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Biden Urges Israel to do More to Protect Civilians in Gaza; Trump Hosting Far-Right Putin Ally Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Lago; Potential TikTok Ban Heads to Floor Vote Next Week; Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) Discusses About House Bipartisan Bill Banning TikTok on U.S. App Stores. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired March 08, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: President Biden and his cabinet members are hitting the campaign trail, taking his message to voters in battleground states after an unusually forceful State of the Union speech. And former President Trump is welcoming Hungary's strong man leader, Viktor Orban to Mar-a-Lago today. Trump has repeatedly praised him for his hardline policies. We're live in Palm Beach, Florida.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, the Pentagon is developing a UFO detection kit to collect better data on possible sightings, even though they say they haven't found any evidence yet of alien technology. The truth is out there and we're going to get to it as we follow these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: President Biden is about to arrive for a campaign event in Pennsylvania, and he is hoping to bring some momentum to his reelection bid after last night's pretty passioned - impassioned State of the Union address. He used that huge platform to jab at his predecessor and current election opponent, former President Trump, no less than 13 times. He also used the bully pulpit to make the case for America's global leadership. He called out Republicans for failing to deliver aid to Ukraine, and he turned up the heat on Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, both during the speech and in a hot mic moment afterwards.

We have CNN's MJ Lee with brand new reporting on the strained relationship between these two allies.

MJ, what can you tell us?

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Brianna, our reporting goes back to a phone call that President Biden had with Prime Minister Netanyahu back in mid-January, when sources tell us that at one point in the phone call, Prime Minister Netanyahu bristled at the President, talking about some recent media reports that cited anonymous U.S. officials that basically said that the U.S. was planning actively for a post Netanyahu government. And what we are told by our sources is that the President essentially sort of brushed aside that idea and that suggestion, essentially saying why are we even talking about this, you are the leader of the Israeli government and the U.S. government is going to work with whoever the Israeli leadership is.

Both men, we are told in this exchange also agreed that these kinds of anonymous quotes from government officials were irritating. This was a brief exchange, we are told, and obviously a lengthy phone call, which the two leaders has - have had many of since the October 7th attacks, but speaks a lot to that tenuous relationship that we have seen growing increasingly strained in recent months as the war has progressed. And we got such an interesting glimpse into those tensions in this hot mic moment after the State of the Union remarks last night, take a listen.

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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I told Bibi - don't repeat this - I said you and I are gonna have to a come to Jesus.

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LEE: And President Biden actually was just asked about that moment by reporters on the tarmac as he is making his way over here to the suburbs of Philadelphia. He was asked, are you frustrated, does this mean that Prime Minister Netanyahu needs to be doing more on the humanitarian front. And he said, yes, he does. And we saw that dynamic actually on clear display last night in his remarks when he really used some strong language to call on Israel to do so much more on the humanitarian front. Take a listen to that moment.

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BIDEN: To the leadership of Israel, I say this: Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip. Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.

As we look to the future, the only real solution to the situation is a two-state solution over time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: Of course, Israel was just one of the many tough issues that the President had to address in his remarks last night.

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And again, the President should be coming here to the suburbs of Philadelphia at any moment now where he is going to be trying to amplify the message that he brought in his remarks last night. And there's going to be a lot more travel coming up in the coming days as well.

KEILAR: And MJ, what will we be hearing from Biden today?

LEE: Yes. Brianna, this is sort of the beginning of sort of that post- State of the Union sprint. As we see, typically the President, Vice President, surrogates and others really hitting the road to try to amplify the message from the State of the Union. Tomorrow we are going to be seeing him traveling to Atlanta, Georgia, and then next week we see him going to New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Michigan.

So a lot of stops aimed at getting to these key battleground states as we get closer to November. And we're also told that the campaign is just going to be bulking up a lot in terms of opening new offices, making new hires and also launching a new ad campaign to the tune of some $30 million over the course of six weeks. Again, all part of a broader effort to amplify the message that we heard last night. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. MJ, thank you for that report. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Last night, President Biden hammered Republicans once again for blocking more aid to Ukraine. And he laid into former president Donald Trump for "bowing down to Vladimir Putin." Well, today Donald Trump is meeting with a Putin ally, the far-right prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is tracking this.

So Kristen, what do we know about this sit down?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know from senior advisors that they're calling this a social meeting between Orban and Donald Trump. And by that they are saying that it is casual, that there is no agenda. It is just two people having a friendly meeting.

But, of course, it is a little bit hard to believe that Orban and Trump are going to sit down with absolutely no agenda. Now, I am told that the White House did not extend a formal invitation to Orban, who is the equivalent of Joe Biden in Hungary. And Orban didn't reach out to them either.

This is significant for a number of reasons. One, Donald Trump is a former president. He's also the GOP presumptive nominee, and he could be president again. And this meeting gives us somewhat of an insight into who Donald Trump might align himself with if he were to be reelected to the White House in November. Donald Trump has often been a fan of the strong man.

And in fact, he said about Viktor Orban, some people don't like him because he is too strong, but it's nice to have a strong man in control of your country. So something he has said that he admired. The two also appear to line up a lot politically. They agree on immigration. Sometimes when you are listening to either one of them speak, it kind of sounds as though they are saying the exact same thing, their treatment of the free press, they call it fake news and they have both said that Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump was in the White House.

Now, in terms of what we're going to learn about this meeting, it is still unclear. His team said that they are going to put out some sort of statement that we might see pictures. We don't expect either of them to actually come out and speak, but the thing to pay attention to here, this is not the same as what it was when Donald Trump was in the White House. This isn't two world leaders' meeting.

Essentially, Donald Trump is a civilian for all intents and purposes. He is the former world leader, but there's no obligation for his team to take notes or to provide notes to someone else to share what kind of diplomatic conversations might be happening between Biden - excuse me, between Trump and Orban. So it'll be interesting to see what they do give us. I am told a couple of Donald Trump's closest advisors will also be in that meeting. So we'll be reaching out to see if in fact there was no agenda, Boris.

SANCHEZ: We look forward to those updates. Kristen Holmes, thank you so much.

Let's discuss with CNN Political and National Security Analyst, David Sanger.

David, Viktor Orban has become something of a darling of the MAGA- right. What is the significance that he's coming to the United States not asking for a meeting at the White House? The White House, not offering an invitation, but he's meeting with former President Trump.

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, if he got - if he came to the United States the chances that President Biden would want to see him are probably pretty small. So Orban is, as you heard in the - in that good report, an authoritarian, I would not say that he has the kind of widespread dictatorial powers that Putin has. He has significantly repressed the media that would go after him. He's a model that you've heard Donald Trump admire many times as he has admired Putin.

You'll remember that, you know, right after the invasion of Ukraine, President Trump's first statement was, well, this is an act of strength and so forth. He didn't immediately react to the invasion of another country and going over their borders and the kind of damage it was caused.

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His admiration for Orban is similar. It's - here's somebody who's figured out how to tame the press and get rid of his critics.

KEILAR: It's interesting because Trump and his supporters on the right have convinced a lot of people that Democratic minded leaders, a number of them, that they're kind of soft, like they're kind of wusses and these strong men, these authoritarians they're the ones that they should be impressed by. But when you think of the actual societies that these leaders, Putin, or even though he's different than Orban or an Orban is governing over, it would really raise questions if people had the experience to live in those societies about whether they would consider that to be a better option.

SANGER: That's right. I mean, preserving individual freedoms, freedom of speech, even freedom of religion and so forth, that's not particularly how Donald Trump has ranked what he considers to be strengths in a country, sounding tough is. Now, interesting to ask the question, whether or not Orban has truly been tough.

I mean, the rest of NATO for all of its divisions and so forth had - came together to push back on Putin's invasion with an organized force that I don't think any of us had predicted NATO would be capable of, who was resisting that throughout? Orban. And Orban has been the one who really has not contributed. Germany's contributed. France has contributed. Britain has contributed. The Netherlands have certainly Poland and all of the former Soviet states, not Orban. I would argue the strength here has come from everybody except Orban.

SANCHEZ: Pivoting to last night's State of the Union and there was a foreign policy moment that wasn't part of the speech. It was caught on a hot mic and I'm not sure if we have the sound bite, but President Biden speaking to lawmakers as he was exiting the chamber said to a couple of lawmakers that he was telling Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel that they would soon have a come to Jesus meeting.

I want to update. Maybe you haven't heard this, but we just got this information. Apparently, President Biden was asked on his way to that event in Pennsylvania about the moment and he said, I didn't say that in the speech. You guys, speaking about the press, are eavesdropping on things, but he did say that Netanyahu has to allow more aid into Gaza. What do you make of that moment? He had to know microphones were nearby.

SANGER: I was about to say anybody doesn't speak in that place knowing that there's every boom microphone around. Let's set that aside for a moment. It is the worst kept secret in D.C. that the relationship between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the President has been strained at best and pretty deeply fraught at other moments.

We've heard stories of the President after these phone calls are over referring with some pretty vivid language, which Joe Biden is capable of to Netanyahu and his inaction. The come to Jesus moment, it's pretty clear what that would be about. It would be about whether or not they are using American weapons for what the President once described as indiscriminate bombing.

He was very clear in the speech yesterday - last night - that Prime Minister Netanyahu has to allow aid in. But think of how we're doing it. The United States and others are putting together this sort of temporary port and the Israelis have not said whether or not they're going to cooperate in getting that into their territory, neighboring them.

I think that it's pretty clear that Biden cannot wait for Netanyahu to move out of that job, but there is no indication that that's coming anytime soon. They could be stuck with each other for a long time.

KEILAR: You have to figure it out.

David Sanger, thank you so much.

SANCHEZ: Thanks.

SANGER: Great to be with you. SANCHEZ: Of course. Still to come, the European Union will join the U.S. to bring some lifesaving aid to Gaza by sea, as David just alluded to, through an emergency maritime corridor. We have the latest on the humanitarian crisis there.

KEILAR: Plus, TikTok users flooding Congress, calling their members with calls, supporting the social media network after a House committee voted to advance a bill to ban the popular video app. We'll discuss it with Congressman Josh Gottheimer.

And then later, thousands of children are ending up in the emergency room after taking a common sleeping aid. We'll have those stories and many more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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SANCHEZ: Next week, a controversial bill is set to head to the floor of the House, one that could basically mean no more TikTok on phones in the United States. A key committee passed the bill unanimously, worried about the video sharing app's ties to China. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is linked to the Chinese government. This bill gives ByteDance 165 days to sell TikTok to divest or it would be banned from U.S. app stores.

Joining us now to discuss is Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. He helped lead the bipartisan legislation to regulate TikTok. He also sits on the House intelligence committee.

Congressman, thanks so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

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The energy and commerce committee, as I mentioned, unanimously approved the bill 50 to nothing. It's now headed to the floor for a vote next week. Are you expecting it to pass? And then what do you think might happen to it in the Senate?

REP. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-NJ): I am and you get the sense of the deep bipartisan concern about literally our number one adversary controlling a major form of disinformation in our country, right? So ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as you pointed out, is controlled by the Chinese government, meaning that it can do what it wants with the algorithms and tweak them and push whatever information it wants about elections, about hate, about any topic that it wants and we've seen it.

And the big challenge, of course, in this country, I know there's a lot of Americans who have the app on their phone, the big challenge is if you're under 30, it is the number - your number one news source now, right? The number one place for information and that is way up, it's a 255 percent increase of use just in people under 30, just in the last years.

So we know it's ubiquitous and it's literally a disinformation machine controlled by our number one adversary, China.

SANCHEZ: I want to zero in on when you said we've seen it, we we've seen signals of malfeasance or at least the opportunity for nefarious activity on behalf of Beijing. TikTok says that they've never nor will ever share Americans' data with the Chinese government. And so far the U.S. hasn't publicly presented evidence that Beijing has accessed TikTok's data. Have you seen any?

GOTTHEIMER: Well, obviously we've seen as the - we've seen the President come out and raise concerns as our commander-in-chief. As you mentioned, I sit on the Intelligence Committee, can't discuss specifics, but the FTC, for instance, and this is public and 2019 find TikTok for knowingly collecting information, emails, photo - photographs of those under 13 years old. So you have two major challenges. There's the disinformation and then there's the collection of literally files information on 150 million Americans who are using TikTok, right?

So we know they have access. If you have it on your phone, you're giving permission to TikTok and the parent company ByteDance to access anything that happens on your phone. It's part of what you agree to in the terms and conditions. And you might imagine how alarming that is not just for them to have information, but of course, also to be able to push out disinformation onto millions and millions of phones every day.

SANCHEZ: I should have mentioned earlier that President Biden has expressed support for your bill. If it does make it through the House and Senate, he has said that he will sign it. I am curious though, I'm sure you've heard the argument that going after TikTok effectively crushes an avenue for free speech. And there's an entire economy that content creators have fostered, that's attached to it.

I'm wondering what you make that this goes against the spirit of the first amendment, this desire to go after tick talk.

GOTTHEIMER: Well, as you know, the legislation itself, which the President said he'll support, as you pointed out, is very narrowly defined, right? It's only an app that the President raises as the power to, of course, ban or force a divestiture or - and, again, ban it from the U.S. app store and only you're talking about Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, right? So it is a - it's not going after any app. It's particularly targeted to our foreign adversaries.

And as you know, what's great about technology is, of course, how quickly something else will pop up and a new vehicle will pop up. But the idea right now that we are literally handing over the keys - and put it this way, imagine we said to China or to Russia, you can take over our new sites of ABC, NBC, CNN, right, and just say, here, take it over. You put up whatever content you want, even if it undermines our democracy, undermines our elections, undermines our security, promotes Osama bin Laden, whatever the issue is, that's effectively what we're allowing right now. And when - and clearly we have not seen enough good faith to show that - to lay the concerns of those who - from a National Security perspective. SANCHEZ: I'm curious - lastly, Congressman - former president Donald Trump argued as this bill, the news of this bill passing committee came out that putting this in place would essentially aid other social media companies. He's apparently changed his position on TikTok, which his administration sort of led the way in signaling as a potential threat. What do you make of that?

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GOTTHEIMER: Well, I haven't seen what he said, but obviously he did raise this as president, raises concerns specifically about TikTok, right? And, obviously, he probably saw some of the information that this president has seen to raise the alarm or sounding the alarm on this and raise concerns.

So I don't understand why he would change his position on this. I mean, the bottom line is handing over the keys to Russia, to China, to North Korea, to Iran, to our enemies to be able to pump disinformation and collect information on every American who's on the app, 150 million Americans. Again, number one news source, if you're under 30 right now, is TikTok, right?

So the idea they'd be able to pump this disinformation, and we've seen the effects of this disinformation out there. I don't understand why anyone would be comfortable with that. You see why it's bipartisan out of the Energy and Commerce Committee overwhelmingly. And I'll tell you on the Intelligence Committee, there is deep concern as well. We've raised the alarms on this.

Mike Gallagher and Raja, the two lead co-sponsors with us, that was an original leader of this bill. We all - we sit on the - we all sit on the intelligence committee. So there's, there's reasons why we all are concerned.

SANCHEZ: Yes. A lot more options for news out there, including CNN NEWS CENTRAL on 1 through 4 PM Monday through Friday.

Congressman Josh Gottheimer, appreciate you joining us.

GOTTHEIMER: I set you up for that plug, man.

SANCHEZ: That was T-ball, man. That was T-ball, but I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

GOTTHEIMER: Good to see you, thanks.

SANCHEZ: Thanks.

So the truth is out there. If you're someone who wants to find a UFO, you are not alone. And we may not be either. Ahead, how the Pentagon wants you to join in on the search next.

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