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Biden Meets With G7 Leaders as Trump Heads to Capitol Hill; Trump Returns to Capitol Hill to Meet With House and Senate Republicans; 8 Million-Plus Under Flood Watches in Southern Florida. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 13, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: His wisdom with journalists following his footsteps, like me.

[07:00:003]

He was one of the first people who believed in and really encouraged me to find a career in television after we first met on the campaign trail back when I was a cub reporter at the Associated Press. I will never forget that he did that for me. I will never forget him and I do want to send our prayers to his family, his wife, Amy, his daughter, Meredith, his son, Nick. May his memory be a blessing.

Thanks to our panel for being here today. Thanks to all of you for joining us. I'm Kasie Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are standing by for the announcement of an unprecedented security agreement with Ukraine. It is supposed to last ten years. Will it last ten months if Donald Trump is elected?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: For the first time since the January 6th insurrection, and for the first time since he became a convicted criminal, Donald Trump returns to Capitol Hill meeting with Republicans looking to rally their support behind closed doors with V.P. hopefuls, allies and former foes.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And South Florida drowning in a deluge. In some spots, almost a foot-and-a-half of rain since just Tuesday and even more is on the way.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Baldwin and John Berman. This is CNN News Central.

BERMAN: Well, look who's here.

SIDNER: Oh, hi guys. I see that we coordinated without even talking.

BOLDUAN: Apologize.

BERMAN: We were there for you.

SIDNER: You're right. You're in. You're in. It is absolutely wonderful to be back. It was not wonderful waking up at 3:30, but seeing your faces, seeing the crew's faces, happy to be back. I feel lighter for a reason.

BOLDUAN: (INAUDIBLE) she's been telling since she's been away.

SIDNER: But I'm happy, honestly, I'm really, really happy to be back on the team.

BERMAN: We are thrilled you are back. You inspired us even in your absence. And to welcome you, we made sure none of your logins worked when you when you got back.

SIDNER: Nothing worked, but I promise I will try not to mess up.

BOLDUAN: Best critic, funniest jokester. Wow. Seriously, still in hospital bed, still texting us.

SIDNER: True. I was watching the show from the hospital bed. Like what am I supposed to do? Like, you know, drink something out of a soup? Like I'm not going to drink out of a straw. I'm going to watch you guys and critique.

BERMAN: But you're feeling good, doing good.

SIDNER: Doing good.

BERMAN: You're back.

SIDNER: I'm back, maybe. We'll see.

BOLDUAN: Let's see how the day goes.

SIDNER: Let's see how the day goes.

BOLDUAN: Okay.

SIDNER: All right. This morning, President Biden taking a stand for democracy with world leaders at the G7 Summit in Italy as his predecessor, Donald Trump, returns to Washington, D.C., for his first meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill since the January 6th insurrection. Trump will meet with House and Senate Republicans today, including Minority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell, who is saying this now about the presumptive Republican nominee, quote, I support him. Trump and McConnell had not even spoken to each other since December 2020.

Biden, meanwhile, is hoping to send a message to Russia with a $50 billion lifeline for Ukraine. Sources say G7 leaders could announce the loan as soon as today, potentially.

CNN's M.J. Lee is in Italy for us. M.J. the work that is starting right now will all lead up to this key meeting between President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy tonight, correct?

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Sara. All of the G7 leaders have now arrived at this very picturesque resort here in Southern Italy. Each of them was greeted by Prime Minister Meloni of Italy, and now they disappear for a while into a number of these working sessions where so much of the focus is going to be about the group fortifying its support for Ukraine as the war goes on.

And this evening, as you said, the president is going to be signing this new bilateral security agreement with Ukraine. It's an agreement that came into being after months of negotiations between the two countries, and the U.S. is committing to, for ten years or so, the training of Ukrainian Armed Forces. The two countries working together on things like military equipment production and weapons production and also intelligence sharing, military assistance.

But as symbolically significant as that pact is, particularly given the moment that we are in with the war now fully in its third year and Russia making gains in the battlefield recently, it's really important to note the fine print here. And that is that this pact is basically not necessarily binding for future U.S. presidents, so a future U.S. president that isn't President Biden.

[07:05:00]

So, say, for example, Donald Trump doesn't necessarily have to uphold this pact that the president is going to be signing tonight.

And I think that is sort of the reality that is underpinning this entire G7 summit, this reality that all of the leaders are aware of, a reality that next year, things could look, politically speaking, very, very different, and just a reminder too that this is President Biden's final G7 summit of his first term in office. Three years ago when he was attending his first G7 summit, he sort of pledged on the global stage that he was going to bring back America's leadership on the global stage. And I think as the summit really gets underway, we are going to see that question really being crystallized. The question of has he made good on that promise that he made three years ago, Sara.

SIDNER: Yes, there will be some consternation as to what might happen if he is not president in 2025. So, we will see. Thank you so much for your reporting there from Southern Italy. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And joining us right now to talk about this is retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. He served as a top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council. It's good to see you, Colonel.

This move, this loan, the move to loan money to Ukraine, backed by the profits from frozen Russian assets, what do you think this could mean for Ukraine's efforts?

LT. COL. ALEXANDER VINDMAN (RET.), FORMER DIRECTOR FOR EUROPEAN AFFAIRS, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Well, it's a long time coming. This has been part of the discussion since even the days before the war started. There was an idea of levying some sort of sanctions on Russia to warn Russia off. And then for the subsequent 2.5 years, there's been a push to take a look at these frozen assets, some $300 billion across different countries in the west and shifting those over to Ukraine, either in the reconstruction phase or currently in Russia's in -- in Ukraine's war phase to be able to build out its industries.

So, this is a welcome move. This is a welcome move in conjunction with a press of a flurry of bilateral engagements between Ukrainian top leadership and the U.S. bolstering support, demonstrating that the U.S. isn't going anywhere on the heels of passing the $60 billion Ukraine aid supplemental. It's another good sign. The provision of military aid has already had an effect on the battlefield, stalling Russia's summer offensive.

All this is building towards another series of meetings in the coming weeks, the 75th anniversary of NATO, which will be critical. There'll be a series of pledges not going far enough in terms of bringing Ukraine into NATO, but at least moving the needle, moving things in the right direction. I'm sure that's going to be a topic of the discussion at this G7 because Ukraine is not going to get everything that it wants, neither are the Eastern European nations that want to bring Ukraine into kind of start to wind down this war. But this is a -- it's a move in the right direction.

BOLDUAN: Also just thinking is the whole idea behind this that drives this. There's also the taking frozen Russian assets to the profits from the holding Russian assets, the taking money from these frozen Russian assets and using it to prop up and to support Ukraine. Just wondering the impact of just that in theory and concept that that would have on Vladimir Putin.

VINDMAN: Well, I think it is pretty critical. If you think about what's happened over the past couple of days, we levied another round of sanctions that forced the shutdown of the Russian stock exchange. You start seeing some images in the streets of people running -- you know, not quite a bank run yet, but people are starting to get worried about getting their resources out of their banks and banks freezing access to hard currency. Same thing with exchanges, you can't exchange Russian rubles for a foreign currency.

And then you hear the rhetoric out of you know the former president, Dmitry Medvedev, who's talking about, you know, all sorts of crazy escalation ideas. It doesn't amount to much. I wouldn't take his, his rants particularly seriously, but it certainly indicates that those sanctions are biting. All this again is a direction. We're seeing a lifting of some of the constraints that we put on the use of Western weapons by the Ukrainians against Russian targets just across the border, where those targets are actually directly involved in the war effort. This is good movements.

I would also say that, you know, this agreement that's being signed, most of these things are aspirational at this point. The success or failure determines -- is going to be determined by implementation follow through. Part of that is what happens with regards to the upcoming election. The Hill is welcoming -- the Republicans on the hill are welcoming an insurrectionist, a felon, to the Hill, you know, the person that precipitated the January 6th insurrection.

[07:10:08]

If he ends up being elected the next president, all of this could easily be undone. Putin could be encouraged to continue the war.

If Biden has a second term, you know, the intent is to continue to support Ukraine with weapons, with financial supports and pressure Putin to end the war. That's the only way this, this ends. It doesn't end with Trump being re-elected. It ends with a Biden second administration and Putin looking for an off ramp, a way out.

BOLDUAN: On the idea of pulling back some of the constraints that have been put on Ukraine, just this morning, asked if Ukraine should be able to use F-16s to fire into Russian territory or Russian airspace, once their training on the fighter jet is complete, the NATO secretary general actually said, and this is how he put it, said Ukraine, quote, has the right to strike military targets on Russian territory, seeming to leave the door open to that. To me, that was a pretty big statement.

VINDMAN: But if you think about the way arm sales go around the world, you know, when the Russians sold arms to the North Koreans or provided arms to the Vietnamese, they didn't really constrain how those weapons are used. That's not the way international arm sales work. Once they're sold to a sovereign independent state, it's up to that sovereign independent state how do they employ these weapons.

The only reason that there have been constraints on Ukraine is because we in the U.S. have treated Russia as a special case. We've basically restricted the Ukrainians use of these weapons. And we're finally coming around to kind of a more normal approach to security assistance and security cooperation.

So, I think that's well within Ukraine's right to take weapons that have been given to it to employ for national defense. It meets all the obligations of U.N. charters and international agreements. It's the right thing to do. We're just kind of going back finally to some sort of normalcy. You know, it's a strange thing to say, but that's the way things are played out in foreign affairs and in wars. So, it's a welcome move, I think.

BOLDUAN: It's also not just about weapons that Ukraine has been struggling with and needs. It's recruiting soldiers and recruiting more help in terms of just people to fight has been an ongoing problem. I mean, from everything you have seen, how serious is this recruitment problem for Ukraine? And what is the fix?

VINDMAN: Yes, it is a serious problem. I hope that part of these bilateral engagements is a more frank discussion. At times, you find yourself in these diplomatic dialogues managing crises. And in crises, you, you take the kind of the most important issue, which is Ukraine's survival and put that at the forefront.

With Ukraine having a little bit more breathing room, you could have some hard discussions on things like Ukraine making investments into its own industrial base, into its own defense, including this recruitment issue. I think the fact is the Ukrainians probably need somewhere in the ballpark of 150 -- correction, 300,000 troops to replace the losses that they've had to fill up depleted units, to rotate units off the frontline, but also to build offensive capacity over the course of the next year to be able to take back and liberate territory.

But right now, it's hard to see how they get there. They've not quite done all the things that they need to do. There's some lack of will by the president of Ukraine, President Zelenskyy, to take these unpopular steps to advance conscription and drafts. But that's an essential -- it's an essential function Zelenskyy to undertake in order to liberate Ukrainian territory.

So, I think it's how they get there. They could probably reduce the draft age from 25 down to 18, like we do and we have a draft age of 18. I think they probably need to make sure that they reduce the evasions. They're taking some steps there. These are not easy things to do, but the Ukrainians can do it if they show the will and resolve to do so.

BOLDUAN: Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, thank you so much. John?

BERMAN: Right. As you heard there this morning, Donald Trump returns to Capitol Hill for the first time since telling crowds to fight like hell on January 6th. The Biden campaign this morning has a message for him.

A state of emergency declared and flood warnings for millions. The rain will just not let up.

And then overnight chaos at the congressional baseball game. Eight people arrested after rushing the field. What was the impetus here?

Also, Sarah Sidner is back.

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[07:15:00]

BERMAN: This morning, for the first time as a convicted felon and the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump will be on Capitol Hill. He will meet with House and Senate Republicans, including many of his vice presidential contenders, and even a few former outspoken opponents, all of whom now are expected to back him in November. This will be the first time Trump has been on Capitol Hill since the January 6th insurrection.

The Biden campaign is taking the visit as an opportunity to launch this new ad highlighting the role the former president played that day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On January 6th, Donald Trump lit a fire in this country, stoking the flames of division and hate.

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Now, he's pouring gasoline.

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They were unbelievable patriots.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pledging to pardon the extremists who tried to overthrow our government. There is nothing more sacred than our democracy, but Donald Trump ready to burn it all down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Let's get right to Lauren Fox. Lauren, what are we expecting from these meetings today?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So many Republicans who are in Congress right now have had ongoing relationships with Donald Trump. But this meeting today, just off campus, is going to be a critical moment for Donald Trump to get the party on the same page, to unify the message and to try to make the case to some of those colleagues in the room as to what his strategy is, to not just win the presidency for himself but also take back the House and the Senate for Republicans in Congress.

We do expect that Mitch McConnell, who has had a very icy relationship with Donald Trump over the last several years, the two of them famously had not spoken since the certification of the election on January 6th. He will be in the room today with Donald Trump as he addresses many Republican senators. The first meeting on Capitol Hill will be with House members just off campus, then later this afternoon, he will meet with Republican senators just off campus.

But I just want to give you a sense of what McConnell is expecting from this meeting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): You know, I said three years ago, right after the Capitol was attacked, that I would support him our nominee, regardless of who it was, including him. I've said earlier this year I support him. He's earned the nomination by the voters all across the country. And, of course, I'll be at the meeting tomorrow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And there is an array of expectations that lawmakers have. Some of them want Donald Trump to lay out the winning strategy for the campaign. Others want him to get into some details about what he wants to do if he were to win another term. Here's a little bit of that.

Representative Matt Gaetz said, I think it's going to be a pep rally environment for the former and future president. Senator Tom Thillis joked, to think we are going to talk a whole lot about a governing agenda on Thursday seems a little naive to me. That's like measuring the curtains. And then Chuck Grassley said to me yesterday, what do I expect? You have no idea what Trump is going to talk about. It's just totally unpredictable.

So, despite the fact that all these lawmakers have expectations for this meeting today, I think the underlying reality is Donald Trump is going to talk about exactly what is on his mind in the moment. John? BERMAN: House Speaker Mike Johnson was even doing a Donald Trump impression apparently yesterday. It will be interesting to see if he does that with Trump himself there. Obviously, a lot going on here. Lauren Fox, thanks so much for being with us. Sara Sidner?

SIDNER: Thank you, John Berman. Still ahead, the Southern Baptist Convention's surprising vote on women pastors and their new advice to members, avoid IVF.

We will discuss that and record rainfall putting more than 8 million people under flood watches in Southern Florida.

All of that's ahead.

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[07:25:00]

SIDNER: Five counties in Southern Florida are under a state of emergency as destructive flooding rolls through the state, which has seen three days of heavy rain and storms. Officials say some areas saw more than 18 inches of rain, an entire month's worth in just two days.

Cars, as you're seeing, they're submerged up to their windshields, in some places, forcing drivers to abandon their vehicles to get to safety. Now, more than 8 million people are currently under flood watches, as the risk of flash flooding worsens throughout Friday.

CNN's Carlos Suarez is on the ground in Fort Lauderdale. Carlos, wow, a lot of water behind you there. I think that is a road or used to be. What are you seeing?

CARLOS SUAREZ, CNN REPORTER: Well, Sara, good morning. So, the good news at this hour is that much of the flooding across South Florida has receded. However, the bad news is more rain is in the forecast.

Now, we are in a neighborhood just north of Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport, where the flooding is still a concern. The folks out here are still having a difficult time getting out of their homes. All of this really a result of what we have seen the past 48 hours in the city of Fort Lauderdale alone, more than a foot of rain fell across this part of Broward County. It is a scene that we saw play out as well down in Miami-Dade County, in the city of Miami Beach, as well as Aventura and Hollywood Beach.

Now, over on the southwest coast of Florida, the folks there, the folks that live in Fort Myers and Naples, they are still drying out after rainfall totals there on Tuesday and Wednesday. We're anywhere between six to eight inches.

Now, as a result of all of this flooding, Governor Ron DeSantis last night declared a state of emergency in five counties, including Miami- Dade and Broward County. All of this allows the Florida Division of Emergency Management to go ahead and start getting some resources to some of the some of the hardest hit areas across Southern Florida right now. Now, we're in this neighborhood where, in April of 2023, a storm system dumped more than two feet of rain. And after that incident, officials here installed new drainage systems, they put out water pumps. But as you can see, all of these systems are still having a really difficult time trying to get all of this water out.

[07:30:00]

Again, Sara, the good news right now is the water levels have receded. But with more rain expected throughout the day, we expect to see more flooding. Sara?

SIDNER: It is so.