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8M-Plus People Under Flood Watches In Southern Florida; Trump Speaks After Meeting With Republican Lawmakers. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired June 13, 2024 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:33:32]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We're standing by for two major speeches. At any minute, President Biden is expected to speak alongside Ukrainian President Zelenskyy at the G-7 summit in Italy.

Meantime, former President Donald Trump is about to speak in the nation's capital. It's actually his first visit to Capitol Hill since the January 6th insurrection.

Meantime, we're also following a flash flood emergency in south Florida. Torrential rain leaving part of the state under water. Dozens of drivers rescued, homes swamped, residents forced to evacuate as well.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Yes, these pictures are unbelievable. Check this out right now. Billions of people are on alert and there is more severe weather on the way. So that is very bad news, indeed.

We have CNN's Carlos Suarez in Fort Lauderdale, which has just been drenched in the past 24 hour -- 24 hours, I should say.

Carlos, tell us what you've been seeing.

CARLOS SUAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna and Boris, the rain is about to move over us again. We're looking at another two to three inches of rainfall later this afternoon and into tonight. And so the flooding that you're taking a look at here behind me is only going to get a little bit more worse.

As you all noted, in the past 48 hours, more than a foot of rain fell across parts of Fort Lauderdale. Now, an aerial look of much of the county out here shows just how much of a situation folks have been dealing with for the last couple of hours. This really was pretty widespread.

[13:35:02]

The video that shows some of this is in neighboring Miami-Dade County as well, down in in Miami and in the city of Miami Beach. Folks, there also dealt with several inches of flooding because of all of the rain that we've had. Now over in southwest Florida, the folks there have also been trying to dry out after more than a foot of rain fell across that part of the state on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Here now, is a resident in Hollywood, Florida, here in Broward County, talking about just the mounting frustration that the past couple of days has been.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA, RESIDENT: It's pretty frustrating. I mean, obviously, for the older people that don't have trucks, you know, because then they're stuck over there and then they can't get in. I try to help them out with my truck. And you know, it's just unnerving sometimes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SUAREZ: And so late last night, Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis, he declared a state of emergency in five counties, allowing for state resources to partner up with cities to try to help folks try to get out of all of this flooding here that we're seeing across the south Florida.

Again, Boris and Brianna, we're expecting the rain to move in again this afternoon, another two to three inches, on top of more than a foot of rain that we've seen over the last 48 hours. And we're still expecting more rain on Friday -- Guys?

SANCHEZ: Just a nasty situation.

Carlos Suarez, live for us from Fort Lauderdale, thanks so much.

At any minute, former President Donald Trump is set to speak in D.C. after meeting with Senate Republicans. We can show you a live look of what it looks like right now. You see all these Republican Senators huddled around the podium.

I see John Barrasso. Looks like Rick Scott is there. J.D. Vance is in the background. He could be a vice-presidential pick.

And they are all just awaiting the former president to speak. His first time visiting Capitol Hill since January 6, 2021. We'll of course, bring it to you live as soon as Trump's steps up to the podium.

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[13:41:25]

KEILAR: All right, we are awaiting and so are all of these Republican Senators. They are very ready for former President Donald Trump there at the NRSC on Capitol Hill. He's going to be making some comments.

Which, quite frankly, just judging by how ready they all appear, these comments do seem quite imminent, wouldn't you say, Boris. SANCHEZ: I would say so. They've been waiting there for a few minutes, this sort of gallery of Republican Senators awaiting former President Trump. His first visit to Capitol Hill since January 6th. The first time that he's seen many of these lawmakers in person in the nation's capital.

And he is walking out now to applause. We'll be listening in to former President Trump as he delivers his message.

He spoke earlier in the day with congressional Republicans, House members, and actually seemed to be happy that many of those who voted to impeach him during the second impeachment were no longer around.

He also, during this afternoon's session with Senators, seemed to have a sort of reproachment with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, somebody who criticized him heavily after January 6t h. Now McConnell is supporting him in his bid for the presidency.

Here is Donald Trump.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Great meeting. There's tremendous unity in the Republican Party. We want to see borders. We want to see a strong military.

We want to see money not wasted all over the world. We don't want to see Russian ships right off the coast of Florida, which is what they are right now. That's unthinkable.

We want to see just success for our country. And we don't have success right now. We have inflation that's killing everybody. We have levels of inflation that nobody's seen for, they say 42 years, they say 53 years and they say 75 years.

I would say probably all of them are wrong. Probably we've never seen levels like this before. And we're going to end that. We're going to bring back our jobs. We're going to bring back common sense to government.

We're going to have strong borders. And we're going to have people come into our country, but they're going to come in legally. They're not going to pour in from prisons all over South America and all over the world. And It's not just South America, by the way. It's all over the world.

And we're not going to have them imported from mental institutions, which is where they're coming from, large numbers, and large numbers are terrorists. And we're not going to have this.

So what's happening to our country is of great concern to the group of people standing alongside of me. And I just wanted to say that we have great unity. We have great common sense. A lot of very smart people in this room and a lot of people that love our country.

They love our country beyond just about all else. And the only thing that maybe supersedes it is their family and maybe their faith in certain instances. And that's very nice. But they want this country to be great again, and we're going to make it great again.

And so I just wanted to thank the Republican Senate. And I want to thank also the House. We met, as you know, with the full House, Republican House today and we had a tremendous meeting with them also.

And there's great unity. Very similar and different topics actually, but not that different. And there's one thing in common, we want to make America great again. We want to make our country great again.

We're a nation that's in decline. We're a declining nation. We're a nation that is being laughed at all over the world. We have a leader that's being laughed at all over the world. And we're going to turn it around. We're going to turn it around fast.

[13:45:07]

The polls are looking like they're very strongly for us. And if -- no matter where you look, in fact, a lot of states that people thought we weren't in play are very strongly in play. Some we're actually leading in.

But we have to get elected. We have to take this -- this beautiful place and we have to make it really something very special again. Right now, It's not special.

Right now. It's being scorned and being used it as example of -- when they look at the crime on the streets, when they look at all of the problems that we have, they're using us as a bad example of democracy. And they're getting away with murder and we're not going to let it happen.

So I just want to thank you for coming. And I want to thank everybody here. You're all either elected or you're going to be elected again and reelected. And with every one of you and you know that. I'll be with you always.

And thank you very much for inviting me. And we're going to have great success. I think we're going to have a tremendous election.

It's -- November 5th is very important. But we really start much earlier than that. You have North Carolina, as an example. You have North Carolina September 6th. You have Pennsylvania starts on September 22nd.

These are things different from the old days. We had Election Day and you had paper ballots and you had voter I.D. Unfortunately -- maybe someday we'll get back to that. But you don't have that right now.

But this is an outstanding group of people. I'm with them 1,000 percent. They're with me 1,000 percent. We agree just about on everything. And if there isn't, we worked it out.

And we've had -- I've had a really great relationship with just about everybody here, with everybody here, just about all of the Senators. And if it wasn't fantastic, it gets worked out.

And we have one thing in mind and that's making our country great.

So thank you all very much. We appreciate you being here. Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

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KEILAR: All right, President Trump there making brief remarks at the NRSC. His first visit back to Capitol Hill since the insurrection. Not going to the capital, though. This is obviously the political arm of Senate Republicans, which is just kind of a stone's throw from the capitol holding.

But he's got a lot there that we do need to fact-check. So we're going to go through some of it.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

KEILAR: He talked about crime on the streets. I mean, listen, I think everyone has anecdotal complaints.

SANCHEZ: Sure.

KEILAR: They would like things to -- if you live in Washington, D.C., I think we would like things to be better here.

However, sort of inconvenient statistics for the former president, violent crime dropping by more than 15 percent in the U.S. during the first three months of 2024. This is according to statistics released on Monday by the FBI.

SANCHEZ: Yes, homicide rates getting historically low. And interesting for the former president to say that crime was such an issue.

He also talked about inflation, the likes of which nobody has ever seen, never seen levels like this before. Actually, the inflation rate, the CPI numbers that came out, I believe, yesterday or the day before, they had inflation at roughly three 3.3 percent.

The highest inflation has ever been in the United States was just about 18 percent --

KEILAR: That's right.

SANCHEZ: -- back in 1917. So two quick fact-checks there.

The president also talking, interestingly enough, about his great relationship with everybody here. And then he paused for a moment and said, "just about everybody here."

(LAUGHTER) SANCHEZ: Obviously, his relationship with top Republican Mitch McConnell has been fraught over the years since January 6th.

We have a crew of folks to talk about the president's remarks. We have Alayna Treene with us, Scott Jennings and Daniel Dale as well.

Let's hand it over to Daniel Dale because he is the expert fact- checker. We just sort of dabble in it.

KEILAR: That's right.

SANCHEZ: Daniel's the actual guy whose title includes fact-checker.

So, Daniel, what did you hear?

DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: Yes, I was going to talk about three things, two of which you covered. The crime stats show that crime is down sharply since the beginning of 2023 and, again, in the first quarter of 2024.

Inflation nowhere near a record high. We did have about a 40-year high in June 2022 when it was 9.1 percent. But former President Trump basically never acknowledges that it has since plummeted, as you said, down to 3.3 percent.

That is nowhere near a 40 -- a 40--year high. It's nowhere near a 75- year high. Certainly, nowhere near the all-time high.

And the other one I want to mention was something he says in pretty much all of his so-called press conference remarks like this. He talked about people flooding in across the border from prisons and mental institutions.

I have repeatedly tried to get information from his campaign, anything that would corroborate this claim that that foreign countries are emptying out prisons and mental institutions to send people here as migrants.

They have not been able to corroborate that at all, nor have any of the experts on immigration that I've spoken to. So that claim seems to have been conjured by the former president out of thin air, but he keeps saying it over and over.

[13:50:13]

KEILAR: And, you know, Alayna, I want to chat with you about this.

What do you think about what you heard from him there? But also this sort of welcome that he is getting from not just Senate Republicans, but from House Republicans, and what this means as he is building the support from lawmakers?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Right. So Donald Trump, I mean, this is what he wanted. He wanted to see a rallying around him from these lawmakers. And It's funny because a lot of the things that you fact- checked are the exact same things he says on the campaign trail. We're also told, even though these we're closed-door meetings, we've got some reporting from inside the room of him repeating a lot of these false claims behind closed doors to them as well.

But look, I think this is a huge moment for Donald Trump, very significant. And It's his first time really meeting with a massive group of lawmakers since leaving office.

And also, he's now the presumptive Republican nominee. He was recently convicted. This is his first time meeting with them after that verdict in Manhattan. And so this was important for him.

And when I talked to Donald Trump's advisers, they stressed to me that they really wanted to see unity. Of course, there were some people missing today. We know Senator Susan Collins, Senator Lisa Murkowski, two people who often break with Donald Trump and Republicans at large, were not there.

You mentioned the -- the icy relationship with Mitch McConnell, which continues to be icy despite McConnell having endorsed Donald Trump earlier this year.

But they really want everyone to be supporting the former president, particularly as we head into this stretch into the summer and the fall.

Of course, It's not just Donald Trump who is facing an election. It's many of these members as well, all of the House members and many of these Senate Republicans.

And so that was a big part of this, too. They want everyone to be on the same message. They want them to be showing their support for Donald Trump. And that's what we're told really happened, that they we're giving him the warm welcome that he very much expected and was hoping he would have.

SANCHEZ: And he was predicting success for Republicans across the board.

TREENE: Yes.

SANCHEZ: He told folks in the room that many of them would be re- elected.

Let's talk to Scott Jennings to get some perspective.

Scott, I really want to ask you about Mitch McConnell. You obviously worked for the Senator. But there was something that I realized. After he stopped talking, he said we have to get elected.

He made no mention of a huge issue, reproductive rights and abortion, despite the fact that there was this Supreme Court decision earlier today.

What do you make of the fact that the president didn't actually bring up an issue that's in the headlines right now? SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, he's not

running on it. I mean, that's what Joe Biden is running on. I mean, when you're running a political campaign, you try to frame campaigns and the issues of the day around what you want to be talking about.

And the things he started with today were borders, our military, and the fact that there are Russian warships off the coast of Florida.

And so Trump's entire strategic imperative every day, I think, is to frame this election as strength versus weakness. And the first -- first three things he brought up fit right into that frame.

So I'm not surprised he didn't bring it up. Although he's been quite clear about his position, should be left to the states. He's pro IVF. He believes in the exceptions, which is the old Reagan position.

He's laid out a marker. And I think most Republicans are kind of falling in line behind that.

But that's not what he's running his race on. It's the other stuff that I mentioned and that's why he started with it, I think, today.

KEILAR: When he said they're using us as a bad example of democracy. And he said right now the U.S. is not special. Who do -- do you have a sense of who he's talking about is using the U.S. as a bad example of democracy? You know, maybe besides China or other countries generally --

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KEILAR: -- America doesn't really care too much about their opinions?

JENNINGS: Well, he has repeatedly said that he believes the criminal indictments in trials against him are an attempt to interfere in the election or to interfere in democracy.

So his supporters, obviously, will agree with that. Democrats will disagree with it.

I do find it noteworthy, in the polling, national and in the states, that that when you ask people who's better for democracy, Biden or Trump, It's very evenly split. And even in a survey I saw to Georgia last week, Trump was ahead on that measurement.

So I think, starting out the election cycle, Democrats thought this was going to be something that they we're going to be able to run on and have a wide lead on that particular issue point. But it really hasn't borne itself out.

I think Trump goes back to that well, because I think they think they've successfully muddied the waters on this issue. And I think he believes his criminal issues, his legal issues is what he would point to as the interference in democracy.

KEILAR: Yes. I mean, I do think you make an interesting point there, Scott, because the numbers are very close. I think our recent polling shows that Biden is actually ahead in that maybe by a few to several points.

[13:55:05]

But considering what Trump's attempts were --

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KEILAR: -- with the election, it's very surprising that it is that close for us.

SANCHEZ: Yes. And, Scott, quickly, your reflections on his seeming reunification. I don't know how to describe it --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: I think that's an interesting -- I think that's a good way to describe it.

SANCHEZ: Yes, because Alayna said it was still kind of an icy relationship.

Where do you see the relationship between Trump and Mitch McConnell?

JENNINGS: Here's what I will tell you about Mitch McConnell. He has a singular focus, winning back the Senate majority. And he knows that Donald Trump, at the head of the ticket, will have a huge impact on that.

Look at where the races exist. Ohio, Trump's going to win Ohio. Montana, Trump's going to win Montana. Nevada, Trump's doing very well here.

And so all these are top-tier Senate races. And it is imperative and vital, I think, for the Republican Party to have the Senate Committee under Senator Daines and the presidential campaign rowing the boat in the same direction.

So that reunification is about winning the Senate, which is what McConnell wants to get accomplished this year.

KEILAR: Scott, Alayna, Daniel, thank you so much to all you. We do appreciate you sticking with us after those comments. Thank you.

And we're now waiting for President Biden. He's speaking at the G-7 here summit in Italy. Shortly, he'll be talking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. So we're monitoring that. Should be starting here momentarily and we're going to bring that to you live next hour.

So stay with us.

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