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Interview With Fmr. Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA); Republican Red Wave in Doubt?; President Biden Announces New Security Assistance for Ukraine; President Biden Set to Announce Student Loan Relief Plan. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 24, 2022 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone. I'm Alisyn Camerota. Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell.

Minutes from now, President Biden will give more details on his plans to forgive student loan debt for some borrowers. Earlier, the president announced that he will cancel $10,000 in debt for those who make less than $125,000 per year and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

CAMEROTA: He also announced a final extension of the federal loan repayment freeze that has been in effect since March 2020.

CNN White House correspondent M.J. Lee joins us now.

So, M.J., we know the Biden administration has been debating this plan for months. Why did they decide to do it?

M.J. LEE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is an announcement that has been in the works for so many months now.

And the White House officially confirming earlier today some key details that CNN reported earlier this week. So let me just walk you through some of those top headlines that you just mentioned.

So, as you said, $10,000 in debt forgiveness for people who make less than $125,000 a year. And then, if you are a Pell Grant recipient, that amount goes up to $20,000. There's also going to be a pause that currently exists for loan payments for people. That was set to expire, remember, on August 31.

So that is being extended one final time until the end of this year. And then, for people who are going to be paying back loans, that payment is going to be capped at 5 percent of their monthly income.

Now, as with a lot of policy announcements that come out of this White House, this doesn't have everything that some Democrats and some advocates had pushed for. But I do think it is really important to talk about the context of just how many people are going to be affected by this announcement.

So we are talking about, according to this administration, some 43 million borrowers who are going to be eligible for some amount of debt relief. And more than 60 percent of borrowers are Pell Grant recipients. So, again, those are the people who will be eligible for up to $20,000 in debt cancellation. According to the Department of Education, that's around 27 million borrowers.

And around 20 million borrowers are going to have their full balance of their debt entirely canceled out. Now, there have been months of waiting, as I mentioned, as the White House has deliberated over this, as the president has really deliberated over this.

Yesterday, we reported that the president spoke directly with Senators Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Raphael Warnock. And now this announcement is going to come directly from the president in just a few minutes. And you can rest assured that this is going to be one of the things that the administration and Democrats really take to the campaign trail as they try to talk about their accomplishments ahead of the midterm elections -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, M.J., we will look for that announcement coming up very soon.

Now to politics.

Democrats are newly optimistic today after last night's election results. CNN projects the Democrat Pat Ryan is the winner of a House seat in a New York swing district. Ryan built his campaign as a referendum on Roe vs. Wade. Democrats are hoping that message continues to help them and hurt Republicans in November.

CNN's Harry Enten is here now.

So, Harry, what do you see in the results in that New York race?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: Yes, so let's start off in New York 19. This is a special House district that Joe Biden won by 1.5 points.

And you can see that Pat Ryan actually has a lead of slightly over two at this particular point, so a Democratic overperformance. Now, in New York 23, another special House election, which a lot of people weren't following, you see the Republican here wins by about 6.5. But keep in mind that Donald Trump won this district by 11.2 points, another Democratic overperformance.

And, in fact, Alisyn, there have been four special elections since Roe v. Wade was overturned. In every single one of them, the Democratic candidate outperformed the 2020 presidential baseline.

CAMEROTA: OK, tell us what's happening in Florida. And do Democrats have any momentum there?

ENTEN: So let's go to Florida. Obviously, the governor's race, I think a lot of folks are interested in, because Ron DeSantis is the current governor. He obviously wants to run for president. So we think. His opponent is going to be Charlie Crist. I think a lot of people think that Charlie Crist was the better general election candidate than Nikki Fried.

Democrats decide, you know what, we're going to go with a safer bet here, Charlie Crist, who was one time the governor in that state. Of course, he was a Republican then as governor. We will see if he's ultimately competitive against DeSantis in the fall, but he's probably the better general election candidate.

Also, take a look here, the Florida Senate Democratic primary, Val Demings the easy winner. She's a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives. She, of course, will be going up against Marco Rubio come the fall. This is one of those tricky races where I think it's not on a lot of people's radars.

But if Democrats have a good of a night as they did last tonight in New York, it could be the type of race that they could in fact make competitive. And Democrats at this point have just the barest of majorities in the Senate, so they're likely to want to widen out that playing field. A state like Florida could allow them to do that.

[14:05:10]

CAMEROTA: OK, so tell us what happened in New York that pitted two Democratic incumbents against each other. And what did Jerry Nadler do to win?

ENTEN: Yes, so Jerry Nadler -- these were both 30-year incumbents.

Jerry Nadler, Carolyn Maloney, basically in the House my entire life. Jerry Nadler was once my representative,then became my representative again once I moved to Manhattan, so I have a lot of interest in this race.

Jerry Nadler easily won this race by over 30 percentage points. There were a lot of late barbs thrown Nadler's way from Maloney. She basically said he was half-dead, challenged his mental faculties, the whole thing, but Jerry Nadler easily came out on top here. So this was a good race for progressives, even if, in the rest of the races and the rest of the primaries, perhaps more moderate candidates, but Jerry Nadler able to come out on top.

His message carried the day, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Harry Enten, great to see you.

ENTEN: Nice to see you.

CAMEROTA: Thank you very much -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right, joining us now is a senior adviser to the Democratic National Committee, former senior adviser to President Biden and former Democratic Congressman from Louisiana Cedric Richmond.

Good to have you on the program.

Let's start with New York 19th and how much Democrats across the country should extrapolate from this Pat Ryan win.

FMR. REP. CEDRIC RICHMOND (D-LA): Well, I think it reinforces that Democrats have the right message and that they're on the right track.

And that is to continue to highlight the dangers presented by the extreme MAGA Republican Party and that, look, the president and the party has delivered. We still have work to do, but there's a plan to get it done.

And I just think that Roe and the opinion that was written after it was overturned highlights how dangerous this party truly is. And I think it was a wakeup call.

BLACKWELL: And after we have seen the results out of Tennessee earlier this year, of course, now what happened last night in New York, do you think that the referendum on Roe narrative, putting that at the center of campaigns, should spread throughout the rest of this country as you look toward November?

RICHMOND: Well, I think if you look at Kansas and the extreme and record turnout that came out after the decision, I think that that clearly highlights how important this is to Americans, when you talk about women's reproductive rights and how extreme of an opinion that it was and the decision itself and how extreme Republicans have gone, with no exceptions and all of those things.

So, I think, right now, people are really taking a second look at what Republicans and the MAGA extremists are advocating for. And they're looking at what the Democrats are doing and what the Democrats are talking about. They're talking about protecting Social Security and Medicare, and they're talking about delivering and bringing costs down, whether it's climate change or reducing prescription drug costs.

So those -- what I don't want you to leave out, Victor, is that, over the last couple of weeks, the president's had some enormous wins. And I think that the public has taken notice of that.

BLACKWELL: Let's talk now about this decision to forgive $10,000 for some borrowers, 420,000 for Pell Grant recipients of student loan debt.

I want you to listen to the policy director of a nonpartisan group that tracks federal spending on that decision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARC GOLDWEIN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, COMMITTEE FOR A RESPONSIBLE FEDERAL BUDGET: So the Inflation Reduction Act saves maybe $300 billion in the first 10 years. If we do -- cancel $10,000 a debt and just extend the pause a few months, we're going to be at about that much in terms of new costs. So all the deficit reduction is going to be wiped out. At the same

time, we're probably going to do more to increase inflation from debt cancellation than any inflation reduction from the Inflation Reduction Act.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: And as my grandmother used to say, cow gave a good pail of milk and then kicked it over. Is that what happened here? You reduced -- the administration reduced the inflation by $300 billion and then now that whole savings is gone?

RICHMOND: Absolutely not, Victor.

And I think it was your program or your network this morning that had several economists on and their opinions that debunked that theory that we just heard.

First of all, for the last couple of years, nobody's been repaying federal student debt. And what this is going to do is help those families and those students; 90 percent of them make $75,000 or less. This is going to help them.

And I just think that this was an answer that they wanted and they went out looking for how to get there, but it's, I believe, inaccurate. Other economists say the same thing.

And, once again, this is helping; 90 percent of the people make less than $75,000. So many of them are Pell Grant-eligible, which means, in order to be Pell Grant-eligible, you have to have exceptional need in borrowing money.

And so we are helping working families by doing this. And I think it was the appropriate thing to do. I think the president spent a lot of time ensuring that he could double the amount of Pell Grant recipients. And I think it was well worth the wait with the result that we got.

[14:10:05]

BLACKWELL: You know, the president for this decision is being hit from both sides here, criticized even by some of his supporters.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson called this B.S. for black people. He said this: "President Biden's decision student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left black people, especially black women, behind. This is not how you treat black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90 percent of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020."

This significantly does not address the racial wealth gap. Your response to what you hear there?

RICHMOND: Well, one, Derrick is a good friend. Two, Derrick is wrong. And if you look at his op-ed that was written, it was before the president's announcement where he's going to double the amount of loan forgiveness for those people who received Pell Grants.

And a lot of those disproportionately are black and brown students. So this is absolutely going to hit home in those communities. And I think that this was the right decision to make. And I think that, as people look at it and the new plan, and what the president actually did today, I think that they will see that this absolutely helps community of color and those on the lower income scale.

And it's what we want to do. The president always said that he was going to lift from the bottom up in the middle out. And that's what this does. And on the campaign trail, he said he would do $10,000. That's exactly what he did, but exactly -- he doubled it for Pell Grant recipients.

And I think that that's another example of promises made, promises kept, and the president keeping his head down and focusing on working families and how to lift from the bottom up.

BLACKWELL: All right, Cedric Richmond, always good to have you. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, let's bring in Ron Brownstein. He's our CNN senior political analyst and senior editor for "The Atlantic."

Ron, let's talk about everything that happened last night.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

CAMEROTA: OK, so let's look at this District 19 in New York. It's this solid swing district. The Republican was favored to win, but, in fact, the Democrat, Pat Ryan, won, now roughly 3,000 votes ahead.

Is that a bellwether? That's how Democrats see it today, because they think that this was about Roe vs. Wade. Is it a bellwether? Or is there something particularly appealing about Pat Ryan, who was a West Point grad? He served two combat tours in Iraq. He then went into the private sector, had a successful run. So was he just a great candidate?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, I would say that New York 19 does not erase all of the challenges Democrats face in the midterm history, low approval rating for the president, high inflation.

But it does suggest, as Harry was alluding to, that some of the dynamics that we saw in 2018 and 2020 are persisting in a way that could allow Democrats to be much more competitive than it looked six or eight months ago.

And what I mean by that is that Pat Ryan only won, according to the numbers I have seen, two counties in the district. He only won two counties in the district. They were two of the three most populous counties. They were two of the three best educated counties. And the third county that kind of fit in there, which was the Republicans' home base, Pat Ryan fought him to a draw.

And what that says is that even though Democrats are facing problems among some of the voting groups that are the most exposed to inflation, including non-college whites, maybe Latino men, to some extent, young voters, they are maintaining the enormous advantages that they had in 2018 and 2020 among white-collar voters and people in more dense metropolitan areas.

I mean, there isn't like a super suburb in here, but to the extent there are more population centers, Ryan really ran up the score in them. And that suggests that the Trump era Republican Party, not only on abortion, Alisyn, but also on guns and democracy and the threat to democracy that many see Trump presenting, is still facing enormous headwinds in those big, well-educated, more affluent population centers.

BLACKWELL: Ron, you pointed out that, yes, this is a win for Democrats. They still have to face history going into November.

But there's one candidate especially who's looking forward to having President Biden come down and campaign for him, despite the low approval numbers. That is former Republican Governor and now Democratic nominee for governor Charlie Crist. Here's what he said about having Biden campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CHARLIE CRIST (D-FL): Listen, look what Joe Biden has done for our country -- President Biden -- forgive me -- has done for our country. He's been exceptional, seriously.

This man is a great man. Joe -- thank God Joe Biden's the president of the United States today. Thank God for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: I mean, that's as much of a full-throated endorsement as you're going to get.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Despite what we're seeing from other Democrats, what do you make of what you're hearing from Crist?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, Florida is -- first off, Florida is now tough for Democrats.

[14:15:00]

We went through about a decade of kind of photo finish elections there narrowly tilting one way or the other over and again for governor and Senate, even president. It's clearly moved a few points toward the Republicans in the Trump era. He's turned out an enormous amount of blue-collar voters, including retirees from other states.

And, in South Florida, the Central and South American population has migrated more toward the GOP. So Crist has a real uphill fight. And Crist represents a theory. The choice between Crist and Nikki Fried in Florida was in many ways, to me, Victor, reminiscent of the choice between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in 2020.

It's not necessarily that one was inherently more electable. They had a very different theory about how you win elections. Biden pressed the theory is, the Republican Party is radicalizing on cultural issues. That's leaving voters in the center available, and the key is to reassure them.

Fried, like Sanders, was arguing that the only way to respond to a radicalizing Republican Party is to mobilize your own base with a really sharp message. Like the voters in 2020, Democratic voters, Democratic voters in Florida went for the reassurance candidate. We will see how competitive that proves in the end.

But there's no question that, for Crist to endorse -- Crist to have Biden calm is kind of reinforcing the message that I think Crist is trying to deliver.

BLACKWELL: All right, Ron Brownstein, thanks.

CAMEROTA: Meanwhile, today is Independence Day in Ukraine, and officials warn that Russia may mark the day with deadly attacks.

President Zelenskyy also says the Kremlin has put the world on the brink of a radiation catastrophe.

BLACKWELL: And President Biden is expected to speak any minute on his plan to bring more student loan relief.

We will bring you his comments live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:21:23]

BLACKWELL: Six months ago today, Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

Also today, Ukraine is marking its independence from the Soviet Union 31 years ago. But there are no celebrations. Instead, Ukraine's president and first lady paid solemn tribute to the Ukrainians who made the ultimate sacrifice in this war.

CAMEROTA: CNN's David McKenzie looks back at these six months.

And a warning: Some of the images you're about to see are disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Russian troops were concentrated on taking Kyiv, occupying and bombing neighboring communities to get close to the capital.

Millions of Ukrainians were forced to flee, walking through rubble and fallen bridges to safety. The carnage left behind has been devastating. And, in Bucha, evidence of war crimes quickly emerged, as mass graves were dug to bury the dead. Russian soldiers retreated from Kyiv in defeat and refocused their efforts in the south and east.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: And David McKenzie joins us now from Kyiv.

So, President Zelenskyy spoke to the United Nations about this significant day. What did he say?

MCKENZIE: Well, Alisyn, it was quite a coup for Zelenskyy to be there remotely speaking to the U.N. Security Council, despite the objections from the Russian ambassador and Russian delegation.

And he gave an impassioned plea about the state of this conflict and that free nations everywhere should support Ukraine in trying to win this war. It's been six months of devastating loss for Ukraine, for its soldiers and for its civilians.

In that speech, he made a particular mention about the fears of a nuclear catastrophe in Zaporizhzhia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Russia has put the world on the brink of a radiation catastrophe. It is a fact that the Russian military has turned the territory of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, into a war zone.

Now Europe and neighboring regions face the threat of the radiation pollution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCKENZIE: Victor, Alisyn, there has been some progress, says the IAEA, the Atomic Energy Agency, to get inspectors in, but no clear evidence that Russia is going to be moving its troops out of that area, which is a starting point for Ukraine. Otherwise, they say that's just not going to happen.

And you had these amazing scenes here in Kyiv today. We were there all day on the street with this parade of tanks, of Russian tanks that had been burned out, captured, or saw Russian soldiers flee from them. This was their celebration to show that they are still in this fight so many weeks and months after it all began -- Victor, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, David McKenzie, thank you for showing us all of that.

And joining us now is retired Brigadier General Peter Zwack.

General, great to see you, as always.

So, according to the Pentagon, Russia has lost in the past six months somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000 of their troops. Number one, do the Russian people know that? And do you think that that's affecting their support of Putin or of the war?

BRIG. GEN. PETER ZWACK (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Alisyn, Victor, good to see you.

It's hard to determine precisely what is going on inside of Russia with the populace. But they -- but the word has to be getting out. Contact has ceased with the fallen. The badly wounded would ultimately come back and can't be indefinitely sequestered. So the word is out.

[14:25:15]

The numbers are hard to -- hard to assess in that 70,000 to 80,000. That is killed in action and wounded, probably. And -- but, no, the word is out in Russia. The bodyguard of lies, if you will, that the regime employs in its disinformation has turned this into a patriotic war against fascism. And that is how the their youth have been sacrificed.

This is going to take time to play out. But, yes, the word is out. But how it's spun is the key factor.

Last point, in Afghanistan, as closed as the Soviet Union was, it was the Russian mothers that came out to put ultimate pressure on the Soviet regime not long before it failed.

BLACKWELL: The crisis of the moment is the standoff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

And there are these talks about getting the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, mission into that facility. Do you have any degree of confidence that Putin will allow that U.N. group onto that property inside that facility?

ZWACK: No.

I will offer this. He's playing a balancing game. And it's important for him to keep a level of -- however he would perceive it, of credibility within the U.N. that censured him a number of months ago. But he's got a lot of -- a number of important nonaligned nations that sort of support him by not supporting the censure and sanctions.

So I think he has to play a careful game. I think they're going to find a way to open it. They have to. The whole world is watching. And it is a risk. And if it blows on their watch, God forbid, then they have even more explaining.

But it shouldn't have taken this long. And I think they're trying to find a way.

CAMEROTA: So, General, the U.S. is announcing that they're sending an additional $3 billion worth of aid to Ukraine. Will that help tip the scales in Ukraine's favor militarily?

ZWACK: I think that let's kind of look what's being talked about.

These are -- a lot of the equipment that people are talking about -- and I'm only hearing what you're hearing -- is what I would call facilitating-type equipment, both in the defense, but also in the offense, minesweeping vehicles, which are very important, MRAPs, which are those up-armored heavy vehicles that can carry troops in heavily mined or a lot of artillery, so protective stuff that is useful for defense, but also for offense, getting through heavy positions.

And lots of ammunition that we're hearing about, and then other types of things that counter stuff, like counter drones, counter electronic warfare, all of that, so not heavy military end items, but the key stuff that they need to kind of make everything work and pull together. And I think that's what this is all about. And it does matter.

CAMEROTA: OK, retired Brigadier General Peter Zwack, thank you.

BLACKWELL: This is the first day of classes in Ohio's largest school district, but the classrooms are empty and the students are learning from home. Details on the historic teacher strike and the impact on parents.

CAMEROTA: And why one harrowing story of a pregnant teenage girl has a Republican in South Carolina rethinking his stance on abortion.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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