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Protests Cancel Trump Rally in Chicago; U.S. Says North Korean Submarine Missing; Japan Marks Five Years Since Devastating Quake; Quest Flies Around the World. Aired 12-12:30a ET

Aired March 12, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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

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NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): The Donald Trump rally that never was: angry protests erupt in Chicago ahead of an appearance by the Republican presidential front-runner. We'll hear from the candidate himself.

Fukushima five years on, why some people have seen little progress since the Japanese earthquake and tsunami shattered their lives.

And tens of thousands of miles with zero frills. CNN's Richard Quest gets set to go around the world on budget airlines.

And hello, everyone. It's all ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. We're live in Atlanta. I'm Natalie Allen.

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ALLEN: Our top story: the threat of potential violence forced the cancellation of a rally for U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, one day after he told CNN he does nothing to incite his supporters.

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ALLEN (voice-over): This fistfight was inside the campaign event in Chicago, Illinois, after everyone was told to go home. There were hundreds of protesters at the rally, taking over sections of the stands. Some of the protesters were forcefully carried out of the arena.

Outside, police formed a human barricade against scores of protesters near a parking garage next to the venue. Five arrests have been reported; two police officers were injured.

CNN senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny was outside with the demonstrators. Here's his report.

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JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: The streets of Chicago just west of downtown Chicago are empty and quiet now, but it was a different scene only hours ago.

So many protesters from around Chicago came out to stand up to Donald Trump. They said that they did not want him speaking here. He was supposed to be at a rally.

And this is what we found on the ground just a few minutes ago, a crumpled ticket for a rally that didn't happen.

One thing I was struck by at this rally tonight, walking among the protesters, was the diversity of protesters, really representing a tapestry of Chicago's diversity. We had blacks and whites, Mexican Americans, Asians, really something different than we've seen at a lot of Donald Trump protests.

Now, inside, it was a combative moment. Outside, it was largely orderly. But this is a sign of something that is going to be continuing as long as the Trump campaign continues. The protesters we talked to were so happy that they stopped him from speaking here in Chicago. So that certainly will embolden others across the country.

So this heated political campaign is certainly going to get a lot more heated. This race may be something that we have not seen in generations -- Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Chicago.

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ALLEN: Trump is pushing back against the notion that he bears any responsibility for violence at his events. But critics point out that the -- only he is dealing with these sorts of problems, even in a particularly combative election cycle. Earlier, Trump spoke with our Don Lemon about Friday night's events in Chicago.

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I got to Chicago a couple of hours ago. And we had 25,000 people scheduled for tonight. We're going to have a lot outside and inside, a tremendous gathering and real supporters. And at the same time, we had some protesters outside which was probably 2,000 or 3,000.

And I met with law enforcement. I don't want to see anybody hurt, Don. So I met with law enforcement and I think we made the wise decision to cancel.

Now it's pretty well broken up and no major problems. And we made a decision, even though our freedom of speech is violated totally, we made a decision not to go forward.

I don't want to see anybody get hurt. And you would have had some people possibly getting hurt or beyond. And so I made the decision, in conjunction with law enforcement, not to do the rally; we postponed it.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think that you were -- the protesters have been expected tonight at your rally.

Was your campaign prepared for this?

TRUMP: Oh, I think we were prepared. But, you know, you can be prepared as you want; when you have thousands of people, you don't want to see a clash --

LEMON: Yes.

TRUMP: -- and they were minor skirmishes but no major clash. So we --

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LEMON: You've seen the pictures, I'm sure, of what happened inside of that really. I'm sure you've been watching and looking at these pictures.

What do you make of what you saw?

TRUMP: Well, I think it's a divided country. I think we have a very divided country, Don. And it's been that way for a long time and it's very sad to see. It is divided among many different groups. And, frankly, it's terrible.

You look at a lot of people who are upset because they haven't had a salary increase in 12 years. You know, if you look at the workers of the country, our jobs are being taken away. Our jobs are being sent to Mexico.

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TRUMP: And they are being to all sorts of other countries. And our factories are closing. We have a lot of problems. And we don't have a real unemployment rate of 5 percent. It's much probably closer to 25 percent because --

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LEMON: Do you think, Mr. Trump, with all due respect you think that --

TRUMP: -- as people give up looking for jobs, Don, all of a sudden, they're considered employed, statistically. And so, it's a lot of problems --

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LEMON: Do you think that's what caused that directly tonight, the scuffle?

TRUMP: Say it again?

LEMON: Do you think that caused the scuffle directly tonight because those people who were fighting tonight weren't fighting over jobs?

TRUMP: Yes. I think it's largely economic. I mean, if you look at African American youth, they have a 59 percent unemployment rate, 59 percent. And it's -- yes, I think it's a largely economic problem, absolutely.

LEMON: Do you think it has anything to do with the tone that some have said that you have set by telling people to get them out or punch them in the face or they should be taken out on a stretcher?

Do you think that you bear of any responsibility for what's happened at this tonight in the rallies?

TRUMP: No, I don't -- I don't take responsibility. Nobody has been hurt at our rallies and we have -- I've had 25,000-35,000 people, more than that. We had one the other day, 25,000 in Florida and we've never had anybody hurt or certainly seriously hurt.

We have -- I don't even know if we've had anybody hurt.

So, you know, we've had a tremendous large number of rallies and massive numbers of people, nobody even close to us in terms of size -- and they're great people. But we will have protesters stand up and be very, very abusive, unbelievably abusive and, in some cases, swinging and, you know, punching and swinging and not a good situation.

And I think we've been -- overall, I think we've been very mild with protesters. And some will stand up and we'll just usher them out. And, you know, it is not me that ushers them out. It's the police force. And the police have done great jobs.

So, until today, we've really never had much of a problem. Now we were in St. Louis today, we had a packed house. We had thousands and thousands of people that, frankly, couldn't get in.

And we had a few protesters. It was not a big deal. It was individual protesters standing up. There were quite a few of them, seven or eight of them, I would say. You know, seven or eight incidents is -- which was fine. And we had all -- everybody had a good time. I hope the protesters had a good time, to be honest with you. Nobody hurt.

LEMON: So I want to ask you a question that my colleague, Jake Tapper, asked you last night at the debate.

Do you believe that you have done anything, Mr. Trump, to create a tone where this kind of violence would be encouraged?

And I'm going to add to that by saying, if your words and your tone inspire people to vote for you, to come to the rallies, to go to the polls and vote, why wouldn't those same words inspire people to violence?

TRUMP: Well, I hope that my tone is not that of causing violence, because my basic tone is really that of securing our borders, of having a country and having a great country, of bringing our jobs back, of bringing our manufacturing back, Don, of getting people jobs. That includes African American youth, where you have a 59 percent unemployment rate.

So I would hope that that does not lead to -- you know, I hope -- I certainly don't do that. I will say we have had tremendous success with people. You see the kind of polls, you see the kind of, you know, popularity that we have in the rallies themselves as well. I mean, it's a love fest in the rallies themselves.

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ALLEN: Trump's critics say he's inspiring violence by using divisive rhetoric but his supporters claim it is the protesters who are responsible for the problems, not Trump fans.

Neil Bush, whose brother, Jeb, ran against Trump for the Republican nomination, says Trump is the wrong person to lead his party and the country but Trump supporter, Kayleigh McEnany insists Trump handled the situation in Chicago admirably.

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NEIL BUSH, BROTHER OF JEB BUSH: Donald Trump has used tactics that have raised an army of very ardent fans, for sure. But he's also locked in a lot of people that just don't like him. And I'm not saying the people protesting there in Chicago are Republican voters, by any means.

But there is a growing coalition of anti-establishment Tea Party Ted Cruz-type people and establishment folks that are rallying behind the candidacy of Ted Cruz to unify our party before the national convention so that we can have a positive message.

We don't need Donald Trump to be the head of the ticket for this great country of ours, to be represented by a man with such a giant ego and with so few solutions to the problems, would be tragic.

And it's not in the nature of a Reagan or a Jack Kemp or, you know, a George Bush Sr. or a George W. Bush to have someone who's got this kind of behavioral challenge.

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BUSH: So I think it's tragic. I think he brought it on because of his tactics that he's used to show that he's the tough guys that's going to be able to keep us safe from these threats. We are still the greatest country on the face of the Earth and he's not the right guy to lead us forward, period.

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KAYLEIGH MCENANY, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Tonight he did exactly what he should have done. He shut down the rally. He didn't want violence. He said so repeatedly in your interview with him, in the statement he released, at the very end of it, he said, please go in peace.

He did the right thing this evening and instead of the story being 10,000 protesters showed up, disrupted the First Amendment rights of Donald Trump and Trump supporters and then all the damage, damages on the screen right now, you're not seeing people in Donald Trump shirts causing the ruckus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kayleigh, let me say this. I don't -- who is criticizing him?

I haven't heard anybody criticize Donald Trump tonight.

MCENANY: Many pundits on this very network have criticized Donald Trump and, in fact, on the last show, one of the pundits said that Donald Trump wanted the violence to happen this evening. That's not true.

And I can tell you this, if 10,000 Tea Party activists had showed up at a Bernie Sanders rally and acted this way, those same pundits would be criticizing the Tea Party and would be calling out anyone who called on Bernie Sanders for being responsible for that.

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ALLEN: It is not clear whether that rally in Chicago will be rescheduled at another time.

Well, the U.S. military has been secretly watching North Korea's apparent search for a submarine like this.

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ALLEN (voice-over): Up next, why the vessel may be lost at sea.

Plus, it's been five years since Japan was rocked by an earthquake and tsunami but areas of devastation still remain. We'll tour some of the destruction ahead here.

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ALLEN: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM.

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ALLEN (voice-over): An Australian aviation official says another piece of airplane debris has been found on the Mozambique coast. This is a picture of it. Experts will investigate if it came from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared two years ago with 239 people on board.

A South African teenager found the debris in December and took it home. His family contacted officials after a different piece of debris was found last week also in Mozambique.

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ALLEN: U.S. officials say North Korea has lost contact with one of its submarines. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN (voice-over): They believe it may have happened off North Korea's east coast during a military exercise earlier this week. CNN's Barbara Starr has the latest for us from Washington.

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BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Off the east coast of North Korea, U.S. spy satellites, aircraft and ships have been secretly watching for days as the North Korean navy searches for its missing submarine, CNN has learned from several U.S. officials familiar with the latest information. The regime lost contact with the submarine earlier in the week.

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STARR (voice-over): It may be adrift under sea or have sunk by now, the officials say. The U.S. believes the submarine suffered some type of failure during an exercise. The U.S. Navy is paying close attention, because it knows North Korea is trying to perfect launching missiles from under sea to avoid U.S. eyes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're working on the submarine and you know, we're watching that closely.

STARR (voice-over): This as a huge U.S. South Korean military exercise continues. Kim Jong-un is showing off his military might and defiance, firing ballistic missiles and posing with what he says are miniaturized nuclear warheads, the crucial item to put on top of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could attack the U.S.

A new alarm sounded by the commander in charge of defending the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the prudent decision on my part to assume that he has the capability to miniaturize a nuclear weapon and put it on an ICBM.

STARR (voice-over): U.S. war plans are now based on the assumption that North Korea may have the warhead. They already have the missile, all leading the military to continually maintain the capability for a pre-emptive strike.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I assess that they have the ability to put an ICBM in space in range of the continental United States and Canada.

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ALLEN: We have a programming note for you. Next week CNN's Clarissa Ward is taking you on a harrowing journey deep into the heart of Syria. Scarred by five years of war and isolated by devastation, you'll get an exclusive look inside Syria behind rebel lines and meet the people who call what's left of their country home. Here's a portion.

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CLARISSA WARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We had to travel undercover to see a war few outsiders have witnessed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The Russian planes target anything that works in the interest of the people. The goal is that people here live a destroyed life, that people never see any good.

WARD: There are snipers all around here but this is the only road now to get into Aleppo.

WARD (voice-over): Aleppo was once Syria's largest city, now an apocalyptic landscape. Any civilian in the structure is a potential target, including hospitals.

WARD: Is it possible that they did not know that this was a hospital?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Everyone knows this is a hospital.

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ALLEN: Again, that is part of our exclusive special coverage, inside Syria behind rebel lines. You'll see it only here on CNN.

It's been five years since a deadly earthquake and tsunami claimed the lives of thousands of people in Japan. The waves from the tsunami flooded the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and caused one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in history. Parts of Japan remain uninhabitable and thousands are still missing.

Our Will Ripley has more from Fukushima Prefecture, where much of the area remains devastated and largely empty.

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WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is my third visit to Fukushima Prefecture and this area, in particular, has changed quite a bit since I was last here a little over a year ago. You don't see the cars and the boats lying about anymore. They've cleaned a lot of that up.

There are trash piles and it appears that they are close to getting this area ready for people to move back.

Every step you take, people died. The new numbers from the fire and disaster management agency show that, when you account for the dead and the missing from the disaster in March of 2011, nearly 22,000 people are gone. And you see and feel the reminders of them everywhere here.

In certain areas the radiation levels are still so high we have to put on this protective gear just to make sure we don't inadvertently contaminate ourselves. These are hundreds of thousands of bags of radioactive soil. They're

so heavy crews have to use excavators to lift just two at a time. They're literally piling up. There are more than 100,000 storage sites, 100,000 across Fukushima. This is just one of them.

Japan is building this massive 400-kilometer seawall. That's about 250 miles to protect people from future tsunamis. But there's a lot of opposition. Critics say it won't fully guarantee people's safety. It will obstruct ocean views and could actually hurt marine life.

It's sad to walk up and down these rows of drab temporary housing and think, this is all people have left of their old lives. Entire communities were uprooted and planted in places like this. And nobody thought that, five years later, tens of thousands of people would still be living here. A lot of the younger people have moved on. They've relocated.

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RIPLEY: But those left behind, often in their 60s, 70s, 80s, these are senior citizens who say they don't know where else they'll go.

I remember the last time I visited this school gym and it was really striking because the graduation banner was hanging on that stage and I was told, had the tsunami happened just one day later this whole room could have been full of people. Thankfully everyone here at the school survived.

These workers took down the banner just today. They are here, trying to clean up and trying to rebuild. But as we have seen, touring this devastated area, there is still so much work that lies ahead -- Will Ripley, CNN, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan.

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ALLEN: Unreal. Five years later, it's still amazing to see that video.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I remember that day so vividly, as do millions and millions of people.

ALLEN: Derek's here because we have major flooding affecting three continents this week.

VAN DAM: It has been a major story here in the CNN World Weather Center, Natalie. We had flooding in Louisiana and the United States, California on the West Coast, we have flooding in Sao Paulo, Brazil, we also have flooding in Serbia. So let's get right to it.

Some incredible but also very sad footage coming out of these locations. Here in Sao Paulo state, 16 people unfortunately have perished from this rainfall event. Mudslides and falling rock causing havoc.

You can see the aerial footage showing that severe flooding throughout the streets with vehicles stuck in the water. People wading through flooded streets and using river boats to get around. Heavy rain even caused the airport to close for six hours on Friday in Sao Paulo, again, Brazil's largest city.

Let's talk about how much rain actually fell in that region. Zooming in to the southeastern sections of Brazil, this is a satellite derived estimate. Anywhere you see that shading of yellow and orange, that's in excess of 100 to 150 millimeters of rainfall, roughly in a 24-hour period.

It's all thanks to a stalled frontal boundary and an onshore flow and there is still unfortunately more rain to come. Just get a load of how much rain fell in Sao Paulo, 87 millimeters in a 24-hour period. That is over half our monthly average. Again, just in one day's time.

The fingerprints of climate change, all over this particular event and that's not the only location that we've seen extreme flooding.

Take a look at the western half of the United States. This is called an atmospheric river of rain and this constant barrage of storm system has brought flooding to Northern California and extremely heavy snowfall to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California.

But get a load of this. They're also prone to mudslides and rockslides over this part of the world as well. That is a close call for that dump truck in Westport, California. And it is not only the western U.S. that's getting hammered with very strong storms; the Deep South has also been inundated with over 500 millimeters of rainfall in a 72-hour period.

You can see how this radar estimated rainfall for Louisiana, into Mississippi, parts of Arkansas, Texas, Western Tennessee and into Kentucky. That has led to 87 rain gauges along the banks of the Mississippi to be at or above flooding, some of them historic flood levels at the moment and that has caused this disaster.

In fact, here's a few images showing you what people have had to deal with. This is a runaway houseboat hitting a bridge overpass on one of the rivers in West Monroe. That is the area in Louisiana that was hit hardest.

Take a look at some of these aerial video footage of the region. Unfortunately this mobile park home just inundated with our heavy rainfall as well, submerged roadways, backed up sewers, stalled cars and flooded homes, unbelievable, 3,000 homes were under mandatory evacuations according to FEMA.

So it's just -- you're starting to pull things together here. There is a pattern. Heavy rain, this is what we would typically see with an El Nino season like we have right now. But also we have our climate change in there as well.

ALLEN: OK, Derek, thank you again.

From London to Australia, to New York and almost everywhere in between, that's a lot of places, Richard Quest is about to fly around the world. Nine countries in all -- but there's a catch. We'll have that next.

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ALLEN: Around the world in eight days, Richard Quest, host of "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS" and CNNMoney editor at large is about to embark on quite the journey. Quest will fly only on low-cost airlines such as AirAsia, around the globe to highlight the expanding range of budget carriers.

He filed this report detailing his adventure.

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RICHARD QUEST, CNNMONEY EDITOR AT LARGE: Ten airlines, nine countries, eight days, one journey around the world, all by low-cost carriers. It's all designed to show how the low-cost airlines are now the backbone of so much in aviation.

How they've changed the way we fly and how, indeed, the other legacy airlines are now also following suit.

And we have certain key rules for how we're going around the world. First of all, we must start and end in the same place. That is London, Gatwick Airport. We must continue to travel in the same direction of travel, no backtracking.

We have to cross the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean once and once only.

And most important of all, there can be no premium seats, no business class, even when they're offered by the carrier -- absolutely not.

Follow along as we go around the world, #FlyWithQuest. Join in this journey, this celebration of the new way of aviation. It's really very simple, it's 10 airlines, nine countries, eight days and one journey around the world.

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ALLEN: That will be Richard Quest. We'll wait for that one. Our top stories are right after this.