Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Biden: "Prepared To Meet With Putin" To Discuss End To War; Senate In Session Weighing Proposed Measure To Avert Rail Strike; U.S. Considers Dramatic Training Expansion For Ukrainian Forces; Paul Whelan's Brother Cast Doubt On American Detainee's Current Whereabouts. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 01, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:00:42]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: It's the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Alisyn Camerota.

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

President Biden just held a joint news conference with President Emmanuel Macron of France, America's oldest ally. The two leaders had a bilateral meeting that was nearly three hours long. They talked about climate policy, trade, support for the people of Iran.

CAMEROTA: Both presidents also stressed a commitment towards peace in Russia's war on Ukraine. CNN's Jeremy Diamond is at the White House for us.

Jeremy, what came out of this joint news conference?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, one of the reasons that France was selected for this first state visit was this partnership between Biden and Macron, which has been at the heart of the West united response to Russia's war in Ukraine. And clearly that was top of the agenda when the two men sat down together in the Oval Office for this bilateral meeting.

And coming out of that meeting and into this press conference, it was clear that while this has been a close partnership, there have been some areas of divergence, particularly on this question of how quickly Ukraine should be going to the negotiating table with Russia.

But in this press conference, we also saw more alignment, it seems, between the French president and the American president than we had seen before. President Biden saying that on his end, he has no immediate plans to contact the Russian presidents, but also making clear that he is open to that idea under the right conditions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm prepared to speak with Mr. Putin, if in fact there is an interest in him deciding he's looking for a way to end the war. He hasn't done that yet.

If that's the case, in consultation with my French and my NATO friends, I'll be happy to sit down with Putin to see what he has in mind. He hasn't done that yet.

In the meantime, I think it's absolutely critical, what Emmanuel said, we must support the Ukrainian people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DIAMOND: And the French president, for his part, he has been maintaining this back channel communication with the Russian president and he has been urging for more negotiations. But today, he also made clear, he said that we will never urge the Ukrainians to make a compromise, which isn't acceptable to them.

So you're seeing more alignment between the U.S. and the French position on that issue. There was also an attempt to smooth over this controversy over these electric vehicle subsidies that are included in the Inflation Reduction Act, the French President has made it quite clear that he was unhappy with those because they only benefit vehicles that are made in North America. He believed that would have a negative impact on companies in Europe.

And President Biden today saying that while he makes no apology for the legislation, he did acknowledge that there were certain "glitches" in the law and he said there's tweaks that we can make to help Europe also benefit from this and to also help propel Europe into this future green economy. So some effort on both sides here, it seems, to smooth the minor bits of tension in this otherwise strong relationship and to try and move forward together.

We heard the French president repeatedly talking about "resynchronizing elements" of the relationship and that certainly seems to be what they are doing and they will certainly continue that tonight with that lavish state dinner expected here at the White House.

BLACKWELL: Jeremy Diamond at the White House, thank you.

Right now, the Senate is in the process of voting on legislation to avert a rail strike that analysts predict would devastate the economy. The House passed its legislation yesterday and it included a measure to add paid sick leave for workers.

CAMEROTA: So the Senate is weighing the measure right now and one of the amendments would include paid sick leave, but it's unclear if that amendment will pass.

Let's bring in Tony Cardwell. He's the president of one of the four rail worker unions that voted against the labor deal, leading to the possibility of a strike. His union represents 20,000 track maintenance workers.

Tony, great to have you here. Your fate right now is in the hands of the Senate. They are voting right now. I mean, we can pull up a live shot at any second.

So here's what passed the House, okay, and we're waiting to see if this passes the Senate right now. Basically, the House gave you guys an immediate 14 percent raise, a 24 percent pay raise, increase by the year 2024, a thousand dollar annual bonuses over five years, no increases to health care co-pays or deductibles and then there was an amendment to add seven days of paid sick leave, of course, that's been the sticking point.

[15:05:01]

If the Senate votes on this right now, passes this without the amendment for paid sick leave, would you be satisfied?

TONY CARDWELL, PRESIDENT, BMWED RAILROAD WORKERS UNION: No, absolutely not. And thanks for having me on. Alisyn. Our members would be extremely dissatisfied. We've been fighting for sick leave for 55 years. We have an opportunity to get it now. We only need 10 Republicans to stand with us on this issue.

I, right now, challenge some Republicans to step up, stand with the blue collar workers of America, stand for the right thing and vote with the Democrats on this issue. We also have some concern on a couple of the Democrats. We hope that all the Democrats stay with us as well.

Look, our members need paid sick leave. There's no doubt about it. This has been all over the news, all over the media. It's been explained thoroughly. Our members are forced to go to work sick because they do not have paid sick leave. And the restrictive policies of the railroad force our members to be at work, if they're not at work and they call in sick, they can get disciplined or potentially terminated.

Here's one of the Republican senators this morning, who was on our morning show and explained why, this is Bill Cassidy, explained why he doesn't necessarily think that sick leave is vital. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): There's tradeoffs here, we got a 24 percent pay increase but didn't get their sick leave. So pretty hefty on one side, but not anything on the other. That's the balance that typically has handled negotiations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: I want to be clear, I have no idea really how Senator Cassidy feels at this hour, but what he was saying there was, hey, you're getting a 24 percent pay increase. That's kind of great, but you didn't get your sick leave.

CARDWELL: Yes. The 24 percent wage increases over five years. It goes back three years and forward two. Our members have been out of contract for three years. They work through the pandemic without any bonuses from the railroad. They've worked hard and we're considered essential workers. There's no reason in the world that they shouldn't get a 24 percent wage increase.

We - our proposal was 31, the 24 barely keeps up with inflation. My members' average about $31 an hour and they're some of the highest skilled labor in America. For high skilled labor, that's a low wage and so this wage package does help them catch up to where they should be, but this doesn't deal with the quality of life issues, that's what's important for these members.

When you are sick, you should be able to stay home. You should not be forced to go to work. And by the way, my members work in large groups and was oftentimes up to a hundred people. And so when someone's forced to come into work and get on a bus with 40 other people and he's got the flu or he's got COVID, it's a safety issue as well.

Obviously, people just need to stand with us on this. The Congress needs to - excuse me, the Senate needs to stand with us on this issue.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CARDWELL: It's the right thing to do and they need to - we need to loosen up the grip of the corporate bosses on the Senate and the Congress. This is a fight that they should stand with us on.

CAMEROTA: One of the things that we just heard from President Biden in this press conference was he's not giving up even if this passes the Senate without paid sick leave, he's not giving up on it. I think we have President Biden, let me see if we have this sound. Basically, he's saying that he will get that done later. He wants national paid sick leave. Do we have that? Well, if not - okay, here it is. Here's the President.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: What was negotiated was so much better than anything they ever had that it's worth - and they all signed on to it, by the way. There are only four unions that - out of the 13 or 14 - that didn't agree - within this agreement. We're going to avoid the rail strike, keep the rails running, keep things moving, and I'm going to go back and we're going to get paid leave not just for rail workers but for all workers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: What do you say to that, Tony, that he's going to go back and get it at a different time?

CARDWELL: Yes, about 80 percent of Americans get paid sick leave right now in this union and other unions have no problem leading a fight to get sick leave for all Americans and this has brought light to this issue.

It's very, very important that employees are able to stay home sick. And the pandemic expose that and there's no reason why everyone shouldn't. So we're proud that he would fight for that issue and hopefully he does continue the fight. There's an opportunity right now in the Senate and all that requires is some people with some guts to stand in and vote with blue collar hard working people. Their own constituents, their own hard working people that live in their cities and towns, I represent members that live across the entire United States and the senators that are voting against this bill are voting against their own constituents' well being. It would be unfortunate if they choose to do that.

I implore them to do the right thing. And by the way, I hope it's a roll call vote. I haven't been able to watch because we will take names and make sure that we vote accordingly. They need to stand with labor on this issue.

CAMEROTA: Well, we're watching minute by minute as well. Tony Cardwell, thank you very much for your time.

[15:10:01]

We should know what's going to happen very soon.

CARDWELL: Thanks for having me.

BLACKWELL: All right. Tomorrow is the final day of early voting in Georgia Senate runoff. More than 1.1 million people have already voted. Most of those were in person and there's been a strong showing of voters under the age of 50.

CAMEROTA: Both candidates have recruited high profile voices as they make their final pitch. Former President Barack Obama will campaign with Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock today, while South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham will stump with Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher joins us now. So Diane, what can we expect at these campaign events?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Incumbent senator, Raphael Warnock pulling up the not so secret weapon for Democrats here in former President Barack Obama. It is the former president's second trip to Georgia to stump for Warnock. He was here just before the general election as well but the timing is likely no coincidence, because it is the eve of the final day of early voting.

We can anticipate the former president encouraging people to either go out to vote tomorrow or make your plan for voting on Election Day now.

Now look, Herschel Walker will be campaigning around the same time tonight with Sen. Lindsey Graham arguably not the same kind of crowd getter as President Obama, but Graham has been a loyal surrogate for Herschel Walker on the campaign trail.

Now, former Secretary of State for Donald Trump Mike Pompeo was supposed to be appearing alongside Herschel Walker today but the campaign tells us that Pompeo had a family emergency and will no longer be appearing at that event. Look, both campaigns trying to get people to get out and vote early now. More than 1.1 million Georgians have cast their ballots already, more than a million of those, of course, early in-person. And we've talked about those eye popping single day records of people actually voting. More than 303,000 people on Monday, but I do want to caution that that's likely because of this compressed schedule, that people only have five mandatory days to do early voting, so they're all having to sort of crowd in an attempt to do it on the same days and it's leading to long lines.

We anticipate that happening again tomorrow. They're also being bombarded on the airwaves. The spending on this four week runoff is astronomical. When you look at these numbers more than $77 million total spent. But look, Democrats outspending Republicans by more than twice on the airwaves, we're talking 52.9 million to 24.2 million.

And look, Victor, Alisyn, just to crystallize how much more money Democrats are putting into this race. This, the candidate, Sen. Raphael Warnock himself has spent 24.8 million on those ads. That is more than all of the Republican spending combined here.

CAMEROTA: Yes, really important context. Dianne Gallagher, thank you.

So a member of the House Committee investigated the Capitol riot said the group will release all of its findings to the public later this month. Tomorrow they'll discuss potential criminal referrals and what to do about Republican lawmakers who defied their subpoenas.

BLACKWELL: CNN's Sara Murray joins us now. Sara - so the interviews are done, what's next?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: The interviews are done, but, of course, they still need to put out their final report that is something that they have been working on. That's something that is also going to be a topic of discussion in tomorrow's meetings. But as you pointed out, they're also going to be talking about potential criminal referrals. They're going to be going over how they might want to present evidence of potential perjury, potential obstruction of justice, potential witness tampering.

So there still is a laundry list of things that this committee has to get through before the end of the year, before Congress changes hands in January.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CA): Well, they've been pretty clear that they'd like to undermine the work that we've done, but we're going to prevent that. We're going to release all the information we've collected, so it cannot be selectively edited and spun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: So you hear Zoe Lofgren there. A member of the Committee talking about how they are going to put out as much as possible and that was - has been their plan for a while, but also has to do with what we are hearing from Kevin McCarthy, a Republican leader who is trying to protect his right flank. He's trying to win the speakership.

And in doing so, he has said that he wants the January 6 Committee to preserve their transcripts to preserve their evidence. And he has vowed that when Republicans take over they're going to hold hearings about security breaches and what led to the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Again, this is not something top Republicans have been particularly eager to delve into. But now that McCarthy is trying to pick up the votes he needs as speaker he is trying to put these olive branches out there to win over these far-right members of his constituency, and hopefully seal his speakership, and what you're hearing there from Zoe Lofgren are efforts to sort of guard the committee's work against that.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Sara Murray, thank you.

BLACKWELL: The family of an American wrongfully detained in Russia says that they have not heard from him and there's confusion over where he may be right now.

[15:15:00]

I'll speak to Paul Whelan's brother about that next.

CAMEROTA: And the Biden administration is considering wrapping up training of Ukrainian forces as they make gains on the battlefield.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:19:29]

BLACKWELL: The Biden administration is considering dramatically expanding the military training the U.S. provides to Ukrainian forces. Now the proposed expansion would include training larger groups of Ukrainian soldiers and changing the types of training those soldiers receive.

CAMEROTA: CNN's Natasha Bertrand to help break this story.

So Natasha, how significant would this change be?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, Alisyn. This would be a pretty dramatic expansion of American forces training Ukrainian troops in Germany. Now to date since the war began, the U.S. has really only trained a couple of thousands Ukrainian soldiers.

[15:20:03]

But under this plan, the U.S. would actually train as many as 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers every month, so pretty big expansion there. And not only would they upped the number of Ukrainian soldiers that they're training, they would also engage in different kinds of training with the Ukrainians, something called combined arms training.

Now, what does that look like? That looks like basically more sophisticated battlefield tactics, instead of just training them on a specific weapons system, for example, they would be training them on, for example, coordinating infantry maneuvers with artillery support, things like that, things that the United States actually already trains on at that specific Base in Germany.

So this would be kind of an expansion of their training in a significant way, but it also would take a significant number of Ukrainian troops off of the battlefield at a pretty important time. And this is a question that American officials are facing right now, asked, what the consequences might be of taking thousands of Ukrainian troops off to the frontline at this point.

They say, well, they expect of a lull in the fighting to come fairly soon, because of the winter months. So they don't necessarily think that it could have that big of an impact on the immediate success of the Ukrainians on the frontlines, but they do think this could have a really significant long-term impact on the Ukrainians ability to successfully push the Russians out of Ukraine, Alisyn, Victor.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Natasha Bertrand, thank you.

BLACKWELL: There is growing confusion over the whereabouts of American Paul Whelan who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in Russia. Prison staff claimed that Whelan was moved to a prison hospital, but his brother, David Whelan, does not believe that. And David is with us now, David, good to see you, again. Thank you for being with us.

You don't believe your brother was moved to this prison hospital, why?

DAVID WHELAN, BROTHER OF PAUL WHELAN: Well, he spoke to our parents on the day that the prison says he moved to the hospital and on days following that up to Thanksgiving and didn't mention being sick, being moved. That would be a pretty big thing for him to tell us and to not have him say so. It makes us worried that he's not where the prison says he is.

BLACKWELL: Do you know - what do you know, I should say, about his condition, his health? He has had some health challenges over the period that he's been in Russia. What do you know?

WHELAN: Well, coincidentally, the U.S. embassy staff had been to visit him back on the 16th, so about two days before the prison said that they moved him to the hospital. They said he looked fine. They said he looked healthy and calls to our parents. He had also presented himself as being fine. I mean, not great you're in a Russian labor camp, but it could be worse. So we were very surprised to hear, A, that he had been moved to a hospital and also that he's not making phone calls now.

BLACKWELL: So if he is not in the hospital, where do you expect he is and why do you think now after a regular schedule of allowing him to speak with either you or State Department employees that that has now ended?

WHELAN: Well, that's a big question. We don't know. He could be in solitary confinement. But then why wouldn't the prison just tell us that that's where he is and he's being punished for something? It's this confusion about why would they would send him to a hospital if that's what they did and if they didn't, then why won't they be upfront about where he is.

And unfortunately, we can't get information about that. Paul's lawyer has asked for information about it and the U.S. Embassy has asked and we still don't know.

BLACKWELL: And there were two pretty important dates that were skipped in the regular scheduled calls. Tell us about those and why that then further supports your theory that your brother is not in this hospital.

WHELAN: Yes, I think it raises a concern for us. Paul is very regular with his phone calls to our parents. He values them as a way to survive through this ordeal. And for him to miss first Thanksgiving, which is a big holiday for our family, and then my dad's 85th birthday this week is really unheard of. He would have to have been prohibited from making those phone calls for him to skip that it's not something that he would have done on his own.

BLACKWELL: Was your brother in the hospital earlier this year? I think I read back in September, he was at a hospital, is that accurate?

WHELAN: He has occasionally been moved to the hospital and then let us know that he has been moved, so that's why this is a concern. He has not always moved because he's got a medical condition. He has sometimes moved I think just to get him out of the way. The last time he was there, as you say, he came back to IK-17 the labor camp and found that about a hundred prisoners had gone off to the war in Ukraine.

So sometimes they seem to do it just to get him out of the way so that he can't report on what they're up to. And this may be the case again, but it's unusual for him not to be able to also call us and let us know where he is.

BLACKWELL: It's been a few months since we spoke last since then former U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson, he was in Russia speaking with officials at the Kremlin about a possible release of your brother and also Brittney Griner. I want you to listen to what he told Jake Tapper. This is back in October.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: You say you're optimistic. You think that you can get by Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan out by the end of the year or so?

[15:25:02]

BILL RICHARDSON, FORMER GOV. OF NEW MEXICO WORKING TO FREE AMERICANS: I do think so. Now, I hate making predictions. But yes, I know they're very despairing, we work closely with families, with the Whelan family, with the Griner family. I know they're very emotional and this is a very emotional time.

All I can say is that the Biden administration is working hard on that, so am I.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: So he says he works closely with your family. When's the last time you've heard from Ambassador Richardson and what do you know about this hope plan to get your brother home this month?

WHELAN: Someone from the Richardson Center does communicate with my sister pretty regularly and so when they have - had an opportunity to speak to people connected to the Russian government, they've tended to let us know.

I think that there's very little chance that Paul will be home this month. I don't think that the Russian government is acting in good faith in their negotiations with the U.S. government. In our family, we're concerned that Paul's lack of calls is actually a bit of leverage, where they are punishing Paul to try to encourage the U.S. government to see that they can punish him while he's in their custody and I don't think that there's a near term resolution.

BLACKWELL: Well, David, of course, we hope that your brother will come home safely and soon. Until then, we'll continue to have this conversation. Thank you for being on with us.

WHELAN: Thank you, Victor. Appreciate it.

BLACKWELL: Sure.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Happening now for the first time, an all-female referee team is officiating a World Cup men's match. We're live in Qatar with the latest.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)