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Fighting Words on Capitol Hill; Historic Win in Mexico; Ceasefire Deal Doubts; Political Pressure on Netanyahu; Emotional Testimony by Dr. Fauci; Hunter Biden's Federal Gun Case; New York Police Officers Shot; NASA Scrubs Starliner Launch. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired June 03, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

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JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: Fighting words on capitol hill as Dr Anthony Fauci is grilled by lawmakers about the origins of COVID-19 and the U.S response to the pandemic.

BRIANNE KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And a historic win in Mexico as voters elect the first female president. Everything we know about projected winner Claudia Shane Bomb and the changes that she is expected to bring. Plus, raising doubts, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the ceasefire deal laid out by President Biden is incomplete, but U.S. officials say the agreement is exactly what Israeli officials proposed. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

DEAN: Today fireworks and emotional testimony on Capitol Hill as the man who led the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic was grilled by Republican lawmakers. For the past four hours, Dr. Anthony Fauci testified before a GOP-led House subcommittee on the origins of the coronavirus and the government's response to the pandemic, which has killed more than one million Americans. Fauci spent a considerable amount of time denying Republican claims of a COVID cover-up and defending pandemic guidelines, and at one point, he got emotional when he was asked about the death threats that he and his family faced.

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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, FORMER DIR.NATL. INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DIEASES: It is very troublesome to me. It is much more troublesome because they've involved my wife and my three daughters.

UNKNOWN: At these moments. How do you feel? Keep your mic on.

FAUCI: Terrible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: CNN's Lauren Fox has been covering for this on Capitol Hill. Lauren, this went on for many, many hours and got quite personal in both the attacks and then also what Dr. Fauci was sharing about his experience. LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Jessica, this hearing went on for nearly four hours, and in a lot of ways, it retread through many of the areas that Fauci has been attacked on by Republicans for years. We should keep in mind, Fauci retired back in 2022, but this is part of a months-long investigation that House Republicans have conducted into the origins of COVID and the government's response to the pandemic. They sat with Dr. Fauci back in January over the course of two days for about 14 hours, but there were still a lot of fireworks from Republicans today. Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene.

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REP. MAJORIE TAYLOR GREENE, (R-GA): Making up guidelines like six feet distancing and masking of children. Do you think that's appropriate? Do the American people deserve to be abused like that, Mr. Fauci? Because you're not a doctor. You're Mr. Fauci. in my few minutes. No, I don't need your answer.

UNKNOWN: Rules of decorum, are we allowed to deny that a doctor is a doctor just because we don't want him to be a doctor?

TAYLOR GREENE: Yes, because in my time, that man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked, and he belongs in prison.

UNKNOWN: Can we suspend?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And Marjorie Taylor Greene, of course, has called into the question the efficacy of vaccines at times. She's also someone who has been known to go after Dr. Fauci in the past. But what's significant today is obviously the fact that this is still an ongoing debate on Capitol Hill. It has been years since the pandemic, and yet Democrats are arguing that Republicans have used their time in this investigation to go through old issues instead of really focusing on how to get the country ready for potentially another pandemic, which Dr. Fauci even acknowledged could happen to the United States in the months or years ahead. Jessica.

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DEAN: Yeah, it seems like a lot of this was really about spilling vitriol and spewing vitriol. Lauren Fox, thanks so much. Brianna.

KEILAR: Let's talk about this a little more now with Dr. Megan Ranney. She is the Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, and she's an emergency room physician. Doctor, thanks so much for being with us. How do you see the lab leak theory now, and how are people seeing it sort of as a prevailing theory compared to how they did before?

DR. MEGAN RANNEY, DEAN, YALE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: You know, we're honestly no closer to no pandemic than we were a year ago or three years ago. Might it have been a lab leak? It's possible. Might it have come from natural causes? Quite likely. Is further investigation at this point going to help us figure out? It is unlikely that spending more time and money trying to litigate the past when we know that many of those early records of the earliest cases of COVID-19 were destroyed or unavailable, it's unlikely that we're going to make forward progress. What I'm really concerned about is that possibility of a future pandemic. We have H5N1, which is already here, and we just reported the third human case. We have the ability to create pandemics in the lab, not talking about the COVID, but about nefarious actors, terrorists who can manufacture harmful viruses using tabletop DNA manufacturing technology. Those are the things that we should be talking about, how to prepare ourselves for the future and help prevent the next one, not trying to go back to something that we're never going to get the answer for.

KEILAR: So what do you make of the split? Because there are some folks like you who think that it's unlikely, maybe that it's a lab leak, but there are people who look at it and they see a lot of factors, and China has been so lacking in transparency on this, that would really obviously help get to the bottom of it. But they do look at certain factors that really, I think, require more questions. What do you make of the fact that there's this division?

RANNEY: I think the division highlights the fact that there are many people who are paying attention to the way that we do virology research for the first time. Do we need safeguards in place? Absolutely. Do we need to think hard about what type of research we fund and don't? Absolutely. Should we be shutting down all research on pandemics and on possible infectious pathogens? Absolutely not. So I think this is a bit of folks seeing this for the first time because they'd never thought about it. I also think there's a political side. Unfortunately, this pandemic got politicized very early on. There was a group of people that are trying to take this origin story and turn it into an indictment of one party and particularly this one person, Dr. Fauci, and thereby are distracting again from the real question, which is what can we do better the next time? Because we know there is going to be a next time.

KEILAR: Well, I mean, if what we can do better, if the lab leak is a real possibility, that's important to look at because that would also inform what you can do better next time. I agree with you. So much of this has been more about the search, not for truth, but sort of for political gain, for deflection of blame when it comes to the handling of the pandemic. But even while you have some people, Republicans, who have operated not in good faith when it comes to trying to talk about what the origin story was, who have pushed conspiracy theories, there's also been this question when it comes to the lab leak, if you do get into it, that does bear some questioning without going, obviously, to those steps of conspiracy theories and deflection of blame. What do you do with that?

RANNEY: So I'm looking here to what the World Health Organization is currently working on, which is updating its pandemic preparedness accords and treaties. Almost every country in the world agrees that we need to have clarity and transparency when there are new emerging health threats, including possible infectious disease pandemics, you are right that China did not participate with clarity, transparency, or speed at the beginning of this pandemic. And that set the world back in terms of the ability to develop testing and the ability to develop vaccines. We need an international coalition. We need investment in shared surveillance or monitoring for emerging pathogens. And we need a commitment to put limits in place on emerging AI and biotechnology techniques that unfortunately make it more possible for terrorists and other emerging cells outside of the United States or inside the United States.

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It makes it possible for people to manufacture pathogens going forwards. So we need international collaboration and funding on precisely the kind of thing that would have allowed us to know what the origin was had it been in place back in 2019.

KEILAR: All right, Dr. Ranney, thank you so much. We appreciate it. We're obviously watching this testimony very carefully. Jessica.

DEAN: The first day of jury selection in Hunter Biden's federal gun case is moving quickly today. The pool of 250 Delaware citizens has now been whittled down to about 25 potential jurors, and they're close to moving to the strike phase. That's when each side would be able to eliminate prospective jurors for various reasons. The president's son has pleaded not guilty to three felony charges, accused of illegally purchasing and possessing a firearm while abusing or being addicted to drugs. Questions so far for potential jurors have heavily focused on substance abuse, addiction, and gun rights. CNN's Evan Perez is outside the court and is joining us now. And Evan, we understand one potential juror remains in the jury pool despite prosecutors' objections that he's talking about his own daughter, who was a recovering addict. What more do you know about this?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jessica. This is a retired maintenance worker who was part of this jury pool. And in questioning, during the voir dire process, he described his own daughter, who was struggling with drug addiction. And he said in response to questions, everyone deserves a second chance. That prompted prosecutors to object, trying to figure out whether to remove him from the jury pool. The judge decided to keep him inside potentially the pool. We have now, reached at least 34 people who are in the pool. After lunch, after the lunch break, we expect to get at least a couple more. And then the process will begin to whittle this down to potentially 12 jurors, four alternates. Now as you pointed out, today has been dominated not only by the issue of addiction and people who are in recovery, but also gun rights. We had one juror who, a potential juror, who said that he believed that people had a God- given right to possess guns under the Second Amendment. Another potential juror who said that she was a Trump critic who supported banning all guns, said that after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, she joined what she called a resistance group. And, of course, there's also the specter of politics that hovers over all of this. Yes, we've heard at least one juror who was removed was dismissed after saying he didn't really think he could be fair.

He said he watched a lot of Fox News, a lot of Newsmax, and the judge thanked him for being honest about his biases and excused him from serving. Again, this process is going a lot more quickly, perhaps, than people anticipated. We could very well have a jury today, which means that the opening arguments of this trial could happen, as early as perhaps this afternoon or early tomorrow. Again, this is a trial that centers on the issue of gun rights, because Hunter Biden bought a gun during a time that he has said publicly he was addicted to drugs. And so that's what prosecutors are homing in on, using his infamous laptop, text messages from that, his own personal statements, his own statements about his drug addiction. And so the odds, obviously, for Hunter are against him because of all of the public evidence. And so the odds are against him because of all of the public evidence that is already out there about him discussing his struggles with drugs during the time that he owned this gun for 11 days in 2018. Jessica.

DEAN: All right, Evan Perez for us live in Wilmington, Delaware, where this is all getting underway. Thanks so much, Brianna.

KEILAR: Two New York police officers are now out of the hospital after they were shot by an undocumented migrant early this morning. Authorities say the suspect who is in custody is from Venezuela and entered the U.S. in July of last year. He's also being investigated in connection with a string of robberies in Queens. CNN's Gloria Pazmino is here on this story. Gloria, tell us what happened in this shooting.

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, it was a close call for two New York City police officers early this morning. Two of them shot at one in his leg, the other one in his chest. The bulletproof vest that he was wearing, saving his life. Here's what we know so far. Right around 1:40 in the morning, two police officers tried to pull over a man who was driving the wrong way on a scooter. That's when police tell us that the suspect ran away on foot. The police gave chase and the suspect opened fire, injuring those two police officers.

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The officers returned fire injuring the suspect and taking him into custody. Now here's what we know about this suspect so far. Police are telling us that it is 19-year-old Bernardo Raul Castro Mata, a Venezuelan national who came into the United States through the southern border in July of last year. We have reached out to immigration authorities to see if we can learn anything more about him, but we have not heard back yet. And as you said, Brianna, you know, this is part of a pattern that we have been seeing here in New York City in the last year, robberies that take place on scooters. People that are riding scooters, they have snatched cell phones, they have assaulted people. The police officers who spoke to the media early this morning said that this is something they have been working on for the last year, that there have been a lot of these incidents. The mayor, once again, highlighting the efforts of his police department to take illegal guns off the street, 15,000 weapons recovered so far, and also just highlighting how close of a call it was.

The two officers went into the hospital. They were in stable condition. And as you said, they were released earlier today. We saw that video of them being let out of the hospital. They're both expected to fully recover. In the meantime, we are waiting to learn more about the suspect and anything we can tell you about his background and the charges that he will likely soon be facing. Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, we'll look for that. Thank God those officers are all right. Obviously, this could have been so much worse. Gloria, thank you for that report. And ahead this hour on CNN News Central, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raising doubts about a ceasefire deal presented by President Biden, even though the White House says the deal was Israel's idea. We have the latest from overseas. And everything we know about Mexico's first female president, we're going to head live to Mexico City for the latest on this historic election. Plus, NASA scrubs its historic Starliner launch, just minutes before lift-off. So what went wrong? And when could they be trying this again? We'll have that and much more all coming up this hour on CNN News Central.

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KEILAR: Today, the White House is reacting to the confusion over what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to in the latest ceasefire proposal, pointing out the plan comes from the Israelis. Last week, you may recall President Biden framed the three-phase plan as a way to end the war in Gaza and to return all of the hostages over time. Hamas said it views the proposal, quote, positively. But then today, Netanyahu told an Israeli government committee that claims Israel agreed to a permanent ceasefire deal without Israeli conditions being met are, quote, not true. And Netanyahu is facing intense pressure from the far right of his coalition. This weekend, two ministers threatened that if Netanyahu implements this deal, they will dissolve the party that helps keep the prime minister in power. We have CNN's Jeremy Diamond in Jerusalem. Jeremy, what's going on here? Because it seems like there is a lot of confusion and bad will between the White House and Benjamin Netanyahu over this.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's no question that there is a lot of muddying of the waters in terms of what exactly this deal would do and the different ways in which President Biden, on the one hand, wants to frame this agreement and the way in which the Israeli prime minister wants to frame it. And look, President Biden is trying to frame this as a way to end the war for both his own domestic political interests, but also because the United States firmly believes that if Israel and Hamas get into a weeks-long ceasefire, that inevitably that will result in an end to the war. And in particular, because this agreement accounts for a continuation of that initial six-week ceasefire period for as long as the two sides continue to negotiate, which could stretch for weeks, if not months, altogether. Now, the Israeli prime minister, for his part, he's faced enormous blowback since President Biden has given this speech from the right wing of his governing coalition. The far-right ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, both of them threatening to bolt from this government and perhaps even force its collapse if the Israeli prime minister goes through with this deal, which could lead to the end of the war. And so the Israeli prime minister, over the last few days, has been

trying to reframe this agreement, to muddy the waters of its terms and to insist that it will not lead to an end of the war and that Israel has not agreed to do so. Now, it is true that the negotiations would need happen during the first phase of the agreement for both Israel and Hamas to agree to a permanent ceasefire. But there's no question that if he agrees to this, it's going to be very difficult for the Israeli prime minister to continue to claim that he's going to accomplish the goal of both returning the hostages and also defeating Hamas, destroying Hamas, I should say, altogether in Gaza. Now, ultimately, the Israeli prime minister may face a choice here. Does he want to save his government or does he want to get the hostages out and agree to the ceasefire proposal? But that very much depends on what Hamas says.

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We heard that Hamas had responded, quote, positively to President Biden's speech on Friday, but we've yet to actually get an official response. And keep in mind that Hamas has wanted Israel to commit to an end to the war at the beginning of these negotiations in order to even get into that first phase of the agreement. And so that still clearly remains a sticking point. We will have to see whether or not they are willing to compromise on that or not. Brianna.

KEILAR: Jeremy, can you tell us the latest on Rafah? Because the U.S., the White House continues to say that Israel's operations are limited. They're saying it does not appear that Israel has launched its major operation there. But politically, the White House kind of needs for Israel to have not launched a major operation there.

Yeah, I mean, look, two things are happening here. On the one hand, you know, President Biden, when he laid out his red line, he talked about Israel going into the population centers of Rafah. Well, Israeli troops are very much operating in central Rafah in one of the areas that was the most densely populated of that city. Although by this point, about a million people have already been forced to flee that city as a result of Israeli military operations. Now, it is also true that the kinds of military operations that we're seeing from Israel in central Rafah are much more limited in scale than the kinds of the kind of massive ground offensive that had been telegraphed for so long by the Israeli government. We're seeing the Israeli military using a lot of special forces in Rafah, sending them in for targeted raids and then pulling back to the perimeters where they've encircled certain parts of that city. So this is not the kind of all out ground offensive that we saw the Israeli military carry out in northern Gaza or in Khan Yunis.

But that doesn't mean that it's not having enormous humanitarian implications. I mentioned the roughly one million people who have been displaced from that city. Combine that with the fact that much less aid is getting into Gaza these days than was, say, a month ago. And you are witnessing enormous humanitarian consequences. In addition to all that, of course, the Israeli military continuing to conduct airstrikes throughout the Gaza Strip in northern, central and southern Gaza, which is obviously resulting in casualties, including civilian deaths. Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Jeremy Diamond, live for us from Jerusalem. Thank you so much, Jeremy, for that report. Jessica.

DEAN: And let's discuss this further with David Sanger. He's White House and national security correspondent for The New York Times and its latest book, New Cold Wars, China, China's rise, Russia's invasion and America's struggle to defend the West just came out this spring. David, great to have you here in studio with us. We just heard Jeremy really laying out the situation as it pertains to this potential ceasefire and hostage deal. And he really laid it out so succinctly, which is Netanyahu really can save his government, it seems like, or get a hostage deal, get these hostages back and get a ceasefire. Do you think that is essentially how this is shaping up right now?

DAVID SANGER, WHITE HOUSE & NATL. SECURITY CORESSPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Not only is it how it's shaping up, I think it's how President Biden designed his statement. Most of the time, Jessica, U.S. government officials, when you ask them about another government's position, say, oh, that's not for us to describe. Let that government describe its own position. In this case, the president went out and gave a speech describing what he said was an Israeli proposal that the Israelis had not themselves announced. Well, there was a reason for that. And the reason was to jam the prime minister in, and he now has to publicly say either, yes, this is what the war cabinet agreed to, or no, I'm not going to do this. And you heard Jeremy put it just right when he said, well, what he's trying to do is muddy the waters about what the agreement really is.

DEAN: And now we are getting some breaking news that CNN is just getting in, that the Israeli military has told the families of four Israeli hostages that are being held, that were being held in Gaza, that they're no longer alive. So this is four additional hostages that have now, been confirmed dead. What does that mean for Netanyahu? He's facing pressure, not just from the hostages families, but a lot of Israelis who say, get these hostages home at whatever cost. Does, how does that figure into this ongoing negotiation?

SANGER: Well, sadly, tragically, that's the clock ticking here. I mean, we don't know whether these hostages who they just announced had died, died in the initial attack or died in captivity, but certainly the conditions are such, that the longer this goes on, the greater chance you're going to lose more of the 100 plus hostages remaining in captivity. And so the question is, how long can Netanyahu hold out on that issue? And at the core of this is the difference between the president saying that Hamas is degraded and therefore cannot conduct a horrible attack like October 7th again, versus Netanyahu saying, no, they've got to be completely defeated. Now, I'm not sure how you would define that. I mean, we went 20 years in the war on terror. Would you say that we completely defeated Al Qaeda or the Taliban?