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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

East Coast Flood: Hurricane Joaquin Gains Strength; Russia Begins Airstrikes in Syria; Trump: Will Send Syrian Refugees Back If He Wins. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired October 01, 2015 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:16] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: East Coast floods. Record rainfall as Hurricane Joaquin gains strength and barrels towards the U.S. We're tracking the storm for you.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Russia launching its first airstrikes in Syria. But their target may not be ISIS. We're live.

Good morning and welcome to EARLY START. Glad to be here. I'm Boris Sanchez.

ROMANS: Nice to have you here this morning, Boris -- today and tomorrow.

I'm Christine Romans. It is Thursday, October 1st, first day of October.

Breaking news this morning: Joaquin now a category 3 hurricane bearing down on the Bahamas, and bringing record rainfall up and down the East Coast.

In Massachusetts, a very dry September ending in dramatic fashion, up to four inches rain. Just north of Boston, a woman had to be rescued from her car after she got stuck in the flood waters.

And look at this car, flowing through deep water in Worchester, Mass. The driver gets to relatively dry land and stalls out, open the car door and gallons, look at that, pour out.

The weather is snarling traffic across the region.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's bad. It's just gridlock everywhere. It is flooding everywhere. I have been on the road for two hours.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: In Maine, the National Weather Service says more than 5.5 inches fell on Portland. One of the 10 all time wettest days in the city's history. The rains knocked out power, downed trees and flooded roads. Only trucks and SUVs getting through there. SANCHEZ: The problems spreading south to Maryland, just west of

Baltimore. Take a look, knee deep flash flood water rushing through the streets. A local YMCA was flooded out with three feet of water. Look at the damage there.

Check out the car in this picture, totaled. Listen to the owner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I really did not know that flash flood meant boom, quick, rain, everything.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looked like a freaking river, it's what it looked like.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: All right. This is not over. This is actually just the beginning. This heavy rain is a prelude to Hurricane Joaquin.

Where will it hit?

Let's get right to meteorologist Pedram Javaheri for us this morning.

So, this is just the early innings of what we could endure here on the East Coast.

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, well said, Christine and Boris. You know, this is a story and one of the more difficult forecast when we take a look at what the storm has ahead of it.

Category three Hurricane Joaquin is north of Bahamas, east of the Turks and Caicos Islands across this region, where the thunderstorms abound. We know gusty winds upwards to 140 to 150 miles per hour. But the model difference this year, some of them are taking it as far as south -- southern South Carolina, other ones as far north as Massachusetts, sometime Sunday afternoon.

Of course, widespread differences in the models, and some of the more reliable models. We'll use the European model, which, by the way, had tremendous accuracy with Superstorm Sandy's forecast. It had the forecast track and the time precisely on the target there. It takes the storm system well offshore. The vast majority of the other models want to take it towards portions of the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast.

The meteorological pattern of this is all set up here. I want to show what we call a negatively tilted trough and I know it sounds fancy with the weather pattern here reaching full maturity when it comes to Friday afternoon to evening, usually when we have this sort of pattern with tropical storms offshore. They want to draw the feature in toward them Eastern Seaboard. We also have a large area of high pressure offshore, some other models want to take the storm system away from the coastline over the open waters.

At this point, the National Hurricane Center wanting to favor more of a coastline impact here sometime potentially Sunday afternoon to Sunday night. Category two potential there for northern portion, far north of northern portions of, say, North Carolina into the Chesapeake Bay region. This would bring in with winds about 100 miles per hour and certainly tremendous rainfall on top of what has come down.

It's absolutely remarkable when you take a look at the rainfall potential in this region in excess of 10 inches in the Carolinas and working to the east up to 4 to 6 inches possible. You know the trees have plenty of leaves on them -- plenty of service area, a lot of rainfall on this. Gusty winds in excess of 100 miles an hour. All of this can play out into large scale power outages across this region if the forecast track takes it in this direction.

So, this is why we are saying preparations should be taken. If the storm guides to the east, of course, at least, we are prepared for what could be the worst-case scenario.

ROMANS: I really like that euro model. I'm really for that euro model, because no one -- everyone here is giving us thumb's up. No one wants disrupted activities next week. Let me ask you a question, there's a lot of rain in the Northeast already. Is that associated with the system or is that a different system that's already dumping a lot of rain and now you've got this threat from Joaquin?

PEDRAM: That's a great question. You know, it has nothing to do with Joaquin. So, the state of Virginia actually is related to the rainfall they've seen in the past four to five days. It's coming from a moisture out of the Gulf of Mexico, not this storm in the Atlantic Ocean.

[04:05:00] So, it's a completely different storm. The timing is just horrible, with both source of the tropical moisture coming in the same area.

ROMANS: It's been so dry up here. So, it's like a mud bath. I mean, the water has no place to go. It just runs right into the streets.

SANCHEZ: We'll keep our fingers crossed for that European model.

Pedram, thank you.

JAVAHERI: Yes.

SANCHEZ: No government shutdown at least for now, breaking overnight. Congress passing a stopgap spending bill with just hours to spare, keeping the government funded through December 11th. That's when Republicans are pushing hard to defund Planned Parenthood. President Obama signing the measure as soon as it reached his desk, calling it good news and cause to celebrate, even if the bar for Congress is, quote, "somewhat low".

ROMANS: A high ranking official at the Secret Service facing disciplinary action this morning for allegedly trying to smear the reputation of Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz. Assistant Director Edward Lowery accused of sending an e-mail encouraging Secret Service staffers to release embarrassing and private information about the Republican lawmaker, specifically the fact that Chaffetz applied to the Secret Service 12 years ago and was rejected.

Chaffetz now chairs a committee that oversees the Secret Service. He has been critical of the agency and admits these revelations have him rattled.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JASON CHAFFETZ (R), UTAH: It's a bit scary. Secret Service diving into my background as a sitting member of congress? It is not about me, but it is about what are they doing over there? These people are entrusted with guns by the president. They are supposed to be the Secret Service and we give them police powers and we give them the ability to, you know, dive into confidential information and it sounds -- it's very disconcerting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Congressman Chaffetz also in the news, slamming House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy for his suggestion that the 2012 investigation of the Benghazi terror attack was paying off politically for Republicans. Chaffetz thinks McCarthy should apologize. The California congressman is the leading candidate to replace Speaker John Boehner. He says the House investigation was a success because it's now contributing to Hillary Clinton's slumping poll numbers.

Meantime, the Democratic frontrunner eager to punch some of McCarthy's comments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When I hear a statement like that which demonstrates unequivocally that this was always meant to be a partisan political exercise, I feel like it does a grave disservice and dishonors not just the memory of the four that we lost, but everybody who has served our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: We should mention that Chaffetz says he will still support McCarthy's bid for the speaker.

Back to Hillary Clinton now, new emails released by the state staffers were concerned about her use of a private e-mail server, worrying that it might invite hackers. The email spanning between 2010 and 2011 also revealed five phishing attempts, targeting her account while she was secretary of state. And now it's been revealed that about two months of e-mails from the start of her tenure at the State Department are missing. Federal officials confirmed they have not been able to recover them.

ROMANS: All right. Donald Trump hotels hacked. Hackers snuck a computer virus into Trump hotels across the U.S. potentially stealing consumer data for an entire year. The hotel chain warns that anyone who visited between May 19, 2014 and June 2nd, 2015 may be affected. How? Hackers placed special software as customers or employees typed in payment information, the software grabbed it. It's unclear if hackers managed to collect all that info, what they did with it,

The company updating the network to make it more secure and offering free identity fraud protection to those affected. I'll tell you, if you don't have free identity fraud protection by now, doing something with a credit card, wow, you are lucky.

SANCHEZ: Not even the mighty Trump immune to these hackers.

ROMANS: Not even Trump.

SANCHEZ: Send them back, he says. Donald Trump explains what will happen to Syrian refugees in he is elected, as Bernie Sanders breaks a fundraising record, next.

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[04:12:00] ROMANS: The U.S. countering Russian claims that its first airstrike in Syria targeted ISIS. Russia's first word to the U.S. about the airstrikes when a Russian official appeared at the American embassy in Baghdad, warning the U.S. to stay out of Syrian airspace.

CNN's Barbara Starr asked Defense Secretary Ash Carter about this unusual move.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: You have been dealing with the Russians for years. So, a Russian general shows up this morning at embassy in Baghdad and apparently reads you your people a note saying airstrikes are going to begin in one hour. What do you make of that? Is that -- as secretary of defense, is that acceptable military relations with you and where does this leave you if you sit down and talk to the Russian military about the way ahead? Is this not a little bizarre?

ASH CARTER, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: You're right. I have been dealing with them for a long time and this is not the kind of behavior that we should expect professionally from Russian military professionally. That's one reason why I think it is a good thing to have an avenue of communication that is less unprofessional than a drop-in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Remarkable. The U.S. also accusing Russia of misleading of the target of airstrikes. American officials say the warplanes were not flying in ISIS held regions.

And "The Washington Post" reports that the strikes hit anti-government rebels in Syria, some of them backed by the U.S. and trained by the CIA.

Defense Secretary Carter accusing Russia of, quote, "pouring gasoline on the fire of Syria's civil war."

For the very latest, let's bring in CNN's Matthew Chance live for us in Moscow. Matthew, I have so many questions about this. About the motive of

Vladimir Putin, of who they targeted, why they went in with little notice for the U.S. and what in the world it means for any kind of conversation between the United States and Russia to try to deescalate the situation in Syria.

Bring us up to speed.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're very complicated questions to answer. In terms of how they can stop shooting each other, or prevent each other of shooting each other, the U.S. and Russia, there's going to be military to military conversations taking place early today to make sure that they can deconflict, which is the word they use to describe not killing each other and also to get clarity on the targets that Russia is hitting.

Publicly, Russia is saying categorically we are striking ISIS targets. The reason it is doing that, I think, because no one is a friend of ISIS that will get international support if it stresses the ISIS targets that it hits. But, of course, we have seen from video evidence, from reports on the ground, that there were other areas which are controlled by other rebel groups, non-ISIS groups that were hit in the Russian air strikes.

And, in fact, the Russian government is ambiguous on this, the Russian foreign minister speaking with John Kerry yesterday saying, we were invited by the Syrian government to assist against ISIS and other terrorist groups as well.

[04:15:06] So, clearly the Russian objective here is to support the Assad government, is to fight the enemies or those that provide or propose the biggest threat to that government. That is clearly what is going on on day two of this Russian/Syrian war.

ROMANS: But if they are striking moderate Syrian rebels, the very people the United States has tried to support and train up to fight ISIS and to blunt the Assad regime, then that is Russian at odds -- directly at odds with the U.S. interests in the Middle East.

CHANCE: Right. It won't be the first time that happened. I think it is important to remember as well that the Kremlin don't draw distinction between ISIS and other rebel groups. And there is a plethora of rebel groups out there, of course, in Syria. Some of them Islamists, some of them more moderate.

But the Kremlin doesn't draw distention between them. It sees them all and describes them all as terrorists.

From the Kremlin point of view, the force is Syrian government. Bashar al Assad is a long-time Russian ally. Russia has strong interests to make sure the he does not fall and he is reestablish control over the whole of Syria. And I think that's what now is being played out and that may well bring Russia and the United States into some kind of confrontation, political, if not actual military.

ROMANS: The word of the day, deconfliction, no question. How to make sure Russians and Americans aren't shooting at each other.

Thanks for that.

SANCHEZ: Back to the U.S. now -- Donald Trump and Jeb Bush butting heads on the campaign trail, this time over the subject of refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria. Trump telling a New Hampshire town hall and CNN's Don Lemon, that as president, he would send refugees back because he believes they could be ISIS sympathizers in disguise.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Why are we accepting all of these thousands? Now, I heard a number today, 200,000. That's almost like -- are they bringing -- are these people ISIS?

We have no idea who they are. We have no idea where they come from. I'm telling you right now, they may come in through the weakness of Obama, but they are going out if I become president. They will not say there. They are going back to Syria, whether it is safe zones or whatever. But they are going back to Syria.

JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have a noble tradition of taking care of refugees. We have done it since the beginning of time. And I think we need to maintain that.

Having said that, we need to screen people and do the things that are appropriate to make sure the people coming here are legitimate.

But send them all back to a hell hole? This is the same guy that is also advocating exactly what seems to be supportive of Putin and his emergence in Syria.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: And there are calls from others who say the U.S. is not bringing in enough to its refugee process.

The political jabs from Jeb, by the way, didn't stop there. Bush also campaigning in New Hampshire. He says Donald Trump needs to put on his, quote, "big boy pants". Jeb's former Florida protege Marco Rubio who's edged past him in the latest polls, was also a target.

Bush sat down with our senior political correspondent Dana Bash.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: There has been so much talk of Donald Trump and how he has affected Jeb Bush's campaign.

But the other story line, a big one, is how Marco Rubio is affecting Jeb Bush's campaign. Rubio is not only seemingly doing better here in New Hampshire and even nationally, but it is a personal issue for him because the two of them knew each other very well in Florida.

The two are friends. Jeb Bush was his mentor. And there are a lot of Republicans who we talked to who are actually torn between the two. So, I asked Jeb Bush about that. Here's what he said.

BUSH: I'm a proven leader. I disrupted the old order in Tallahassee. I relied on people like Marco Rubio and many others to follow my leadership. And we lead the state on job growth, reduced the role of government, reformed the things that were broken, took on some very powerful interest and we won, and I could be that disrupter in Washington, D.C.

Look, we had a president who came in and said the same kind of thing, new and improved, hope and change. And he didn't have the leadership skills to fix things. In fact, he has been the greatest, most divisive president in modern history. What we need is someone with proven leadership to fix things, and I believe I have those skills.

BASH: That line talking about his own leadership, that is something that he is trying to press more and more. We heard it here at his town hall and maybe more importantly his campaign is now spending money, big money, on ad talking about his bio, talking about his record, ads here in New Hampshire and other early contest states, because his aides believe this is something he can actually pull off because he's got the money, he's got the organization, as long as people actually know that he's just not another Bush.

[04:20:06] The question is, how long that's going to take? And they said they are in it for the long haul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Both Jeb and Trump have events tonight in New Hampshire. We will see what other attacks they launch.

Dana, thank you.

Also on the Republican ticket, Ben Carson and despite comments about Muslims, he had a big third quarter haul for his campaign. They announced that they raised more than $20 million over the past three months. Carson speaking to a group of fellow physicians in New Hampshire Wednesday, sounding a bit like Trump when funding his campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have made it very clear that I'm not going after the billionaires and the special interest groups. I'm not licking anybody's boots. And I'm not going to be beholden to a bunch of special interest groups. There's only one special interest group and I mentioned it and that's the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton's third quarter fundraising take was $28 million, just a few million more than her chief rival for the nomination, Bernie Sanders. It's also a sharp drop from the record setting take of $47.5 million in the spring. Now, the pace of donations for sanders campaign picked up dramatically

over the summer. He collected $25.5 million in the last three months. His campaign touted the fact it reached 1 million online donors faster than any candidate ever. So, it turns out those big crowds, they are reaching into his pockets because certainly, certainly, he's been drawing crowds.

SANCHEZ: He's got a lot of support online.

We've got breaking news overnight. Afghan forces taking back part of the city seized by the Taliban, but where does the fight go from here? We are live, next.

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[04:25:17] ROMANS: Breaking overnight, Afghan special forces say they have retaken the major city of Kunduz days after it was overrun by the Taliban. Now, the operation launching late Wednesday, still ongoing, forces working to clear Taliban fighters from a few districts within Kunduz.

I want to bring in CNN international diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson, with the very latest now. He can tell us what is happening there on the ground.

So, how reliable are the reports that the special forces are able to oust the Taliban from the strategic town?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Well, the Taliban are tweeting they have pulled back from the town, but they do control -- still control those two districts inside Kunduz province. It seems unlikely the government is going to be in continuous operation there and retake the areas. The Taliban have had them for months and months and months.

So, what really turned the tide here are two things for the government. One is they were able to get reinforcements through to the outskirts of Kunduz , where they were hold up at the airport, and the second thing, NATO and U.S. advisors on the ground who were involved in calling in air strikes when their own positions were being threatened by Taliban forces.

So, you have that combined effect, the NATO/U.S. advisors helping sort of break the logjam for the Afghan government. But the real question now for the Afghan government is, can they really clear out all of the Taliban? Can they win over the towns people, some of them who have clearly elements decided to side with the Taliban against the local governor or against the police and against the government?

We heard reports from residents in the town that the electricity was cut, the water was cut. Food prices going up two or three times for the price of regular food items.

So, the government is going to have to address those things quickly, get those basic services back up and running. But in the midst of that, the Taliban are not going to give up entirely. We can expect to see them try to mount some counter attacks.

Now, though, it seems the government does have control over most of the city.

ROMANS: All right. Important to note with the help of U.S. and NATO advisors on the ground. Thanks so much for that, Nic Robertson.

SANCHEZ: The U.S. spending trillions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Certainly, the investment is not a great look this week.

East Coast flood. Record rainfall happening as Hurricane Joaquin gains strengths and barrels toward the U.S. We are tracking the storms next.

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