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tv   Face the Nation  CBS  February 19, 2024 3:00am-3:30am PST

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welcome back to "face the nation." we go now to congressman jim clyburn in santee, south carolina. congressman, good morning. thanks for being here. we appreciate it. >> thank you very much for having me. >> congressman, you are a long-time confidant of president biden. when you look at his re-election campaign right now, you're optimistic, i know, but what's your biggest concern? what keeps you up at night politically? >> well the thing that keeps me wide awake are the
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misinformation efforts that are under way throughout this campaign. i've heard so much, heard from people, sharing with me things that just aren't true. so much from people that seem to feel that everything they see or hear via the internet, has some substance to them. so that's the thing that keeps me up. whether or not we're going to have a campaign for the presidency free of all these interruptions and all of the misinformation. >> what specifically are you speaking about? >> well, we remember what happened up in new hampshire when people using ai replicated the voice of joe biden and put things out over the air that were not true. we've already seen some of that taking place here in south carolina regarding the republican primary and inviting democrats into the primary,
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saying things over the air that just are not true. >> you worry about how information is received by voters, how they understand this campaign. what about turnout? you've seen how the biden administration's support for israel, and its war with hamas has sparked protests at events across the country. are you concerned that democratic turnout could be soft among voters and others becaus of the biden administration's position on that issue? >> i'm concerned about the issue like everybody else is. i'm concerned about what's going on in russia, and i think all of that is part and parcel of the same thing. of course we're hearing from a lot of people who are concerned about what is happening currently with the leadership in russia, with what's going on with the ukraine war, what's going on in israel, the gaza
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strip. all of these are big concerns that all of us, but when you have these concerns, you're looking for people who can lead us through this stuff. nobody is better equipped to do that than joe biden. he has the experience. he has the wisdom. he has the demeanor. he has the relationships. he has what it takes to get this country to where it needs to be and to maintain the relationships we need to have with our allies around the world. that you're not going to find on the other side of the aisle. >> you said he should stay steady with u.s. allies. when it comes to israel should he stick with his position on prime minister netanyahu or perhaps rethink that relationship? >> i'm not sure we know what that relationship is with netanyahu. i've talked to the president about this. of course, he is not going to be public with everything he says to netanyahu. i know this, he feels about the way i feel when it comes to
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netanyahu. his leadership is not good for israel. we stand firmly with the people of israel, but i've always had a real problem with netanyahu and that continues to be today. >> you say you have a problem with netanyahu. the israeli prime minister. you say you've spoken to the president privately about this. does he have a problem with netanyahu? >> i've shared with the president about what my feelings are about netanyahu. he is going to develop his own feelings about that. >> but does he agree or disagree with your assessment, congressman? >> he's accepted my assessment. i have not asked him whether or not he agreed with me. i just let him know, this is the way i feel. i'm not running the country. you do what you feel is in the best interest of the country. >> you famously told then candidate biden in 2020 he should nominate a black woman to the supreme court. it helped him get your
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endorsement and win over many black voters. what does president biden need to do to make sure black voters come out in the same way they did for him in 2020? does he need to do anything specifically and does he need to make a new pledge and what should that be if so? >> he should continue to manage the country the way he has managed it. he made that pledge and it was a timely pledge because all of us know what history of the country is and up to that point there had been five women on the supreme court and not a single time had an african american woman been seriously considered. i thought that's what needed to be done in that particular instance. no, i would say to him, keep doing what you're doing. >> congressman, you are running for re-election but leaving the democratic leadership. you're 83 years old. president biden is 81. how should he handle the issue of question of age in the coming months? >> emphasize your experience, emphasize the wisdom, maintain your connections with folks. i'm on my way to new york this
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evening. i wish the weather were different up there but i'm going. i will be in pennsylvania very soon, north carolina, and georgia, carrying this president's message of experience of a steady hand, of maintaining our trek toward a more perfect union, doing the things that ares an necessary t maintain our relationships around the world. i am fond of saying this is a great country. no need of being made great. we have to figure out ways to make the country's greatness accessible and affordable for all of our citizens and joe biden is doing that and we have got to stay focused on that. >> congressman jim clyburn, thank you. we appreciate it. we'll be right back. this is its when we find out... (luke) hey, quick question. student body math proficiency, would we say it's good? fair? satisfactory? (player 1) what? (luke) like a percentage, if you had to guess. (players) hey, get out of here man. get off the field. (luke) understood.
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a presidential hisser to kwan and the author of "the unfinished presidency" and amie parnes, a national political reporter her book co-authored with john allen "lucky" chronicles president biden's 2020 campaign. it's great to have both of you here. i love reflecting on the presidency presidents' day weekend. we'll begin with you, you are close with former president jimmy carter and written a book about his unfinished presidency after he left the white house. he's down in plains and it's a year ago today former president carter entered hospice care and a year later he is still with us. tell us about what you know from the carter family, how he's doing. it's a tough year. and what his presidency means. >> it is tough when you're 99, but carter has a lot of will. he's alert and eating and has ability to understand what's going on around him. i'm hoping he makes it until october 1st, 2024, so we have
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jimmy carter at 100 years old and we can celebrate. he's kind of beat cancer before, but he's focused on eradication of guinea worms. used to ravage over 20 african countries. they're close to doing away with that horrible disease, and he still has a cognizant about that. as for who he is, looking better and better every day in history and you pull back history and look at the camp david peace accord, look at what we have now. environmental front, he put as much land as the state of alaska -- of california aside in alaska and that's only going to grow when climate all that he saved. he injected human rights into our diplomatic par lance. he's the person to recognize the people's republic of china, not
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nixon officially. the pan na mall canal treaty. the list goes on and own. created fema, department of energy, super fund sites. on paper you look at this saying it's a remarkable one-term president who, by the way, is going out with the love of the world, a nobel peace prize and his int intact. >> and amie, as faulkner said, the past is never past. you think about president joe biden who you have covered so closely. he endorsed jimmy carter in 1976 when carter ran for president. he's been to plains to visit with the former president and the late first lady rosalynn carter. there was something about carter always feeling misunderstood by official washington and biden, a long-time insider in washington, you sense from the biden people these days a sense he is misunderstood. >> definitely. when doug was talking about one term i think that is a line that is scaring a lot of people inside biden world right now and
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scaring a lot of democrats because they think he could possibly go down that carter path and he could be a one-term president and that is driving the campaign right now and the white house to prevent him from becoming that. you're seeing that. there is this worry when you talk to people and they're being candid with you and they tell you what's really going on, there is a worry they see what's happening in the polls. biden himself is becoming frustrated with what is happening, and you see that they're trying -- they're looking at the polls saying okay, what can we do better? how can we communicate our strategy more effectively? because i think they know when they're being candid with you, they have failed. >> when you look at the biden campaign it's not only president joe biden, it's vice president kamala harris. what's her role in the coming year as this campaign heats up? >> well, first off, it really looks like it's going to be biden-harris and you're reading all these people saying biden is going drop out.
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i don't believe it for a minute, certainly not until june. joe biden is going to collect the delegates and own the democratic party and hopefully he'll go on with kamala harris. now if biden had to drop out for some reason, i would say poll numbers hitting 22%. then they would have to probably turn to kamala harris unless they were going to do something at the convention like with the michelle obama ticket as some sort of surprise that's pie in the sky. >> very pie in the sky. i've noticed, doug, jill biden, the first lady has been out front working with the president, urging supporters to rally behind him. do you believe she's a vital part of the campaign? >> she is the vital part. dr. jill biden is it. if you go back to 1952, harry tr truman could have run, and he didn't. why is this the korean war and other reasons. but bess wanted to go back to independence. she didn't like it in
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washington. cut to '68, linden johnson quit in march of '68 and people say because of walt cronkite. no. the big thing his health wasd, high blood pressure, tension, and lady bird johnson didn't want to stay. let's go back to texas and convinced johnson to step down. the truman, give me a two, truman could have stayed on and johnson and both said no because their wives, their spouse, said enough. that's not the case with jill biden. she likes power. she wants to stay. she wants some sense of -- she teaches in virginia college. this around our building here is her home and the idea of relinquishing it all after you've taking the slings and arrows of the last arrows of attacks and when you get all the
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delegates i'm going to open it up to a bunch of people, it's childish when you read those kind of reports. >> i see no reporting that that's going to happen. >> no. i don't think he would ever, ever, he feels that he is the most capable person of beating trump. he said it publicly and privately to former president barack obama, said it to countless people. he thinks he's the only one in the game that can do this and points to 2020 and even dating back to 2016. he actually had beef with hillary clinton for a while because he thought, you know, if he would have run instead, he could have beaten donald trump. and here we are in this, he thinks in this whole mess. his problem is right now that he's going to have to counter all of these polls that say that, you know, people don't have confidence in him anymore. when you see polls from 2020, he was supposed to be the guy who united the country, who was there to bring everyone together, who was the -- he talked about the soul of the nation. and a lot of people look around, they look at their bank accounts
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and they say, look, i'm still not feeling, i'm not feeling great about things. i think that the country has become more divisive. i think he might pay the price for that. >> i hear from my sources close to president biden that he's so frustrated behind the scenes because he will point to economic data even if people feel inflationary pain, he knows they might be unhappy with the economy but points to the stock market and other data factors and says things are going well, things are getting better, and he's frustrated about the media talking about his age. how is that frustration playing out behind the scenes? >> it is. he's very frustrated according to people i'm talking to and all those reports are true. he's increasingly saying we have done so much, look how much we've accomplished. why isn't this out there more. that's what i was talking about, when you talk about a communication strategy, he is having a communications problem and that is what they're going to have to figure out quickly. >> doug, you've written
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extensively about former president ronald reagan. listening to senator lindsey graham, you hear the tension now in the gop when it comes to foreign policy. is this reagan's party at all anymore? is it all now in the imprint of trump, especially when it comes to issues like putin, russia, foreign affairs, ukraine? >> it's trump's foreign policy. the days of reagan are over. reagan has more in common with bill clinton's presidency or barack obama's. ronald reagan always despised russia and the soviet union because he saw it as totalitarian. he bet on that as a governor in the 1960s, giving speeches, democracy will prevail. famously went and gave his speech at normandy, peggy noonan speech, among others over there and said we liberated the first half in world war ii of europe and now we have to liberate the second half. the breakup of the soviet union
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happened under bush 41 in 1991, that's the kind of thing ronald reagan loved and reagan would be ill and his former great secretary of state george shultz to see this militarization and space that russia is trying to do to come up with new satellites and nuclear things. reagan and schultz wanted to start reducing nuclear weapons in the world, not increase them. >> foreign policy also an issue for president biden. i remember he would be up on capitol hill in recent decades covering him when he was chairman of the senate foreign relations committee. now focused on ukraine and the middle east. you heard from congressman clyburn, i asked about the protests at some of these democratic events about the biden administration's support for israel in its war with gaza. how do your sources think about foreign policy especially with what's going on in israel as they try to galvanize their own coalition? >> that's the problem and
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question. they're trying to walk this tightrope, if you will, because they have to appease the base. the base is not happy. they know they're not happy. you see him slowly walking back. he was very, very deferential to israel in the early days of the war. you're seeing it less and less. he is going have to explain and talk to the people more about what is happening. i still don't think this will come down to foreign policy, that this election is about foreign policy. it's not 2004. i think that it will come down to the economy and maybe immigration and abortion as to kind of subsequent issues, but i think the economy is what is really, really going to drive the selection in voters and apathy. if they are feeling like no one understand them f they're feeling like they can't relate to either side, there is the fear they could stay home or they could vote for a third party and that should be also what's worrying democrats right now. >> quickly, they're keeping an eye on robert f. kennedy jr. and
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cornell west and independent candidacies at the white house? >> they are. they look at what happened in 2016 how jill stein wrecked this for hillary clinton. she was one of the reasons, obviously. they are worried and should be because people are so indifference is a huge story line in this election. the players are two people we know they're baked in, people know about them, the polls say what they're going to say. i don't know if it's going to change that much. >> doug, finally, i was on the streets of new york this week not walking around, covering former president trump and his legal challenges in manhattan. step back as a historian. to have trump facing a hush money criminal trial starting in march, paying potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in a civil fraud case, two looming federal trials on the horizon, also georgia. we've never seeing anything like this. i know unprecedented seems like we use that word all the time. we have not seen that.
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>> we have not. makes spag knew's look quaint. dean doing a little jail time over a bungled third rate burglary look quaint. this is somebody, a donald trump, who has been a predatory capitalist getting money wherever he can and making up products, elevating his own self-worth. what does it remind one of? another american tradition, gangsters and cons in the sense that we elevate them. you go to chicago you don't hear the stories of the great politicians of that era. you hear about al capone and, you know, dillinger in the west, billy the kid, kind of an outlaw president and ex-president and our country a lot in the country like that. >> trump denies any wrongdoing in all of those case. douglas brinkley and amie parnes, we appreciate it. we'll be back in a moment.
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a celebration last week in kansas city that was meant to mark the chiefs win in the super bowl took a horrifying turn when a burst of gunfire killed one
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person and injured nearly two dozen others. our mark strassmann has more. >> reporter: gounshots, panic o paraded in kansas city. a super bowl situation hijacked. another american moment shattered. >> i was crying a lot. >> you had to be terrified. >> i was terrified. >> reporter: with today's gun violence there is no sacred space. inside this mega clutch last sunday, a woman stormed in firing an ar-15, shot and killed by off-duty police officers after a running gun battle. >> it's scary. >> reporter: on average, more tan 325 americans are shot every day. last year, saw 656 mass shootings defined as four or more victims. >> travel the world and feel a lot safer there than i did in my own city. >> reporter: bullet by bullet,
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gun violence grasps on to every stresses. >> people are experiencing trauma. >> reporter: dr. evans, ceo of the american psychological association. >> how significant is this stress? >> we have about a third of people in the country who are saying that their behavior has changed because of mass shootings. >> reporter: right after mass shootings, evans says 75% of americans report significant stress, and that parents of young children especially have concerns about their kid's safety. >> when you're talking about churches and synagogues and shopping malls, we have less of an ability to distance and that has a different kind of impact on us. >> reporter: on the polarizing issue of guns a majority, 56%, favor more restrictions according to gallup. >> i'm a gun owner. it should be, you know, harder for certain individuals to obtain a gun. >> reporter: owning guns makes millions feel more in control, but with gun violence, anxiety climbs because people feel they've lost control.
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>> why haven't i got shot, i don't know. >> reporter: guns in crowds have become a new american anxiety. kansas city a reminder of denver's nba championship parade last year when two people were shot. >> people just can't go buy a gun or assault rifle and go kill people. how many more people have to die before we change that? >> we'll be right back. plishmen♪ ♪concerns of getting screened faded away♪ ♪to my astonishment.♪ ♪my doc gave me a script i got it done without a delay.♪ ♪i screened with cologuard and did it my way.♪ cologuard is a one-of-a-kind way to screen for colon cancer that's effective and non-invasive. it's for people 45 plus at average risk, not high risk. false positive and negative results may occur. ask your provider for cologuard. ♪i did it my way!♪ (luke) this will be a gold mine of local intel. just you wait. ask your provider for cologuard. (marci) right. so, tell us about this corn festival? (stylist 1) oooh you got your corn pudding... you got your corn chowder... (marci) so... is it safe around here?
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>> announcer: this is the "cbs overnight news." good evening and thanks for joining us. tonight flags in minnesota have been lowered to half staff honoring two police officers and a paramedic shot and killed today. it happened after an hours-long standoff with a gunman in the minneapolis suburb of burnsville after a domestic abuse call. another officer was wounded. governor tim walz called it, quote, horrific, adding "we must