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Mitch McConnell to Step Aside as Senate Leader; Texas Wildfires; Congress Questions Hunter Biden. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired February 28, 2024 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:01:05]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Stepping down as leader, Senator Mitch McConnell shaking up Washington with his decision to step aside as Republican leader in November after years as the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill.

And Hunter Biden in the hot seat, the president son appearing in the Republican-led impeachment inquiry into his father, as he insists that his father had nothing to do with his business dealings.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And an out-of-control wildfire tearing through Texas, the second worst so far in the state's history, one official describing homes as burning in almost every direction.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: We are following some breaking news, and that is that Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history, says he will be stepping down as the Republican minority leader in November.

Here he is on the Senate floor just minutes ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Father Time remains undefeated. I'm no longer the young man sitting in the back hoping colleagues would remember my name.

It's time for the next generation of leadership.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Let's get right to CNN's Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill.

Lauren, this was a historic moment that we just witnessed. How are his colleagues reacting on Capitol Hill?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you saw on the floor behind him that Mitch McConnell had really just a small audience of Republican senators joining him on the floor as he made that announcement.

Several of his colleagues telling our colleagues waiting off the floor that they weren't aware he was about to make this announcement, or probably more senators would have been present.

But our colleague Ted Barrett did have a chance to talk to Senator John Cornyn, who's seen as someone who could potentially succeed Mitch McConnell as the leader of the Republican Party. And Ted was pressing him, as were other reporters, on whether or not he planned to vie for that role. He said today is not the day to have those conversations.

Another person spotted on the floor, John Thune, the number two Republican right now in the Senate, and another person who is largely seen as potentially being able to fill McConnell's shoes when he steps aside as Republican leader in November.

But it was really this amazing moment as McConnell went to the floor and made clear that one of the talents that is underappreciated in Washington is knowing when it is time for new leadership. And, certainly, he's referring to many lawmakers he's seen stay in their roles for perhaps longer than they should have.

He also was making it clear that he's not going anywhere just yet. He is not planning to step aside as leader until November. And he argued that he still has plenty of disappointment for his critics that he's going to look forward to in the months ahead.

Certainly, he is someone seen on the Republican side as a long- serving, respected leader, someone that people listen to within his party. But he wasn't shy on the floor about the fact that some of the most pressing issues that he's been pushing for, including aid to Ukraine, has really put him at odds with many members of his own party, saying that he isn't perfect, he has a lot of flaws, but the one thing that he does get is politics.

And I think he acknowledges the fact that the Republican Party has really shifted beneath him, even as he has continued to view his role as making sure that the U.S. has universal and global impact on the world stage -- Brianna, Boris.

KEILAR: All right, Lauren, thank you.

And let's bring in CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings to talk a little bit about this.

[13:05:01]

You were, of course, a campaign adviser to Mitch McConnell. You have long been in the orbit of Mitch McConnell.

What's your reaction to the news?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I'm certainly sad for him, because you can tell the emotion in his voice that this was a hard decision to make.

But I'm also happy for him that he's making this decision on his own terms and that he's doing it for the reasons that he thinks are right for the country. And I was incredibly moved by his speech. I had a chance to talk to him on the phone a little earlier today, and he's at peace with the decision and looking forward, frankly, to the next couple of years.

When you're not in leadership, it often frees you up to do some things that are more issue-based and things you really care about, as opposed to having to run the whole conference. And I know he's looking forward to that. I think he's likely to have a senior role on the Appropriations Committee, specifically dealing with defense appropriations.

And one final note. I think he's very much looking forward to continuing to be the leader of the faction of Republicans who still believe in sort of the Reagan foreign policy objectives of making America a superpower and a force for good in the world.

And so I'm happy for his career. I mean, the longevity he's had, he's the longest-serving senator in the history of Kentucky and he's the longest-serving party leader in the history of the United States Senate. I mean, it's a heck of a career for a guy who Ronald Reagan once introduced as Mitch O'Donnell at a campaign rally in 1984.

To come this far and to live through as much as he's lived through is pretty remarkable.

SANCHEZ: Scott, he did become emotional talking about his wedding day falling on Ronald Reagan's birthday. He spoke effusively of President Reagan at a time where, as you noted, the Republican Party has shifted away from so much of the principles and the ideals of that era.

He also mentioned that, as a younger man, he hoped that colleagues would remember his name. There's no doubt, Scott, that his name is going to be remembered.

But I'm curious, from your perspective, what his legacy will be as a U.S. senator.

JENNINGS: Well, I think the longevity of holding the leadership position is certainly -- you can't overlook that, given he got it in 2007. He lived through the Tea Party undulation. He's lived through the Trump undulation.

I mean, he really has maintained a position of leadership through a lot of turbulent things over the last several years. So I think that's number one. Number two, certainly, the courts. I think one of the accomplishments he's most proud of is his role in helping get conservative judges on the bench.

And that, of course, includes the Supreme Court. I think that is a proud accomplishment for him. And number three, as a national matter, I think he really is leaning into his traditional role as being a hawkish U.S. senator, somebody who believes that America is a force for good in the world.

And even though the isolationists in our party are ascendant right now, he believes that that viewpoint, that Reagan viewpoint, deserves to be promoted and defended. And I think he's very proud of his work on that.

Back home in Kentucky, where I live and where I have known him for the last 28 years,he's very proud of all that he's been able to deliver to a small rural state. I mean, Kentucky wouldn't have much influence over the last 40 years if not but for the leadership and influence of Mitch McConnell.

So he's very, very proud of what he does for his constituents as well. There's some big-ticket items that he's got left to work on, though. But I think this foreign policy idea, the notion of what it means to be a global superpower is really on his mind, and I know he's going to spend a lot of time on that.

KEILAR: All right, dropping some hints there, perhaps, Scott Jennings. We will see what comes of that.

Scott, thank you so much for talking to us about McConnell, especially having spoken to him on the phone earlier today.

And our CNN senior political analyst, Ron Brownstein, is with us now to talk about this.

McConnell is someone who has tried to channel, I think, Trump, right? He's tried to channel some of the force behind Trump, but he's often really provoked the ire of Donald Trump, just kind of by being Mitch McConnell and the way that he is.

I wonder how you think this is going to affect the Republican Conference in the Senate and just the Congress and overall.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, McConnell is obviously extremely consequential, but also a complex figure.

His policies, as Boris was alluding to, are shaped by the Reagan era, his policy views, what matters to him most. His tactics have been Trumpian, in the sense of the ends justify the means. His decision to block Merrick Garland in 2016 obviously had a huge implication for the court, but it also changed the Senate in a fundamental way.

It made it a far more, I think, confrontational place. It was obviously heading in that direction over years. But that is a breakpoint in American history, not only in terms of the court, but also in terms of the Senate, and then the bookend to that of pushing through Amy Coney Barrett when voting had already begun in 2020.

[13:10:03]

And he had this kind of -- this rationality created that you cannot fill a Supreme Court seat in an election year by the opposite party. His stepping aside is significant of the broader trend, which is that, if Donald Trump comes back in a second term, the internal Republican resistance to his most extreme ideas is crumbling.

And even when he was president, between the Congress and members of his own administration, there were people who pushed back on a lot of ideas. That pushback, I think, and what you're seeing in McConnell, the elevation of Mike Johnson to the speakership, all of it, it is telling you that internal resistance will not exist in any meaningful way, I think, in a second Trump term if he wins.

SANCHEZ: And if he does, part of it could be attributed to McConnell himself.

BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely.

SANCHEZ: I found it interesting that Scott described McConnell surviving the Tea Party and Trump undulations, the implication there being that it's a wave that will eventually crest and go away.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Yet McConnell deciding not to convict Trump in that second impeachment...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: Critical moment. That was the moment.

SANCHEZ: So he opened the door for perhaps a permanent change to his party.

BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely.

You know, Trump -- McConnell always viewed -- I think McConnell through his career, like I said, the ends justify the means.

And I think he believed that convicting Trump would have torn apart the Republican coalition. And even if he personally wanted to do it, he was unwilling to take that risk. It is important to understand that what he represents in a policy sense is on the declining side of the Republican Party.

A majority of Republican senators voted against the aid to Ukraine. A majority of Republican House members last fall voted against the aid to Ukraine. Senator from Missouri Eric Schmitt tweeted the day of that vote, when McConnell was on the losing side of the Democratic -- of the Republican Party, but the winning side overall, he tweeted, 15 of the 17 Republicans elected since 2018 voted no.

And, again, it goes back to my to my first point. The trend in the Republican Party is in a Trumpian direction. And the idea that they would be kind of the adults in the room who are institutionalists who are resisting many of the more extreme things that he wants to do, whether it's withdrawing from NATO or minimizing our participation, or -- massive militarized door-to-door deportation, that force is going to be a lot less powerful in the second Trump term.

And McConnell stepping aside, I think, is just acknowledging that reality.

SANCHEZ: And the reward for having been the adult in the room is now ridicule and essentially a stain on his record by fellow Republicans.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, exactly.

SANCHEZ: Ron Brownstein, appreciate the analysis.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: So, the other big story on Capitol Hill today, Hunter Biden sitting for a closed-door deposition.

KEILAR: That's right, set to be grilled by some of his harshest Republican critics.

And this could make or break the GOP's effort to impeach President Biden over these allegations that he was involved in his son's foreign business dealings, which is something that has very much fallen apart here recently.

SANCHEZ: Yes, absolutely.

In his opening statement, Hunter Biden confronted those claims head on. He said, in part -- quote -- "I am here today to provide the committees with the one uncontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry. I did not involve my father in my business."

CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid is live for us on Capitol Hill.

Paula, walk us through what else lawmakers heard from the president's son so far.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, I will remind you, this is happening behind closed doors. There are no cameras.

So we're relying on our sources and lawmakers to describe what exactly is going on here. And it's as if -- not surprisingly, it's as if members of both parties weren't even attending the same hearing. A large group of Democrats came out earlier, told us that this was an embarrassing spectacle, that what they had seen so far appeared to be a waste of government time and money.

But Republican Nancy Mace, she came out and she described Hunter Biden as being defiant and dishonest. But she did note that, at least at the time she came out a few hours ago, she said that he had not invoked his Fifth Amendment.

Now, that is significant, because he is, of course, facing two separate criminal probes. Now, we expect there will likely be another break, so we will likely get an additional round of details. But they only really got Hunter Biden to sit down behind closed doors to answer questions by making some concessions.

One is that this is not being filmed and the other is that we're going to have a transcript release, and we're told that could come within 24 hours. So that's really what we're going to need to get the full picture of what's going on in this hearing, which, as you noted in the introduction, it really is a make-or-break for GOP lawmakers, who so far have not been able to produce any clear evidence linking President Biden to his son's foreign business dealings.

KEILAR: No.

And what was sort of a tenuous bit of evidence, certainly one that was not ironclad, the central claim that Republicans made about Hunter Biden and then-former Vice President Joe Biden, it turned out to be fabricated by an asset with these extensive ties to Russian intelligence.

[13:15:06]

Do Republicans have any other evidence to support this investigation?

REID: Well, this is the big question, because they have released most of what they have. And there does not appear to be a lot of "there" there.

There is also clearly an effort to conflate the Bidens, including Hunter Biden and James Biden, with President Biden. And I pressed Chairman Comer on that earlier today as he entered the deposition room. Let's take a listen to that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REID: You're keep saying the Bidens. We're talking about President Biden specifically. What evidence do you have that he profited off his son's foreign business?

REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY): We have two checks.

Joe Biden received two payments. We found this through subpoenaed bank records, two payments.

REID: You're putting steps between sort of the check and President Biden.

COMER: The steps are called money laundering. That's what the steps are called.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: So, what he is referring to, those checks, those are repayments, so one from his brother, James Biden, a repayment to President Biden when he was not in office. He was not a vice president or president at that time.

Again, they haven't put forth any evidence to prove that President Biden engaged in -- there, he alleged money laundering, corruption, influence peddling. They have thrown around a lot of allegations, but they have not been able to provide direct evidence.

And it's not clear that they're going to get it from today's hearing, especially, as you noted, when the key witness who alleged that President Biden and his son Hunter received millions of dollars in former bribes is now facing charges for lying, for fabricating those statements.

SANCHEZ: Yes, and, Paula, we should point out those two payments that Comer is alleging, Republicans on the Oversight Committee have evidence that those were loans that were being repaid. So they actually have evidence contradicting the very allegations that they are making. Nevertheless, they're making them.

Paula Reid, keep us posted.

REID: The lawmakers are actually coming out right now.

SANCHEZ: OK.

REID: So I think we're going to need a little update.

SANCHEZ: Yes, keep us posted on what you're hearing.

Paula Reid, thanks so much.

Let's break this down with CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero.

Carrie, does this go anywhere toward proving any actual illegality by President Biden?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Not from what we have heard so far.

And, in my view, this deposition shouldn't even be taking place. There's really no justification for hauling in the president's son, based on the evidence, at least as we know publicly, that the committee has developed so far.

As you mentioned earlier, the individual that it appears the committee was relying on for so much of its information was the source, the confidential informant for the FBI, who now has been discredited, charged criminally, arrested, and the government has alleged that he was in contact and gathering his information from Russian intelligence sources.

Based on what we know so far from the deposition today, it doesn't sound like Hunter Biden has revealed information that supports the committee's theories in any way. We will see the transcript when it comes out to see if the facts are anything different than that.

KEILAR: If you were a prosecutor and you had, say, I don't know, filed an indictment or you were pursuing something, and the central basis for it was that you had someone like this Smirnov guy alleging what he alleged that now turns out he fabricated it, he's very much in touch with Russian intelligence, he's facing charges for lying, what would you do if you were prosecuting that case and then this is what happened to the evidence you were hanging your case on?

CORDERO: Well, when we're in the criminal justice system and when we're talking about the work that actual prosecutors do and the Justice Department does, they're not going to bring a case based on a single source.

So they would need to conduct an investigation that is based on a reliable source of information and then corroboration.

KEILAR: But if it fell apart, the central tenet of why you were seeking charges or an investigation, what would happen?

CORDERO: Right.

So, what I'm saying is that, originally, a case wouldn't be brought on a single source. But if the -- a key piece of evidence, so one key piece of evidence in a case falls through, then the prosecutors would have to determine whether or not they have enough other evidence to bring the case forward.

But this is not a criminal prosecution. This is a political process. And we always have to keep in mind when we're dealing with congressional investigations and congressional oversight that at -- even if it is an impeachment inquiry with this -- which this purportedly is, it is not a legal proceeding. It does not adhere to the guidance of prosecutorial discretion and prosecutorial adjustment.

It is a political process.

KEILAR: Process is a generous word maybe, Carrie.

(LAUGHTER)

KEILAR: But thank you, Carrie Cordero. We certainly appreciate you.

And ahead this hour on CNN NEWS CENTRAL: It's nearly the size of Rhode Island. It is burning through 150 football fields every minute. We're going to take you live to Texas, where there is this huge wildfire that is raging out of control.

[13:20:06]

SANCHEZ: Plus, a fresh test for the conservative Supreme Court. The justices are hearing arguments on whether the federal government has the right to ban bump stocks, which can make guns more lethal.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Right now, the state of Texas is fighting its second biggest wildfire in history. It's the largest they have had there in 18 years. It's called the Smokehouse Creek Fire, and it is in the Texas Panhandle.

It started on Monday, and it now covers an area 11 times larger than Washington, D.C., and it's igniting land at an average of 150 football fields every minute. It's jumping roads, as ferocious winds fan the flames.

[13:25:23] The Smokehouse Creek Fire has zero containment, and it's one of five fires that is burning in the Texas Panhandle. Several thousand people have evacuated at this point, and many are navigating just harrowing scenes like this one. Listen to one survivor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BROOKE MCQUIDDY, EVACUATED FROM WILDFIRES: So, then it got very dark and gray. And as we were leaving, we could turn around, and it did. It looked like Armageddon. It looked like our town was just being engulfed in black, and it was just disappearing right before us as we were walk -- driving in our rearview mirrors.

We all were wondering, what is this? What's going to happen? Are we going to be able to return? Is there going to be anything to return to?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's go now to CNN's Lucy Kafanov, who is on the ground there in Fritch, Texas, with the very latest -- Lucy.

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, as you point out, we are in Fritch, Texas. This is one of the areas that it's been devastated by these fires.

This is a town with a population of roughly over 2,000 people. They were evacuated yesterday when the fires came through. Some of the structures are still burning. Some of the fires are still going. You can that see pillow -- billowing smoke back there. We were actually just over in that area speaking to some of the residents who had been able to return to their homes to see what was left of their homes.

We spoke to one individual who had lived in this area for about 30 years, lifelong resident. He described the terrifying moments as the flames approach their neighborhood. They evacuated. He said that the homes across the street from him, his friends, his neighbors completely destroyed.

They went down in 30 minutes. It was crazy fast. Those are the words that he used. And he actually saved one of his neighbors' life. He had to knock on the door to wake him up to get him out of there to get him to safety. He's back. The neighbor unfortunately lost everything that he owned.

And that is just one of the many stories here unfolding. One of the difficulties with these fires is that they erupted so quickly. They moved so quickly. One of the miracles, Brianna, is that, although this is now more than 500,000 acres, we have spoken to some officials here who said that, as far as they're aware, no lives lost so far, some structures damaged, some homes lost, but so far the lives are largely intact.

But these communities are going to be rebuilding for a very long time, and Fritch is just one of many areas impacted. There's also Canadian, Texas, which had to see its hospitals and nursing homes completely evacuated, a lot of residents still waiting for word on the fate of their homes and properties -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, such good news, though, about human lives saved there, though.

But, Lucy, these pictures, they're really unbelievable.

Lucy Kafanov from Texas for us, thank you.

And next: Former President Trump ordered them banned after the Las Vegas shooting. Right now, though, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a case that could put bump stocks, an accessory that allows some semiautomatic weapons to be fired like a machine gun, back on the civilian market.

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