thing. teambeans.shop. i'll tweet out the link. if you want this hat, make me an offer. thank you for watching tonight. let's get to the big show. "cnn tonight" with the big show "cnn tonight" with the big show d. lemon. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com a wore this today. i wore this one as well. this is scott beagle. he died in the marjory stoneman douglas school shooting. so, the mask makes us remember covid. and this for really amazing colleague and his entire family, team beans. i went there today. so, make sure everybody, you go there, you support it and it goes to supporting cancer foundation. and not one more child should have to deal with this. not one more family should have to deal with it. >> kids are going to lose but we can make a difference. the reason we did it, we care about our own always. but andrew and his wife, special people who fought a hell of a fight and really did it in an inspirational way. i've never seen people -- and they're young too. i've never seen people come together around their kid any better than they did and made all of us love them and beans. if you want it, make me an offer. highest offer will get the hat and everything i offer on the show. this is an emotional time. we all lived through such horrors this last year. everybody lost something or someone. and now we're trying to figure out how to mark life going forward wlrks the loss is permanent as it was with beans, or temporary like with me with the long haul thing. my daughter turns 18 tomorrow, by biggest one. >> oh, yeah. >> it makes you think. everybody says it went by in a blink. no, it didn't. no, it didn't. 18 years is a lot of time, and it makes us all remember what life is about and what you leave and what your legacy is and how you take care of each other. the president hit those notes tonight and it's right that he did. >> if you talk about compassion, someone who knows compassion, someone who has suffered as much loss as joe biden before he was president his first time in the white house as vice president, he lost two children. he lost his wife. and you could feel in his speech tonight the compassion that he had, that he has, and i think for the time that we're in right now with the -- with covid, with people suffering so many losses, with just what's happening in the country the right person, the right time at the moment. that's not political. that's coming from a place of the heart, a compassionate place of the heart. i've got to tell you we're thinking about everybody who has suffered from covid, all the losses we've had. chris, i love you. i'll see you tomorrow night. >> i love you don lemon, especially tonight. >> team beans. make sure you go to the site and check it out. this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. thank you so much for joining. so, we have breaking news, okay. i think it is fair to say, and i think you'll agree, most of you, the country is at a turning point tonight. and the president of the united states speaking to the american people in his first prime time address on where we stand after a year of covid. it has been a long, torturous year. don't you think? a long year. think about everything we've gone through, the quarantine, the lockdown, the misinformation, the crazy statements, the fighting of the masks, all of that. but right now where we are, this president is promising every one of us -- every adult will be eligible for a vaccine no later than mae 1st, urging americans not to let masks divide us, condemning hate crimes against asian-americans as wrong and un-american and demanding they stop. >> too often we've turned against one another. a mask, the easiest thing to do to save lives, sometimes it divides us. states pitted against one another instead of working with each other. vicious hate crimes against asian-americans who have been attacked, harassed, blamed and scapegoated. at this very moment so many of them, our fellow americans, they're on the frontlines of this pandemic trying to save lives. and still -- still -- they are forced to live in fear for their lives just walking down streets in america. it's wrong. it's un-american. and it must stop. >> compare that to the racist names for the pandemic that the other president called this virus. none of that tonight -- none of it, not a trace. ah, how refreshing, how human, how compassionate, how american. president biden acknowledging it won't be easy, saying, i need you to get vaccinated and wear masks to get us to something close to normal by the fourth of july. >> i promise i will do everything in my power. i will not relent until we beat this virus. but i need you, the american people. i need you. i need every american to do their part. that's not hyperbole. i need you. i need you to get vaccinated when it's your turn and when you can find an opportunity and to help your family, your friends, your neighbors get vaccinated as well because here's the point. if we do all this, if we do our part, if we do this together by july 4th, there's a good chance you, your family and friends will be able to get together in your backyard in your neighborhood and have a cookout and barbecue and celebrate independence day. >> what the president is saying is help is on the way. that's how the preacher says it on sunday morning, right? help is on the way. come on, everybody! help the on the way if you just do your part, right? there was no, i alone can fix this. no, no, no, no, no, no, no. no, i know better than the generals. how about we're all in this together. i need your help. we're all americans. woo! h hallelujah. how different is that? how different from the me, me, me, me, me, me. me, me, me that we heard for four years. i need you. now the president has to deliver though on those promises and on the monumental covid relief bill that he signed just today. all that as we mark one year of covid. a year like nothing we have ever seen really in most of our lifetimes in this country, nothing. the deadliest year in the recorded history of the united states. think about that. the deadliest year in the recorded history of the united states, a year of covid and a year of lessons about leadership. exactly one year ago the then-president of the united states said this. >> the vast majority of americans, the risk is very, very low. >> now here we are after a year of denial, of down playing the virus, of saying it would just go away like magic, saying we could inject disinfectant. after a year of lies that cost the lives of more than 530,000 americans. we can never ever, ever forget those who we lost. but as president biden is keeping his promise to make covid relief his first priority, the gop or the gqp is completely failing to meet the moment. republicans are hard at work trying to disenfranchise americans is a voter suppression effort, the likes of which we have not seen since jim crow. there are more than 250 bills nationwide to roll back voter access, 24 of them in arizona alone since january. one arizona republican is really -- he is taking saying the quiet part out louds to new heights or maybe -- probably better new depths. his name is john kavanaugh. he's a republican in the state house putting it all out in the open here. he says, quote, everybody shouldn't be voting. i'll say that again. he says, everybody shouldn't be voting. not everybody wants to vote. and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they're totally uninformed on the issues. quantity is important but we have to look at the quality of votes as well. can you believe it? he actually said that out loud. now you know the thinking. everybody shouldn't be voting. like when voters had to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, like that kind of stuff? like when black folks were turned away? like that kind of stuff? like poll taxes. you know -- you are know what i'm talking about. suppression! you know, like, when literacy tests were used to keep people of color and sometimes poor whites from casting ballots. what he is saying is the definition of voter suppression because you know why? everybody should be voting. that is the american way. that is the foundation of our democracy. free, free, free and fair elections. not quality of votes. free and fair. if you care about democracy, then you want everybody to vote. everybody is equal. come on. everyone is equal under the law. not the quality of this person's vote is better than the quality of this person's vote because it doesn't -- that's not how our democracy works. as joe biden vows to open up vaccines to all american adults by may 1st, his predecessor is trying to take credit for it. so, look, the vaccines were developed under the trump administration. for the former president who was secretly vaccinated, by the way, in the white house, for him to now want to take credit for vaccines is really something. is it any wonder that he is the only living president who wasn't photographed getting vaccinated? is it any wonder he's not part of the president's club urging americans to get vaccinated? >> we've lost enough people and suffered enough damage. >> in order to get rid of this pandemic it's important for our fellow citizens to get vaccinated. >> i'm getting vaccinated because we want this pandemic to end as soon as possible. >> so, we urge you to get vaccinated when it's available to you. >> so, roll up your sleeve and do your part. >> this is our shot. >> now it's up to you. >> there's one in every bunch. or in this case there's one not in every bunch. and over at the fox propaganda network, the people who brought out the gop outrage machine with dr. seuss, mr. potato head and neanderthal thinking, now we have tucker carlson single handedly managing to turn the military against him. really? this is how you appeal to the gop base, by infuriating our military with slurs against women in uniform? okay. i hope everybody is sitting. turn up the volume because you've got to hear it to believe it. roll it. >> so, we've got new hair styles and maternity flight suits. pregnant women are going to fight our wars. it's a mockery of the u.s. military. china's military becomes more masculine, as it's assembled the world's largest navy, our navy needs to become more feminine, whatever feminine means anymore since men and women no longer exist. the bottom line is it's out of control and the pentagon is out of control. this is a mockery of the military and its core mission, which is winning wars. >> told you. a mock -- a mockery. a mockery. pregnant woman in uniform a mockery. how do you think he got here? let me tell you what's a mockery, a host -- and i'll say it again -- the fox propaganda network who never -- never served in the military mocking women who do. that's what a mockery is. the pentagon incensed at the disrespect of women in the armed forces, john kirby saying secretary of defense lloyd austin shared the same revulsion as many military leaders. >> what we absolutely won't do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the chinese military. maybe those folks feel like they have something to prove. that's on them. >> secretary certainly shares the revulsion of so many others to what mr. carlson said in his opening statement. >> new jersey congressman mikie sherrill who spent almost ten years on active knewty in the navy tweets that she served with women who risked their lives to protect our country. tucker carlson did not. and over on the propaganda fox propaganda network he is playing the victim after getting called out for mocking the women who serve in our armed forces, who risk their lives to protect our country. the pentagon won't stand for it. and we shouldn't either. we shouldn't stand for any of it, not the propaganda, not the voter suppression, none of it. we shouldn't. america is at a turning point right now, as i said, and the president is making some big promises. now he has to deliver on those promises. >> there is hope and light and better days ahead if we all do our part. this country will be vaccinated soon. our economy will be on the mend. our kids will be back in school. and we'll have proven once again that this country can do anything. 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>> yeah, officials said that he really wanted to strike that balance, acknowledging that yes, you are seeing about 1,500 people die every single day but also look ahead to what's going to come. he was setting goals tonight. we got dates from president biden. one of the biggest is the may 1st date saying this is when he's going to direct all states, which the white house says he has the authority to do via the health and human services did you want department to make sure all americans are able to get the vaccine by may 1st. they're going to have a federally supported website to go and look for where the closest vaccine to you is, and they also set up a call center for people who don't have access to internet. the other big thing so many people have asked about is when are schools going to reopen and reopen the way we saw them before. they talked about the money it's going to take to do that, talking about the vaccinations going forward, who can conduct this vaccine. you saw several steps coming from this. i think at the end what you heard from him saying this is not just on the federal government. it's on individual americans to make the decision, go out there and get the vaccine when it's their turn. i think he spent part oeft speech addressing the vaccine hesitancy, which is what you heard from so many federal health officials is a concern. when the supply is here and people can get it, you really saw him take time in tonight's speech to address that part of it. >> i want to play a little bit more of the president tonight and we'll discuss. >> it's the details of life that matter the most. we miss those details. the big details and the small moments. weddings, birthdays, graduations, all the things that needed to happen but didn't. the first date, the family reunions, the sunday night rituals. it's all as exacted a terrible cost on the psyche of so many of us. for we are fundamentally a people who want to be with others. >> dana, there was compassion. there was empathy there. this is what president biden does very well. what did you think of his tone and message? it wasn't until the end that he really touted his rescue plan. >> yeah. that part was vintage joe biden, taking the realities of people's humanity, the realities of what people need and want in their everyday lives and relating to it and making it clear that he understands it. and, you know, that is something that is so basic that we had become until that's four years used to seeing and hearing from presidents. you know, the kind of sympathy factor, the empathy factor and the relatable notion of somebody who's, yes, in the white house, who is the most powerful person, you know, in this country and in the world but somebody who understands the struggles people are going through. and there are a few politicians who really get that at their core like joe biden. and, you know, that was a big part of what he was doing tonight in addition to the policy prescriptions, in addition to the promises that he made that kaitlan was talking about. >> let's talk a little bit more about the promises. he relay aid story about a woman he met on the campaign trail this past summer who said, i just want you to tell me the truth, i can handle it. and he believes americans want the truth. so, having said that from the very beginning, dana, president biden has been managing expectations and then trying to exceed them. now people are going to be very excited about may 1st and getting life back to normal soon after. is that a risky promise? >> yes, it is a risky promise. but, you know, the fact that this president who understands the expectations game when it comes to politics and when it cops to leadership felt that he could say, and his advisers felt that he could say may 1st, speaks to the confidence that he clearly has with regard to the supply because, you know, there are all kinds of problems with regard to finding a way to get the vaccine. the processes of each state or even here in d.c. are very cumbersome and certainly not uniform. but the big thing is supply. and the fact that the deal that he helped to bring together, unprecedented deal between two major competitors, merck and johnson & johnson, that is one example and just the fact that there are three really good vaccines on the market of why he felt like he could say that. but to go back to your original question, is it risky? yes. because if he can't get that done, then that's a bar he set for himself. >> kaitlan, talk about a study in contrasts here, president biden condemning the rise in violence targeting asian-americans. listen, i remember when he -- i'm sure you were there as well. i know you were there as well -- when he would get into squirmishes with asian-american reporters at the white house. so, talk about a different message than the former president who used to use racist language to describe the virus. >> well and just a few days ago when former president trump put out a statement trying to take credit for the vaccines -- basically there's a sense in the trump world that the biden administration is taking credit for the vaccine. he called it the china virus, which is something the white house was pressed on, which is why is the white house referring to it given what we've seen play out in the past year, which is the rise in bigotry and violence toward asian-americans because of terms like that and others people use that i won't repeat here. what you saw president biden do tonight was take a moment to address that specifically head on, which i think is notable that he did do that in a national address where million of people are watching to say that that was un-american and it was wrong and address that in a sense that you did not see with the last white house where there are several instances we could bring up where it was not only former president trump but his senior white house aides doing that as well. i think there was a difference in talking about that and talking about holding the chinese government accountable for how they responded to the initial outbreak of the pandemic and what they could have done differently. i think that's something you'll see the biden administration deal with going forward, which is how are they going to navigate a relationship with them on that. but he did take time out of that tonight to address that and tell people they need to stop