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CNN Tonight
Lawmakers Get Into Shouting Match Over George Santos; New Evidence In Special Counsel Probe May Undercut Trump's Claim; Joe Biden And Kevin McCarthy Will Make A Deal On Debt Ceiling; Texas Becomes Epicenter Of Mass Shootings In U.S.; CNN TONIGHT Shares The Truth About Sharks; CNN TONIGHT Presents "On the Lookout." Aired 11p- 12a ET
Aired May 17, 2023 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[23:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in to this hour where we bring you "Tomorrow's News Tonight." We have a great lineup of reporters here with me. We have Harry Enten, Shimon Prokupecz, Jeremy Diamond, first time on the couch, and Alayna Treene is back. Great to have all of you.
Okay, so today, the House voted on a resolution to refer George Santos, the truth-challenged congressman, to the Ethics Committee after (INAUDIBLE) a shouting match erupted on the steps of Congress.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY) (voice-over): Resign!
REP. GEORGE SANTOS (R-NY): Yes, sir.
JAMAAL BOWMAN (D-NY): Resign! Resign!
SANTOS: No, I did not. I allowed --
BOWMAN: Get him out!
SANTOS: I allowed the process --
BOWMAN: Get him out! Courtney has to kick him out! He's embarrassing you all. He's embarrassing you all.
REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Biden -- Biden is embarassing --
UNKNOWN: For what? Expel him! You got expel! Save the party! The party is hanging by a thread!
TAYLOR GREENE: We got to -- we got to get rid of Biden --
UNKNOWN: The party is hanging -- the party is hanging by a thread!
TAYLOR GREENE: -- to save the country, to save the country. UNKNOWN: You got to save the party.
TAYLOR GREENE: Impeach Biden! Impeach Biden! Impeach Biden!
UNKNOWN: Listen, no more QAnon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(LAUGHTER)
CAMEROTA: Alayna is here to fill us in. It is so great to see them setting such a good example for the kids at home.
ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: I know. I mean, absolute chaos at the Capitol today. And really, I mean, it was a crazy day for anyone who has been following this whole Santos saga.
So, earlier this week, a Democratic congressman introduced a resolution to expel Santos from Congress following the Justice Department issuing a federal indictment against him with 13 charges. Some of them are money laundering, wire fraud, continuously making false statements to the House, which I'm sure everyone has head time and time again about.
And then, a House Republican said, we don't really want to do that, we are going to buy ourselves some time and try to push this off and have -- refer this resolution to the House at the Ethics Committee and have them take it up first.
And so, that is kind of what played out today. But I have to say through all of this, George Santos is loving the media attention. He is not backing away away from the fight. He also was interviewed by CNN's Manu Raju on the Capitol steps earlier today and said he does not plan to resign. I think we have that soundbite. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Why are your 145,000 voters, why are they served -- wouldn't they be served better if you are to resign given that you are facing investigation on the Ethics Committee, you have multiple charges, federal charges, felonies that you are facing, you don't sit on any committees? How are they better served when you being here in Congress?
SANTOS: I was elected by them to come represent them. I will continue to do that. I have not done my job since I got here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TREENE: Now, clearly, he is saying he does not plan to resign. Even though, I will say, a lot of his Republican colleagues (INAUDIBLE) in the halls of Congress. I mean, I talked to him a lot. None of them are very vocal about supporting him. Many have also said they want him to resign. Even before the Justice Department issued all of these charges against him, people were very wary about George Santos. CAMEROTA: So, could they have voted him out? I mean, they're referring him, as you said, to the Ethics Committee. Could they just have taken a vote?
TREENE: They could have. The thing though is that I do think, and this was a calculation on Kevin McCarthy's part, they don't want to lose a Republican member of Congress.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: There it is.
TREENE: They have a very --
SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: That's what I was hearing.
TREENE: -- narrow majority. They can't have -- they don't want to have another potential special election to replace him and a Democrat could take a seat. And so, they kind of have to stick with him for now.
But, I mean, the optics around George Santos are not good for the Republican Party either, and that is something that a lot of Republicans are worried about.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I mean, this is raw politics, right? Kevin McCarthy has a four-set majority. And particularly as he's heading towards this debt ceiling showdown, which if he compromises as he is likely going to need to do if he wants to avoid default, there is a risk to a speakership.
There is a possibility there that he gets challenged by the far-right members of his caucus who don't want to do that, who number more than four already, and they certainly number more than three. And so, for Kevin McCarthy, every single vote matter.
[23:04:56]
And I also think what's interesting, you know, Alayna was talking about the Republicans who have been calling on him to resign, most of those are New York Republicans. They are his fellow Biden district Republicans, Republicans whose districts voted for Biden in 2020 and then elected them to Congress in 2023.
CAMEROTA: So, what's going to happen now with this? What happens next?
TREENE: Well, it's going to the Ethics Committee.
CAMEROTA: How long will that take?
TREENE: Apparently, they were giving him around 60 -- of the committee 60 days to do this, which is a short time frame for the House Ethics Committee. I do think people are very eager to make sure they do keep it to a tight timeline.
PROKUPECZ: In terms of the New York political scene right now, they expect this to happen quickly. I spoke to someone tonight in -- on the democrat side who said that they actually think this is going to happen fairly quickly. And, you know, now, they are gearing up for a potentially special election. There is a lot going on behind the scenes. But they are expecting it to happen fairly quickly.
The thing that may have been slowing some of this down was the federal investigation. It's not uncommon for the FBI, for the DOJ to tell the Ethics Committee to slow down and let us do our part, and it could explain why perhaps DOJ moved, some people thought, quickly here.
CAMEROTA: Why can't they happen in parallel?
PROKUPECZ: Because what happens is that they don't want them to interfere in anything. The DOJ may be doing some of the same witnesses because when you look at the ethics charges or the complaint on the ethics stuff, it's similar to what these charges that the DOJ just brought, lying and -- the allegations of lying --
CAMEROTA: And financial stuff.
PROKUPECZ: Financial stuff. So, all of it is there. So, they now have that information even more based on the complaint from the Department of Justice. So, it's there for them. They just need to move on it.
ENTEN: I mean, just from the pure politics, which is my lane, as Jeremy was saying, look, this is a district Biden won by eight points. If you look at the special elections that have occurred this year, you see Democrats actually outperforming the Biden baseline in different state, legislative, and federal congressional special elections. That is going through their mind.
And I think it is so funny when Santos said, well, the voters elected me and I'm here to represent them. Yeah, north of 70% of those same voters want him to resign. So, he's not on the side of the voters, he's on the side of George Santos, and he is going to say whatever he needs to say to keep his political career alive even if it is dying a slow death.
DIAMOND: Look, he is running for reelection, too.
ENTEN: Yeah!
DIAMOND: Don't count the man out yet.
CAMEROTA: What some of his voters say is that they elected him on false pretenses. They didn't know his real resume. Let's talk about what -- the CNN exclusive reporting also came out today. That are the records that the National Archives has that they say proves that -- reveals, I guess, that Donald Trump and his top advisers did know the correct declassification system for those documents, top secret documents that he had at Mar-a-Lago. So, what now?
TREENE: Well, yes, these are 16 documents that -- I will say also that Justice Department subpoenaed Donald Trump and his team before they have yet to turn them over. Now, the National Archives, according to our reporting, told Trump's team, we are turning them over to the special counsel looking at the classified documents case. And it's still unclear what's in these documents. But the thing that we do know is that it shows that, like you said, they know -- that it shows that Trump might have known what the classification process was while in office. That really speaks to his intent. And I think that's the key thing here, that the special council, Jack Smith, is going to be looking at, did you know when you were in office what the declassification process was like and did you then know that you were taking these classified documents home with you?
CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked Donald Trump about this at the town hall last week. He continues to say that he can just declassified document by thinking about it, but she did press him on this at a town hall. Let's listen to what she had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Why did you take those documents with you when you left the White House?
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I had every right to under the Presidential Records Act. You have the Presidential Records Act. I was there, I took what I took, and it gets declassified.
COLLINS: Do you still have any classified documents in your possession?
TRUMP: Are you ready?
COLLINS: Do you?
TRUMP: No. No. I don't have anything. I have no classified documents. And by the way, they become automatically declassified when I took them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TREENE: So, this is very messy. Now, I also did talk to some people close to Trump's legal team and they were saying that they are going to try to fight this in court or they may try to challenge it in court. It's unclear.
But one issue that they have had throughout this entire case is any time they thought about mounting a legal challenge about these types of documents, they end up in the hands of the special counsel already. And so, they are worried that that could happen this time, but it is something that they are arguing that they think they could put up a legal fight.
CAMEROTA: So, in other words, they're going to fight the National Archives -- they think that they have control over what the National Archives hands to the special counsel?
TREENE: Yes. That's what happens.
PROKUPECZ: The other thing in all of this if I think about what is going on with the special counsel investigations is the obstruction of the investigation. Right?
[23:09:53]
If they can establish the fact that he knew that this was classified and so, therefore, he knew potentially he was -- he had material that perhaps he shouldn't have, that it was a crime, so he is obstructing obviously the investigation and the ability to get these documents.
I think in the end, it is potentially the obstruction. I mean, every one you talk to that's close to the former president and other legal folks and other folks who have been following this much closer that I have, but every one is saying the obstruction.
CAMEROTA: Because in the last hour, we were just talking about how they also found classified documents at Vice President Biden --
PROKUPECZ: But they gave it up.
DIAMOND: And this speaks to the very distinction between those very two cases.
PROKUPECZ: Right! And I think that is the whole point. This is what the National Archives -- yes, the fact that he had -- okay, yes, he had the classified documents, but the fact that like when they went to try and get this information and he wouldn't give it up and it just continued and continued, and then there are allegations that, you know, was he moving things around, was he -- you know, all these stories were about the fact that they were trying to hide.
CAMEROTA: We just don't know that.
TREENE: He was subpoenaed -- Donald Trump was subpoenaed for these documents. The National Archives have requested them. He refused to turn them over. And that is the key difference between Joe Biden now president, Joe Biden then vice president, and former Vice President Mike Pence. When they knew that they had these classified documents in their possession and were asked to turn them over, they did. That is the key distinction that the Justice Department is making.
CAMEROTA: All right, Alayna, thank you for bringing us up to speed on all of this and letting us know what happens next. Meanwhile, President Biden says he and Kevin McCarthy will make a deal on the debt ceiling because there is no alternative. So, what's going on behind closed doors? Jeremy is checking his phone right now so that he will tell us what his sources say, next.
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[23:15:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: All right, the clock is still ticking on hitting the debt ceiling. President Biden is still confident that a deal with Republicans can be reached.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We're going to come together because there's no alternative way to do the right thing for the country. To be clear, this negotiation is about the outline of what the budget will look like. Not about whether or not we are going to, in fact, pay our debts. We're going to continue these discussions with congressional leaders in the coming days until we reach an agreement, and I will have more to say about that on Sunday.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Okay, Jeremy has the inside scoop for us. So, Jeremy, you have reporting of what is going on inside the room --
DIAMOND: Yes.
CAMEROTA: -- with Speaker McCarthy --
DIAMOND: We love that, right?
CAMEROTA: Yes, peel back the curtains.
DIAMOND: Let's get inside.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
DIAMOND: Listen, what's interesting about this is we have about two weeks until the U.S. could potentially default. And yet, coming out of this second meeting between the president and the congressional leaders, everybody said they felt like it was productive. Everybody said that they felt like they were seeing some progress with the talks.
CAMEROTA: Great.
DIAMOND: Part of that stands from the fact that they are at least in basic agreement now on the idea that default would be catastrophic and that a compromise of bipartisan solution is necessary. I would say that most of the American public was probably already there before them. But they have gotten there now.
What is also the reason for a sense of optimism among some of the folks that I have talked to is the idea that the tenor of the meeting, folks felt like it was a more candid and better conversation between the president --
CAMEROTA: More productive meeting, you're saying? Is that what you felt?
DIAMOND: More productive and more conciliatory in some ways. That there was a sense that everybody wanted to get to an agreement. And mostly because it's in contrast to what happened the week before. When you look at the week before, there was a pretty sharp disagreement between the president and Kevin McCarthy.
Kevin McCarthy nearly call the president a liar in this meeting as the president was talking about the fact that McCarthy wanted to cut veterans' benefits, frequent talking point of the White House as they have been talking about that House republican bill. That wasn't part of this conversation. Instead, it seems that both sides were trying to move beyond the talking points and actually get into the steel.
Now listen, they are just at a point where they are agreeing on what to negotiate about. They haven't actually started doing the actual negotiating or they are just starting to do that, I should say.
CAMEROTA: While they're in a rush.
(LAUGHTER)
DIAMOND: Two weeks ago. But this is Washington!
CAMEROTA: Yeah, I know, yes. We have seen this movie before. But are Democrats worried about this? There's a big thing about like the president won't negotiate. Just last night talking about why it's not a bad word? Americans actually want to see negotiation. But nevertheless, since the president has said he wanted to negotiate, are Democrats worried about what's going on?
DIAMOND: It depends on what that ultimate result looks like. When you think back to 2011 when then Vice President Biden was one of the lead negotiators of that debt ceiling deal at the time, a lot of Democrats felt like he gave away too much, like the Obama White House and Vice President Biden gave away too much in those negotiations.
So, there is a sense of that fear that still exists today among some congressional Democrats, especially as you are starting to see them talk about things like work requirements for some of the safety net programs.
Now, the president, part of the reason why they are having these concerns is because a few days ago, he kind of left the door open to the possibility of enhancing some of those work requirements.
The White House quickly shut the door on the notion of work requirements for Medicaid programs, but they are still leaving themselves a little bit of wiggle room in the negotiating room to negotiate more work requirements for some other programs.
CAMEROTA: We heard from Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley, who voiced concern about all of this, he said -- quote -- "McCarthy is going to want to have a lot of things that are wrong for America. And I think the president needs to be thinking about what McCarthy says knowing he has the option to say, what you're asking is unreasonable. It's going to hurt the American people, I'm elected to defend the American people, so I'm not going to let it happen. Your blackmail tactic will not succeed for anything. That's what I want to hear from the president."
President Biden (INAUDIBLE) able to say that, right? Isn't that sort of his style?
DIAMOND: Look, he did shut the door on the Medicaid work requirements notion. He talked about that this morning. He talked about it yesterday. So, they are drawing a red line on that point.
[23:20:00]
But at the same time, this is a president who recognizes that they're going to need to compromise. And increasingly in talking to folks inside the West Wing, there is a sense that they're going to need to agree to things that they don't want, that Democrats don't want, and that is just the nature of compromise.
TREENE: It is also the same thing that I'm hearing on Capitol Hill. And there are people, some Democrats who have been criticizing Joe Biden for not negotiating sooner and waiting until the 11th hour to sit down in the same room with Kevin McCarthy.
And it is scary. I actually do think -- I think most of the time, when we go to this, we go to this debt limit fight and this conversation almost every year, and they are always waiting until the 11th hour, but then a deal magically comes together. I think a lot of people are hoping that will happen. This time, when I talk to lawmakers, they are not so sure.
DIAMOND: There's a bit of a difference.
TREENE: There is a difference.
PROKUPECZ: Why is that? Is it because of Congress in the sense of the way --
TREENE: There's a mix. I think --
PROKUPECZ: Like McCarthy just doesn't have full control of --
TREENE: Yes and no. I think more of it is the timing. A deal like this one takes months to come together. We are now two weeks away from June 1st. That is the deadline that the Treasury Department has said that the government could default on its debt.
And even if they do reach a deal or an outline by the end of this week, which is what they are hoping to do but is a very, I think, ambitious goal, they still have to draft the legislation, then they have to sell it to both the House and the Senate, then they have to try to get enough support for it. That's a very, very big obstacle for them to overcome! And I do think there is that --
PROKUPECZ: The fact that Biden cut his trip short, should we read anything into that? Is that kind of a good thing like in terms of -- is there some --
DIAMOND: It's a sign that this a deal that's going to come down to Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy. Right? And when you are raising Kevin McCarthy before in terms of why does this time feel different, that is certainly a part of it. He has -- as we were talking in the previous segment, he has this very, very narrow majority.
He has a large segment of this caucus that seize that House republican bill that they did to raise the debt ceiling and cut spending as a floor, not a ceiling, but a floor for the minimum that they would like to see happen. And that is not going to happen in these negotiations.
ENTEN: I think the turning point of all of this was when Kevin McCarthy was actually able to get a bill passed in the House, right? I think that was -- Joe Biden and Democrats never thought that they would actually -- Kevin McCarthy with a slim majority can actually do that! It took 15 votes for him to become speaker, right?
PROKUPECZ: Right.
ENTEN: He was actually able to pull it off! I think now Biden (INAUDIBLE) a little bit, coming back to the table trying to figure out, okay, how much do I actually have to give away here and at the same time actually keep my caucus in the Congress with me, with actually giving something to Republicans that McCarthy can actually sell to a decent chunk of his people?
DIAMOND: I spoke to one person who has been involved in these negotiations and this person basically said, look, as part of the calculus here, we are keeping in mind Kevin McCarthy's very slim majority and we're also looking at, what is the deal where Kevin McCarthy can afford to lose some of his caucus and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, can bring some people on? Right? That's ultimately the fine line that they are dealing with here.
But Kevin McCarthy has a different calculus because he wants to stay speaker and he agreed to some rules as part of becoming speaker that will allow a very small number of members to jump in and put it up for about.
PROKUPECZ: So, what's the earliest that we can see anything -- any kind of --
CAMEROTA: June 1st.
(LAUGHTER)
TREENE: I mean, I will say from my conversations, neither side wants to see the government default on its debt. Sure, you do have a handful of Republicans who are fine to have, you know, an economic catastrophe and blame it on President Biden. But by and large, nobody wants this. So, the will to do it is there, but it really is, I think, at this point in time in question and also seeing which side will cave first really --
CAMEROTA: Yeah.
TREENE: -- to get this done.
CAMEROTA: All right. Well, something tells me that we will be doing this again tomorrow night.
(CROSSTALK)
CAMEROTA: Thank you all for that reporting. We have a little bit of news coming into our newsroom right now. Air raid alerts are being declared or heard across Ukraine where it is now early Thursday morning. Kyiv's air defenses systems have been activated.
The city's military administration says on Telegram -- quote -- "The air defense is at work, remain calm! Remain in your shelters until the air raid alert is over." We will bring you more information as soon as we get it into our newsroom. We're monitoring that.
All right, meanwhile, back here, mass shootings have tripled in Texas in the last five years. At the same time, the state continues to loosen its gun laws. Shimon is going to talk about how the stats give us the stats on how Texas has become the epicenter of this in the U.S.
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[23:25:00]
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CAMEROTA: Five of the deadliest mass shootings over the past eight years have happened in Texas. The most recent was when a gunman killed eight people at a crowded shopping mall in Allen. Let's look at the map. Nine people killed in a Waco bar in 2015. Twenty-six killed in a church in Sutherland Springs in 2017. Ten killed in a Santa Fe High School in 2018. Twenty-three killed at an El Paso shopping center in 2019. Of course, 19 children and two teachers killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in 2022. On and on and on.
Shimon is here. Shimon, can you give us the numbers? Is Texas the epicenter?
PROKUPECZ: Look, there certainly been a lot of attention. There has obviously been a lot of mass shootings. When you look at that map, you know, we just had one there a few weeks ago in Allen. For the majority of them, the guns that are being used in these mass shootings, they are purchased legally, right?
[23:30:03]
So, when you look at Texas, yes, there are a lot of gun owners in Texas. Sixty percent of households in Texas are gun owners. Talking about 430,000 guns sold so far this year. And again, we talk a lot about how loose the state of Texas is when it comes to gun rights.
I was in the state capital just a few weeks ago covering a hearing. There were literally people walking around. They are just open carry. It's just a loud and just a thing that it was fine. It's perfectly fine. But what was striking to me was that they were around the family members from the Uvalde massacre who were they are fighting for the change in the gun laws.
So, that's what you are seeing in Texas. Certainly, you don't -- in the Allen, Texas shooting, this last mass shooting that, was a transfer kind of sale. It was like a personal sale. Really, unrestricted in the state of Texas. No background checks. So, that's what you are seeing time and time again in the state of Texas. It's just these loose gun laws.
CAMEROTA: And that's the culture, obviously, of Texas. And for people in the northeast, it's hard. It is almost inconceivable for us because we have such a different culture. But in Texas, for decades, centuries, they have had a different relationship with guns. But does it correlate more guns -- the numbers that you just said --
PROKUPECZ: Yeah.
CAMEROTA: -- the amount of gun sales, does that correlate to more mass shootings?
PROKUPECZ: So, honestly, if you look at the stats, when you look overall, you see that homicides are up nationally. They are up 73%. Texas, they are up 90%. A lot of the mass shootings are certainly driving some of those numbers up.
But the thing is it's really hard to know. Would stricter gun laws -- I don't -- who really knows? Do families and do other folks believe it? Yes, because certain individuals probably would not be able to get a hold of assault rifles. They should not be able to do it.
And that is something you are seeing in Texas where there was this push to raise the age. We've seen in other states, we're moving it from 18 to 21, to be able to purchase assault-style rifles. And in Texas, what you are seeing is the opposite. It's sort of like open carry. In most states, you have to be 21. In Texas, they said, no, you can be 18, and certainly, doing away with some of the restrictions you see in other states when it comes to handguns and open carry.
ENTEN: I would say a few things. One, that push to raise the age limit from 18 to 21, it's popular in Texas. There was a recent poll done there that showed, I think, it's like 76% or 74%, ridiculously high number.
CAMEROTA: The public likes the idea.
ENTEN: Yeah, the public likes the idea, even in Texas. Nationally, it is popular, 80% plus. And look, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that if you look at the U.S. overall, how many guns per capita? You look at other countries, it tends to be far, far less. We know that we have a lot more homicides here.
The other thing I will note, you know, we are rightfully so on the focus on mass killings. But the fact is, you know, there are a lot more gun deaths from other ways, right? You know, suicides, obviously, a large portion of it. you know, individual deaths in urban centers.
And so, you know, when we just think about this topic overall, we do know that the states where you do tend to have the highest number of killings per capita, right, we have to control for the population, do tend to be the states where, in fact, you have the highest number of guns in those states. Now, obviously, correlation does not equal causation. But I think when you look at those numbers, a wandering mind begins to --
PROKUPECZ: See, Harry is much better with the stats than I am. I kind of feel like we reversed roles.
(LAUGHTER)
CAMEROTA: You are working in tandem, which is fantastic. Look, everybody -- it is not a secret that other countries, when they come here to visit, say, why do you have mass shootings here? The people find it inconceivable in other countries because they don't have this phenomenon. Truly American.
PROKUPECZ: Having spent so much time as I have in Texas, I have learned so much about this country and certainly about gun rights and about folks' passion for carrying guns. And you really feel that in Texas. This is just -- it's politics, it's their belief, it's sort of -- this is why we are not seeing the governor there do anything. It's very easy. If he wanted this legislation, to raise the age, he would do it, but he has made all kinds of --
TREENE: I will say, too, on just the foreign countries but, I mean, you look at the U.K. or Australia where -- I remember in the U.K., in the 90s, they had a horrible mass shooting. And after that, they acted. A conservative government was in power and they acted to tighten gun laws there. And you have seen in the years since, gun deaths go down as a result. And similar things happening in Australia.
[23:35:02]
And I think -- I know from friends that I have abroad, like you said, they come in and are like, I don't understand, there are shootings that are happening every day here, and they change the laws. You are not seeing the shootings there. And people say it's a mental health issue. But then, are you saying they don't have the same amount of mental health issues?
CAMEROTA: They also say it is our Constitution.
ENTEN: There it is.
CAMEROTA: And that's what we hear all the time. Well, Shimon, let's talk about what -- it has been -- you spent a year, basically, in Uvalde. And everybody remembers your phenomenal reporting there and everybody remembers your (INAUDIBLE) questioning of the officials who were stonewalling and who would not give you information.
You won the Peabody, the very prestigious Peabody Award. We are all so proud of you. So, now, you are -- you have this new special coming out this weekend.
PROKUPECZ: Yeah.
CAMEROTA: We have a little preview of it.
PROKUPECZ: Yeah, we do.
Okay, let's watch this and you can tell us about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNKNOWN (voice-over): "The Whole Story." One year after the Uvalde massacre, the community still seeks answers. Now, families have turned to CNN for footage Texas authorities refused to release.
UNKNOWN: I want to see everything that hurt my baby.
PROKUPECZ: The authority should not be the ones doing this for you. Do you think it will help you trying to heal?
UNKNOWN: Yes, it will.
UNKNOWN: We lost our daughter. We lost ourselves. We are just trying to pick up the pieces.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): "The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper," Sunday at 8:00 on CNN.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Okay, that looks intense.
PROKUPECZ: It's probably the most intense thing I have ever done in my life and probably will be the most intense thing I ever will do in my life is to have to sit before mothers of little kids and show them video of the injuries of what their kids went through. They came to me. It was --
CAMEROTA: They wanted to see it.
PROKUPECZ: They wanted to see it. We were in Uvalde working on this special and we had a completely different path than we were going with this. And I get a call from one of the mothers and she says to me, we want to see the video. I was just, like, are you crazy? I can't show this to you, it is so horrific.
CAMEROTA: You got it through (INAUDIBLE) request?
PROKUPECZ: No, we got it through sources. This is the thing because the officials there have not released any information and they have not been willing to share any of this information with the families. And, you know, we went. It was a very painful experience, a very emotional -- the mothers sat there and watched this video. And they saw their kids and the injuries.
But for them, it was important to see because they were trying to get answers to certain questions. One of the mothers, her little girl was passing out, and she couldn't -- no one ever told her that this is what she was going through and what she was suffering.
CAMEROTA: She is a survivor, in other words?
PROKUPECZ: She is a survivor. Everyone that we showed and everyone that we talk about is a survivor. We have some new information where there is a little from inside the classrooms, screaming for the police to come in. And the police don't hear her. And this is all captured on the 9-1-1 call. So, we played that. But it was -- just the most difficult because -- and I said this to folks. I said we are not trained to deal with this kind of stuff. And I just did not know what to do. We made decision to show it to them. And we sat there with them as they watch this. And their reaction -- of course, there is some anger. But they were thankful. They were happy that they saw this.
And then we show some more video with another parent to show whose daughter, Chloe Torres, called 9-1-1 and sort of what she went through. You know, people will find it -- every time I watch it, we've had to watch it a lot for editing and making sure that we -- you cry every time you watch it.
And then we speak to parents of a girl who died and just what their life has been like and how they describe just how horrible it has been to live without their daughter, and they are just waiting for the day that they could see her again. Meanwhile, they have several other kids.
But, you know, one of the things that I think is so different about what we are doing here is usually when you -- like Sandy Hook or other mass shootings, you go in, you do the stories, you do these documentaries, and you talk about the people's lives and what it is like, and it is horrible.
Here, we are actually getting people a window into what it was like for these kids that day who survived because we have this video. And I think it's important for people to see what these guns do, what this day did to these people. And the fact also is that these families are still not getting the answers that they need and the services that they need.
CAMEROTA: Yes. And with this -- Shimon, we've made this point before, but it's so valuable. You did not leave. You didn't just -- all the crews go in for this mass shooting, report on it, report on it, and then leave. You stayed and you stayed to try to get answers and you stayed to be able to help them see the real story. And the fact that you are going to be able to bring it to all of us, obviously, it's hard to watch, but it is important because --
PROKUPECZ: It is so important and I hope people watch.
CAMEROTA: -- it keeps happening. Yeah.
[23:40:00]
Shimon, thank you for everything and for all of that.
PROKUPECZ: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: Make sure you tune in. Shimon returns to Uvalde in this all new episode of "The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper" this Sunday at 8:00 right here on CNN. We will be right back.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: That's a 20-footer.
UNKNOWN: Twenty-five. Three tons.
[23:45:00]
UNKNOWN: You are going to need a bigger boat, right?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Spoiler alert. They never get a bigger boat. But that boat was a lot bigger than the one a fisherman in Hawaii was in when he was attacked, reportedly, by a tiger shark.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: (Bleep) (bleep) Tiger shark!
PROKUPECZ: (INAUDIBLE) my pants --
(LAUGHTER)
CAMEROTA: You guys are scared in the studio. (INAUDIBLE) managed to kicked that shark away after it attacked his kayak. But with summer around the corner, what is the truth about shark attacks? Harry is here with the shark data.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Harry, you have shark data?
ENTEN: We have data for everything, Alisyn.
PROKUPECZ: He is a shark.
ENTEN: Look, I am a shark. I got three little interesting pieces of information to go through this. Number one, in fact, unprovoked shark attacks worldwide -- you know how many there were?
CAMEROTA: No.
ENTEN: Last year?
CAMEROTA: How many?
ENTEN: Look at this. Just 57. That's actually less than the 2017 to 2021 average when it was 70. But here's the whole thing. But we are still petrified of sharks, right? So, there was a very interesting IPSOS poll that was taken a few years ago that essentially asked, okay, are you terrified of shark attacks? Look at this. Fifty-one percent say they are terrified and 38% said it makes them -- sharks make them scared to swim in the ocean. My goodness, gracious. And then --
PROKUPECZ: Don't diminish my fears. (LAUGHTER)
ENTEN: Hold on, hold on. Here's the big thing. "Jaws," remember "Jaws" back in '75?
CAMEROTA: Yes, we just played it.
ENTEN: You just played it, right? Great little nugget from "Jaws." They actually took a poll back in 1975 and what they found was, seeing "Jaws" in 1975, did it increase your fear of swimming in the ocean? Thirty-five percent of Americans said yes, 61% said no. But still that 35% --
PROKUPECZ: Why do we get so excited when there's like shark sighting and like we all run to cover it and then they empty the beaches and everyone runs away and no one wants to go in the water?
ENTEN: Because you just said you nearly cropped your pants in the --
(LAUGHTER)
Because shark attacks scare us.
PROKUPECZ: He's coming after me because I took time away from him.
ENTEN: No. It is far more important.
CAMEROTA: That's hilarious. But, Alayna, doesn't it seem like there are more shark sightings and shark attacks nowadays?
TREENE: Okay, so, I have a personal anecdote here. I grew up going to Cape Cod every summer. And I feel like I was always there during shark week. And it was all exciting. We had shark trackers and whatever, Alisyn, but we never would see a shark. I think in the past several years -- and again, this is based on --
CAMEROTA: No experience. So, what that is about? Aren't there more sightings now?
ENTEN: No, there are not more sightings. They just covered more.
PROKUPECZ: Right.
(CROSSTALK)
That's what I asking you.
TREENE: What about the seals? So, this is the thing in the Cape. The seals -- my grandparents have a little pond in there that connects to the ocean where the seals have been swimming in in the past couple of years and they never have had --
CAMEROTA: It's getting warmer like something has changed.
DIAMOND: Right. That is what I was going to say.
PROKUPECZ: I was just going to say (INAUDIBLE) global warming --
TREENE: -- sharks pushed them inland.
ENTEN: Maybe it is just that seals are trying to make the sharks look bad. That is what I think --
PROKUPECZ: Come on.
ENTEN: No, no. The seals are trying to make the sharks look bad and that is what is going on. I think that's -- we figured it out. We took some of it.
CAMEROTA: Okay. Maybe it is a seal disguised as a shark.
ENTEN: That's right. He went to Party City.
(LAUGHTER)
CAMEROTA: Excellent. All right, thank you all very much, Harry. Up next, "On the Lookout," our reporters tell us what stories they're looking out for on the horizon and the sharks are looking out for on the horizon.
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[23:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: And we are back with our fantastic panel of reporters to tell us what stories they are keeping an eye on. We call it "On the Lookout." Okay, Jeremy?
DIAMOND: Okay, let's come back to what we were talking about before, which is the debt ceiling. Look, President Biden just arrived in Japan for this now truncated foreign trip that he has. But look, the stakes are high in the world stage and the president is going there now, having warned for weeks about what default would do to the United States and also to the U.S.'s reputation internationally.
But it's not just defaults that affects the U.S.'s reputation internationally. It's also just the very threat of default. And that's certainly going to loom over the president's trips.
What I'm looking out for to see is how much does this actually factor in to the president's trip and what kind of a message of reassurance is he going to try and deliver to these allies at the G7 about the United States, about its creditworthiness going forward and, as the president says, the U.S. is not a dead-beat nation, a nation that pays its debts. Can he show that there has been progress to make sure the U.S.'s reputation is not undermined?
CAMEROTA: We will keep an eye on that as well. Thank you for leading us to that. Okay, what are you looking for, Alayna?
TREENE: Well, we are still looking at the return of Senator Dianne Feinstein to the Senate. And it's a tough story. She was out for nearly three months while struggling with chronic shingles. She returned and there has been a lot of questions over whether she is fit to continue serving as a senator.
She's 89 years old. She's had some health issues. There was an incident this week where she was taking questions from reporters and it seemed as if she either stumbled or she mistook that she was gone.
But long story short, there is a big question about whether she should resign, if Democrats in the Senate and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should talk to her about this.
So, it's something we will be following closely. But I will say, a lot of these lawmakers we hear from are saying it's her decision as long as she can continue her work. They hope that she can finish out her term. So, we will keep an eye on that.
CAMEROTA: Okay. Thank you. Shimon?
PROKUPECZ: Well, obviously, it's a story that so many are talking about today, Meghan and a different Harry.
[23:55:03]
ENTEN: Hmm.
PROKUPECZ: Sorry. The more fallout. I think we need to know more about what happened here. I think we will. I think, you know, New York City reporters and the tabloids are going to keep chasing this to try and get more information.
CAMEROTA: Were these New York paparazzi or were they --
PROKUPECZ: I would assume --
CAMEROTA: -- from London or something?
PROKUPECZ: I mean, they could have been. But there -- I've seen some video and it looks like New York because I've been out covering stuff and they look like similar -- you know, people that I've seen. So, I think majority probably were New Yorkers. So, I think more information -- there's some conflicting information at this point. So, I think that is sort of what I am looking for to see more about --
CAMEROTA: Okay, Harry, five seconds.
ENTEN: I would just say tomorrow is no dirty dishes day, which has never been a big problem for me because apparently, I have a wonderful dishwasher. So, I am going to --
PROKUPECZ: Do you eat at home?
ENTEN: I eat at home but I usually eat on plasticware anyway.
PROKUPECZ: He doesn't eat at home. Come on.
ENTEN: But, you know, no dirty dishes --
TREENE: Plasticware?
CAMEROTA: Okay.
ENTEN: No dirty dishes tomorrow, folks. That's what I'm looking forward to.
CAMEROTA: Well, okay, great, Harry. Thank you. You don't leave this building but okay.
PROKUPECZ: Yeah, exactly.
CAMEROTA: Tomorrow on "CNN This Morning," famous chef Guy Fieri on the state of restaurants in America and how food can heal America's divisions. We need to see that. It starts at 6:00 a.m. Eastern.
Thanks so much for washing watching tonight. Our coverage continues now.
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