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Soon Biden To Deliver Remarks On Gun Safety In Pennsylvania; Biden To Speak Primetime On "Battle For The Soul Of The Nation"; Up To 4,500 National Guard Troops Deploy To Jackson, Mississippi; Governor Declares State Of Emergency For Jackson. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 30, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SERENA WILLIAMS, TENNIS PLAYER: Oh, my god.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible) ...

WILLIAMS: Oh, my god. I love you, too. Oh, wow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Look at how happy she looks there. Williams also reflected on her career and what's allowed her to win all of these years, but she refuses to say if this is her last tournament. She previously said she's evolving away from tennis. She was asked about that again yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAMS: Yes, I've been pretty vague about it, right? I'm going to stay vague because you'll never know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Williams has won six U.S. Open titles. She won the first one in 1999 when she was a teenager. Of course she wants to stay vague. I don't think she knows what she wants to do yet. And when you hear the roar of the crowd like that, why walk away from something you're so good at?

BLACKWELL: And two things, like she can play doubles for another five to 10 years, right? She and Venus can play. But also they need to bring that same energy for every match, right? I guess they expected and last night would have been the last one. They have to bring the we love Serena signs again tomorrow night and every match moving forward.

CAMEROTA: That's right. Keep them guessing.

BLACKWELL: Yes, keep them guessing.

CAMEROTA: Like keep that energy. Look at that. How could she walk away from something that brings her this much joy?

BLACKWELL: It's the top of a brand new hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Victor Blackwell.

CAMEROTA: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

At any moment now in Pennsylvania, President Biden will give a speech on gun safety. He's promoting his safer America plan, which includes increased funding for police and public safety, along with a renewed push for an assault weapons ban.

BLACKWELL: This is the first of three trips to Pennsylvania in the coming days. On Thursday, President Biden will deliver a primetime speech in Philadelphia. He'll be back on Labor Day in Pittsburgh to celebrate American workers. CNN's Arlette Saenz is traveling with the president in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. So what can we expect from the President today?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor and Alisyn, President Biden is set to take the stage behind me in just a short while to talk about his efforts to try to tackle violent crime, including gun crime in this country. The President is going to lay out his safer America plan, which includes hiring and training a hundred thousand police officers over the next five years nationwide, as well as calling for billions of dollars of investments in community violence prevention programs and other initiatives.

The President is also expected to tout that bipartisan gun reform legislation that was signed into law earlier this summer, the first of its kind in decades. And the President will renew his call for an assault weapons ban, something that he believes the majority of this country supports.

But this speech also gives the President an opportunity to try to present a contrast with Republicans and what he has come to calling an extreme MAGA agenda. That - those are terms that we have really seen the President lean into over the course of the past week.

And one argument that officials say the President is prepared to make is that Republicans can't say that they support law enforcement while also calling for defunding the FBI or defending rioters who were up on Capitol Hill on January 6. Now, this speech is a little over a month in the making. The President was set to travel here to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to talk on this very topic relating to crime in July, but then they had to cancel that event after he contracted COVID 19.

And the fact that he is coming here to Pennsylvania is incredibly important as well. The President is preparing to make this all out push here in the Commonwealth over the course of the next week. In addition to this event here in Wilkes-Barre, on Thursday, he will be in Philadelphia where he's set to re-prize (ph) that campaign slogan, that theme that we heard so often back in 2020, that this is a battle for the soul of the nation and talk about how democracy is at stake.

On Monday, he is returning to Pittsburgh to participate in some Labor Day events there. That is a place that we have often seen President Biden go to over the years. But this is also a Commonwealth where there are very critical contests for both the Senate and also the governor's race. And so the White House and President Biden really leaning into the

fact that they're coming to Pennsylvania to bring their message as they're heading into a full campaign swing very soon.

CAMEROTA: Arlette Saenz with laser-like focus regardless of the noise going on around her, well done, Arlette. Thank you very much for that reporting.

Let's discuss with former Missouri State Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson and Albany, New York Police Chief Eric Hawkins. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being here.

Chief, I want to start with you. What is something that President Biden could announce today or do that would bring down crime and particularly gun violence in cities like yours?

CHIEF ERIC HAWKINS, ALBANY, NY POLICE DEPT: Well, I think first of all I like to hear the President convey an appreciation to local law enforcement officers around this country for the hard work they're doing.

[15:05:07]

I think that it's where the top elected official to publicly come out and praise the officers what they've done particularly over these last two and a half years or so will be a big morale boost. But then in terms of some specific things, I like to hear that there is some funding to assist local law enforcement with addressing this surge of illegal guns and other illegal weapons in our communities across this country. It's having a devastating impact, it's traumatizing the people in our communities and it'd be nice to hear that there are some funding available to help us deal with that.

Specifically on guns, let's stick with the President's push forth assault weapons ban, Captain. Would that have a dramatic impact on the types of crimes that are happening in Missouri to resurrect what we saw about 20, 30 years ago?

CAPT. RON JOHNSON, MISSOURI STATE HIGHWAY PATROL (RET): I think it'll have an impact, but I think we've got to look at the gun issue as a whole. When we look at the everyday crime that goes on in urban cities like St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago and other cities, they're involving several types of weapons. So I think we have to look at the issue as a whole. I think it is a start and it's definitely something that is an issue for us in America, we've had many incidents that have involved assault weapons.

But we got to look at this gun issue as a whole and really look at how do we change that impact and began to save lives across the country?

CAMEROTA: Chief, I just want you to comment on the incredible whiplash that you and so many police chiefs must be experiencing in terms of politicizing the police. I mean, obviously, after George Floyd's murder, there was a call from a handful of progressive Democrats to defund the police and then the pendulum swings so quickly to now you hear this handful of Republicans who are calling for defund the FBI, one said destroy the FBI because of the search of Donald Trump's home. Just tell us what it's like to have the policing, be so political right now.

HAWKINS: It's been a very difficult time for us in law enforcement over these last couple of years. We understood in law enforcement as a whole that reform, overall reform was something that was (inaudible) there were some things that were happening in law enforcement that we understood could be improved, some things could be changed, some things could be thrown out altogether. But we also understood that there was a lot of good that was in law enforcement, a lot of good things that were happening.

And so when we had - we saw that this (inaudible) did, in fact, move way too far over when this all started to happen. And so we're at this awkward (inaudible) where we're going through reform movements. In the city of Albany, we're a hundred percent buying into this idea that we have to have some sort of reform in policing in our city, but we've got to preserve all of the - all of the good things that have been going on in our city as well.

And we got to understand that if mistakes were made in the movement at the very outset, and we recognize that some of those mistakes were made in terms of the reforms that people were proposing in law enforcement in general, that now is the time to recognize that and acknowledge it, just like law enforcement had to acknowledge that there were some things that needed to be changed.

I think that now we have to overall acknowledge that there are some things with the reform movement that can be adjusted as well and we can still get the reform that we - that was necessary in law enforcement but then at the same time we can allow our officers to have the tools, resources and support that they need to adequately protect our communities.

BLACKWELL: Captain, the White House has said that we're going to hear about initiatives to support community policing, building relationships between the departments and the communities they serve, something that you prioritized when you were working in Missouri, especially around Ferguson. What works, what do you want specifically to hear from the President today, that will change the climate in some of these cities?

JOHNSON: I think we have to put some funding there. I think we've come to use community policing as a buzzword, but I think we have to make sure we're funding those programs. We're making sure that law enforcement is staffed well enough where officers can actually get out and actually do community policing and that isn't riding in their cars, it's actually being on - like the old days - on bikes and on foot patrol. But we've got to have fun in there.

And I would like today, this word defunding I've never liked it, we need to get away from it. I think that - like the Chief has talked about, a lot of police departments across the country are instituting new programs and doing many new things and I think that word really - it's been a negative for our communities and also for the men and women that go out every day and try to make our community safe. [15:10:00]

And so I hope the President hits on that. I will say that I believe our president is a real supporter of the law enforcement, but we've got to come out and say it. We've got to come out and be strong enough in our verbiage that says that and I think it will bode well for our country.

BLACKWELL: All right. Captain Ron Johnson and Chief Eric Hawkins, thank you for your time and thank you for the work you do.

President Biden is heading to Philadelphia to give a primetime speech on Thursday on what he calls the continued battle for the soul of the nation. Joining us now is CNN Political Commentator Errol Louis. He's a Political Anchor for Spectrum News and a columnist for New York Magazine. Errol, good to have you back.

It's not subtle here that you're going to Pennsylvania three times in a week, right?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, that's right.

BLACKWELL: The political element here is clear, but the message he's delivering at this point specifically on community safety, how much of that is about policy potentially or is it all driven toward the midterms?

LOUIS: Much of it is driven by the politics of an interesting policy. I mean, when he said a hundred thousand cops would be hired under his proposal, I went right back to 1994 when Bill Clinton, another Democratic president, seeking to get re-elected, offered to hire a hundred thousand cops nationwide and it worked out for Bill Clinton.

I mean, so the politics of it are unmistakable whether or not crime came down because those hundred thousand which in the end was about 88,000 cops were hired between 1994 in about the year 2,000, it's unclear whether or not there was a straight line correlation. But this is the President taking action. This is the President trying to insulate his party, not just himself from the charge the Democrats are soft on crime, so the politics leads to the policy. There's no way around that in a midterm season, certainly no way around that when you're talking about a president wanting to be reelected.

CAMEROTA: Speaking of going back in time to something that worked, the assault weapons ban. And so at the moment, the latest polling that we have, this is from Quinnipiac, this is back in June, 50 percent of the country supports an assault - a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons, 45 percent oppose it. It worked. I mean, in terms of mass shootings. When there was an assault weapons ban and mass shootings demonstrably dropped, when it ended, they went up.

LOUIS: Well, talk about an issue that's been completely severed from policy, because the numbers are just as you say. But the politics of it make it impossible for it to even get a vote or really even a serious hearing in the United States Senate. That's going to continue to be the case. I'm going to be listening today to hear what the President offers as a way to try and get around it.

Now, clearly something has shifted in the debate, because we got the first real legislation that deals with gun control in about 30 years. There were a lot of massacres along the way and so you could argue that it was much too late and much - even much too little, but this president, I think, sees that there's a way to maybe get a conversation going, at least show that he is trying to take action on it and that's good politics as well as good policy.

BLACKWELL: And also turning what has been used as a cudgel against Democrats and flipping that back on Republicans when the small portion of Democrats talked about defunding police and that was mostly at a local and state level, not as much at the national level. And now you hear Republicans say, defund the FBI, as Alisyn mentioned, destroy the FBI. He takes this opportunity to say, how can you be pro-police or pro-law enforcement and support that.

LOUIS: That's right. And it's - he may be connecting those dots, because this was billed as a speech about the soul of America or - and to the extent that he wants to go down that path, we're going to hear him attacking Trump and Trumpism and talking about the violence of January 6, and the subsequent violence that he says is marring our democracy.

And yes, there is a connection between those who are now attacking the Justice Department, the FBI, the IRS calling for these to be dismantled. He's been calling that out as extremism and I think we'll hear more of that discussion today.

CAMEROTA: Are we seeing a President Biden with the wind in his sails? I mean, given the legislative wins that he's had, that as you know, Errol, the - some Republicans are trying to hit him for his behind closed door comments about MAGA Republicans, but he doesn't seem to be backing off his MAGA Republican rhetoric.

LOUIS: No, that's right. I mean, as you hear your opponents screaming in agony, that tells you maybe it's time to go in the same direction. I don't think Joe Biden is going to give that up. Clearly, they polled test a lot of these things and the reaction that he's getting - look, Republicans have acknowledged, some of them publicly, that things are not going as well as they had hoped. But the red wave that they expected to materialize is really being undermined at every turn, not just because of the President, but because he has a partner like Chuck Schumer in the legislature, he has Nancy Pelosi in the House and they've gotten some things done against all odds with no margin for error.

They've carried every single Democrat, even Joe Manchin after lots and lots of negotiation. So yes, I think they're going to be - they're going to continue to be very upset and very frustrated and at the same time, as he calls them extremists, he's also going to be - wrap himself in the flag and say he wants to put a hundred thousand cops on the street and then leave it back to them. Okay, now, what's your next move.

[15:15:03] CAMEROTA: Errol Louis, thank you very much for helping us to preview

it.

BLACKWELL: Thanks, Errol.

CAMEROTA: The President will, again, address gun safety and policing in America at any moment. So we're going to take you live to Pennsylvania as soon as it happens.

BLACKWELL: And there's a water emergency in Jackson, Mississippi. The Governor says it's so dire people can't even flush their toilets. There's not enough water to fight fires. The crisis is now prompting the National Guard to mobilize.

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[15:19:52]

BLACKWELL: The Justice Department is expected to release its written response to former President Donald Trump's request for a special master to oversee the FBI's review of material seized at Mar-A-Lago.

CAMEROTA: The DOJ was allowed to file up to 40 pages, because they said the 20-page limit was not enough. CNN's Evan Perez is live in Washington. Evan, what will we see today?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think one of the first things you - in that filing last night where they said they wanted to go from 20 pages to 40 pages as they said that they needed all that space in order to address the legal and factual issues. And I think that we can read into the fact that the Justice Department believes that what Trump - the Trump legal team filed in court were filled with inaccuracies, including the fact that they were claiming that the former president and his legal team were being very cooperative with their investigation, with this effort to get these boxes of classified documents out of Mar-A-Lago, so we're expecting to see some of that.

We also know that they're going to describe to this judge in Florida that, look, we've had a filter team, a team of separate FBI agents and lawyers, who've been looking through these documents, making sure they set aside things that could have some privilege issues, and we have a whole system set up for that. There's no need for you to appoint a third party special master, which is what Trump is requesting that this judge do.

The hearing by the way, Victor and Alisyn, is still on Thursday. We're going to see whether she decides there needs to be a third party to oversee all of this.

BLACKWELL: Evan, Tony Ornato plans to leave the Secret Service. He tells CNN that he plans to cooperate with a DHS inspector general probe. What are you learning?

PEREZ: Well, that's right. So he's telling Whitney Wild, my colleague, that he has - just because he's leaving the Secret Service doesn't mean there's not going to be cooperation. He says his lawyers are working with the Homeland Security Inspector General to do - to cooperate in their investigation.

And Victor and Alisyn, you know, obviously, he's at the center of a lot of attention simply because of some of the accounts that were - that came in to the January 6 Committee, Cassidy Hutchinson and her accounts of some of the things that happen on January 6, there is still obviously a separate investigation being done by the Inspector General. And so the question of where are those text messages, the missing text messages are among the things that we know are still being investigated. Victor and Alisyn?

BLACKWELL: All right. Evan Perez in Washington for us. Thank you.

PEREZ: Sure.

CAMEROTA: The governor of Mississippi declaring a state of emergency in Jackson, where a water shortage is so dire that residents cannot brush their teeth or flush their toilets. All schools are closed and moved to virtual learning. And this is not from lack of rain, it's from too much rain. The pumps at Jackson's main water treatment plant were severely damaged after days of flash flooding.

BLACKWELL: The city's mayor says the water system has been long overdue for improvements, but he's not had the state funding to fix it. CNN's Ryan Young is live there at the water distribution site in Jackson. We see the cars there in line behind you. Give us an idea of what you're seeing and how long they expect this will go on?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Let me set the scene for you guys right now. You're talking about 2020 and just think about the idea of sitting outside, it's 91 degrees. It's hot. People have been out here for two hours, look back at this direction, you can see the line going all the way back here, Victor and Alisyn, and then we want to show you this perspective.

As you look all the way down there, that's the line, it's been more than a mile long. We've talked to people who've been sitting in his line for over two hours. They've been frustrated. They're angry and even after they get water, they are still upset. The reason why? They're only getting one case of water.

You talk about the idea of having to wash their children in brown water. One family came to us with video and showed us what was actually coming through their pipes whenever they could get water. You can't flush and they're already talking about critical services, like firefighting services can't be done right now. You think Jackson State has also had to move some of their players to hotels.

This is a dire situation. This is not the first time we've been here for a water problem in Jackson before. And the big talk now is who's going to pay for it all and how long is this going to happen. You're talking about critical infrastructure that everyone expects to turn on their lights and have water that's not happening here. We talked to some very frustrated residents about what's happening in their city.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VICTOR MARTINEZ, JACKSON, MS RESIDENT: They need to get it together, you know what saying? Like for the last few weeks, even like last few months, like, Jackson always has a water problem.

LYNN JONES, JACKSON, MS RESIDENT: It's not okay. We need to do something about it because we do pay taxes and we expect that the system will work. And - but when it's done, we just need to - I'm glad they are bringing in some people and hopefully they'll correct the problem and we're just very fortunate in America that we don't face this every day like a lot of people in the world do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: You think about this has been going on for quite some time, so people have been saying not in 2020, not in 2021, not in 2022, when is this going to stop? When is this problem going to be over? No one has an idea of when the money is actually going to start flowing in this direction.

[15:25:01]

After you wait two hours, you snake all the way around this direction at the Hawkins airfield and then you get one case of water. There are people who've been close to running out of gas here who've been turning their car off sitting in the heat. A lot of elderly people who are also in desperate need of water, they're not sure exactly what's going to happen next.

We've also been told the National Guard has been mobilized. They're going to come in. But people want to see water tankers. They want to see the governor, mobilize more people. In fact, we talked to one lawmaker who says there's no water at the state capitol as well.

So you know this is a dire situation, you think about the frustration and you add the heating this. When we were here the last time, people were collecting rainwater in buckets to flush their toilet and they think that's not how people should live, especially in America. The whole issue now is, yes, there'll be a news conference in probably in the next 30 minutes, where they're going to be talking about what they're going to do next. But at the same time, people know there's a long term solution for this, that's going to take a lot of time and people are literally yelling at us as they drive by, frustrated by sitting in this lie for so long and you can understand that.

CAMEROTA: Man, Ryan, that really illustrates the crisis ...

BLACKWELL: Yes.

CAMEROTA: ... of people having to sit there and wait for one case.

BLACKWELL: One case of water. You have to use that to cook ...

YOUNG: In the heat.

BLACKWELL: ... to - for consumption, to brush your teeth and that's just one case of water, it takes two hours.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Ryan, thank you. Thank you very much for showing us all of that.

BLACKWELL: All right. Ukraine's president says the country's counter- offensive to claw back territory from Russia will be slow in order to grind down the enemy. We'll speak to a Ukrainian father living in that war zone next.

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