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Biden to Speak at NATO Summit. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired June 30, 2022 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:31:19]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN's special live coverage of the NATO summit from Madrid, Spain. We are awaiting a news conference from President Biden, just a few minutes from now, following a consequential several days in which the NATO leaders moved toward expanding the alliance's membership. Also bolstering its forces in the east against Russia.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins there in the room where the president will speak.

Kaitlan, accomplishments here in Europe, major challenges at home. What do we expect the president's message to be today?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, this is the last event that President Biden has on his schedule before he does depart back to Washington. But it certainly has been quite a busy two days here at the NATO summit. And, obviously, the biggest takeaway is that NATO has now formally invited Finland and Sweden to join the military alliance, something that has happened much faster even than this administration anticipated would be. They actually weren't expecting that issue to be resolved given Turkey's objections while President Biden was here on the ground, but now it has been and, of course, they are moving on in that process, which is not yet complete.

I think a lot of questions that will be facing President Biden and other world leaders as they are departing this summit is matching the rhetoric from this summit and what they talked about when it came to support for Ukraine, for what happens when they're back at home because they are now four months into this invasion. It does not have an end in sight at this point as you heard the director of national intelligence of the United States say they do expect this to continue to go on for some time. And right now the situation on the ground in Ukraine is still pretty grim.

And so you're seeing leaders here, including the secretary-general at NATO say that their support for Ukraine will go on as long as it takes. And so, of course, these world leaders are each confronting high inflation at home, high consumer prices, potentially fatigue when it comes to the war in Ukraine the longer it goes on, and so those are all issues that they are going to be facing as they return home.

We should note that President Zelenskyy himself raising the idea, the question of why Finland and Sweden are allowed to join NATO but Ukraine, of course, still does not have a clear pathway forward on that front. Those are big questions that still are unanswered, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes, Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much.

And we are back now with our panel as we await the president. Kasie Hunt, Gloria Borger, Evan Osnos.

Clarissa, it does strike me, and we've been talking about this to some degree, is how the security posture in Europe has changed. They discuss Russia not just as a clear and imminent danger, of course, to Ukraine, but to the alliance, to alliance members. I spoke to the Estonian prime minister yesterday. She described the possibility of a Russian attack on Estonia. And that would, therefore, be an attack on the alliance. This is a very different Europe.

CLARISSA WARD: It is a radically different Europe from the Europe that we were in one year ago. And there is a deep irony in the fact that President Putin, literally his objective and intention was to up end the existing security agreement here in Europe. He has succeeded in doing that, but not in the way that he had hoped to. Very much the reverse.

We are seeing a NATO that is more robust, more united, and more muscular than we have seen in quite some time. It was just a few years ago President Macron was saying that NATO was experiencing a sort of brain death I believe was the expression he used. And now you see it 300,000 troops, rapid response force, ready to go, by the beginning of next year. I mean that's a significant achievement.

SCIUTTO: No question.

WARD: However, as we all know, Gloria, Kasie, Evan, that is not the only thing that President Biden is going to be talking about today. He is going to face a lot of questions. And one of the big impacts, of course, of this war, of these sanctions, has been soaring energy prices.

[08:35:01]

Americans are really feeling the pain at the pump. That is a big issue for voters. The U.S. is looking at the specter of a potential recession.

I wonder, Gloria, what do you think President Biden will say today on the economy to offer some reassurance to Americans?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's - you know, he's got to walk this fine line because he understands that his political popularity has tanked at home. He's concerned about it. And I'm told by a White House source that, look, the president is obsessed with gasoline prices, and he understands how this will impact him. He's heading into a midterm election.

I think the president, you see at NATO, is a leader there who feels like he's on terra firma with his fellow leaders at NATO. And folks at the White House have a great deal of pride in the way they say the president has managed to coordinate NATO leaders in terms of Ukraine.

But he understands, when he gets home, he's got - he's got pressures on the economy, he's got pressures even from the left and his own party about what are you going to do about Roe v. Wade. So it's very difficult territory to navigate for him. And how he navigates it is carefully. And I don't know that he can do it successfully. We'll just have to see how he manages it.

SCIUTTO: When you speak about economic challenges, some perspective because the degree of the energy crisis here in Europe is just - it's a different category. In the U.S. it's higher gas prices, that's very real, but they're worried about energy shortages going into winter as Russia uses this in effect as a pressure point, as leverage against the west.

Evan, another headline out of this summit is that for the first time the NATO alliance has, in its strategic concept, its mission statement as it were, China. It mentions China as a challenge going forward. Given your time spent in China and covering China, what's the significance of that for the alliance?

EVAN OSNOS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, this is a big deal. Jim, it's the kind of headline that I think may loom larger in history when historians go back and they talk about this summit. This will be a pivot moment when the western alliance, for the first time, describe what the document calls a strategic partnership between China and Russia to undermine the rules-based international order.

This is a fundamental change from how the alliance originally conceived of its mission. And it's a sign that has both short-term and long-term consequences. Look, in the short-term, they are sending a message to Xi Jinping in Beijing that if you ever imagine that you're going to try to move on Taiwan, to try to take control of that territory, that you can expect to see a much larger international reaction than you might have assumed just a few years ago. You know, you see political turbulence at home in a whole range of countries. You see prime ministers coming and going, obviously questions about America's politics. But this is a pretty clear declaration to the Chinese that the west is watching, and is watching carefully and warily, I think.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WARD: And we already heard a pretty fiery response from China's leadership to the new strategic concept.

I mean, Kasie, we've been talking about some of the domestic issues that are bound to come up in this press conference. It's been a while since President Biden has given one. Of course, abortion is at the sort of forefront of everyone's mind at the moment. The president, you know, has talked openly about his struggle, trying to balance his political views with his personal religious views. He's facing a lot of pressure from many Democrats and progressives who don't think he has been forceful enough on this issue. What do you think we might hear from him today if he's asked about that? KASIE HUNT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes, we sure have. You

know, I think that the tough questions for the president on abortion are about the actual actions that he is willing to take using his executive authority, because you saw him come out after the decision came down and he gave a pretty forceful speech about this. But Democrats, progressives in particular, were pretty quickly angered by what they saw as the lack of a plan from the White House in pushing back on some of these things right out of the gate.

Remember, there was plenty of time to plan for this. I mean this opinion was leaked. We knew that it may go through some smallish changes before it actually was issued, but the writing was really on the wall. And I think where you're hearing and where I'm hearing when I talk to my sources, pushback and frustration among, you know, abortion rights advocates, they're looking at some of the things President Biden could do, like, again, abortions on federal lands. There are some other things that they potentially could do. And the administration is just reluctant. So, I'm interested to see if Biden gets pressed on those details. I think we know what he'll say broadly, but there are some specific questions that our domestic press corps could potentially get into.

[08:40:00]

But let me just circle back also t the China conversation because I think this actually is very interesting from a domestic political perspective as well. And I'm interested to see how the president answers questions on this today because China has become a very salient domestic political issue in the United States around security, but also around manufacturing, labor questions. It's something that Republicans are eager to seize on. And this is actually something that the president can sell as saying, look, I led the NATO alliance to be tough on China. He will talk about that especially when he goes to some of those midwestern states that are going to be critical in the event that he does run for re-election, places like Wisconsin, for example. So, I think it's important to keep an eye on that stuff also.

SCIUTTO: It is notable as well that both Ukraine and China and Russia are -- these are bipartisan issues in the U.S. where you have Republican -- strong Republican and Democratic support for tough stances against Russia, on Ukraine, but also China. That's a place where it brings the parties together. And you might say the European allies, because even as recently as last year, there were European countries that weren't as forward leaning as it relates to China, that the U.S. was pushing them on issues such as 5-G and so on. But, as you see this now in the strategic concept, they've come around.

WARD: I think there was still - they've come around. There was still some argument or discussion, shall we say, spirited discussion about whether to present China as a challenge or a threat or how to categorize that in a nuanced way. Some European countries have been more reluctant, as you say, too sort of put too fine a point on it.

SCIUTTO: YE, and we're worried about antagonizing, certainly.

WARD: Absolutely. SCIUTTO: And there has been some comment today that they do not want to start a war with China. In other words, they're not declaring China an enemy. But they certainly are acknowledging it's a challenge.

Christiane Amanpour also with us today.

Christiane, we have discussed often how Russia believes it can wait the west out, right? That they can weather not just the economic cost, but the personnel losses on the battlefield. What do officials, diplomats say to you? Do they -- are they confident that they're in this, the west, NATO, the U.S. is in this for the long haul?

CHRISTINE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: You know, I have to say, at this moment, yes, if you listen to rhetoric. But it's a question, if you look at the reality. And I've been saying this for the last, you know, this kind of verbal jujitsu. Something has to change if the rhetoric is to actually match the reality because what Putin is doing -- and he's just done it this week as we reported, he's left Moscow for the first time in a long time, certainly since the war. He's gone off talking about being Peter the Great. He's talking about, you know, factoring in everything that the west is throwing at him, and understanding the rules of the road now and deciding he can live with it.

He's going to pull a Syria. That's what he's going to do. And he's going to count on the west not being able or not being willing to actually stick it out to the bitter end. (INAUDIBLE) and as you've (INAUDIBLE) said, he doesn't really are care, like the Ukrainians do, like the west do, about what happens to his own soldiers. It is essentially cannon fodder. They're standing back mostly at long range pounding to rubble Ukrainian towns and villages in the east and consolidating bit by bit, you know, inch by inch.

Yes, there have been counteroffensives. We understand in Kherson and elsewhere, by the Ukrainians. But for them, it's going to be a harder slog the longer this goes on.

And we're already hearing -- and it's just unbelievable that we're hearing this right now - NATO, in the last few minutes, has sent out a presser, according to our Natasha Bertrand there in Madrid, that they are walking back this idea of the 300,000 new forces that are to be deployed as a deterrent force, that the secretary general said earlier this week that this is what's going to happen.

Now we're hearing that actually that might have caught NATO and that perhaps it's (INAUDIBLE) more aspirational than actual (INAUDIBLE) furthermore (INAUDIBLE) these 300,000 may not be actually (INAUDIBLE) countries, but will (INAUDIBLE) remain in home (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: Yes.

AMANPOUR: May not be actually deployed to various countries, but will remain in home countries.

SCIUTTO: Yes. AMANPOUR: The fact of the matter is, that since the beginning of this war, as you know, Jim, many retired commanders, many certainly European and American generals said that the current formulation and deployment of NATO, which is some 40,000 in the NATO states around the borders, is simply not an adequate deterrent to Putin. So, unless they're going to get serious about that, you know, that - that's also a question.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

AMANPOUR: So, we're really waiting to see whether all this lofty talk, you know, becomes a reality. And the test is Ukraine. If Ukraine loses, all of this lofty talk is for nothing.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

[08:45:03]

WARD: And that's exactly -- you know, you touch on such an important point there. When you've been talking to the Baltic states, the Estonian prime minister, this is their big concern.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WARD: This trip wire that had been the sort of existing policy, whereby a country would almost be overrun before NATO would come in.

SCIUTTO: Yes. She said wiped off the map.

WARD: Wiped off the map.

SCIUTTO: The defense plan is to let them be invaded and then take them back.

WARD: And the counterargument from NATO has been, the capacity isn't there yet to move troops into these areas. The barracks aren't there. There isn't enough space to do the kind of maneuvers and training that we would need to do.

But for the Baltic states, I don't know, how much more confident are they feeling now?

SCIUTTO: The word was cautiously optimistic when I pressed her on that, is NATO making the changes necessary to give them comfort, the Estonians, the other Baltics, confident that they would be defended, could stand up to invasion. Cautiously optimistic, not quite convinced.

WARD: Not quite convinced.

And I think the other thing, you know, dove tailing with what Christiane was saying about Putin being ready for a long war is the idea of understanding what the Russian approach and understanding of this war is.

AMANPOUR: Jim. SCIUTTO: Yes.

WARD: Russia sees itself as being in an historical moment -

AMANPOUR: I wanted to jump in.

WARD: And continuing the sort of 1940s, second world war fight against Nazism. They are being pounded with propaganda, day in and day out. And so Vladimir Putin just simply doesn't have that same responsibility to his voters to try to give deliverables. He can't afford to keep this going.

SCIUTTO: As the reincarnation of Peter the Great, I think, you were saying.

Christiane, sorry, I know you wanted to pipe in.

AMANPOUR: No, no, just because it's so important what you're just discussing right now. The idea that the perfect should be the enemy of the good, that, you know, yes, it does take a long time to move forces.

But, look, I covered the Gulf War, right, the first Gulf War. Within four to five months, the United States assembled a coalition of 500,000 troops from all its allies, and regional countries in the Saudi desert. Can you imagine the logistics it took to get them all from Europe and the U.S., on aircraft carriers and the like, into the Saudi desert?

OK, they weren't permanent structures, but they were heavy weaponry, there was armored columns, there were 500,000 troops to face down Saddam Hussein. A little itty-bitty threat given what we know Russia is capable of.

So, the idea that they cannot stop moving, these forces, to where they're needed right now, strikes many in the military world as somewhat self-defeating. It is true that over the last many years western nations have reduced their military budgets and have thought that these kinds of threats, these kind of land wars in the heart of Europe were a thing of the past and therefore have somewhat dangerously, you know, shot themselves in the foot, to coin a not very clever phrase.

But the fact is, they can actually and they could actually do it if they needed to and if they're convinced or other if they need to, you know, send Putin a message, they need to start doing it.

WARD: So then I guess the question becomes, Evan, you know, if it's - if it's all possible, which it, you know, appears to be, to what extent does the political will go? At what point do Americans start to feel fatigue, stop feeling as willing to engage with this war when they're facing all these issues in terms of inflation and rising food prices and rising energy prices and the gas pump. And because you have President Putin willing to weaponize fuel, willing to weaponize food, at what extent, you know, to what extent does the American political will go? OSNOS: Yes, that's - that's one of the themes that I think comes out

if you listen to comments we've been talking about over the last few minutes is the question of will. You know, how long is the American will last? And it's interesting to think about Joe Biden's own experience here.

Look, he came to Washington shortly after Watergate, when this country was in the grip of dealing with - it's -- the first threat to democracy that we've had in the last 40 or 50 years, then, of course, he lived through the oil crisis in the 1970s, and this was all happening in the depths of the cold war. So, in some ways he has dealt with this question of how do you keep the American public focused, motivated. And it doesn't always work.

Look, the blunt reality is that the political weight, the pressures of the things that we've been talking about are accumulating over time. Christiane makes an essential point, which is, these problems are going to get harder. They're not going to get easier the longer they go on.

But I think there's one thing here that is also worth pointing out, which is that there is a natural pairing of the message he's talking about at home, and the message he's talking about abroad, which is the threat fundamentally to democracy. And when he is faced, as he almost certainly will today, with questions about this mounting evidence that has come out in the January 6th hearings about the threat to American democracy, I would not expect him to talk about putting a - putting is hand into the process. He's very much going to leave that to the Department of Justice.

[08:50:15]

But it is an opportunity for him to remind people that the process that we have in this country about sorting through the threat to democracy, the threat to freedom, is essential to us having the credibility to be able to look to our European allies and mount a serious challenge to Russian authoritarians.

SCIUTTO: I will tell you that eyes here in Madrid were watching those hearings. They're aware of the events there and European officials have said to me, for months, that they worry about the long-term stability of the U.S. political system. It's a genuine - a genuine fear, a genuine concern.

We are waiting, we're told it's just moments away, from President Biden giving his press conference as we end -- as he ends a five-day trip to Europe and two days here in Madrid for the NATO summit.

There's the podium there. Our Kaitlan Collins is in the room. The moment it starts, we're going to jump right in.

Kasie, as we wait for the president here, you can say -- we were talking about political will.

HUNT: Yes. SCIUTTO: Officials here in Madrid will say they've demonstrated will in the alliance by doing things like adding two new members, right? That was not a guarantee at this summit. Turkish opposition was real. They reached an agreement. They are putting perhaps not as many forces on high alert as advertised, but they are putting far more forces on the eastern flank. The alliance, at least, is demonstrating will.

HUNT: They absolutely are, Jim. And I think that this is something that President Biden can point to as a significant development that he will likely say he played a key role in making sure that it happened. Because as you point out, I mean this was far from assured. This did take behind the scenes effort. It did take a deal-making to get us to this point. And there's no question that the U.S. president played a significant role in that.

And, again, I think that there was a lot of conversation here in the states as we was going off on this trip that, you know, domestic considerations were basically going to overwhelm what was going on overseas because we had had a lot, obviously, unfolding in Washington and elsewhere.

But I think the reality is, this gives the president an opportunity to stand on the international stage and refocus American attention in places where he actually potentially has some political wins, right, from the perspective of people back home. And as we've been discussing pretty in-depth, he's got a lot -- you know, the cards are pretty stacked against Joe Biden right now at home. He basically has his hands tied. He can't do very much about the economy. All he can do is basically talk about it. He's got to leave it up to the Federal Reserve. They don't have a lot of tools in their toolbox to deal with this.

But, this gives an opportunity to highlight the reasons for why Americans are feeling some of that pain. And it is a lot easier to actually be able to show and say, you know, this is the reason Vladimir Putin is doing these things, these are why gas prices are high, than it is to do that when you're back home at the White House.

WARD: I don't know if that was some kind of a warning.

SCIUTTO: A warning perhaps? A two-minute warning? We - again, we're still watching for the president's arrival there. And we will cut in once he begins.

WARD: One thing I think that's interesting, you know, we're talking a lot about the challenges that President Biden is facing at home domestically with his political agenda. But it's not only President Biden who is facing these challenges. President Macron of France just lost his parliamentary majority.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

WARD: President -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing, you know, huge challenges back in the U.K.

SCIUTTO: (INAUDIBLE). WARD: I wonder, Christiane, if you have been hearing quietly sort of murmurs or concerns that not just the U.S., but that other key European nations that are sort of linchpins of NATO will be struggling to turn that rhetoric into reality, as you said.

AMANPOUR: Well, look, in a way, yes. I mean, on the -- you mentioned Boris Johnson here in the U.K. Of course he has massive domestic problems, but he's actually used the Ukraine war to try to shield himself and insulate himself as, you know, a warrior for what's right internationally. You know, he's called it a -- I think he called it a Churchill moment or a 1937 moment. At least some of his government people are saying that.

And today the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said that they were pledging more than a billion new pounds in military assistance to Ukraine with this precise view to enabling Ukraine to push the Russians back even from territory that Russia gained in 2014. And I'm not sure that is an aim that most governments have or whether it's even possible at this particular moment.

Macron himself is being criticized actually, yes, he's got less of a majority, as you say, in the French national assembly, but he's also being criticized along with the German chancellor for being jolly slow, making a lot of promises and not delivering the kind of heavy weaponry that the Ukrainians need.

[08:55:09]

Furthermore, the Lithuanians, and you guys have been talking about the Baltics and their trip wire fears about being gobbled up, the Lithuanians have been saying that Macron is making them very nervous by talking publicly about eventually having to reintegrate Putin into the European security architecture. They don't like the sound of that one little bit. And it's not clear whether Macron has changed that opinion. But that certainly, as we all remember, what he said, you know, a few - a few weeks ago.

So, there is, you know, there are differing nuances coming out of various different capitols (ph).

SCIUTTO: Yes.

AMANPOUR: But then again, when you talk to the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU said, we are in this for as long as it takes to make sure Russia is defeated.

You know, the big sort of overarching, sort of, you know, NATO/EU/U.S. says the right things. The question is, can you keep everybody on side.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

AMANPOUR: And, crucially, are those heavy weaponry systems going to get there?

SCIUTTO: Well, three months ago, I think no one would have expected Finland and Sweden to join the NATO alliance. A -- something they'd avoided for decades, right? Finland maintaining that neutrality.

WARD: Right

SCIUTTO: Their view of Russia changed after this invasion. And the alliance is expanding as a result.

We have been given a couple minutes to go, a two-minute warning. There is the president.

Let's listen in.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you. If you have a seat, please sit down. I think someone else walked in the room.

Thank you very much for taking the time to be here.

I think we can all agree that this has been a historic NATO summit. Some of the folks who have been covering me for a while, about a year and a half ago, when the first G-7 meeting took place in England, I talked about the need for us to reconsider the makeup of NATO, how it functioned, and come up with a different strategy for the - for NATO and how we work together. And in addition to that, we also talked about the G-7 taking on additional responsibilities.

Before the war started, I told Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, NATO would not only get stronger, but would get more united. And we would see democracies in the world stand up and oppose his aggression and defend the rules-based order. And that's exactly what we're seeing today.

This summit was about strengthening our alliance, meeting the challenges of our world as it is today, and the threats we're going to face in the future.

The last time NATO drafted a new mission statement was 12 years ago. At that time, it characterized Russia as a partner, and it didn't even mention China.

The world has changed. Changed a great deal since then. And NATO is changing as well.

At this summit, we rallied our alliances to meet both the direct threats that Russia poses to Europe and the systemic challenges that China poses to a rules-based world order. And we've invited two new members to join NATO. It was a historic act, Finland and Sweden, two countries with a long tradition of neutrality, and choosing to join NATO. Some in the American press will remember when I got a phone call from the leader of Finland saying could he come and see me. And he came the next day and said, will you support my joining -- my country joining NATO. We got on the telephone. He suggested we call the leader of Switzerland --Switzerland, my goodness, I'm getting really anxious here about expanding NATO - no, Sweden. And what happened was, we got on the phone and she asked if she could come the next day, to want to talk about joining NATO. Allies across the board are stepping up, increasing defense spending.

A majority of them are on track for the first time to exceed our 2 percent of GDP commitment that they make. They agreed to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense.

Look, for example, Germany, Germany has committed to spending 2 percent going forward and announced a special fund for its military of more than $100 billion. Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands have announced they will also meet their 2 percent commitments. Poland, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania are doing more than 2.5 percent, some as high as 3 percent.

[09:00:02]

Together to deploy more assets and capabilities to bolster our alliances across all domains, land, air, sea.