. Do you want us to tell your sister something from you? A message?

WARD (voice-over): Do not be afraid, she says. But it's impossible not to be scared. Some of the patients here are in very bad shape.

WARD: How do you stay strong when you're seeing this?

DR. RICHARD KOJAN, ICU DOCTOR, ALIMA: For me, its our humanity.

WARD: Your humanity?

KOJAN: Yes, it's our humanity. When people are suffering like this, I feel it. I feel it.

He was in a coma.

WARD: Yes.

KOJAN: It's Ebola confirmed.

WARD (voice-over): Ten-year-old Meshack (ph) is still very weak. His mouth ravaged with blisters from the virus. He asked the doctors for a banana, an encouraging sign. Slowly, slowly, Dr. Kojan warns him. His condition is improving, but he has a long way to go.

WARD: He wants to lay down? Let's help him lay down then.

WARD (voice-over): They lay him down in the corridor while his room is disinfected. Nothing about this situation is OK. But these doctors are doing everything they possibly can.

As we walk to another ward, a familiar sound in the distance.

WARD: You can hear the cries of a family who are claiming the body of their loved one. This is a scene that's playing out here multiple times every single day. WARD (voice-over): This is a temporary ward for suspected cases. Patients lie waiting for test results that are taking up to a week to process.

WARD: So this is the situation that healthcare workers really want to avoid and are racing to put a stop to. You have five patients in the same room, all of them suspected of having Ebola, but doctors can't be sure. They can't rule out the possibility that one person in here may not have Ebola. And then, of course, there's a strong chance they could contract it.

WARD (voice-over): Every exit from the red zone is as careful as the entry. Protective equipment must be sprayed down with chlorine and methodically removed.

WARD: We were in there for maybe half an hour and I could barely stand up by the end. It's incredibly tiring, really hot. You're sweating so much, you're thirsty. I just, like, help us understand the kind of stamina that you need as a doctor to be going in and out of that red zone multiple times every single day.

KOJAN: It's really hard. We have to stand strong for those patients and otherwise, you know, the situation will be really very, very bad.

WARD: That 10-year-old boy. That's hard to see.

KOJAN: The first day, you know, he was really bleeding. A lot of diarrhea and shock, you know. So you have to get a way to give IV fluid. It's not really easy. So, and for me, you know, like an ICU doctor, when you have a situation like this, it's very hard to just say, I have to stop because I'm tired.

WARD (voice-over): On the outskirts of the city, the family we met earlier is burying their father, 72-year-old farmer Papa Babona Baudoin (ph). The burial team forms a cordon around his grave. The mourners forced to grieve at a distance, the final cruelty of this vicious virus.

Clarissa Ward, CNN, Bunia, Democratic Republic of Congo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BOLDUAN: The final cruelty of this virus. Clarissa and for her entire team, thank you so much for that reporting.

Still ahead for us this hour, a centuries-old shipwreck and priceless artifacts found sitting at the bottom of the ocean for hundreds of years. What they are now bringing up.

[08:49:58]

And police play a game of chicken in Pennsylvania. Wait until you meet, yes, Lieutenant McQuail. They named it, not me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BERMAN: The NBA Finals tip off tomorrow night in San Antonio at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time, which, if you want to know my opinion, is too late. It makes it hard for morning show employees to watch, right? Just as important, it's tough for children too. So New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is trying to address that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZOHRAN MAMDANI (D), NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Who's ready to watch the Knicks?

KIDS: Me.

MAMDANI: Who's ready to watch the Knicks win the championship?

KIDS: Me.

MAMDANI: All right, here we go. Here is our Mayor's order. Repealing kids' bedtimes for the Knicks finals run.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:54:59]

BERMAN: I'm sure parents will love that. At least parents with a good sense of humor. Look, when the game starts at 8:30, especially the finals, it can go well past 11:30 into midnight, especially when the refs are calling too many penalties or too many fouls on the Spurs which they will because they're going to favor the Knicks. It's going to go very, very late. Good for the Mayor to try to do something about it.

SIDNER: I'm sorry, but this is --

BERMAN: Where are you from? Wait. Where are you from?

SIDNER: I'm from next door.

BERMAN: Well, you're not from next door.

SIDNER: This is from the good stuff.

BOLDUAN: The more we chat, the less I get to talk about the chicken.

SIDNER: All right, fine.

BOLDUAN: Keep the chicken, please, Chris.

SIDNER: It's supposed to be good stuff.

BOLDUAN: Let's try this. May I take it? Here we go. Wow, we are going off the rails in a show that is always off the rails.

New this morning, the Villagers rescued from a flooded cave in Laos. Reunited with one of the rescue divers. What a moment. Five villagers survived 11 days deep inside that cave. They escaped through those narrow tunnels with the help of that diver and teams of international experts. This morning, two men are still trapped in the cave. And teams are racing against time now to try to find them. Searching the dense jungle to try to find another access point in.

In Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, there is a new officer on duty. She's got feathers instead of a badge number -- instead of a badge number. The name, Lieutenant McQuail. That is the name they gave her. The back story, after nearly causing a traffic jam, this daring chicken was then adopted by the police department. Recruited on the spot. That is until its owner comes forward. Now officially part of the department, she is in charge of crossing patrol, of course, they say. And just begging for cheesy dad jokes. Monaco, how about this one? Why did the chicken cross the road, apparently to enter the police academy, Sara?

SIDNER: He calls.

BOLDUAN: We've lost it.

SIDNER: Dad jokes are good. They're good jokes. Thank you, Monaco, for the joke. And thank you, Kate, for the story.

All right, this morning, there is potential major breakthrough in the fight against one of the deadliest cancers. Researchers say an experimental daily pill may significantly extend the lives of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. A new study found the drug daraxonrasib nearly doubled survival time compared to standard chemotherapy and caused fewer severe side effects for patients.

Joining me now to discuss this breakthrough is Dr. Shubham Pant. He is a gastrointestinal oncologist at the University of Texas, the famous MD Anderson Cancer Center. It's so good to see you because this is incredible news, actually, this discovery. Can you give us a sense of what exactly this pill does? What does it help with and how does it extend life?

DR. SHUBHAM PANT, GASTROINTESTINAL ONCOLOGIST, UT MD ANDERSON: Yes, thank you so much. As you know, pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease with very few treatment options. But 90 percent of pancreatic cancer is run by a KRAS mutation. It's always been considered undruggable. So think about it like a light switch, which should be turned off normally in the body, but it's stuck in the on position. And this drug, daraxonrasib, I know it's a tongue twister.

SIDNER: It is a tongue twister.

PANT: Daraxonrasib is a molecular glue. Yes, it is. Daraxonrasib is a molecular glue which sticks to the on position and flips that switch off and leads to cancer cell death. And the trial was in patients with stage four pancreatic cancer who had received one cycle of one prior chemotherapy. And patients were randomized to standard of care chemotherapy or the pill daraxonrasib. And what we saw was just remarkable, a doubling of survival in the patients who received daraxonrasib.

SIDNER: That is, it's truly incredible. And just explain to us why so many times when we hear someone has pancreatic cancer in particular, that often you lose that person, it's often advanced. Why is that?

PANT: Eighty percent of pancreatic cancer is advanced because it's kind of like deep inside the body, so when it shows up and it metastasizes early. So unfortunately, by the time patients have symptoms, it's already metastasized. And that's the challenge of the disease.

SIDNER: I do want to ask you if this particular treatment might be something used for other cancers or is it very specific to pancreatic cancer? Because if this extends life, it's a real game changer in the medications for cancers in general, is it not?

PANT: Yes, you're exactly right. So the KRAS mutation is in 90 percent of patients with pancreatic cancer, but it's also present in patients with colon cancer or lung cancer. So I think it's just an amazing time in science and scientific breakthroughs for treating cancer. And we're just getting started. We are taking this drug to the frontline setting. That means newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer taking this drug and other drugs to the adjuvant setting.

[09:00:15]

That means after the cancer is out to really take care of the micro metastatic disease or kill the micro metastatic disease. So I'm really excited about the future of cancer therapy.

SIDNER: We all are. That is incredible. Dr. Shubham Pant, thank you. Thank you to your team who are working on this, the scientists who ended up helping come up with this particular drug. It is so, so welcomed by the folks in the community of cancer. I really appreciate your time. We love our scientists and our doctors.

A new hour of CNN News Central starts right now.