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Tonight: Biden Gives First Address Before GOP-Controlled House; White House: Biden To Remind Country "What Has Been Accomplished." 7,200 Plus Dead As Rescue Teams Scour Debris For Survivor. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired February 07, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: He's a great example, Victor and Bianna, of betting on yourself as many of these players have.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. Who needs rugby when you've got football that'll take you to the Super Bowl? Coy Wire, thank you.

Well, it is the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Bianna Golodryga.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell. Good to be with you.

In just a few hours, we'll see President Biden in primetime. This will be his first State of the Union address before a divided Congress. Now, the speech will offer the President his largest television audience of the year. And unlike last year, when Nancy Pelosi sat behind the President, the House Speaker seat will be occupied by Republican Kevin McCarthy. His party holds a slim majority in the House, and officials say the President will extend his hand.

GOLODRYGA: Biden will do that by touting his unity agenda toward ending cancer, supporting veterans, tackling the mental health crisis and combating the opioid epidemic. However, the President is also expected to lay out his successes, setting up what insider say is a test run for his reelection bid.

We've got CNN's Manu Raju on Capitol Hill and CNN's Phil Mattingly at the White House.

Phil, to you first, give us a preview of what we can expect tonight.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think the President will try to connect. When you talk to his advisors connect what they view as critical accomplishments of the last two years to what they know they still need to accomplish in the year or two ahead. And it's critical because they recognize that there is some - to some degree - a disconnect between what they've accomplished and how the American public views the President's accomplishments.

You can look at poll after poll after poll over the course of the last several weeks, where there's not a sense of resonance in those accomplishments, although from a legislative perspective, especially, there's a very clear record that they can point to. That will be one component.

The President expected to say the State of the Union is strong. However, there is still more to be done. Progress, but a job not finished yet and finishing the job is something you hear repeatedly from aides the President will stress as of the utmost importance when he lays out his agenda for what's next.

Now, you guys make a critical point here. The President, despite the fact that this is definitely a new era of partisan warfare with the House Republican majority, is not expected to make any political attacks. He will make clear where there are differences of opinion particularly on issues like the debt limit going forward.

However, that olive branch that he plans to lay out there is not just one that is coming with no basis. He has two years of bipartisan accomplishments on things like infrastructure on the chips and science act that he will point to and a slate of agenda items that he believes Republicans support, at least to some degree and he will seek to highlight those.

But guys, you make a really critical point here, for a president that in the weeks ahead is expected to launch a reelection campaign, this is a primetime moment in front of 10s of millions of Americans where they want to lay out what the White House has done, what this administration has accomplished and what they believe they can do going forward. Those are not differentiating issues. They connect with one another. And part of the President's job tonight is to tell the story that connects both at home on the domestic side, on the economic side and abroad on the foreign policy side how they believe the accomplishments of the first two years connect to the years ahead and connect to a likely reelection campaign.

BLACKWELL: Let's take it down to Capitol Hill. And Manu, how Republicans are preparing for the President's speech?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they're preparing. They know full well that there will be 10s of millions of people watching this speech and they too will be under the microscope. This will be the first time Kevin McCarthy will be sitting behind the President, a divided Congress, a Republican-led House.

And McCarthy, behind the scenes, counseling his members that this will be something that people could hear you speak, if you were overheard talking or overheard saying something, the microphones could pick up those conversations. So be careful about those conversations, he told his members.

He said also be careful about what you're watching on your phone. Photographers will be zooming in on members of Congress who were sitting on the House floor, all of which is very clear. Kevin McCarthy understands the optics here and he wants to show Republicans as the reasonable opposition party, not a caricature, like he believes the White House will try to portray them as.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): We will listen. There are times

hopefully we can agree, there's times we will probably going to disagree. But we're members of Congress. We have a code of ethics of how we should portray ourselves, but also do our jobs and that's exactly what we'll do. But we're not going to be childish games tearing up a speech. I mean, that's just a political play.

RAJU: And what if he comes after you guys, attacks you as MAGA or extreme MAGA Republicans? Will that make things more difficult to get a deal on the debt limit and the like?

MCCARTHY: I think it looks very poorly on the President. He's the leader of the free world and that's what he wants to spend his time on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So that is one of the big things that Republicans will be listening for tonight. How exactly does the White House message, how they will deal with the thorny issue of raising the debt limit, how will President Biden address that issue with Republicans.

[15:05:04]

Because that is really the one issue in which Congress has to get done over the next few months. The rest of things that Biden will lay out tonight almost certainly will not get done if it's things such as raising the - imposing a new assault weapons ban or imposing taxes on billionaires, things that Democrats like, but Republicans will reject full stop.

So the question will be on that major issue that they have to deal with, what will he say and will he say anything to essentially poke Republicans in the eye. Kevin McCarthy there warning President Biden not to go that route, guys.

BLACKWELL: Manu Raju, thank you. Manu, Phil, stay with us for this conversation.

Let's bring in Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, CNN Political Commentator and CNN Presidential Historian, Tim Naftali.

Tim, let me start with you. President Biden's four immediate predecessors: Trump, Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton all entered office with their party holding both chambers in Congress. And then at some point, at least one of them flipped. Ron Brownstein writes for cnn.com, we saw a breadth, the spectrum of responses, what are you expecting from the President tonight?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: I'm expecting President Biden to follow President Obama's approach. I expect him to congratulate the Republicans for winning the House. I expect him to welcome the new Speaker of the House.

By the way, George W. Bush welcomed Nancy Pelosi and made a point of the fact that she was the first woman speaker. I expect him also to talk about the ways that the parties can work together. But there's one big difference that gives President Biden an advantage over President Obama.

BLACKWELL: What's that?

NAFTALI: He can point to the fact that unity has already brought results, that the 117th Congress saw Republicans and Democrats voting for a number of measures. In our system, even if the Democrats control the Senate, they still need the Republicans to avoid a filibuster. So he can say, you know, people, when we work together, this is what we can - we achieve and then he can go down and list all the achievements of the 117th Congress.

So he's not only going to talk about unity, he can actually show that unity works and is effective.

GOLODRYGA: And Doctor, Tim talks about unity. There are few things that divided the country more sadly, than the pandemic over the past few years. And we know now that the emergency programs offered by the administration surrounding the pandemic will end on May 11. There have been a lot of pressure from Republicans to end these programs sooner is now the time to do that.

ABDUL EL-SAYED, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think unfortunately, this speaks to the reality that Democratic administration doesn't really have much of a choice. They're being forced into this. The question really at hand right now is how do you make permanent some of the provisions that it required a state of emergency to offer, whether it's keeping people on Medicaid roles who need it, making sure that SNAP benefits are truly whole and can support a family, making sure that people can afford their vaccines as we continue to tell them to protect themselves from future waves of this virus and making sure that people aren't put out by having to pay for testing, so that really is the focus here.

And you're right, unfortunately, people do want the President to move on, even though the pandemic continues to take nearly 400 lives a day here. And yet, I think there is an opportunity to pivot off of everything that government was able to do for people during the pandemic to make those things permanent.

BLACKWELL: Phil, I'd like you to pull the thread of your reporting a bit more here on the tough balance the President has to make tonight. Of course, he wants to talk about what his administration has accomplished thus far. This is the springboard to the 2024 run. But his advisors know that overplaying some of the economic advantages through legislation that the American people have not felt yet can be counterproductive.

MATTINGLY: Yes. Look, I don't think there's any question about that and I think every time you talk to White House advisors, they very much want to highlight what they've accomplished over those first two years, but they always pause and caveat with the idea that the job is not done, finish the job is I think something you're going to hear the President say several times throughout the course of these remarks. And so understanding that on the economy while there has been a rapid

economic recovery in the wake of the pandemic and certainly just in the last seven or eight days, you've seen blockbuster jobs, numbers' growth has been durable, even inflation has started to decelerate over the course of the last six months that people are still feeling inflation. And inflation is still at decade's highs at this point in time and that needs to be reflected.

It's a difficult balancing act, but one that I think is really central to how the President and his advisors have prepared for this moment understanding that they can't look like they're out of touch with where the American public is. However, they believe that there's not necessarily a full grasp of what they have accomplished and just how dramatic Things have changed over the course of the last two and a half years and how they thread together that story is critical.

[15:10:05]

I think the President is viewing this when he talks to his advisors, it's just that. The necessity of telling a story, not just giving a laundry list of accomplishments, and a laundry list of policy priorities going forward. But how you knit that together in a narrative that really lands for the American public as they watch the speech or as they see clips on social media over the coming days.

GOLODRYGA: And Tim, foreign policy is expected to come up as well, not just Ukraine, but also U.S.-China relations. And this was prior to the Chinese surveillance balloon and the debacle that has fallen from that with Democrats and Republicans now having somewhat different approaches into and responses as to how the President should have approached it.

You tweeted about this, though, in terms of what the President should say, specifically related to the balloon and you said, beware of letting this balloon become your Sputnik moment, what do you mean by that?

NAFTALI: I tweeted that before our magnificent military shut it down. I'm not in the comms (ph) business. I might have told the American people about a day and a half earlier that we were going to take care of this. The Pentagon had a not great briefing, but the President did the right thing and our military did it the right way and no one was hurt, and no - there was no property damaged except for the spy balloon.

So I think the talking point that the Republicans might have had to divide our country disappeared.

GOLODRYGA: I mean, they still say the fact that it was up in the air for three days was a national security threat.

NAFTALI: Bianna, the reporting lately has shown that they've backed away from making it a top of the line story, because they've seen the American people are satisfied with how the President dealt with it. So I would say that foreign policy is a strong suit for this President. He can not only talk about our commitment to Ukraine and freedom throughout the world, but also talk about how we use our military as we need to, to protect our homeland and to learn about other countries' intelligence capabilities.

BLACKWELL: Manu, as we've had for several weeks now, since Kevin McCarthy got the gavel, had this conversation about whether Republicans are moving beyond former President Trump, if they're looking ahead, the selection of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders seems to potentially balance that, a former Trump administration official, but now a new governor, first female governor of Arkansas, what should we expect from her?

RAJU: Yes, that's a interesting pick. Because given the fact that she was, of course, the White House press secretary, she won, someone who's very close with the former president and someone who was selected by the Republican leadership and had to get signed off not just from Kevin McCarthy, but also from Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who is no ally of President - former President Trump and is - well, it's nothing to do with former President Trump going forward.

But Sanders, her speech will almost certainly try to portray the opposite of what Joe Biden is saying there, she's pointing to problems at the border, pointing to high inflation, contending that the administration does not have a plan to deal with just that. Still uncertain whether or not she will talk about what Donald Trump did in office or whether she will steer clear from Donald Trump and instead have a more forward looking message.

All questions as Republicans and Democrats will look at that message and as Republicans plan to respond and are almost certainly expected to push back against the President Biden's message tonight, guys.

GOLODRYGA: All right. We will be watching. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Tim Naftali, Manu Raju and Phil Mattingly, thank you all.

And be sure to join Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper for live coverage of President Joe Biden' State of the Union address that will begin tonight at 8 pm right here on CNN.

BLACKWELL: Rescue crews in Syria and Turkey are pulling people out of the rubble there as the death toll from the devastating earthquake is now above 7,000, more than that just ahead.

GOLODRYGA: And many Idaho - Iowa residents are - Ohio residents are still unable to go home, following yesterday's controlled release of toxic chemicals at the site of a train derailment. We're live on the ground after the break.

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[15:18:10]

BLACKWELL: In Turkey and Syria right now there's a desperate search for any survivors of Monday's devastating earthquakes. The death toll keeps rising. It's now above 7,000. Search dogs are assisting teams digging through the debris of thousands of collapsed buildings. At times, rescue is called out for silence to listen for voices of anyone alive under the rubble.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through interpreter): Speak out loud.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible) ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Speak out loud.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible) ...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: Family those missing anxiously wait and watch as the search teams do their work. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh got a firsthand look at what this effort involves.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Very few of the apartment blocks in this area are standing, a building over there seems to have basically split and fallen in two. And here, excavators and bare hands in turn being used to try and get to anybody who might still be alive because the hours are running short, the light is running out. It is bitterly cold and you can see everywhere fires people have already lit to try and keep themselves warm in these conditions. They will just get worse as will the chances of them being able to pull their loved ones out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: In Syria, a little girl comforted her siblings as rescuers work to pull them from the rubble, just take a look at their faces. Thankfully they were both pulled out alive.

A U.S. search and rescue team will arrive in the quake zone tomorrow.

Elias Abu Ata, spokesperson for the International Rescue Committee joins us now along with Dr. Ben Abo of the Florida Task Force 1 Disaster Response Team. Welcome both of you.

So Elias, let me start with you, because this is really a race against the clock right now.

[15:20:02]

Past quakes have shown us that the first three days really are the most critical in the search and rescue effort in terms of finding survivors there. Where do things stand with your team right now?

ELIAS ABU ATA, SPOKESPERSON, INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE: Thank you, Bianna and Victor for having me. And just allow me first to thank you for bringing awareness to this crisis and fundraising through CNN impact.

With the situation horrific as you can see in this imagery and photos, the situation couldn't be worse when we're talking about freezing temperatures, in addition to challenges on the ground for the staff or rescuers. As you said, it's a race against the clock and we're still within the first 48 hours of one of the largest earthquakes that has hit the region this century.

For the time being, numbers have exceeded thousands, more than 5,000 deaths and 23,000 injuries in both countries, Syria and Turkey. On the ground, we've witnessed how roads have been damaged through - because of this earthquake and even the aftershocks. Our staff on the ground have been unable to go back to their Houses, if they've had their Houses still standing. Some of them are working in cars. Some of them have lost Internet connection. We've been experiencing outages with mobile phones, with electricity and even with gas supplies.

So even for those families who have luckily didn't lose their homes, they can't go back home or if they do go back home, they will have to endure freezing temperatures, since there's no gas. This is - there's so many challenges and within Syria, in specific, it is a crisis within a crisis when we talk about over 4 million people in Northwest Syria, who have endured 12 years of conflict but also devastated economy, a cholera outbreak, COVID-19 and so many crises with inflation, so it's been really bad for these populations.

BLACKWELL: Dr. Abo, you were crucial in the team at Surfside, the condo collapse there in 2021, that was one tower at one location. This is more than 5,700 building collapsed in Turkey alone. How do you approach something on this scale?

DR. BEN ABO, FLORIDA TASK FORCE 1 DISASTER RESPONSE TEAM: Yes. It's really - it's - carefully is the best word to describe it, you have to be very educated hypotheses and how to approach it. We have the same similar risks. A big difference, though, is you have the cold, which is horrible for traumatic injuries versus the heat. But we're there to try to bring some calm to the chaos, which is ultimately going to be there.

So have to peel the band aid and start somewhere and try to keep it as organized as possible. It's extremely hard when you have all the - you see all the devastation around and you want to run and help all the different ways, but as a team that trains, if you have a number of teams already there, and others coming in that are training for this, we train in a certain way to get as much done as we can and as much good as we can in an organized approach. If you let the organization go away, the chaos ensues and gets even worse.

And so that answer really is just as organized as possible, start somewhere and go as much as we can.

GOLODRYGA: To be clear, these people are well-experienced and know what they're doing and have worked through past earthquakes. But Elias, brought up war torn Syria and that poses another conflict in terms of how to get the goods, the food, the supplies anything to those that are desperately needing it right now in the search and rescue process. The only crossing between Syria and Turkey that's been approved by the United Nations for a humanitarian route has been destroyed, so what happens now? ABU ATA: We've heard from unverified reports, actually, that this

border crossing was non-operational yesterday, but we also heard reports saying that it is working today, it is open. The thing is with the border crossing for Syria, I mean, the last few years we've had the U.N. Security Council voting on ensuring these border crossing points remain open for the U.N. assistance to cross.

Unfortunately, for the time being we only have this one border crossing called Bab al-Hawa, which is between Northern Syria and Southern Turkey. And sadly, we have been witnessing how the impact of this border crossing if it's - eventually gets de-authorized, then that means millions - over 2 million people will be at risk of being cut off of assistance.

And now with this challenge, I mean, there's an emergency within another emergency with this earthquake and with previous - with the current winter storm and the snow storm that has happened has been - we've witnessed snow falling on - in northern Syria. So it's just - it's going to be more devastating to experience that, not to mention the trauma of you waking up at 4 am to see your loved ones missing or your building collapsing.

[15:25:00]

You just - if you allow me to quote one of our staff in the field in Syria, he did say, the worst experience he had was that it's the feeling of the unknown, because they were in their sleep where they didn't know what to do, where to go. It was just so chaotic for them and it is - it was pretty traumatic.

So I think for the IRC now, our main concern is to ensure the safety and security of our staff and also ensure they have - they're able to do their work and rescue lives and provide assistance and relief as we scale up our response in both countries.

BLACKWELL: Elias Abu Ata and Dr. Ben Abo, thank you for the work that you are doing. The thousands of people who are waiting for some answer on their loved ones, I'm sure they are very grateful.

GOLODRYGA: Yes.

BLACKWELL: For more information about how you can help, you at home can help the earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria, go to cnn.com/impact for a list of vetted organizations.

GOLODRYGA: Coming up, a United Airlines jet had to turn around mid flight after a battery caught fire in the cabin. We'll bring you those details up next.

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