Biden calls for "immediate ceasefire" in Gaza at Morehouse College commencement | May 20, 2024

[Music] [Applause] what's up party people hope you're starting your week off right I'm KY wire this is CNN 10 this Monday kicks off our final week of the show before summer break so let's make the most of these last five episodes of the Season all right let's get started today first up we head to Atlanta Georgia where President Joe Biden delivered a commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for morouse college one of the more than 100 historically black colleges and universities were HBCU in the United States the first HBCU were founded before the Civil War when slavery was still legal in parts of the US which meant that racial discrimination made it difficult or depending where you lived illegal for black people to get an education we have seen many prominent African-Americans attend h BCU over the years including Oprah Winfrey Dr Martin Luther King and current US vice president kamla Harris President Biden's visit to Morehouse which is an all male campus comes at a time when polls show that his support among young people and black men among other groups is lagging and it comes at a time when student protests over the US's policies toward the war in Gaza have made headlines on several college campuses on Sunday a small number of Morehouse students in the audience turned their chairs so they were facing away from the president in silent protest as he delivered his commencement address in his speech President Biden cited a number of his policies that he said have supported black Americans and he restated a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza it's a humanitarian crisis in Gaza that's why I've called for an immediate ceasefire an immediate ceasefire to stop the fighting bring the hostages home and I've been working on a as we speak working around the clock to lead an international effort to get more Aid into Gaza CNN's Nick Valencia was at morouse College talking to students ahead of a graduation ceremony that had students divided about the choice of commencement speaker when you talk to Alon Gibson about his upcoming college graduation you can see he's excited Co canceled his high school commencement in 2020 so this one is extra special I think most star like me that are a little bit enthusiastic but most just want a peaceful graduation without protest for the 21-year-old morouse senior getting President Joe Biden as the commencement speaker is in his words pretty cool even if he does see why some of his peers think the choice was controversial I personally don't agree with some of the things that the White House has done but you still want him to come here I still do want him to come because I agree with his um his full body of work there's been mixed reactions some for some against more house student newspaper managing editor Colin Royal says mostly the invitation created confusion on campus the fact that we weren't really in the loop for that was kind of concerning uh especially when you have somebody of that magnitude and somebody that's been involved in a lot of things that students have protested against who would you guys much rather have as a commencement speaker I am inclined to say Andre 3000 they joke but Mark Riggins and Noah Collier have been on the front lines as two of the most vocal critics at morehous to B invitation I exist as more than a prop for a photo op draped in cfas the Pro Palestinian activist tell us about what they call us imperialism which they say Biden has Amplified by his armed support for the war in Gaza while at the same time overlooking their concerns as black men he completely dismissed Us by calling us violent by calling us anti-semitic and are you no in no way shape or form are any of us anti-semitic cuz if we we would not be engaging in these protests the idea of anti-Semitism does it com completely contradicts and conflicts with the values that we move with was part of my calculus that he would say yes to us because he's in this presidential race absolutely morehous president David Thomas invited Biden to be the commencement speaker back in September today he defends the decision as well as the school's choice to give Biden an honorary degree what I want them to walk out think is the president of the United States came to give the commencement speech at Morehouse College because morouse College matters in the world and therefore what I do with the privilege of having gone to Morehouse means I should matter in the world in the long-standing tradition of morehouse's student L activism Thomas says he will give space for protests on Sunday but we take a hard line if protests are disrupted 10c trivia which foreign country owns the most US debt Japan China UK or [Music] Mexico ding ding ding Japan is your correct answer here the US owes trillions of dollars in debt to several different countries because the government spends more than it brings in in taxes the US borrows money from other countri countries to cover its expenses becoming financially stable can be a very complicated process but in the end it comes down to basic math did you earn more than you spent if so then things should be okay when when put into those terms the US government is not in the best shape it's expensive to run the government and in order to pay for social services like Medicare which is Health Care partially paid for by the government for people over the age of 65 the government needs to collect taxes to cover the cost and the thousands of other costs like it for which the government pays for the last several years for both Democratic and Republican administrations the US government has been spending more than it collects in taxes our Matt Ean breaks down the financial terms for us and makes sense if you will of the country's Current financial predicament people sometimes get confused when we talk about the debt and the deficit can you explain the difference between the two and the relationship the deficit is the difference between what the government is taking in in Revenue in what it's spending you just take the total revenue subtract the total expenditure that's the deficit if you go back to the year 2000 it was actually a surplus did you say Surplus there was a surplus can you believe it can we get another Surplus anytime soon no we're not even close I laugh I should be crying I mean no our deficit is large it's 1.6 $1.7 trillion that's a long way from zero and all the trend lines look pretty difficult here and then national debt has reached record of over $34 trillion for some perspective if you took $3 34 trillion $1 bills and stack them on top of each other they'd reach the moon and back almost five times this can all sound you know so complicated and massive right a trillion dollars here a trillion dollars there can you talk about what ways all of this will impact the average American right that the college kid that just graduated or a new home buyer or a single mom it's not one of those uh clip events it's it's more of a corrosive on the economy results in steadily higher interest rates it does mean that we're going to be paying more for getting a mortgage loan if we want to buy a home which is already very unaffordable you know given the high rates and High house prices it's going to affect rates on getting a loan to purchase a vehicle credit card loans any borrowing we need to do it's just going to be more costly to do it the interest payments on the debt is starting to add up and starting to crowd out the kind of things we want our government to do I mean the interest payments now are over a trillion dollars in fact I think we are now spending more on interest payments on the debt than we are on our own National Defense I don't think that's ever happened in in the history for which we have data and so every billion dollars that we spending on interest to our creditors is a billion less that we can maybe spend on things that we care about like education or defense or rebuilding roads and bridges is that right that's exactly right who gets the blame here is this a republican problem is this a Democrat problem is it is it really bipartisan if you kind of add up uh deficit Finance uh initiatives done under Republican presidents and add up the deficit finan initiatives done under Democrats interestingly enough it comes out to be about the same so it's a bipartisan problem we we all are uh guilty of in Rising deficit in debt that we're struggling with right now [Applause] today's story getting a 10 out of 10 go workers at Major League Soccer Match in Philadelphia Pennsylvania between the union and the New York City Football Club went on a raccoon asence mission to trap a raccoon storming the pitch look at him go dodging Defenders like Messi they tried to trap him with a trash can then tried and tried again could you believe it they finally caught it and it was okay the Philadelphia unions say the star of the show was safely released all right shout out time now to my Superstars at St Margaret School in nirth Pennsylvania rise up and we're showing some love to our friends at Madison number one Middle School in Phoenix Arizona let them hear you roar wild cats take some great energy into this week if you're off to a great one keep it going if you're off to a rough one keep going remember it's not what we're going through that matters it's how we go through it mine's right shine bright I'm Coy wire and we are CNN 10