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Biden to Outline Infrastructure Plan Tomorrow; Suez Canal Reopens; Chauvin Trial Resumes Today; Houston and Baylor Advance to Final Four. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired March 30, 2021 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

ERIC NELSON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY FOR DEREK CHAUVIN: That Mr. Floyd died of a cardiac arrhythmia that occurred as a result of hypertension, his coronary disease, the ingestion of methamphetamine and fentanyl and the adrenaline flowing through his body, all of which acted to further compromise an already compromised part.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN AVLON, CNN ANCHOR: Joey, as a defense attorney, how do you not confront the obvious fact that whatever else was going on inside George Floyd's system, the knee on the neck was the precipitating event? How do you ignore that obvious reality?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So, John, you can't, right? That's the elephant in the room. And so you have to embrace that fact, but you have to explain the fact. And so, to be clear, the defense has nowhere else to go, right? You take what you find. This is the case. These are the facts. You don't invent facts. What you do is you try to make the bad facts more favorable or you try to explain away those facts. And that's what they're attempting to do.

Another indication the defense gave is -- that it's saying very clearly, there's no evidence of restrictive breathing. Well, really? Well, what about the fact that he was saying he could not breathe? What about the fact that there's the kneeling on the neck? What about, right, the obvious indication from the bystanders saying, hey, let up?

And so what they're going to do is to pivot to the medical testimony and try to get any expert they could find to say it was a pre-existing condition, it was the methamphetamine, it was the whatever else he had in his system, it was he was sick, it was et cetera. And, finally, I think the prosecutor, they'll retorted on that saying, hey, he's lived with those conditions before and he was just fine.

And so to Areva's very good point, believe your eyes. That's what the prosecutor said. I think that resonated. And they also said he never let up, he never got up, that is Chauvin. And so it's a very difficult bridge to overcome if you're on the defense's part.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Areva, Joey, thank you very much. We really appreciate your time.

AVLON: Thank you, guys.

AREVA MARTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Thank you.

JACKSON: Thank you.

AVLON: All right, President Biden will soon lay out the details of his ambitious infrastructure plan. And we're going to break down what he's hoping for and if he has the support to pass it through Congress, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:36:28]

CAMEROTA: President Biden will outline the first part of his $3 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan tomorrow.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is live at the White House with a preview.

What do we know, Jeremy?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Nearly two years after President Biden launched his presidential campaign in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the president returning to that very same city tomorrow to launch the first part of this $3 trillion to $4 trillion infrastructure plan, something that was, of course, central to that very same presidential campaign.

The president laying out this first part, which is expected to focus more on physical infrastructure, rebuilding roads, bridges, airports and also you're going to see some investments in clean energy as well as areas like broadband across the country.

The second part of that infrastructure and jobs package will come next month from the president. And that is going to be focused on social welfare, on the care economy, expanding things like family leave, child care and access to healthcare.

But the big question here, of course, will be, how will the president pay for this? Right now what we're expecting is that the president is going to lay out a series of tax increases on corporations and businesses, increasing that corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent and a series of other changes as well.

That will, of course, be the big sticking point with Republicans, who, in principle, are also on board with this idea of big, bold, infrastructure spending. But the difference here is in how to pay for this. And so Democrats have already laid the groundwork for this budget reconciliation process to pass this simply along party lines. Of course the White House is saying right now they want to work with Republicans, they want to work with Congress to get this passed. And a senior official telling me this morning they want to get this passed by this summer. Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Jeremy, thank you very much for breaking all of that down.

So that giant container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week is finally free and we have the pictures of how this all played out, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:42:23]

AVLON: The Suez Canal is finally open for business again. The vital passageway was blocked for nearly a week after a giant skyscraper-size cargo ship ran aground.

CNN's Ben Wedeman has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): One final push and the enormous stern and the Ever Given is afloat.

God is great. The ship is floating, they shout. As the little tug boats that could blare their horns in celebration.

Rescuers had been pushing, prodding, prying day and night for six days, trying to dislodge the 224,000 ton behemoth stuck solid in the Suez Canal, damming a shipping lane crucial for world trade.

Monday, it floated free, not a moment too soon.

We'd hoped it would not take this much time, says the man in charge of the Suez Canal, Osama Rabie.

For days machines could dredge but nobody commands the tide. Sunday night offered a high water mark and an opportunity to refloat this stricken ship. The tug boats pushing with all their might. Finally Monday, 11:00 a.m. local time, movement.

The engines revved, the tide began to float the Ever Given. The stern was lifted, pushed 50 meters toward the center of the canal. The bow freed a little from its entrenchment in the clay bank. But again, by mid-morning, the tide was going out.

One more great tug was needed and by a quarter past three local time, she comes free from the shore. The Ever Given was guided away.

It leaves an almighty bottleneck in its wake, billions of dollars in cargo stranded on more than 400 ships, all backed up and waiting.

In three days or three and a half days I might make up for the loss, Osama Rabie says. We'll work around the clock until we get the ships through. Time, of course, money for the shipping companies waiting to get goods

through what should be a shortcut from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean.

The Ever Given now taken to a place called the Great Bitter Lake, where it will wait to be deemed seaworthy. The joyous farewell to a ship that could continue to fuel much bitterness as an investigation gets set to determine who foots the bill for this great big blunder.

[06:45:04]

Ben Wedeman, CNN, on the Suez Canal.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AVLON: Believe your eyes. That was the message from the prosecution in the Derek Chauvin trial as they showed the jury the video of George Floyd's death. The key evidence presented by both sides, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The Derek Chauvin murder trial began with the jury seeing nine minutes and 29 seconds of the deadly police encounter that killed George Floyd. But there were other key moments as well.

And CNN legal analyst, Elie Honig, is here with us. He's a former state and federal prosecutor.

So, Elie, tell us what the main themes of the prosecution's case were yesterday.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Alisyn, I was taught as a prosecutor that when you're giving your opening address to the jury you have two jobs, to be clear and to be credible. I think the prosecutor, yesterday, met both of those goals.

Now, he was not dramatic. He was not dynamic. But he doesn't need to be because when you're prosecuting a case like this, you don't want the prosecutor to be the star of the case, you want the evidence to be the star of the case.

[06:50:04]

And, of course, the most important, most powerful piece of evidence is that video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck, which we learned yesterday is actually nine minutes and 29 seconds. Somehow even longer than the 8:46 that was in the original complaint. The prosecutor argued this video proves that what Derek Chauvin did was a crime.

Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JERRY BLACKWELL, SPECIAL ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: We're going to show you that it was not accidental in terms of what was happening there at the scene. That what Mr. Chauvin was doing, he was doing deliberately.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HONIG: And the prosecutor argued that Derek Chauvin's conduct was a direct cause of George Floyd's death.

And, remember, if Chauvin's conduct was even one of several causes of death, then the jury can convict Chauvin.

AVLON: All right, Elie, so the defense went next. Take us through their opening statement and main themes.

HONIG: Yes, John.

So they started with a reasonable doubt defense. This is very common in criminal trials. The defense lawyer reminded the jury that the prosecution bears the burden of proving every element of these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. It's standard stuff but it's important.

The defense's key argument here is going to be that Chauvin somehow did not cause George Floyd's death. And, in fact, it was caused by a combination of his pre-existing conditions and drug use.

Let's listen to Defense Lawyer Eric Nelson as he laid it out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC NELSON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY FOR DEREK CHAUVIN: While they were in the car, Mr. Floyd consumed what were thought to be two Percocet pills. The results of Mr. Floyd's toxicology screen revealed the presence of fentanyl and methamphetamine, among other things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HONIG: Now, obviously, that conflicts with the prosecutor's evidence. And we will see later in this trial a battle of the experts, a battle of the scientific evidence.

The defense also has a common sense problem here. How could Derek Chauvin's kneeling on George Floyd's neck have had nothing to do with this? The defense also argues that Derek Chauvin did not use excessive force when he held back George Floyd, when he kneeled on his neck. Again, there's going to be a bit of a common sense problem with that.

CAMEROTA: Well, let's talk about the witnesses. So there were three yesterday. What did we learn?

HONIG: Yes, a busy day. We got through almost three entire witnesses.

So the first witness was Jena Scurry, whose this 911 dispatcher. She was sort of the textbook opening witness. She was rock solid. No drama. She established one key point, that what she saw happening on that screen was so alarming to her that she called her sergeant for the first time in her career. The cross examination showed, well, she had a lot of different things going on and she didn't necessarily see or hear everything. Then Alisha Oyler. You may remember, she was a very nervous witness. The prosecutor walked her through very slowly. She took seven videos. She was a cashier at the store across the street. Really what the prosecutor wants there is her videos, not so much her testimony.

And then Donald Williams, who was an eyewitness on the street at Cup Foods. He said he stopped because George Floyd was distressed, was in trouble. Now, Mr. Williams has this history as a mixed martial artist and he ended up giving a seminar to the jury on choke holds and pressure points and a really compelling piece of evidence was that he said to Derek Chauvin, that's a blood choke. That's the kind of testimony that will resonate, that will remain with the jury. It's a visceral, important piece of testimony.

When the trial resumes today, Donald Williams will still be on the stand.

AVLON: For sure.

CAMEROTA: Elie, thank you very much for all of your legal expertise.

HONIG: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, now to sports.

Half of the men's Final Four is set and let's just say Texas is well represented, John, whatever that means.

The "Bleacher Report" is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:57:48]

AVLON: All right, half of the Final Four is set and the other two spots will be decided tonight.

Andy Scholes alma mater, Houston, first to punch their ticket and he is basking in the glory with the "Bleacher Report."

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Oh, I'm super pumped, John. Go Cougs for the first time since Hakeem Olajuwon and Five Slama Jama. The Houston Cougars are back in the Final Four. They built up a huge lead over Oregon State at half-time, up 17 at the break. But the Beavers actually came all the way back in this game to tie it with 3:48 to go. Some really nervous moments for Houston. Quick drives, though, would knock down a big three to give the Cougs back the lead and Houston's tenacious defense and offensive of rebounding just winning out as they beat the Beavers, 67-61 to make it to the Final Four for the first time since 1984.

And it's going to be an all Texas matchup on that side of the bracket as Baylor earned their first Final Four birth (ph) in more than seven decades. The Bears leading wire to wire beating Arkansas 81-72. Last time Baylor got this far in March Madness was 1950 when there were just eight teams in the tournament. All right, the women's tournament, we had an absolute thriller between defending champion Baylor and UConn. Baylor was up. It was Paige Bueckers of UConn going on a 19-0 run to grab the lead. Now, the Lady Bears would fight back in the closing minutes and they actually had a chance to win this game in the final seconds. DiJonai Carrington going to drive to the basket. Looks like she was fouled right there. But there was no call made. Huskies win 69-67 to make it to their 13th straight Final Four.

Now, after the game, Baylor head coach Kim Mulkey said the NCAA should stop testing players and coaches for COVID-19 in the Final Four.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIM MULKEY, BAYLOR HEAD COACH: Wouldn't it be a shame to keep COVID testing and then you've got kids that end up having -- test positive or something and they don't get to play in the Final Four? So, you need to just forget the COVID test and let the four teams that are playing in each Final Four go battle it out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:00:04]

SCHOLES: Yes, and many calling that comment irresponsible, guys, because, you know, there's strict health and safety protocols in place.