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Biden To Visit TX As Court Battle Over Border Law Plays Out; Hospital In Alleged Princess Of Wales Data Breach: All Disciplinary Steps Will Be Taken; Report: Sharp Decline In Wellbeing Among Young People In U.S.; Congressional Leaders Announce Finding Deal To Keep Govt Open, Johnson Facing Far-Right Pushback. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired March 20, 2024 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: But as Gloria noted, in some of the polling we're seeing, those numbers with some of these younger voters, in particular, starting to soften.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: He's also saying, look, Republicans had their chance on a tough immigration bill that they're never going to get under Donald Trump and they blew it and they didn't go along with it.

So Biden is using that to say, look, I've been trying but I've been blocked.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right. Gloria and Jessica, obviously, a lot going on today and a lot of issues that they're focusing on. We appreciate you guys being here with us.

So while the world wondered what was going on with the Princess of Wales, apparently so did a staffer at the London hospital where she was being treated. And now there's an investigation underway.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:35:16]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: So who tried to access the Princess of Wales private medical records? The United Kingdom's data watchdog says it's assessing reports of a data breach at the London hospital where Princess Kate was treated back in January.

KEILAR: This alleged invasion vision of privacy is the latest plot twist in a months-long saga that has left the world asking, where is Kate Middleton and is she OK.

CNN's Anna Stewart is in London.

Anna, walk us through what is going on. Very serious allegations here.

ANNA STEWART, CNN LONDON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, really serious allegations. This comes, of course, after weeks of speculation and rumor. Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably haven't escaped it. Where is the Princess of Wales? Is she OK? What's here condition? Why did she photoshop family photos?

But this story takes a completely different turn. This came out in "The Daily Mirror. This is the tabloid here in the U.K. And it has uncovered an investigation that at least one staff member says has tried to access the medical notes of the Princess of Wales while she was in hospital in January at the London clinic.

This is a private hospital. She underwent abdominal surgery. And following that, she spent 13 nights in hospital.

Now, if true, this data breach is incredibly serious. It could be a criminal offense. It's certainly illegal. And it is being taken very seriously by authorities.

So the ICO, which is the data regulator here in the U.K., has received a report of the breach. They're looking into it. They have the power to prosecute and to fine the London clinic, the hospital.

A private hospital that has a number of high-profile patients under their rosa, including former royals, Prince Philip, Princess Margaret, and so on.

They, of course, also looking at this because it's very damaging for their reputation.

CIO put out a statement saying, "There's no place at a hospital for those intentionally breach the trust of any of our patients or colleagues."

Hopefully, we find out a bit more about that. Clearly, there is a vacuum of royal news and a huge hunger from the public to know more. But this is totally unacceptable.

KEILAR: All right, Anna Stewart, thank you so much for the latest there. It's pretty wild, pretty unacceptable, indeed.

Let's bring in Kristen Meinzer. She's a royal-watcher. She's the host of "The Daily Fail" podcast.

This is a pretty serious allegation here. And it's not clear if the breach was successful.

But what do you make of this, this attempt to gain access to her medical information, which you would expect there would be some kind of trail of to figure out who's done this?

KRISTEN MEINZER, ROYAL WATCHER & HOST, "THE DAILY FAIL" PODCAST: Yes, this is absolutely horrendous. None of us would ever want this to happen with our own personal medical records.

And it's just indicative of the bigger issue here that Prince Harry has been spearheading, which is about invasion of privacy, specifically with the royals.

And questions about whether or not people are trying to find out private information to then sell to the tabloids. And how much are the tabloids in on all of this?

And it's been shown over and over again that the tabloids have oftentimes been instrumental in these invasions of privacy when they have to do with not just the royals, but even private citizens, victims of crime and so on.

And so this is a very big deal and it crosses over with the case that Harry is involved in right now with Murdoch.

So a lot of eyes on this case at the moment, especially with all of the public interest around Kate and where she has been since Christmastime.

SANCHEZ: And to that point about public interests, we recently saw a video of her and, at least to my eyes, she looked fine. Why hasn't that silenced rumors about her health?

MEINZER: Yes, well, unfortunately, when that video came out, it was on the tails of a lot of misinformation from the royals.

We had the Mother's Day photo a week earlier, which was found just hours after its released to have been doctored minimum 20 ways and received a kill notification from the A.P. and half a dozen other outlets.

In some cases, being compared to, as K.P. was being compared to North Korea and other governments as far as how reliable the images are that are coming out of there at this point.

And so, because there are all these questions about how reliable are the image we're getting from Kinsington Palace, it's hard to know, was this video actually what we think it is?

And since its release, even TMZ's executive producer -- TMZ had the exclusive U.S. rights on this image from this video -- even he came forward and said he's not 100 percent sure anymore that it's even Kate in that image.

KEILAR: Yes, Kristen, where's the line here? I mean, clearly the royal family, the palace, they haven't handled this correctly. We can say that.

But at the same time, health is private. This is a woman who has children. We don't know what the health issue is. It could be something moderately serious and they want to shield the kids from any questions or worries they might have.

[14:40:09]

I mean, where is the line, because you can understand that certainly. Where is the line that people should be walking here?

MEIZNER: Yes, I don't think any of us in the public or in the press are demanding live daily updates with all of the gritty details about Kate's health. I think what we're hoping for is just some more transparency. And one

look no further than Buckingham Palace and Prince Charles -- or I should say King Charles -- King Charles, he was forthright that during a medical examination for a benign enlarged prostate, that cancer was discovered.

We were not told to type of cancer. But we were told all of those other details. We were given photos of the king reading get-well cards. We were given photo-ops of him waving to the public. We are shown him continuing to take meetings.

And all of this has led to the public feeling totally at peace with what we know about the king. And I think that Kinsington Palace could have done the same with Kate.

I'm not saying it had to be on that same level. But just a little bit more transparency would have saved all of these headaches.

And because the public was so desperate for anything from Kate, and then the thing that we got was immediately found to be fraudulent, it just really shook the public's trust in Kinsington Palace.

SANCHEZ: Well, no matter what is going on with her, we hope that she's well and healthy.

Kristen Meinzer, thank you so much for the time. We appreciate it.

MEINZER: Thanks for having me back.

KEILAR: For the first time, America has fallen out of the top-20 happiest countries. The reason behind the drop.

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[14:46:29]

SANCHEZ: Not much to be happy about here, apparently. A new report shows the U.S. is no longer one of the world's 20s happiest -- 20th.

(LAUGHTER)

SANCHEZ: One of the top 20th happiest countries. And a big reason for the drop is actually young people.

The annual Global Happiness Report found a notable drop among folks between the ages of 15 to 24.

KEILAR: Driving this decline, the report found were factors like lack of education, skills, training and access to affordable housing. You can see how that would be depressing.

Joining us now to discuss, we have a psychiatrist, Dr. Gail Saltz, with us back on the program.

All right, Doc, the U.S. ranks in the top-10 happiest countries among the 60-plus age group. So talk to us about what's driving this generational divide.

DR. GAIL SALTZ, PSYCHIATRIST & PSYCHOANALYST: Well, if you look at happiness overall, we've known from a lot of research that it occurs in a lifespan based on a U-shaped curve.

Which means basically early life, childhood is often happier than midlife, not as happy, lots of stressors, having children, taking care of parents, working, et cetera. And later life, happier again, when a lot of those stressors are relieved.

So this is already an age group where you would expect them to be happier. But this generation is looking at a lot of differences. What are they?

They are not expecting to do as well as the generation before. And that's newer news, right? So economically, things don't look as bright.

There's a lot of political divide. There are concerns about racial issues. There are concerns about climate change. There are concerns about the future and not doing well as the prior generation.

Remember, this scale looked at how great is your life compared to the best life do you think you could be having. So they're looking up and saying it looked better before. It doesn't look as good for us. And that creates a feeling of not having well-being.

In addition, this group has social media all over. And the main source of happiness and well-being or relationships. But in real life relationships not social media, which can really detract from feeling socially supported and having real relationships.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the report says that young people were experiencing a dramatic increase in loneliness. It underscores that point about relationships that you were making.

Another thing that social media does, it creates these sorts of warped comparisons, when you're comparing yourself to, as you were saying, the best life you could have.

The gap is enormous when you look at some of the influences that you see on social media, perhaps some of the, let's say, edited or filtered lives that they post online.

What's the best advice you would offer a young person that's feeling lonely right now and perhaps too engaged with social media?

SALTZ: Yes, put the emphasis back on "in real life." So take off a few of those apps, look less often, and instead work on having even one or two people in your life who you built an in-real-life really good, good friendship with.

Because that actually is what we find, particularly for this age group, for adolescents and young adults, is what makes a huge difference in those issues you brought up, loneliness and actually having more happiness and well-being. That's really important. KEILAR: IRL.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: Dr. Gail Saltz, we'll take that advice. Thank you so much for being with us.

SALTZ: Thanks for having me today.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

It's important to have those in-real-life relationships, somewhat to console you perhaps when you say 20s or a word that doesn't exist --

(LAUGHTER)

[14:50:04]

KEILAR: It's OK. Boris.

SANCHEZ: -- on national television --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: IRL. It's OK.

SANCHEZ: Thanks for having my back, Brianna.

(LAUGHTER)

SANCHEZ: So House Speaker Mike Johnson says he's reached a deal to fund the government. So why are some members of his conference still demanding a shutdown? We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Congressional leaders say they have hammered out a deal to keep the government up and running. And now the race is on to pass the legislation before this weekend's shutdown deadline.

CNN's Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill with the latest here.

All right, Manu, how are things going?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, they haven't even released the bill yet. They did announce a deal, but the deadline is on Friday.

Remember, they're supposed to get this done by October 1st, but they've had short-term extension after short-term extension.

Now, much of the federal government is resting on Congress getting this done by 11:59 p.m. on Friday. There's a rule to give members of the House three days to review legislation.

[14:55:04] And it's unclear if there'll be able to have -- whether Speaker Johnson has to waive that rule. And that is causing significant blowback on the right. The Republicans were concerned about the deal the speaker cut as well as the potential that they could waive that three-day rule.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN RAND PAUL (R-KY): Well, it isn't really about the process of whether it's Friday or Saturday or Sunday. It's whether or not someone stands up and says the emperor has no clothes. The country has no money. That is my point.

REP. BOB GOOD (R-VA): One of the concerns I have is with this -- is from our member friends who are planning to vote for the bill and don't need 72 hours to decide you're going to vote for some 2000 pages that spends $1 trillion and has policies you don't even know what's in there and what's not in there.

RAJU: Do you think you guys should set it down?

UNIDENTIFIED CONGRESSMAN: I do, 100 percent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: But even so, we do expect their -- for them to have the votes, ultimately, to pass this bill and to avoid a government shutdown.

Brianna, the big question is when they will do that. Not only is there a question in the House. There's a question the United States Senate.

They need to get all 100 Senators to agree on a time to schedule the vote. Any one Senator can delay this past that Friday deadline, potentially pushing a shutdown into the weekend or early next week.

And that is what Senator Rand Paul, who has criticized this deal -- he would not commit to allowing a quick vote here.

So there are definitely going to be some speed bumps before final passage of this bill, which has not yet been unveiled --

KEILAR: Yes --

RAJU: -- Brianna?

KEILAR: -- he's not afraid to be the one sticking out sometimes on an issue like this.

Manu Raju, live for us from the Hill, thank you.

Former President Trump bragging about his role in overturning Roe v. Wade, but he has refused to say whether he'd support a national abortion ban, until now. We'll have his latest comments next comments, next.

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