Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Interview With Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL); President Biden Addresses Nation Following Election. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired November 07, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:02]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: And I know we're going to be covering it every step of the way.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: Oh, yes. No, I talked to a Trump adviser recently about all this and they said that a second Trump term would be Trumpism on steroids.

BROWN: Yes.

ACOSTA: And so I fully expect that's what we're going to see.

Pam, thanks so much. I will hand it off to you now.

BROWN: All right, thanks so much.

And, of course, we were waiting to hear from President Biden to make his remarks following the election.

Good morning, everyone. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington.

There's some live pictures now of the White House Rose Garden. Any minute, as I noted, President Biden will address the nation for the first time since his party's stinging defeat at the polls this week. Biden spoke with president-elect Donald Trump yesterday to congratulate him and invite him to the White House.

The president's speech comes as Democrats grapple with the future of the party and as many of Kamala Harris' allies place some of the blame on Biden for not dropping out sooner, lots of finger-pointing here this morning.

As we await the president's speech, I'm joined by Arlette Saenz, Alayna Treene, Jeff Zeleny and David Chalian.

Arlette, I spoke to a source this morning who tells me President Biden's message is going to be pretty straightforward. Tell us more about what we're expecting to hear.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pam, this will be the first time President Biden is speaking publicly since voters decided to send Donald Trump back to the White House. He is expected to reflect on the election results and talk about the country coming together in this moment. But President Biden also will be talking about the transition. Advisers to Biden have insisted that he wants to ensure that there is a peaceful transfer of power.

That is something that was not afforded to Biden back in 2020, when Trump had put up roadblocks through the transition process and did not concede this election. So President Biden yesterday did place that phone call to president-elect Trump to congratulate him and invite him here to the White House.

Sources say that that meeting could potentially happen as early as next week. But one big question facing President Biden heading into this speech is whether he will address what went wrong for Democrats in this election. There's been a lot of soul-searching within the Democratic Party over the last 48 hours, a lot of questions about messaging and strategy.

And many Democrats are placing the blame directly at President Biden's feet, as some have expressed concerned about the fact that even decided to seek reelection at the beginning and then, when he did drop out of this race, left the Democratic nominee with little time to mount their campaign against Trump.

So these are all key pieces of the arguments within the Democratic Party right now. And they very well could shape how Biden is remembered going forward. But, today, he is facing this new reality that the man that he had defeated in 2020 will be returning to the White House today.

And we will hear directly -- or next year -- and, today, we will hear directly from President Biden about how he feels about these election results and how the country should proceed going forward.

BROWN: All right, thanks so much.

And I want to bring in more of our panelists right now.

Jeff Zeleny, you have been covering this every step of the way as we await President Biden to speak. What more are you learning about how Democrats are grappling with these big questions, these heavy questions about moving forward amid this resounding election loss?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, I mean, as Arlette was talking about, the soul-searching, there's certainly finger-pointing.

I think you have to put those in a couple buckets. One, the mechanics of this election, was enough done to sort of turn out the vote? If you look at the battleground states, actually, the margin was pretty slim, but the -- perhaps the bigger problem for the Democratic Party are in non-battleground states, like in New Jersey, like in Illinois, places where Republicans made very, very big gains.

And that has to do with the messaging, the brand of the party. So, yes, there are a lot of conversations, but it starts right here with President Biden. There cannot be -- this is a bit of a backward- looking sort of part of the autopsy, I think, but his decision to stay in the race, enabled by Democrats at all levels, up and down, from the House to the Senate, certainly in the White House, to say, no, he's just fine, he will be the candidate, that certainly led to a cascading series of events.

So, as always happens in a defeat like this, so there will be a lot of finger-pointing among the coalition, but I'm interested to what President Biden is going to say. I believe that there will be very little of this introspection or soul-searching coming from him.

I think he will talk about -- this is an institutional type of speech. He's standing in the Rose Garden here. He is very committed to the peaceful transfer of power. It's why he invited the former president. But when we take a stock of this, he ran for president to stop Trumpism, if you will.

Now, as he begins to take his leave in 74 days or so, Donald Trump is coming back, and he is -- it's more than just the Trump era. I mean, this is a monumental defeat for Biden in that respect.

[11:05:06]

BROWN: It really is.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: He also takes to this lectern in the Rose Garden today i mean, this is a monumental defeat for Biden, that respect. It really is. He also takes to this lectern in the Rose Garden today as the only person to have ever defeated Donald Trump.

And so that, no doubt, is going to be in his head, as it has been for some time. We have no idea. All the evidence at the time suggested he didn't really have a path to defeat him if he had stayed the candidate.

But we know from reporting that Joe Biden has often made the point to people around him that he is the only one that actually had defeated Donald Trump. And, today, after these election results are in, he will still have that claim to a piece of his legacy.

BROWN: Yes, you have to wonder how much he's thinking about the fact that Harris lost 13.2 million -- or had less votes, 13.2 million less votes than Biden.

CHALIAN: We're still counting lots of votes coming in, in California. There are going to be millions more votes that have not yet been counted. So that is not a final number.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: OK, that is not a final number.

(CROSSTALK)

CHALIAN: But no doubt Donald Trump is on track to win the popular vote, which he did not do either in his 2016 victory or obviously in his 2020 defeat.

BROWN: Right. And that is worth noting.

And, of course, we are still counting those votes. But, I mean, it goes without saying, David, that this is not how President Biden wanted to leave the White House. This is not what he wanted his legacy to look like right now.

CHALIAN: And this will be a core part of his legacy. There is no doubt.

Barack Obama understood when he left the White House after eight years, despite his resounding success to get there in 2008 and the reelection, he understood that Trump's defeat of Hillary Clinton was going to be part of his legacy, which is why you saw some of what you saw from Obama in the intervening years.

This too will now be a big part of Joe Biden's legacy. As Jeff said, his decision to run for reelection, despite his age and the concerns voters clearly had about it and do all systems go, rather than saying to his party, I'm going to pass the torch, I'm a one-term guy, and you guys have an open, engaged primary process to figure out the best path forward and have the whole party weigh in on that, he chose not to do that.

(CROSSTALK)

ZELENY: And his decision to run for president in the first place in 2020. So it's actually even bigger than that.

BROWN: But, of course, he also, from what I'm reading from our reporting, feels a little bit like, well, if Hillary Clinton and Obama hadn't kind of tried to push me to the side earlier, maybe this would have been different.

ZELENY: I mean, perhaps, but I think that we will see how introspective President Biden is here at this moment, but he owns a very large portion of this.

The economy was a central driver of this election and the decisions that he made certainly didn't entirely contribute to it. He inherited a pandemic -- a post-pandemic economy. So every presidency -- as David's making the point, it is so interesting when we just -- I think, in history.

One presidency is an extremely linked to the next, but these certainly are.

BROWN: Yes, and I think that is the point, I mean, in large part. Not one thing decides an election, but it was clear the voices -- the voters made their voices heard here with their votes on the economy and on inflation, and that does go squarely at President Biden.

CHALIAN: Yes, no doubt about it.

I -- we went into this election with a singular big question, and that was, can Kamala Harris jumped the hurdle of three-quarters of the country saying it was on the wrong track, people expressing real pain about inflation, and the incumbent Democratic president she serves as vice president at historically low approval ratings for successful reelections, for that party to get another vote of confidence from the American people?

The answer on Tuesday was a resounding no. She is not able to jump that hurdle. That was too high of a hurdle, and it's not clear that any other Democrat could have done so. What is clear is, the Democrats did not put forth a message that appealed to enough people in this election to counteract those environmental factors in the electorate.

BROWN: Right. Right.

And you could argue, well, the prices of the grocery store don't always fall on the president, there's lots of external factors and so forth, but the perception of these Americans is that actually, no, this is the Biden administration, this is what we're seeing.

I think also what I'm told is that he's going to focus a lot on the peaceful transfer of power, emphasizing that, clearly drawing a stark contrast with Trump from 2020, Jeff.

ZELENY: Sure. I mean, this did not happen -- what we're about to see here in the Rose Garden and over the next coming weeks did not happen four years ago, because, at this moment, four years ago, when Donald Trump was defeated, he was contesting the election at every turn.

So this is very important to President Biden, the peaceful transfer of power. The presidency is bigger than the man still in the Oval Office. So I think that his call with Donald Trump yesterday was just signifying that you have to do those things, even when your party is defeated.

[11:10:15]

I mean, there are many examples in history, obviously, when a president is defeated or when his party loses, where you still have to step up and do the presidential role of that.

But I think this is so different in the sense that we are now beginning the very end of Joe Biden's leave for public life, which we thought initially was back in 2017, when President Obama at the time gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That seems like a very long time ago.

However, I think just the introspection here, one person not in the Rose Garden, at least we believe, is Vice President Harris. She has nothing on her public schedule today. So how that relationship repairs -- so that is what is so fascinating here, just at this moment in time of history.

As far as we know, President Biden still has not spoken in an extensive way, if at all, with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who played a huge role in sort of getting him off the stage. So that's why this is no ordinary speech from a president sort of taking his leave. So, to David's point, yes, he is the only person to defeat Donald

Trump. And that is front and center in his mind. And Biden loyalists will say, well, perhaps you should have stayed on the ticket and won.

I think that there's zero evidence, in fact, there's much evidence to the contrary, that that would have been an even bigger disaster for the party.

CHALIAN: But I do think Jeff's point about the through line from Biden's stated rationale for running for the presidency in 2019 and 2020, and obviously ultimately successful effort, that battle for the soul of the nation, that is going to be his mission in the Rose Garden tonight.

He sees this role of the commander in chief, of the president of the United States speaking to a divided country in the immediate aftermath of the election to continue the work of fortifying the soul of the nation, to put on display the peaceful transfer of power that he was not afforded.

(CROSSTALK)

CHALIAN: It was ultimately peaceful, but it clearly was bumpy along the way, that he was not afforded from former President Trump.

So the contrast with that will be clearly front and center today, but also Joe Biden's belief in that work of the need to fortify the soul of the nation. And this, he believes, is a critical component to that.

BROWN: All right, stay with us. We're waiting for this. We're watching for President Biden to address the nation. We're going to bring you to live right here on CNN.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:16:25]

BROWN: And welcome back.

Any moment, President Biden will address the nation after Vice President Kamala Harris' defeat this week. We will bring it to you live.

But, first, Latino men delivered big for Donald Trump this election cycle, favoring the president-elect by double digits. Latino women still favored Kamala Harris, but by smaller margins than they supported Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

One Democratic lawmaker called the loss of Latino voters -- quote -- "nothing short of catastrophic for the party."

Let's bring in Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez of Florida.

Congressman, thank you for coming on. You are on the House Homeland Security Committee. As you well know,

Trump has made any promises for a second term, one of them being mass deportations once he is back in the White House. Realistically, how do you see that taking shape, given the logistical and financial complexities at play with an operation like that?

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): I agree it's going to be a very, very big task.

And my hope is and I expect that we will just simply follow the law. We will probably have to hire many more additional hearing officers to give the folks that have come in under the Biden/Harris administration and the millions that have come in under the Biden administration their hearing in court,

I mean, look, what's supposed to happen at the border is, if you come in seeking asylum, you're supposed to either be held in a third country or you're supposed to be held inside the United States. That didn't happen. And then you're supposed to get a hearing to determine whether your claim of asylum is actually valid.

It turns out that about 80 percent of those claims are not valid and those people, those folks are deported back to their country. That's the way that it's supposed to happen. Everybody has due process here in the United States. And so I believe that that's the way it'll happen.

We will have more hearings and it'll be done quicker. The people who get their hearing, those that are found to have not a valid claim will be deported back to their country and those that have a valid claim will be allowed to stay in the United States, because that's what the law says.

BROWN: So let's look at this a little bit deeper, because as you well know, this election, if anything, shows that voters have not been happy with inflation.

And economists saying mass deportations could actually add to inflation and really hurt the economy, not to mention the cost here. The average cost of deporting just one person -- and this is from 2016 from ICE -- was $11,000. And you multiply that with what Trump is vowing to do, it's expensive.

I know you are concerned about the deficit and where is money going to come from. What do you say to that, to that concern among economists about what this could do to the economy and to inflation?

GIMENEZ: We need to follow the law, the law of the United States.

And the fact that it's going to cost $11,000 to deport folks that probably should have never been allowed in is actually due to the malfeasance and the destructive policies of the previous administration. We just have to follow the law.

If the current administration had just simply followed the law, we wouldn't be in this pickle. We wouldn't have millions and millions of immigrants that maybe did not really have a valid claim to enter the United States. You wouldn't have had that massing of people at the border, because, as soon as the Biden/Harris administration got -- they took power, everybody knew, hey, come on in, they want open borders, you can get in.

Under Trump, that didn't happen. And so this is all -- that all falls at the feet of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And so, yes, we just have to follow the law. That's really what the American people want. That's what Hispanics want. We just want you to follow the law.

BROWN: What do you think should happen in a situation when deportations would separate kids from their parents? What do you think about that?

[11:20:05]

Are you OK with separating families through these proposed deportations? Or do you think they should all be deported together? What do you think?

(CROSSTALK)

GIMENEZ: I will tell you what I'm not OK with, OK? I'm not OK with the fact that we have 300,000 kids that we don't know where they are and who they're with or what they're doing. I'm certainly not OK with that, OK?

And so, look, there's a law also that...

BROWN: When you say that, what do you mean? I just want to understand what you mean by that.

GIMENEZ: That means that there are 300,000 kids that Homeland Security can't tell you where they are. That's what I mean. And so we had at least 85,000, and that grew to 300,000.

I think that's a much more serious problem than some hypothetical about separating families. Look, somebody born here in the United States, they have birthright citizenship, right? And so they're going to stay here. We will get to those issues as they come.

But, right now, my main concern is finding those 300,000 kids that nobody knows where they're at.

BROWN: All right, and we're just checking on that number. I didn't have that number at the ready, but my producer is just double-checking that.

I do want to ask you, because Trump did get a ton more support among Latino voters. And I'm wondering why you think that is. I mean, as you know, a lot of his rhetoric on the campaign trail was demeaning and insulting illegal immigrants, right?

Why do you think Latino men have really come to him in larger numbers this time around? GIMENEZ: Look, President Trump was railing against and is against the

criminals that were allowed to come into the United States through the immigrant criminals that are in the United States, one of them being Tren de Aragua, which is actually here in Miami too, all right?

And so we have a lot of criminals that were allowed to come into the United States that should not have been allowed to come into the United States. That's what he's really against. We understand and I understand that many, the majority of the people coming through the border are just seeking a better life here in the United States. I do. I understand that very well.

I'm an immigrant myself. We believe in legal immigration. That's what Hispanics believe in, like I believe most Americans believe in legal immigration. We don't believe in illegal immigration. Why are Hispanics going to the Democrat -- I mean, to the Republican Party?

Well, because I think that -- I know that our values are more aligned with Hispanics than the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party is going way to the left, to the extreme left. Many of us came here fleeing communism, fleeing socialism, and we look at the Democrat Party getting closer and closer to socialism and that's being rejected.

And so we're a party of faith. We're a party of family. We're a party of hard work. And Hispanic men and women are people of faith, people of hard work, people of family. And so, though -- our values are aligning, and so I look at it it's simply that the Hispanics are coming home to their natural home, which is the Republican Party.

BROWN: All right.

And just to follow up on the 300,000, there is 300,000 missing -- let's see. It's a paperwork problem, I'm told, not necessarily translating into 300,000 missing children. But I do take your point that that would be a concern if there are children that cannot be found and located, clearly.

Congressman Carlos Gimenez, thank you so much.

GIMENEZ: I appreciate it.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Yes, thank you.

We are waiting and watching for President Biden to address the nation. We're going to bring it to you live. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: President Biden speaking now at the White House.

(APPLAUSE)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. Please. (APPLAUSE)

BIDEN: Thank you.

Good to see the Cabinet and staff together.

(APPLAUSE) Thank you.

(CHEERING)

BIDEN: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Please. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The -- it's good to see you all. Particularly good to see my granddaughter sitting in the front row here.

Hi, Finn. How are you, honey?

For over 200 years, America has carried on the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world. And that's not hyperbole. That's a fact -- where the people, the people vote and choose their own leaders, and they do it peacefully.

[11:25:24]

And we're in a democracy. The will of the people always prevails. Yesterday, I spoke with president-elect Trump to congratulate him on his victory, and I assured him that I'd direct my entire administration to work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition. That's what the American people deserve.

Yesterday, I also spoke with Vice President Harris. She's been a partner and a public servant. She ran an inspiring campaign, and everyone got to see something that I learned early on to respect so much, her character. She has a backbone like a ramrod. She has great character, true character.

She gave her whole heart and effort, and she and her entire team should be proud of the campaign they ran.

The struggle for the soul of America, since our very founding, has always been an ongoing debate and it's still vital today. I know, for some people, it's a time for victory, to state the obvious. For others, it's a time of loss.

Campaigns are contests of competing visions. The country chooses one or the other. We accept the choice the country made. I have said many times you can't love your country only when you win. You can't love your neighbor only when you agree.

Something I hope we can do no matter who you voted for is see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans, bring down the temperature. I also hope we can lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system. It is honest, it is fair, and it is transparent, and it can be trusted, win or lose. I also hope we can restore the respect for all our election workers,

who busted their necks and took risks at the outset. We should thank them, thank them for staffing voting sites, counting the votes, protecting the very integrity of the election.

Many of them are volunteers who do it simply out of love for their country. And, as they did, as they did their duty as citizens, I will do my duty as president. I will fulfill my oath and I will honor the Constitution.

On January 20, we will have a peaceful transfer of power here in America.

To all our incredible staff, supporters, Cabinet members, all the people who've been hanging out with me for the last four years, God love you, as my mother would say. Thank you so much. You put so much into the past four years. I know it's a difficult time. You're hurting. I hear you and I see you.

But don't forget, don't forget all that we accomplished. It's been an historic presidency, not because I'm president, because of what we have done, what you have done, a presidency for all Americans.

Much of the work we have done is already being felt by the American people. But the vast majority of it will not be felt -- will be felt over the next 10 years. We have legislation we passed that's just only now just really kicking in. We're going to see over a trillion dollars worth of infrastructure work done, changing people's lives in rural communities and communities that are in real difficulty, because it takes time to get it done.

And so much more is going to take time. But it's there. The road ahead is clear, assuming we sustain it. There's so much, so much we can get done and will get done, based on the way the legislation was passed. And it's truly historic.

We're leaving behind the strongest economy in the world. I know people are still hurting, but things are changing rapidly. Together, we have changed America for the better. Now we have 74 days to finish the term, our term.

Let's make every day count. That's the responsibility we have to the American people.

Look, folks, you all know it in your lives. Setbacks are unavoidable. But giving up is unforgivable. Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable.