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Biden Expected to Speak About Middle East Crisis in U.N. Address; Biden Arrives at U.N. Ahead of Address to Assembly; Biden Addresses United Nations for Final Time as President. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 24, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

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JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. You're live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

At any moment, President Biden will give what could be one of the most consequential speeches of his presidency when he delivers his final address to the United Nations General Assembly.

Right now, Brazil's president is speaking. You can see him right there. President Biden is up next, we are told, as he looks to cement his foreign policy legacy against a backdrop of global crises, including the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East that is widening. This morning, it's threatening to explode into an all-out war in the region.

CNN's Alex Marquardt and Kayla Tausche are at the U.N. this morning. Alex, let me start with you first. How will all of this impact what we see there today and how big of a moment is this for the president?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, no doubt, it is a big moment for him as he looks to this final speech at the U.N. General Assembly, talking about his priorities for from the past four years and those going forward, what has been done, what still needs to be done, and essentially talking about his accomplishments and cementing that foreign policy legacy, as you noted.

But, Jim, this was already going to be a U.N. General Assembly where so much of the focus was on the war in Gaza. Now, it is even more focused on the Middle East with fears over this escalating conflict in Lebanon, concerns that the entire region is going to -- the war is going to expand across the region.

And that really does highlight the fact that the U.S. has been playing a big role in trying to quiet both those conflicts in Lebanon and in Gaza, and has failed. The talks about the ceasefire are on ice in Gaza. The diplomatic efforts to get Hezbollah to pull back from the border, to get those tens of thousands of residents on both sides of the border back into their homes, that has failed. So, no doubt, the president will be speaking about the Middle East, as will countless others. We're going to have a lot of conversations throughout the course of the next few days, and there will also be lots of meetings on the sidelines. This is going to be a major focus on the conversation, but at the same time, at this stage in his presidency, the president is also looking to talk about a number of other issues, the conflicts in Sudan and in Ukraine, climate change, A.I., competition with China. But there is going to be a real emphasis on the Middle East.

And following Biden, you'll also hear from Middle Eastern leaders, from Turkey, from Jordan, from Qatar, who will emphasize their concerns, who will probably vent some of their anger towards Israel.

So, this is a moment of countries coming together of talking about global cooperation, of highlighting the need to cooperate and talk to each other. But at the same time, there are stark differences between many of these countries here, Jim.

ACOSTA: Yes, there's no question about that, a lot of jitters inside that community of U.S. allies there in that region of the world.

And, Kayla Tausche, I do want to go to you and ask, you know, given what we've seen in the last several days, I wonder if the president's speech writers have had to sort of expand portions of the speech that deal with what's happening right now in the Middle East right now. What are you hearing in terms of his advisers and what they're saying about what we might hear in this speech?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, that was a question that I posed to an advisor just a few minutes ago by text, when we were waiting for the president's motorcade to roll through, which it just did ahead of that speech that was expected to begin at 10:00, and we expect it now to begin momentarily.

Traditionally, the president keeps the speechwriting process open up until the final hours and the final minutes before delivery because he has had to allow for changes in these fast-moving developments so many times. We know that President Biden is expected to highlight the need for a ceasefire in Gaza, between Israel and Hamas, as the negotiations have been ongoing for months.

But now, of course, with the specter of this war widening, it's expected that President Biden and his top dignitaries in their discussions with their counterparts are now going to be increasingly focused on the Middle East and what, if anything, they can do to stabilize the situation after their efforts, so far, as Alex was just noting, have failed.

But it does, Jim, underscore just how much has changed in the last year for the Biden administration. You may remember last year at the U.N. it was all about Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the U.S. after the General Assembly, but President Biden used his remarks to really try to rally the world and his domestic audience to come to Ukraine's defense and pass billions of dollars in more military aid for Ukraine, which ended up happening several months later.

[10:05:12]

But around that time, the president's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told a conference audience that they were proud of the way that the Middle East, in his words, was quieter than it had been in two decades. They were essentially hailing the relative peace that was ongoing in the region at the time and just eight days later is when October 7th took place. It was an attack that senior officials did not predict and at the time they thought would be short lived. And now it's proven to be one of the biggest dilemmas facing the administration as President Biden stares down his final months in office, and you can bet that they're going to be working feverishly behind the scenes to figure out what, if anything, they can do, Jim.

ACOSTA: And you're looking at live pictures right now of people arriving at the United Nations General Assembly. We can't tell whether or not that is the president who's about to get out of the limousine that you see staged right there. You did see some aides scrambling just a few moments ago.

But, Alex Marquardt, as we're waiting for the president to arrive and deliver this speech, and, again, we might see images of the president here at any moment, I did want to ask you, over the summer -- and there is the president right there, that is President Biden entering the General Assembly with his U.N. ambassador by his side. So, he'll be speaking in just a few moments.

But, Alex, I mean, set the stage for us over the summer. We heard the secretary of state, Tony Blinken, described these talks to bring some sort of ceasefire and hostage releases at the ten-yard line. That certainly was not the case.

MARQUARDT: We've seen all kinds of optimism, heard all kinds of optimism from various senior administration officials and most recently what we've been told is that the agreement that is on the table is 90 percent there. And so while that sounds like it's quite close, that final 10 percent is really going to be the hardest part.

And what it comes down to, sources have told us, is that exchange of hostages for prisoners. You have more than 100 hostages, Israelis who are still being held -- Israelis and other nationals, I should note, being held by Hamas and other groups, around half of whom are still believed to be alive. And so there is still some negotiating about which Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons the Hamas would demand.

At the same time, we've also heard Prime Minister Netanyahu talking about how they are refusing to leave. They will never leave that Egypt-Gaza border known as the Philadelphia quarter, that that is critical for Israeli security.

So, those do appear to be the two main sticking points. But at this point, Jim, what we're hearing increasingly from the mediators, Egypt, Qatar, and, of course, the United States, is that they just aren't sure whether the parties want a ceasefire. They do not know whether Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, wants a ceasefire in this moment. They don't know, frankly, whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a ceasefire in this moment because it's clear that he believes that he still has things that he wants to accomplish, that he wants the Israeli military to accomplish when it comes to taking out Hamas inside Gaza.

So, those conversations have essentially been stalled for most of the past few weeks, despite the fact that they do believe that they are relatively close. Now, you can imagine that those conversations are even farther back, even further stalled because of this escalation in Lebanon. So, what we're seeing now, Jim, is a very interesting moment where U.S. and Israeli officials are trying to delink, decouple the conflict in Gaza from the conflict in Lebanon so they can just get to a quiet stage on that northern border, that Northern Israeli border, the Southern Lebanese border with Hezbollah, and then turn their focus back to Gaza.

We have heard Hezbollah say, no, the two are linked. Until there's quiet in Gaza, we're going to keep fighting. So, that is really one of the priorities right now to try to get quiet on those two fronts, Jim.

ACOSTA: Absolutely. And so tell our viewers you're going to see President Biden make his way up to that podium to address the U.N. General Assembly. That's going to happen in just a few moments from now.

Kayla Tausche, I do want to address Ukraine for just a moment because that has also been a sort of hotly debated issue inside the administration among the U.S. and its allies over or not the Ukrainians will get permission from the United States to use those long range missiles against Russian targets. Perhaps we might hear something about that from the president. What do you think?

TAUSCHE: It's certainly possible because it's something that's been under discussion in recent weeks. President Biden has said, we're working on it, when asked whether the U.S. would in fact allow Ukraine to use its long range missiles to hit targets further inside Russia. And it was something that President Biden discussed with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, who visited him at the White House for a bilateral meeting just last week.

We expect President Zelenskyy to address the U.N. Security Council today and to address the broader General Assembly tomorrow. But I think, Jim, that really the focus for any potential U.S. policy announcement would be when President Zelenskyy visits the White House on Thursday.

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President Biden has had a tradition of providing a hero's welcome for Zelenskyy at the White House and using those meetings to shore up support domestically to provide some of this aid to Ukraine, where there's previously been resistance.

This happened this time last year when Zelenskyy visited the White House and shortly after that also held a meeting with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, as well as the big four leaders in Congress who were then deliberating whether to provide the tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine that the White House had requested.

That ended up happening six months later, and that really incited some worry within the administration that if there is a need for more aid, as there is expected to be, that it would be very hard pressed to actually get that support from Capitol Hill.

So, look for that Washington visit where Zelenskyy will be meeting with both Biden but as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, who could potentially assume the reins of the Democratic foreign policy if she wins in November. Certainly, you know, that could change the game as well for those discussions. But I think Thursday is really key there, Jim.

ACOSTA: Yes. I was just talking with the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, just a few moments ago, and he was being very cagey as to whether or not the U.K. was going to go along with this idea. It sounds as though that all of the U.S. and its allies are sort of waiting to see what the president, what the White House ultimately decides to do. And you're all too correct there, Kayla, may come down to this very critical meeting between the president and Volodymyr Zelenskyy coming up on Thursday.

Alex Marquardt, back to you for just a moment. I mean, getting back to the situation in Lebanon we were just talking about the prospects for a ceasefire, a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. What has taken place over the last several days, really over the last week, we saw those exploding pagers last week and so on, has just really complicated things, I have to think, to a degree that is just going to be confounding for U.S. officials here in the coming days. I assume it's made it very complicated for the President in delivering this speech today and the message that he's going to get across to the United Nations.

MARQUARDT: Yes, Jim and backing up one step farther, I mean, there has been this low level conflict between Hezbollah and Israel for essentially the same period as the war in Gaza. Israeli officials will say that, you know, Hezbollah essentially started that conflict on October 8th, started firing rockets into Northern Israel. Some 60,000 Israeli residents have had to leave that area. Same thing has happened on the other side of the border as Israel has responded. Now, of course, this situation has escalated significantly.

So, while those Gaza ceasefire negotiations have been going on, there's been a simultaneous separate track led by a senior U.S. official named Amos Hochstein who is the -- essentially the envoy for Lebanon, who's been trying to come up with a deal that many felt was --

ACOSTA: I'm sorry, Alex. The president has just gotten up to the podium. He's at that the lectern? Let's talk to the president.

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: Today is the fourth time I've had the great honor of speaking to this assembly as president of the United States. It'll be my last. I've seen a remarkable sweep of history. I was first elected to office in the United States of America as a U.S. Senator in 1972. Now, I know I look like I'm only 40. I know that. I was 29 years old. Back then, we were living through an inflection point, a moment of tension and uncertainty. The world was divided by the Cold War. The Middle East was headed toward war. America was at war in Vietnam, and at that point, the longest war in America's history.

Our country was divided and angry. And there were questions about our staying power and our future. But even then, I entered public life not out of despair but out of optimism. The United States and the world got through that moment. It wasn't easy or simple without significant setbacks. But we go on to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons through arms control, and then go on to bring the Cold War itself to an end.

Israel and Egypt went to war but then forward to historic peace. We ended the war in Vietnam. The last year in Hanoi, I met with the Vietnamese leadership. We elevated our partnership to the highest level. It's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the capacity for reconciliation that today the United States and Vietnam are partners and friends.

[10:15:07]

That's proof, even from the horrors of war. There's a way forward. Things can get better. We should never forget that. I've seen that throughout my career.

In the 1980s, I spoke out against apartheid in South Africa. And then I watched the racist regime fall. In the 1990s, I worked to hold Milosevic accountable for war crimes. He was held accountable. At home, I wrote and passed the Violence Against Women Act to end the scourge of violence against women and girls not only in America, but across the world, as many of you have as well.

But we have so much more to do, especially against rape and sexual violence as weapons of war and terror. We were attacked on 9/11 by Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. We brought him justice. Then I came to the presidency at another moment in a crisis and uncertainty. I believed America had to look forward. New challenges, new threats, new opportunities were in front of us. We needed to put ourselves in a position to see the threats, to deal with the challenges and to seize the opportunities as well. We need to end the era of war that began on 9/11.

As vice president to President Obama, he asked me to work to wind down the military operations in Iraq, and we did, painful as it was. When I came to office as president, Afghanistan to replace Vietnam as America's longest war, I was determined to end it, and I did. It was a hard decision but the right decision. Four American presidents had faced that decision, but I was determined not to leave it to the fifth.

It was the decision accompanied by tragedy. 13 brave Americans lost their lives along with hundreds of Afghans in a suicide bomb. I think those lost lives, I think of them every day. I think of all the 2,461 U.S. Military deaths over a long 20 years of that war. 20,744 American servicemen wounded in action. I think of their service, their sacrifice, and their heroism. I know other countries lost their own men and women fighting alongside us. We honor their sacrifices as well.

To face the future, I was also determined to rebuild my country's alliances and partnerships to a level not previously seen. We did it. We did just that from traditional treaty alliances to new partnerships like the Quad with the United States, Japan, Australia and India.

I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair, but I do not, I won't. As leaders, we don't have the luxury. I recognize the challenges from Ukraine to Gaza, to Sudan and beyond. War, hunger, terrorism, brutality, record displacement of people, a climate crisis, democracy at risk, strangers (ph) in our societies, the promise of artificial intelligence and its significant risk. The list goes on, but maybe because all I've seen and all we have done together over the decades, I have hope. I know there is a way forward.

In 1919, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats described a world, and I quote, where things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, end of quote. Some may say those words describe the world, not just in 1919, but in 2024. And I see a critical distinction.

In our time, the center has held. Leaders and people from every region and across the political spectrum have stood together, turned the page. We turned the page in the worst pandemic in a century. We made sure COVID no longer controls our lives. We defended the U.N. Charter and ensure the survival of Ukraine as a free nation. My country made the largest investment in climate, clean energy ever anywhere in history. There will always be forces that pull our countries apart and the world apart, aggression, extremism, chaos and cynicism, a desire to retreat from the world and go it alone.

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Our task, our test, is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than those that are pulling us apart, that the principles of partnership that we came here each year to uphold can withstand the challenges, that the center holds once again.

My fellow leaders, I truly believe we're at another inflection point in world history. The choices we make today will determine our future for decades to come. Will we stand behind the principles that unite us? Will we stand firm against aggression? Will we end the conflicts that are raging today? Will we take on global challenges, like climate change, hunger, and disease? Will we plan now for the opportunities and risk of revolutionary new technologies?

I want to talk today about each of these decisions and the actions, in my view, we must take. To start, each of us in this body has made a commitment to the principles of the U.N. Charter to stand up against aggression. When Russia invaded Ukraine, we could have stood by and merely protested. But Vice President Harris and I understood that that was an assault on everything this institution is supposed to stand for. And so my direction, America stepped into the breach, providing massive security and economic and humanitarian assistance. Our NATO allies and partners and 50-plus nations stood up as well. But most importantly, the Ukrainian people stood up. I asked the people of this chamber to stand up for them.

The good news is Putin's war has failed. And he's -- at his core aim, he set out to destroy Ukraine, but Ukraine is still free. He set out to weaken NATO, but NATO is bigger, stronger, and more united than ever before, with two new members, Finland and Sweden.

But we cannot let up. The world now has another choice to make. Will we sustain our support to help Ukraine win this war and preserve its freedom, or walk away from that aggression, be renewed and a nation be destroyed? I know my answer. We cannot grow weary. We cannot look away and we will not let up on our support for Ukraine, not until Ukraine wins just and endurable peace in the U.N. Charter.

We also need to uphold our principles as we seek to responsibly manage the competition with China so it does not veer into conflict. We stand ready to cooperate on urgent challenges for the good of our people and the people everywhere. We recently resumed cooperation with China to stop the flow of deadly synthetic narcotics. I appreciate the collaboration. It matters for the people of my country, and many others around the world.

On matters of conviction, the United States is unabashed in pushing back against unfair economic competition, against military coercion of other nations in the South China Sea and maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits and protecting our most advanced technologies so they cannot be used against us or any of our partners.

At the same time, we're going to continue to strengthen our network of alliances and partnerships across the Indo-Pacific. These partnerships are not against any nation. They're building blocks for a free, open, secure, and peaceful Indo-Pacific.

We're also working to bring greater measure of peace and stability to the Middle East. The world must not flinch from the horrors of October 7th. Any country, any country would have the right and responsibility to ensure that such an attack can never happen again. Thousands of armed Hamas terrorists invaded a sovereign state, slaughtering and massacring more than 1,200 people, including 46 Americans in their homes and at a music festival. Despicable acts of sexual violence, 250 innocents taken hostage. I've met with the families of those hostages. I've grieved with them. They're going through hell.

Innocent civilians in Gaza are also going through hell. Thousands and thousands of kills, including aid workers, too many families dislocated, crowding in the tents, facing a dire humanitarian situation. They didn't ask for this war that Hamas started. I put forward with Qatar and Egypt a ceasefire and hostages deal. It's been enduring.

I asked for this war that Hamas started.

[10:25:02]

I put forward with Qatar and Egypt a ceasefire and hostage deal. It's been endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. Now is the time for the parties to finalize its terms, bring the hostages home, and security for Israel and Gaza free of Hamas grip, ease the suffering in Gaza, and end this war.

On October 7th -- since October 7th, we've also been determined to prevent a wider war that engulfs the entire region, Hezbollah, unprovoked, during the October 7th attack, launching rockets into Israel. Almost a year later, too many on each side of the Israeli- Lebanon border remained displaced. A full scale war is not in anyone's interest.

Even if the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible. In fact, it remains the only path to lasting security to allow the residents from both countries to return to their homes on the border safely. And that's what we're working tirelessly to achieve.

As we look ahead, we must also address the rise of violence against innocent Palestinians on the West Bank and set the conditions for a better future, including a two-state solution where the world, where Israel enjoys security and peace and full recognition and normalized relations with all its neighbors, where Palestinians live in security, dignity and self-determination in a state of their own.

Progress toward peace will put us in a stronger position to deal with the ongoing threat posed by Iran. Together, we must deny oxygen to its terrorist proxies, which have called for more October 7th and ensure that Iran will never ever obtain a nuclear weapon.

Gaza is not the only conflict that deserves our outrage. In Sudan, a bloody civil war unleashed one of the world's worst humanitarian crisis, 8 million, 8 million on the brink of famine, hundreds of thousands already there, atrocities are for and elsewhere. The United States has led the world in providing humanitarian aid to Sudan, and with our partners who've led diplomatic talks to try to silence the guns and avert a wider famine.

The world needs to stop arming the generals, to speak with one voice and tell them, stop tearing your country apart, stop blocking aid to the Sudanese people. End this war now.

But people need more than the absence of war. They need a chance, a chance to live in dignity. They need to be protected from the ravages of climate change, hunger, and disease. Our administration has invested over $150 billion to make progress and other sustainable development goals. It includes $20 billion for food security, over $50 billion for global health.

We've mobilized billions more in private sector investment. We've taken the most ambitious climate action in history. We've moved to rejoin the Paris Agreement on day one. And today, my country is finally on track to cut emissions in half by 2030, on track to honor my pledge to quadruple climate financing to developing nations with $11 billion thus far this year.

We've rejoined the World Health Organization donated 700 million doses of COVID vaccine to 117 countries. We must now move quickly to face Mpox outbreak in Africa. We're prepared to commit $500 million to help African countries prevent and respond to Mpox and to donate 1 million doses of Mpox vaccine now.

We call on our partners to match our pledge and make this a billion dollar commitment to the people of Africa. Beyond the core necessities of food and health, the United States, the G7, and our partners have embarked on an ambitious initiative to mobilize and deliver significant finance to the developing world. We're working to help countries build out their infrastructure, to clean energy transition, to the digital transformation to lay new economic foundations for a prosperous future.

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