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Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) On Biden-Netanyahu Phone Call Today; 600+ Stranded Amid Rubble After Taiwan's Strongest Quake In 25 Years; NASA Launching Planes, Rockets Into Solar Eclipse Path. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired April 04, 2024 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL)

[07:31:25]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: If you bought a Powerball ticket with two bucks and a dream -- well, your dream is not dead. Far-fetched, but not dead. There was no grand prize winner in last night's $1 billion power jackpot -- however, nine players won at least $1 million apiece. Your next shot at the big bucks will be this Saturday. The jackpot, an estimated $1.23 billion, the fourth-largest in Powerball history.

And the award goes to Caitlin Clark. Not a surprise. She's been named the 2024 Naismith Player of the Year. This is the second year in a row Clark has earned the honor. Last month, she became the NCAA's all-time scoring leader, breaking a previous record held by Pistol Pete. Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes will take on UConn tomorrow night in the Final Four.

All right, thieves in California making off with as much as $30 million in cash on Easter Sunday, one of the largest heists in the state's history. The L.A. Times now reporting that "experienced crew" broke through the roof of the facility that stores cash for businesses across all of Southern California. They got access to the vault without triggering the security system somehow. The LAPD and the FBI currently investigating this insane robbery -- Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: What's more far-fetched? Winning Powerball or pulling that one off? We will see. We'll leave it to you.

All right, so there's also this, this morning. A startling new report out from the American Cancer Society reporting a real threat that the world could see a major spike in cancer cases, and soon, finding that cancer diagnoses could rise 77 percent by 2050. So what would be driving this? Where is the threat and concern?

CNN's Jacqueline Howard has the details from this new report out this morning. Jacqueline, what are you learning?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Well, Kate, we know that there are two key drivers behind this. One, just as a society, we're aging. And two, as a society, we're growing.

And this report shows that in the year 2022, there were about eight billion people around the world. That number is projected to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050. So as we have more people in the world and more older people because we're aging, we can expect to see more cancer.

And this report found that lung cancer was really the leading cause of cancer death in 2022 and it causes the most cases as well.

But when you look at data by country and by men versus women, you see interesting trends. Like, on this map here, here's the cancer incidence among men around the world. You see prostate cancer, in green, is very prevalent. There's also lung cancer in blue, which we see a lot of in European and Asian countries.

And then when you look at cancer incidence among women around the world, breast cancer is the most prevalent. You see breast cancer there in pink. But we also see cervical cancer in orange, which is prevalent in African countries. And then, lung cancer, in blue, prevalent in Asian countries.

So these trends are very, very important to follow. They show that cancer isn't just a public health concern here in the United States but all around the world. And it's estimated that about one in five people will develop cancer in a lifetime. So these are numbers that are important to follow, especially as we think about what the future could look like, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Well, and looking in -- looking to the future and with this new report from the American Cancer Society, what are they saying about -- you know, you've got multiple types of cancer. You've got multiple countries --

HOWARD: Yeah.

BOLDUAN: -- we're talking about and different health care systems, but what people can do best --

[07:35:00]

HOWARD: Right.

BOLDUAN: -- to reduce their threat of cancer.

HOWARD: Right. Well, the report does recommend interventions as a society, like tobacco control and improved screening. But individually, we can each do something to reduce our cancer risk. Eating more healthy. Getting regular exercise. Watching how much alcohol we drink and not smoking. These are all things that we can do to not just reduce our cancer risk but to live healthier lives just in general, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Jacqueline, thank you so much for bringing that report out this morning. A lot to learn from it. Thank you -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right.

In the coming hours, a critical phone call between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- the first since Israeli Forces killed seven humanitarian aid workers from World Central Kitchen.

Joining us now is Delaware Sen. Chris Coons. He serves on the Senate Foreign Relations and Judiciary Committees. He also is national co- chair for the Biden-Harris reelection campaign. And you just returned really recently -- like, just now -- from your trip to six countries in Africa. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here this morning.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): It's good to be with you, Sara -- thanks.

SIDNER: I want to start with this phone call. Biden has said he's outraged on the attack, as is much of the world, on the World Central Kitchen aid workers. He has this phone call with Netanyahu today. There is tension that has been there for some time.

What more can he say to try and change what is happening on the ground in Gaza? What do you want him to say to Bibi Netanyahu?

COONS: First, I think President Biden is going to demand accountability. A quick, prompt -- a quick, thorough, and independent review of this particularly tragic incident.

Look, this war in Gaza against Hamas by Israel has been going on since October 7, and thousands and thousands of civilians have been killed. This has been a tragic war, really, from the beginning because Hamas has used Palestinian civilians as shields and they have embedded themselves underneath mosques and hospitals. But this particular targeted killing, which is hard to explain or understand, brings into sharp focus the challenges of the ongoing campaign against Hamas.

It's been months now that many of us have called on Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and to protect aid workers. These seven deaths are tragic, but there have been nearly 200 --

SIDNER: Right.

COONS: -- aid workers killed so far.

The IDF needs to provide direct communication, real-time on the ground.

And there's a column in The New York Times this morning by David Sanger and Peter Baker suggesting the IDF might accompany humanitarian aid deliveries. Otherwise, frankly, I don't see how we fend off famine in Gaza.

World Central Kitchen, World Food Programme, Anera -- all the major non-profits that deliver food right now into Gaza have stopped operations because they don't know whether their staff will be the next to be killed in a friendly-fire incident like this.

SIDNER: Yeah. We just heard from Americare and one of their partners says they have to cease for right now because their aid workers are simply not safe.

I want to let you listen to what Jose Andres, the founder of the World Central Kitchen, has said about the attack -- his pointed words -- listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSE ANDRES, FOUNDER, WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN: What I know is that we were targeted deliberately non-stop until everybody was dead in this convoy. That cannot be -- that cannot be the role of an army. That cannot be the role of an army that has hundreds of drones (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Israel's minister of economy is the one who has pushed back, saying that claim is nonsense.

But the World Central Kitchen founder makes a very compelling argument as to what happened here, and he says he doesn't trust the Israeli military to do an independent investigation. Do you?

COONS: I think we need to hear both from the IDF and have an independent investigation by an organization outside the IDF to review the materials, the details, and the video of exactly what happened.

Jose is a close friend. He's well-respected and well-regarded on both sides of the aisle. In the Senate, in fact, he just briefed a dozen senators about two weeks ago.

I spoke to him Tuesday. He is grieving. He is angry. I understand and respect that emotion and that response to this tragic incident. But so many others are as well.

When I was last in Israel, now two months ago, Cindy McCain, who runs the World Food Programme, who is a friend, had said to me our aid workers are getting killed. You have to raise this. I raised this issue with Benjamin Netanyahu in person -- the prime minister --

SIDNER: What did he say?

COONS: -- and he said we'll take care of it. We understand it's an issue. It clearly hasn't been taken care of.

And look, President Biden has conveyed again and again before any further large-scale military operations there has to be humanitarian aid. There has to be a relocation of civilians. I suspect this call today will be a very important next step in the U.S.-Israel relationship.

SIDNER: You've had words with Benjamin Netanyahu. The president has had words with Benjamin Netanyahu.

[07:40:00]

At what point does the policy change? Do you support a change in policy instead of a carrot, instead of words, a stick saying to Israel that in order to get military aid, you have to change your tact? When does that happen?

COONS: I think we're at that point. And I think we're at the point where President Biden has said and I have said, and others have said if Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister, were to order the IDF into Raffa at scale -- they were to drop thousand-pound bombs and send in a battalion to go after Hamas and make no provision for civilians or for humanitarian aid, that I would vote to condition aid to Israel.

I've never said that before. I've never been here before. I've been a strong supporter of Israel the whole time I've served in Congress.

We just appropriated another $3.3 billion of support in the last appropriations bill we did.

SIDNER: Right.

COONS: The challenge is to make it clear that we support the Israeli people. That we want to and will continue to have a strong and close relationship with Israel. But that the tactics by which the current prime minister is making these decisions don't reflect the best values of Israel or of the United States.

SIDNER: So things have gotten so bad for the first time, you are saying yes, we will put conditions on military aid --

COONS: I'm speaking for myself, obviously.

SIDNER: Speaking for yourself. But you --

COONS: If they -- if they continue with large-scale military operations in Raffa without making any provision for civilians.

Now, to continue fighting Hamas -- taking targeted raids, small counterterrorism, or special forces raids -- I think that's an acceptable part of continuing their campaign against Hamas.

But the IDF can bring humanitarian relief in through the north of Gaza. They just demonstrated this two, three weeks ago by escorting in convoys of trucks through a new opening in the very northern security perimeter of Gaza. It is the far north of Gaza where the IDF has the most control, where there is the most famine, and there is the most urgency.

I think we can move forward if we see real seriousness about addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as well as the security crisis that Israel continues to face.

SIDNER: Famine is happening. People are starving.

Senator Coons, thank you so much for coming in. I know you're tired after your --

COONS: Thank you.

SIDNER: -- after your six-country trip in Africa. I really appreciate your time -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. This morning, a statue unveiled on the sidelines of the world's greatest race, which ends in the world's greatest city. It commemorates Spencer the Golden Retriever, who graced the sidelines of the Boston Marathon for years after the marathon bombing in 2013. He showed up rain or shine holding up a Boston Strong flag in his mouth. Sadly, Spencer died last year.

Now, his owners adopted another Golden, Jimmy, who is expected to take up the flag on Patriots Day, which is race day, April 15.

The statue is pretty much right where Spencer always stood, mile three in Ashland, which means even I ran past him.

The criminal trial for Donald Trump set to begin. Trump's new efforts to delay it rejected. What he plans next and might these moves backfire?

New startling images of earthquake damage and an update on the urgent search for survivors trapped under the rubble.

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[07:47:46]

SIDNER: New this morning, a big legal loss for Donald Trump. The New York judge presiding over Trump's criminal hush money trial rejected the former president's last-ditch bid to delay that trial. The trial, then, will begin jury selection just 11 days from now on April 15. It had already been pushed back from March and Trump wanted to postpone it again until after the Supreme Court rules on his presidential immunity claim.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz is joining me now. Katelyn, this thing is going forward.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Sara, it certainly looks like it. Donald Trump is making a lot of attempts to try and delay that trial to get jury selection not to start on April 15 as scheduled, but the judge is not buying it.

There's another thing happening here, too, in this case in this lead- up to trial. It's the table setting of how this is going to work once a jury is seated and the prosecutors are going to be able to present their evidence in the hush money case.

In this latest situation that the judge ruled against Donald Trump on, his request was to delay things because the Supreme Court is looking at presidential immunity. Donald Trump's attorneys were telling Judge Merchan, in this case in New York, nothing that Trump said while he was president should be able to come into the presentation prosecutors make, including tweets. They can't even use his tweets before the jury.

The judge says this was way too late for you to be bringing this up, asking for this in March to try and cut it out of the trial, but I'm going to not allow us to delay the trial. However, the judge said to Donald Trump's attorneys you can bring this up during the trial if there is something the prosecutors want to present that something Trump said while he was president. Sure, flag it for me at that time. That's the table setting going on.

There's going to be other rulings as well out there because Donald Trump's attorneys are trying other ways to delay this case. One of them is they're asking him to delay because of pretrial publicity. We don't have a ruling on that yet from Judge Merchan, although he has shot down requests like this in the past.

And the D.A.'s office in New York says it is perverse that Donald Trump thinks that this case should be delayed because of pretrial publicity. He's the one causing all of the pretrial publicity -- Sara.

[07:50:06]

SIDNER: Yeah. Up until now, delay, delay, delay has worked for the Team Trump. Not this time, perhaps.

All right, thank you so much, Katelyn. Appreciate it -- John.

BERMAN: All right. With us now, Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor.

Counsel, let me read you part of what Judge Merchan wrote because I think there's some frustration maybe --

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Ah.

BERMAN: -- in here.

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

BERMAN: He said, "The fact that the defendant waited until a mere 17 days prior to the scheduled trial date of March 25 to file the motion raises real questions about the sincerity and actual purpose of the motion. The circumstances, viewed as a whole, test this Court's credulity."

WILLIAMS: Meow. I mean, that is pretty harsh language from a judge in any context. But he's got a point, John, and just look at the opportunities that the former president's team probably had to raise these motions. They could have done so back in February when the Supreme Court took the case, back in October when they briefed the issue for the first, and then or back in May 2023, the first time it came up when they tried to remove the case to federal court.

This issue of immunity has been out there for nearly a year at this point -- yet, it's only the eve of trial that the Trump team chose to move for it. So it's fair for the judge to say I think you're trying to okey-doke me with the timeline here and we're just not going to do that.

BERMAN: Isn't it, though, normal/good lawyering to file as many motions --

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- to delay before the trial starts? WILLIAMS: Well, yes and no. It is good lawyering to protect a defendant's rights, and it's a really important point, John. It's -- in any criminal case, a defendant has a right to slow down a trial, to delay it, and make sure that all of his rights are protected. And frankly, if you care about seeing someone convicted, you want to have that defendant get his rights to have his day in court because you can get a conviction tossed out later if he didn't.

So, yes, there's a space for that but just look at the calendar and the timing and it's a little -- you know, it's long part of a pattern.

BERMAN: And when you push the judge to the point where he has --

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- as you say, has a meow-like tone --

WILLIAMS: Yes. Yeah.

BERMAN: -- maybe you've gone too far?

WILLIAMS: Maybe. I mean, again, there are judges -- judges are just like all of us. Sometimes they get annoyed, sometimes they don't. But clearly, this is a point at which the judge was frustrated with the -- with the attorneys.

BERMAN: There's a little bit of a tale of two judges --

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- going on right now. The judge in the New York criminal case who is not having any of the delay tactics. And the judge in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, Aileen Cannon, who -- whether or not she's buying into the delay tactics may be part of the delay situation --

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- right now to the point where there are those who are speculating that some of her decisions might not just be appealed but there's a possibility she could be removed from the case.

I want to play some sound from Ty Cobb -- not the baseball player. That would be a good book --

WILLIAMS: That would be sweet, yeah.

BERMAN: That would be a good booking though.

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

BERMAN: But from the lawyer who did represent --

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- Donald Trump for a while. He was on with Erin last night -- listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TY COBB, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE LAWYER: You know -- and, yes, she may be incompetent but at this stage of the game the -- her incompetence is so gross that I think it clearly creates the perception of impartiality -- of partiality and her attempt to put her thumb on the scale. So I think that should disqualify her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAMS: Yeah. So I think the fact that a judge should be removed from a case and can be or will be removed from a case are two very different things. Now, merely a judge getting it wrong isn't going to be sufficient to get a judge kicked off. Judges get it wrong and that's why we have appeals courts to sort of challenge their decisions.

Now, the Justice Department did something really, really smart yesterday in saying you have to rule on this motion before the jury is impaneled. If not, we lose our right to appeal or we'll -- and then we'll move to get you kicked off. Why they did that is that judges have an obligation to rule on anything that could go away once a trial starts. So they're sort of pushing her and baiting her and if she fails to do that, I don't see how they don't at least try to get her kicked off.

Elliot Williams, great to see you in person.

WILLIAMS: You, Yanks!

BERMAN: I was going to say it was even better that you didn't the Yankees once but I knew that was coming. You could not resist it.

WILLIAMS: Oh, I got you.

BERMAN: The Red Sox are winning well, so I'm winning as well.

WILLIAMS: Yeah.

BERMAN: So I'll allow it -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: All right. So right now, more than 600 people are still stranded in eastern Taiwan after that 7.4-magnitude earthquake, which hit yesterday morning. Ten people, we've now learned, are reported to be dead and more than 1,000 people have been wounded. And dozens were rescued overnight, thankfully, including workers stranded in a quarry. We're going to show you some video because we have a video of what the quarry looked like before the rescue.

CNN's Ivan Watson is in Taiwan for us. Ivan, what are you seeing?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, Kate, I'm in this small city called Hualien. This is the epicenter of when they -- Wednesday morning's 7.4-magnitude earthquake. So here we have a pretty stark example of the sheer power of that earthquake, which has been described as the most powerful earthquake to hit Taiwan in 25 years.

[07:55:00]

This building -- a residential building -- maybe six stories -- leaning precariously. We saw social media videos of firefighters rescuing residents by ladder from this building. And it is one of several that are going to be demolished here in this city as a result of this earthquake, which has been deadly and has wounded more than 1,000 people.

But I do want to share with you another side of this city. As we pan down the street away from that precariously leaning building, you can see the lights of Hualien lit up on the night of a holiday here. Many of the shops and restaurants are open right now. This is a town that lies on a fault line that is very accustomed to earthquakes, as is all of Taiwan, and people get over this rather quickly. '

Not only that, look at the buildings around here. They look very much structurally sound. You have to go a long way around this town to find buildings like this that are so badly damaged.

Now the situation in the mountains -- the enormous mountains around here -- is very different. For example, a 10th victim -- his body was found today. That's a Taiwanese tourist in a national park about an hour's drive from here. And that's where we saw those massive landslides -- entire faces of mountains coming down. And that's where the emergency workers are trying to reach scores of people -- hundreds of people that they still cannot reach because of these obstructions.

Take a listen to what one eyewitness had to say about what these rockfalls looked and felt like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): There were too many rocks, like bullets, falling from above. We didn't know where to run. We were all scared.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: So, terrifying scenes there.

I just met the mayor of this city of Hualien. He was on crutches. He was hit by falling furniture in his home on Wednesday morning. But he attributes the kind of training that residents of the city get as they grow up, at school, of how to deal with earthquakes for the relatively low death toll, considering the sheer power of the earthquake that struck this city just yesterday morning.

Back to you.

BOLDUAN: Yeah. It's almost -- it's almost hard to wrap your mind around the contrast and the images that you're able to show us here. It's great. I'm glad you're there, Ivan. Thank you so much. We're going to continue covering this -- John. BERMAN: All right. This morning, we are learning what NASA has planned for the epic total solar eclipse on Monday. While most of us might be content just to look at it, NASA is going to shoot rockets at it, sort of.

CNN's Bill Weir is here. Bill, why are they trying to shoot down the eclipse?

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're not --

BERMAN: Is that wrong? Do I have that wrong?

WEIR: That's a little bit wrong.

BERMAN: OK.

WEIR: Let me set you straight. Actually, we -- science can learn so much during these events. Most famously, Albert Einstein, in 1916, floated a theory that gravity is the result of time and space bending sort of like a fabric of the universe. Like a bowling ball on a trampoline. And you'd be able to prove this by planets or stars being in the wrong place. A different perspective changing. Three years later during a 1919 eclipse, they proved the theory of relativity.

And these days, scientists are most obsessed with the corona. Not the Mexican beer or the virus but the corona is the atmosphere of the sun, which is 10 millions of degrees hotter than the actual surface of the sun. And one of the enduring mysteries is why as the sun gets hotter and cooler over these 11-year cycles -- why that maintains a consistent temperature?

So they're going to fly these rockets -- WB-57 -- or, I'm sorry, not rockets, airplanes -- WB-57s -- high-flying airplanes. They got to 60,000 feet, twice as high as your flight to grandma's house. And they're going to take pictures of the corona and measure it -- and do this and fly in the path of the eclipse. It can stay up there for a lot longer and gather a lot more information.

But then you also need an instrument that's between the airplanes and satellites to study the ionosphere. And that is the layer that protects us from the vacuum of deep space. It's these charge particles that protect us and contain Earth's livable habitat. And that fluctuates as the sun goes around the Earth rotates. It gets stronger during the day and then later at night.

And now, with the eclipse, they can send these rockets up before, during, and after the eclipse to measure how those charge particles fluctuate. How they affect communication on Earth between radio transmissions and satellites.

There's a bunch of citizen science going on with ham radio operators sort of sending pings and then recording how long it takes to hit a certain area and come back. And there are balloon experiments happening in Colorado. Satellite stuff everywhere.

So much attention in the science world paid to what's happening. BERMAN: It is incredibly cool. Chances that only come once a generation or so.

WEIR: Yeah.

BERMAN: And you make it sound so much cooler than my dumb joke. Bill Weir, great to have you here.

WEIR: Good to see you, John.

BERMAN: Kate.

BOLDUAN: You guys are talking about relativity and the corona, which I -- you know which one I thought it was. And I'm just focused on my chances to win Powerball. So that's where we are today.