good morning. thursday, march 11th, 5 a.m. exactly in new york. i am christine romans. president biden gives his first primetime address to the nation tonight. the american rescue plan becomes law when he signs it tomorrow. he calls the measure a historic victory for the american people. there are stimulus checks, unemployment help, tax credits to lift children out of poverty. money for schools, states and local governments. support for schools and small businesses. more, help with rent, money for vaccines, internet for kids stuck with remote learning. bottom line, a lot of help for the poorest americans. biden is now armed with his first major legislative achievement. cnn has new information about what we will hear from the president tonight. our congressional reporter daniella diaz is live. good morning, daniella. now the president taking this on the road. reporter: that s right, laura. president biden is going to talk to americans directly tonight in the primetime ad
honor the more than 529,000 people who have lost their lives to covid-19. and address the sacrifices that americans, that all of us have made during this pandemic while recognizing how it has very much changed our lives. that is right. president biden is also expected to tout what just passed and that is his $1.9 trillion covid stimulus package known as the american rescue plan. largely popular with the american people. but it passed only along party lines. there was not a single republican in either chamber that supported the bill. the president will sign it into law tomorrow and then he s going to pennsylvania next week to sell it to the american people. so let s begin at the white house with our john harwood. good morning to you, john. what have you learned in terms of the tone we re going to hear from the president tonight? reporter: well, poppy, pretty consistently president biden has struck a very sober tone about this pandemic, honoring the sacrifice of people, spe
more than 529,000 americans have died, the highest death toll of any nation in the world and nearly 2,000 people in the united states are still dying each day. this isn t over. and the numbers don t tell the whole story. it is the lives interrupted, the families suddenly broken, so many people left to die and grief alone that really hit that does hit the hardest and cannot be forgotten. mothers and fathers and brothers, sisters and friends and coworkers, so many taken too soon. i know i m going to remember michelle, a nurse whose brother-in-law, sister-in-law and mother in law were all admitted to her hospital and she was the only person able to hold her mother-in-law edna s hand as she passed. unlike in a normal circumstance where you would be together gathering as a family, we ve all had to work through this separately. and there is also danielle lopez whose uncle was killed by the virus last summer. it just i m sorry, i m trying to even process that all that th
to socially distance but recognize that they need to point forward with the vaccines coming online, numbers dropping and less deaths. the president will talk about that. emphasis most certainly on what he s about to sign in a few minutes. keep an eye on, also, the administration launching into a blitz to sell and message this proposal. importance in their minds what this $1.9 trillion brings to the table. the president they announced yesterday will make a trip to pennsylvania tuesday and next week the president and vice president will be heading to georgia as part of the effort to talk about this profeposal. why does it matter? georgia and the two democrat whose hailed from that state because of runoffs, $ 1.9 trillion wouldn t have been possible. because of this, the president is able to sign his cornerstone proposal. phil mattingly, thank you. covering the white house for us. it is remarkable for president biden to be signing such a sweeping piece of legislation just seve
states senate today, senate majority leader chuck schumer is going to join us. and rachel, this new information tonight, the new tape of donald trump making a call to georgia to an election official, this one before christmas. so earlier than the one that we already heard is just such stunning additional information about what was clearly an ongoing campaign to try to change the result of that election. and as you point out, he seems to cross the legal line repeatedly in these phone calls. and it also fills in some of the pieces about who was involved in this campaign and what the pattern of corrupting events were. and this may be a racketeering investigation in georgia based on actions and statements from that district attorney s office. but the white house chief of staff really did turn up bodily in person surprised at the audit in georgia when they were auditing the absentee ballots in cobb county. he showed up in person and then the next day he apparently told the presi