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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Coast Guard: Crews Found Five Major Pieces Of Debris That Helped Identify Titan Sub; Whistleblowers: IRS Recommended More Charges Including Felonies Against Hunter Biden; Special Counsel's Office Has Multiple Recordings Of Former President Trump; Greene Calls Boebert A "Little B**** On House Floor. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired June 22, 2023 - 17:00   ET

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

[17:00:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Paul-Henri Nargeolet, he's a French submariner and ex-Navy officer. Plus Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son, Suleman. CNN's Jason Carroll is in Boston for us, where the site of the U.S. coast Guard Command Center is located.

Jason, the U.S. Coast Guard admiral called this catastrophic implosion. That what they assessed it is. But there remains so many questions as to how this happened and even whether they will ever be able to recover any potential human remains.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Quite right, exactly, Jake. And also questions about whether or not something like this could have been prevented. Again, this all happening this morning when these officials who were running this massive search, at the time search and rescue operation. The remote operated vehicle that was down on the ocean floor, early this morning at 8:55, a.m. came across that debris field. Right now what they are doing is the ROVs are still there on the ocean floor, still trying to map the ocean floor, still trying to figure out exactly what is down there in terms of debris.

The Coast Guard earlier today, the rear admiral gave his assessment of exactly what happened. And in addition to that, a deep sea expert weighed in on exactly what was found.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL HANKEN, UNDERSEA EXPERT: We found five different major pieces of debris that told us that it was the remains of the Titan. The initial thing we found was the nose cone, which was outside of the pressure hole. We then found a large debris field. Within that large debris field, we found the front end bell of the pressure hole.

REAR ADM. JOHN MAUGER, U.S. COAST GUARD: The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber. Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: And Jake, I know you mentioned there at the top in terms of timing when this may have happened, I actually asked the rear admiral about that. Given that the Titan lost communication with the ship on the surface about an hour and 45 minutes into its descent, the rear admiral could not give specifics in terms of when this catastrophic failure happened. But he did say that sonar buoys, which have been placed in the area throughout this entire effort, did not indicate, did not pick up any sort of acoustic type of sound that would have indicated some type of implosion. Jake.

TAPPER: And Jason, tell us more about what we just heard from the co- founder of OceanGate.

CARROLL: Right, right. The co-founder, exactly, releasing a statement just a short while ago, this coming from Guillermo Sohnlein, he said the following, he said, "It's a tragic loss for the families and for the ocean exploration community in general. All five crew members were passionate explorers, and they died doing what they believed in. Those of us in the community that work at that depth, know that there's always a risk. There's pressure, so, there's pressure down, so -- there's pressure down so intense that if there is a failure, it's in an instant catastrophic failure. And we all know that it's a risk."

A risk that has been talked about by those who were on board. Now we have answer that so many were asking what happened. But again, there are a lot of questions as to now why it happened, Jake, and could it have been avoided?

TAPPER: Yes. Jason Carroll in Boston for us, thank you so much. Some of the debris that was found include the tail cone of the Titan submersible. That piece, along with any other evidence that was found will most certainly be looked at as officials try and figure out what exactly caused this vessel to implode. Joining us now, CNN's Tom Foreman.

Tom, show us where these discovered parts used to be on the Titan.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is really important to the investigation here. First piece they found was this sort of tail cone that sticks out here that says OceanGate on it, then if you take that part away, they also found the nose cone over here, which contains that window up front that we've seen so many pictures of. And then they found this part back here. These are both the titanium caps on each end you've heard so much about.

The reason they know automatically that everyone was lost once they found those parts is the rest of this is nothing but a carbon fiber tube.

TAPPER: Right.

FOREMAN: There is nothing in there to protect anyone. So those are the three pieces they found. And here's where they found them, we mentioned the idea that they were maybe an hour and a half into their descent, an hour and a half into the descent of a two hour descent would theoretically put them somewhere in this area, ballpark, and the Titanic is actually in two parts down here separated by about a half mile. They were in this general vicinity of the bow, sort of out in this area. That's where they found all the pieces in an area where there's no other debris.

[17:05:13]

So, that gives us an idea of how explosive this moment was because these portions here were also separated a bit from each other. We don't know how much they drifted as they went to the bottom, but if they happen over the bottom, that's what happens.

TAPPER: Right. And just keep that up for one second just to give people an idea of how deep this is.

FOREMAN: Oh, sure.

TAPPER: This is the Grand Canyon.

FOREMAN: Sure.

TAPPER: This is the Eiffel Tower. That's the Statue of Liberty. Just a little speck --

FOREMAN: Right, right.

TAPPER: -- compared to how deep this is. It's --

FOREMAN: Yes, two and a half miles, roughly. It's a long way down.

TAPPER: And the pressure down there is unbelievably intense.

FOREMAN: Impossible. The pressure down there is about 5,000 pounds for every square inch of that exposed vessel.

TAPPER: Right.

FOREMAN: Every inch of it, 5,000 pounds. It's an immense amount of pressure.

TAPPER: So obviously people aren't just like scuba diving down here. It's too deep.

FOREMAN: No.

TAPPER: You would die. What are the vehicles, the vessels that found this?

FOREMAN: Well, interestingly enough, nuclear submarines are going to operate way up here. They're not going down here, they can't go down here. This is --

TAPPER: Too deep.

FOREMAN: This is a very a forbidding area. So, what went down there and found it were these robotic remotely controlled diving devices which went down there and looked around. Not really great devices for looking around, better for retrieving and collecting things. But in this case, this is what was used to find what was after. This would also be what is used now, in all likelihood, to retrieve what is down there.

And retrieving everything down there is really important, as much as you possibly can because as with any accident investigation, you've seen it many times. What investigators would absolutely like to get back to is a reconstructed version of as many pieces of this as they possibly can because that will offer clues. Did the window fail first? Did one of these seams fail along here? Was there a problem with the carbon fiber itself?

Had it become stressed and did it give way? They may not get answers, but the more pieces they can collect, a piece at a time with those robotic rovers down there, picking them up as a guest told you a while ago, loading them into baskets, bringing them to the surface, the more chance they have of putting it all back together. Question is, how much can they invest in doing that? How long can they invest and how successful can they be?

TAPPER: Yes. And one of the things that was interesting that David Pogue was talking about is he said most vessels are just this one kind of material. This one had three different kinds of material --

FOREMAN: Yes.

TAPPER: -- including the window. And his theory, just having been on the vehicle, was that, like any sort of fissures that emerged in between.

FOREMAN: Yes.

TAPPER: Just from going -- did they have one over there, too?

FOREMAN: Yes, yes.

TAPPER: Just from going up and down, and these different chemicals reacting differently to heat and cold and pressures --

FOREMAN: Right.

TAPPER: -- that's where even a molecule of a fissure of a crack could have, like, had all the water coming in at that depth.

FOREMAN: That's absolutely true. And one other thing to think about that we'll be asked about a lot in this, most deep dive vessels like this are basically round. They're spheres to put it all the same pressure. This is a cylinder, very, very, very different dynamic forces.

TAPPER: Yes. All right. Tom Foreman, thanks so much.

Joining us now to discuss, Tom Maddox. He was part of a Titanic expedition in 2005. He's the CEO of Underwater Forensic Investigators.

Tom, thanks for joining us. Unfortunately, under tragic circumstances, what does an underwater investigation look like now that we know that the Titan submersible imploded and is on the bottom of the ocean along with the Titanic? TOM MADDOX, CEO, UNDERWATER FORENSIC INVESTIGATION: Well, Jake, thanks for having me on. My condolences to everyone involved, all the families, friends of those who perished.

In an underwater investigation, it's -- you can think more related to an airplane investigation. We've seen how that happens. The first part is recovering all the pieces that they can, as was just mentioned earlier, and try to put that together like a puzzle to find out where the failure point was, that's going to give us an indication of what happened. If we can gather any information such as data collection, you know, design engineering plans, things that we can gather over the years and put them together and then try to basically all the mystery and put a puzzle together to tell us what happened.

TAPPER: So no one knows for sure exactly why the vessel imploded. Some of the debris that was found includes the tail cone of the Titan. What do you make of what was found? Obviously, we know nothing for sure, but do you have a best guess as to what might have happened based on what was found in the condition it was found in?

MADDOX: Sure. We don't have any facts now. Anything that I state would be total speculation, but my theory at this point was that there was some type of catastrophic failure on the descent, as was mentioned and as believed by a lot of experts. That catastrophic failure probably was instantaneous.

[17:10:14]

There are two ways that could happen in that water column. One is there could be an explosion, which could be an internal explosion that atmosphere inside the sub is oxygen aided and that could be highly explosive, so that could happen. But there are also through hull fittings for connectors and devices that are basically reachable from the immense pressure. So at that pressure, like you said, they're probably around four, 5,000 pounds per square inch, over 350 times the pressure on Earth. Any small leak could cause an immediate implosion which would destroy the craft.

So when we see parts of the craft there, I am just amazed that they were able to that quickly locate some of this debris. What they would do now is go back to that site and like cookie crumbs, try to find a trail as to where that would lead. Because even though there was an explosion or implosion, at that point, the parts could be scattered and some of them could still be slightly buoyant to the fact that tides and currents could have drifted them away. So the big project right now is going to be trying to collect those parts. They won't just go randomly collect them, they'll mark them, they'll indicate where they were and they'll lay out a map of where those parts were found.

TAPPER: All right, Tom Maddox, thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us. We appreciate it.

Coming up, we're talking to a diver about what happens during a catastrophic implosion. That's ahead. Plus, exclusive new reporting about the special counsel investigating Donald Trump's handling of classified documents. Special Counsel Jack Smith says he has more recordings of Donald Trump.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:15:43]

TAPPER: And we're back with what the U.S. Coast Guard is now calling a, quote, "catastrophic implosion," a tragic incident of the submersible that was heading to explore the Titanic wreckage. The exploration company OceanGate says all five passengers on board the vessel are now dead. Let's get right to CNN's Paula Newton who's in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

And Paula, this was a massive search and rescue operation. Now, of course, rescue is out of the question, it's a recovery operation. But the Coast Guard says it still has rovers in the water. Why is that?

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. And at this point, when we talk about what they're recovering, it's very important to this whole investigation, which will likely be led by the Transportation Safety Board here in Canada. As your guests have already said, it's not just for the families, but for the industry as a whole to understand exactly what happened. I will say the Transportation Safety Board doing an investigation here, you know, 25 years ago on Swiss Air 111. I mean, that accident, that air accident had to be investigated in waters that were much more shallow and yet it was just such a complex investigation as it was.

They are thankful that right now the resources are out there that can do as much salvage as possible at that sea bottom to recover the debris because again, it will contribute to a more fulsome picture of exactly what went on here. And especially given the tragic circumstances, they also want to bring a measure of peace to the families. And whatever they can say about how it happened, when it happened, and the conclusive proof that they can gather, all of that will matter.

TAPPER: Paula Newton in Halifax, thank you so much.

Let's bring in diving expert Rick Murcar. He's an international training director at the National Association of Cave Divers and is a retired army officer in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Rick, thanks for joining us. The Coast Guard says that they believe that the sub, the Titan experienced a, quote, "catastrophic implosion" near the wreckage of the Titanic. What happens to a person when anyone is suddenly exposed to water at that depth? Likely two miles below sea level?

RICK MURCAR, INTERNATIONAL TRAINING DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CAVE DIVERS: Yes, first of all, my condolences to the families of these explorers. And maybe April 15 should be a day of remembrance for explorers in any maritime exploration.

So, the pressure, right now we're at one atmosphere, and if I want to put a number on that, we're roughly about 15 pounds per square inch. If we look at the time frame, that 145 that they lost contact and we start to assume, and I can only speculate here and I agree with the forensics experts on how they would do this reconstruction of the accident scene, we look at that, and if we look at and say, a respectable descent rate of approximately 85 feet per minute, and that's saying that, you know, you're getting to the Titanic at two and a half to three hours of a descent time, that would put the Titan at approximately 8,700 feet. That pressure alone is at 265 atmosphere. It's absolute 265 times what it is at the surface.

Not knowing where this implosion actually occurred, and speculate again, it probably occurred somewhere on the descent. And it might have been a small thing, it might have been a pure instantaneous thing, which sounds bad, but we actually probably hope that's actually what happened, and that these gentlemen, they didn't even get a chance for their brain to communicate that there's some danger going on. It just boom happened.

I can't do an implosion simulation, but you can inflate a balloon right to maximum expansion of the latex material, hit it with a needle, and you get that instantaneous effect. And that's probably what occurred on this implosion. So as we look at this pressure going on, you know, we get down to even that 8,700 feet, and you've already got approximately 3,900 PSI for every square inch of pressure on that hole. Then you get down to the Titanic, you're at 5,600 PSI. So, that pressure continues to build and build and build.

The Titanic, of course, is at 380 bar, 380 atmosphere is absolute. Human body cannot withstand that kind of pressure. It would have been in spontaneous to be hit with that, just to put it into perspective.

[17:20:07]

The questions, of course, you're looking at, we're talking about the carbon fiber centerpiece. Being a lithium mechanical engineer and having worked with various materials, I kind of question, as many have, you got the similar metals between the titanium and the plexiglass window and this material of carbon fiber? So anywhere you have dissimilar materials, you have a joint. That joint is subject to failure.

One of the early briefings, they talked about the landing frame. That almost immediately tells me that there's some compromisation of the integrity of the hull --

TAPPER: Yes.

MADDOX: -- leading to the implosion --

TAPPER: All right, Rick --

MADDOX: -- in itself.

TAPPER: Rick Murcar, thank you so much. I appreciate your time today.

What could the recovery effort for the Titan debris look like? And will any of it be pulled up to the surface? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:25:21]

TAPPER: And we're back with our world lead. The catastrophic implosion of the submersible Titan, which the company OceanGate says killed all five passengers on board. With me now to try to understand what could have gone so dreadfully wrong with the sub and what the recovery effort might look like is Bryan Clark. He's an expert in naval operations. He's a former Navy submariner and also a senior fellow and director at the Hudson Institute.

Bryan, thank you for joining us. The Coast Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard said the ship imploded. What do you and obviously were -- this is all speculation, but you're informed, you're an expert, what might have gone wrong with the vessel to cause an implosion?

BRYAN CLARK, DIRECTOR CENTER OF DEFENSE CONCEPTS AND TECHNOLOGY AT THE HUDSON INSTITUTE: Well, Jake, what I'm thinking might have happened is the cyclic stress of repeated surfacing and diving with the carbon fiber hull of the vehicle might have introduced some flaws into that carbon fiber structure. When you look at the research on carbon fiber, the research focuses on compression being, you know, one of the things that's not well analyzed, how well it performs under compression stress as opposed to expansion stress. So tensile stress, which is normally what you see with an airplane that's built out of carbon fiber, as tensile stress as opposed to compression. So I think that might have been what happened. The cyclist stress eventually caused a flaw in the carbon fiber structure to give way and caused a catastrophic implosion.

TAPPER: So U.S. Coast Guard officials, they're saying now that they're going to continue to search for pieces of the sub and any remains of the passengers. Just how difficult is it to search at this depth of the ocean?

CLARK: Right. It's extremely challenging. Obviously, people can't go down there. Divers really can't go down there. So you're going to have to be dependent on remotely operated vehicles, as we've seen been deployed down there.

And they'll search the bottom using sonar, primarily because it's faster to identify objects. And then they'll turn to using cameras with, you know, with lights, obviously, to identify whether those objects are pieces they want to retrieve, and then they bring robotic arms out to go and put them into baskets and bring to the surface. But it's pretty painstaking, as you'd imagine, because you're searching a debris field that's pretty wide, trying to differentiate pieces from ocean life and pieces that are potentially the Titanic that might be in the same debris field.

TAPPER: What kind of safety features should vessels like the submersible, the Titan, what should they have in place if they're going to travel almost 13,000 feet underwater?

CLARK: Yes, we really need multiple systems to have some redundancy for each of these potential failure modes. So, I think, one, you know, the design of the vehicle was somewhat suspect, you know, because of the use of, as we talked about, titanium and bells with this graphite or rather carbon fiber body, which is an unproven technology in this application. But if you're going to do that, then you have to also have more means of being able to communicate with the surface. Just the one acoustic radio, acoustic communication system is probably not sufficient. Needs better navigation systems to be able to tell exactly where it is and notify others where it is.

It needs a beacon so you can find it if it does get lost. It didn't have any of those things. And then you need a way to allow the crew to get out if they were to be able to surface. One of the challenges with this vehicle is the door is bolted on from the outside. So even if they successfully surfaced, they still could not let themselves out.

They would have to have been retrieved by somebody coming from the outside and unbolting the door. So, there's a number of features that this vehicle incorporated as an experimental vessel that we wouldn't want to include in a manned submersible that we took out on missions in the military, for example.

TAPPER: All right, Bryan Clark, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

What two IRS whistleblowers told lawmakers about Hunter Biden and what kinds of crimes charges they think he should be facing? Then the special counsel says it has more recordings of Donald Trump and will have the exclusive new details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our Law and Justice Lead, two whistleblowers, two told Congress that IRS investigators recommending charging the President's son, Hunter Biden, with attempted tax evasion and other felonies far more serious than the charges Hunter Biden ultimately pleaded guilty to. This is according to transcripts of the whistleblowers private interviews with lawmakers. CNN's Evan Perez is with us now. Evan, what do you make of these whistleblowers saying that the IRS wanted actually tougher charges for Hunter Biden?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, this matches some of the reporting CNN has done over the last year or two that indicated there was a lot of disagreement behind the scenes about this case, the strength of the case and whether to go tougher on Hunter Biden. And according to this testimony that was released, these hundreds of pages that we reviewed today, the IRS was recommending 11 total counts against Hunter Biden, including felonies for federal tax evasion and filing false tax returns, false statements included in that for years 2014 and others.

In the end, what Hunter Biden agreed to with prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Delaware, a Trump appointee, by the way, was for two misdemeanors. That's what he is going to appear in court in the next week to finally plead guilty to. Gary Shapley, one of the whistleblowers who did appear before congressional investigators. This is what he said. He said, quote, I am alleging with evidence that the DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow walked this investigation and did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation. And Jake, it should be noted that it's not unusual for investigators and prosecutors to have disagreements before they, you know, as you go through these cases, it happens all the time. It happens in our newsroom right, between reporters and editors about the strength of a story or a case.

[17:35:19]

TAPPER: What do you know about this claim by the whistleblowers that there were WhatsApp messages between Hunter Biden and a business partner that referred to President Biden?

PEREZ: Right. And this is at the center, Jake, of the allegation that they're making, which is that there was some kind of political interference, that there are people who were putting obstacles in front of these investigators, that they were trying to look at certain evidence. And in this case, what Shapley is saying is that there were these WhatsApp, messages that he believes were not fully investigated, or at least he doesn't believe were fully investigated.

And I'll read you just a part of one, allegedly from Hunter Biden that they say they had, and this is to a business partner, a Chinese business partner, and he's pressuring this person to pay up. And according to it says, I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. And it goes on to talk about how his father is there and everybody will regret if they don't pay up.

And so, Jake, the question for the reason, the reason why this matters is that Joe Biden has repeatedly said that he never, never had any conversations with his son about his business.

TAPPER: All right, Evan Perez, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Also in our Law and Justice Lead today, we have some new exclusive CNN reporting that Special Counsel Jack Smith has obtained multiple recordings of former President Donald Trump as part of his investigation into Trump's handling or alleged mishandling of classified documents. The clips were provided to prosecutors by Trump's legal team, as well as at least from one other additional source. This revelation comes as the Special Counsel's office has begun producing the evidence in the classified documents case to Trump's legal team as discovery, I believe is what that's called.

CNN's Paula Reid and Elie Honig are with us. And Paula, we knew about the one recording of Trump from July 2021 at Bedminster, where he's talking about some document involving a potential attack on Iran. He was meeting with a bunch of Mark Meadows autobiographer. I mean, it's kind of a contradiction in terms. But some people helping Mark Meadows write his autobiography. What do we know about these other recordings?

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's exactly right. We broke this story about that recording and then it was included in the indictment. So last night, when the special counsel revealed that it had interviews, plural, well, that piqued our interest. So we called our sources and we learned that, in fact, the Trump team has provided about half a dozen additional interviews to prosecutors. They were subpoenaed in March of this year to provide any materials related to General Mark Milley.

And we've learned that they've handed over multiple recordings where Trump can be heard talking about Mark Milley, but he does not reference any classified documents. Now, the Special Counsel also has at least one other source providing them recordings, and that also includes one of the copies of that Bedminster interview that they originally got.

Now, I want to emphasize during the discovery process, as Elie knows as well, you have to hand over everything you've collected, and not all of these are necessarily going to be pertinent to the criminal case. And we have multiple sources telling us that none of these additional interviews rise to the level of potentially incriminating conduct like that original Bedminster interview.

TAPPER: Ellie, how valuable could these recordings be to the Special Counsel's team?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Jake tapes are gold to prosecutors. They're the best possible evidence you have, because you get to play for the jury the defendant's own words and the defendant's own voice. And if we look at a crucial conversation like the one at Bedminster, where Donald Trump is acknowledging that he knows he has these documents, that he knows they were never declassified, and he's apparently referencing the contents of them, this is the document, the recording that Paula reported on, which appeared in the indictment. It's the single most important piece of evidence that I've seen in the indictment.

If you didn't have a tape, you'd have to call it eyewitness. And eyewitnesses can be cross examined. You don't remember exactly what words were used. You may have some bias or incentive to lie one way or other. But if you have a tape, you just play the tape, and that's the best evidence you can have as a prosecutor.

TAPPER: Paula, you're also reporting that sources are saying that during the summer of 2021, when the Bedminster thing happened, multiple people were making recordings of Trump, which is not surprising, I suppose, in some ways. But what do you know about that?

REID: Well, the most surprising thing is that the former president knew he was being recorded when he made these comments about classified documents and for these other interviews. Now, during this time, the former president was in the habit of having his aides record any conversations with people working on books, journalists, even if they were friendly. But that has created a potential archive of evidence for prosecutors. And it's our understanding that most of these recordings were uploaded to the iCloud. And it's unclear, though, if prosecutors were able to access that. But in trying to protect himself against any incorrect reporting, he has provided a potential trove of evidence for prosecutors.

[17:40:10] TAPPER: Sometimes that happens. I mean, Hillary Clinton had that private e-mail server, so she theoretically so she wouldn't have to hand things over to pesky House Republicans.

REID: I don't know if I agree with that characterization, but have me on, I'd love to talk about that --

TAPPER: OK, well, I'm just saying, sometimes you try to do something to protect yourself, and it ends up hurting yourself.

REID: Both of them made their lives more complicated, absolutely, no, no.

TAPPER: That's absolutely that's all I'm saying. Ellie, does this signal anything to you about a timeline for the trial?

HONIG: Well, Jake, it tells me that everyone's pushing except for Donald Trump for a quick trail. Prosecutors have begun to turn over vast amounts of discovery. They've said they're ready within 70 days. The judge has set a tentative trial date, which is unlikely to hold for August. The X factor here, though, is going to be Donald Trump. He's the defendant. He's the one who has the right to file motions to prep, so two of the three necessary parties are on board. We'll see if Donald Trump goes along with that. I suspect he's going to want to slow things down.

TAPPER: All right. Ellie Honig and Paula Reid, thanks to both of you.

Things are getting ugly on the Hill. Republicans are calling other Republicans names over impeachment resolutions and much more. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:45:21]

TAPPER: In our Politics Lead, tensions between two Republican firebrands, far right firebrands have reportedly boiled over after a heated exchange between Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, during which reportedly Greene told Boebert on the House floor, as reported by "The Daily Beast," quote, I've donated to you, I've defended you, but you've been nothing but a little bitch to me, unquote. This is how Greene and Boebert asked about that report, responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So is that Daily Beast story about you calling her an expletive --

REP. MAJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): I will not confirm or deny.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Can you comment on the report that she cursed at you on the floor?

REP. LAUREN BOEBERT (R-CO): Like I said, I'm not in middle school. (END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Well, I mean, some might beg to differ on the middle school thing. Let's talk about it. Laura Barron-Lopez, Greene is upset beyond the calling her a little bitch. And by the way, these are all in quotes, so don't get mad at me. I'm just quoting, congresswoman. Greene is upset with Boebert because she claims Congresswoman Boebert stole Marjorie Taylor Greene's impeachment resolution and reintroduced it with her name on it. What do you make of this all?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it does wreak of middle school or high school. I mean, it's essentially them taking very online tactics into real life and just they're constantly seeking attention. And both of these members have been that way since they entered office. You know, it's something the impeachment resolutions themselves are not something that Speaker McCarthy supports at this point right now. He doesn't want to bring these to the floor. But Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert clearly want to, in a way, out extreme each other. And we've seen that from the beginning, since they've joined the House. I think that really it's just, you know, creating another distraction that ultimately shows that Speaker McCarthy has a lot of difficulty keeping his members in line.

TAPPER: And I remember a few months ago, Margaret, I remember Lauren Boebert, if memory serves, kind of making fun of Marjorie Taylor Greene with the whole Jewish space lasers nonsense. So I guess I could understand why Marjorie Taylor Greene would feel a little bit brave.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: They simmering rivalry in the you stole my publicity stunt camp, I think it sort of shows two things. One is the idea that the right flank is putting so much pressure on the caucus itself. Really, it's making it hard for Kevin McCarthy to operate, it's making it hard for each other, that it's become like a story inside a story that could actually undercut the marginal power of the Republican Party in the House right now.

The other is let's just think about what this is all about. It is it about an effort to impeach President Biden on the basis of.

TAPPER: I'm not quite sure.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes. There's no merit to a lot of these.

TALEV: I mean, that's what it's about.

TAPPER: I mean, it might be human sacrifice for all I know in terms of the allegations we hear about Joe Biden. Let's turn to another wing of the Republican Party, another minority wing of the Republican Party. And this is former Republican Congressman Will Hurd, Republican of Texas. We now have another entrant into the field. He's joined the race. He's directly challenging frontrunner Donald Trump in his announcement video. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. WILL HURD (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If we nominate a lawless, selfish, failed politician like Donald Trump, who lost the House, the Senate and the White House, we all know Joe Biden will win again. Republicans deserve better. America deserves better. It's common sense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: With Hurd's entry, we now have a dozen high profile candidates on the Republican side. What do you think of his chances, Jonah?

JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Low. Look, I like Will Hurd a lot. If I could anoint someone a president, he'd be on a list. I think he's qualified, he's good, he's smart, he's a decent guy. I think -- I mean the Trump campaign came out with a statement saying, this has more to do with the fact that Ron DeSantis is kind of sputtering. And I think there might be a grain of truth there that it doesn't seem like DeSantis, and I think DeSantis is going to have better days ahead, but it doesn't seem like DeSantis is catching fire the way they wanted to. So it feels like the field is a little more wide open.

And again, this is a problem with both parties. It's worse these days with Republicans. There's too much incentive to run for president, even if you know you can't win because it boosts your name I.D., it's good for you for other reasons.

TAPPER: Books, speeches, cable T.V. appearance.

GOLDBERG: All that stuff. And I'm not questioning his motives. I think he's a very patriotic guy, served his country, but I just don't see it right now.

TAPPER: So we had him on the show a few I don't know if days or weeks. Everything is a blur. But after the indictment of Donald Trump for the classified documents case, we had him on with Valerie Plame because they're both former CIA officers who really understand the significance of classified documents and the importance of them not being revealed. And he was very strong. I actually had no idea he was I'd heard whispers for months, but I didn't know he was actually going to run for president. And he was very strong on that issue.

[17:50:18]

He does have an ability, in the way that Chris Christie is a former U.S. Attorney does, to make a national security argument against Donald Trump. That could be effective. I don't know if the Republican base wants to hear it, though.

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Although Trump will point out accurately that Heard voted with him 80 percent of the time in the House, had voted against the impeachment over Ukraine when Trump was accused of jacking up Zelenskyy over Javelin missiles. So Trump's got a pretty good defense, which is, hey, you were there with me before, now you're not. This is just opportunistic.

The problem is, I think Hurd is a good guy, too. He's terribly bright. I think it's good for the country. People like that want to serve. He's just going to split the anti-Trump vote even more. It's what Trump said when Tim Scott got in the race. The more the merrier. And he's right. There's an irreducible sum, maybe even 40 or 50 percent of Republicans who just will never abandon Trump. It's a little lower, but the rest of them, the other 55 or 60, are going to be divided between 10 or 11 candidates and watch Trump waltz right back in.

TAPPER: I would say there's probably really only three anti Trump candidates Hurd, Christie, and Asa Hutchinson. Don't you think that's right? I mean, the others are trying to walk along.

TALEV: And the difference is that Hurd is from and a really important state, Texas. He's 45 years old. He's a person of color. He -- remember, he'd gotten the car with Beto O'Rourke. So he's doing the bipartisan thing. He's appealing to the youth vote. If there was a general election between Will Hurd and Joe Biden, Biden will still be worried about the center of the country. Abortion would be maybe the only issue things would pivot on. But that's not the way the political system in the U.S. works right now. It is a primary driven presidential contest, and in this primary, it's very difficult to understand the math.

TAPPER: And you just wrote a great column about this, I think, a week ago, about the idea of, do Republicans even want to win the election itself as opposed to the primary.

GOLDBERG: Yes. Look, there's this weird, dysfunctional thing going on the right. Particularly, you can see it in Congress where with like the Freedom Caucus crawling back the deal with Kevin McCarthy, where having a win is proof that you compromise too much, right? Having a win means you sold out. Losing proves you are pure, right? And this sort of nihilistic death wish of, you know, anybody who actually gets something accomplished, well, they've sold their souls to the deep state is just the most dysfunctional asinine form of politics. And it's a very strong strain on the right.

TAPPER: It's very prevalent. Meanwhile, the heat in the Republican primaries remains between Trump and DeSantis. I want you to take a listen. Again, DeSantis and Trump are going at it about COVID. DeSantis makes Trump into be the Fauci guy, and Trump says, hey, you have more deaths in your state than Andrew Cuomo did in New York. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Florida was the third worst state in deaths by COVID. That's your scorecard. It's a sad scorecard. So why do they keep saying that DeSanctimonious did a good job. New York had fewer deaths. And again, that's the way you have to, I guess, evaluate a job.

RON DESANTIS (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When you are saying that Cuomo did better on COVID than Florida did, you are revealing yourself to just be full of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARRON-LOPEZ: Again, this is something that is DeSantis is clearly trying to use to tear away some of the core bit of Trump's base to show that he's more right, more to the right than Trump is on an issue that the reason that so many Republicans don't believe in the efficacy of the COVID vaccines is in part because of the way former President Trump approached the whole response to COVID and doubting scientists and doubting the overall scientific response to it. But DeSantis is seeing this, as well as LGBTQ rights and others, as a way to move to the right of Trump.

TAPPER: Fascinating stuff. More to come. Thanks to all.

Concert goers got treated to a very different kind of show, thanks to Mother Nature. But first, here's CNN's Alex Marquardt who's intra Wolf Blitzer with what's next in this Situation Room. Alex?

[17:54:20]

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN HOST: Well, Jake, we'll be speaking with a number of people who knew people on board that fateful trip on the Titan, including Aaron Newman, who knew several people. He was also on board the Titan when it went down to the Titanic back in 2021. Newman is actually an investor in OceanGate, the company that owns the Titan, and he spoke about the CEO, Stockton Rush, saying that he has a vision. He built that vision. This was just the beginning of his vision. So Jake will be speaking with him and several others about that tragedy on the Situation Room right at the top of the hour. Jake?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Devastation in Matador, Texas, where a tornado killed four people and injured 10 others. The twister hit this small town about 280 miles northwest of Dallas last night. Crews are ramping up efforts to restore power there, with temperatures expected to reach the hundreds over the weekend. Everyone who lives in Matador is accounted for, but search teams are looking for visitors or drivers who might have been in the area.

And northwest of Texas, in Colorado, people saw this. Heavy hail injured nearly 100 people attending a Louis Tomlinson concert at the Red Rocks amphitheater. Authorities say at least seven people had to be rushed to the hospital. They are thankfully, all expected to survive. Tomlinson tweeted in part, quote, devastated about the show tonight. Hope everyone is OK. Sending you all love.

[18:00:05]

You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky, if you have an invite. The TikTok at JakeTapper, I'm back there. You can tweet the show at TheLeadCNN. Our coverage continues now with Alex Marquardt. He's in for Wolf Blitzer in "THE SITUATION ROOM".