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Special Coverage of the Mass Shooting in Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired June 13, 2016 - 15:30   ET

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


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[15:33:24] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have friends here at Pulse and I have friends in Orlando who suffered physically and emotionally. And now, mentally because this day is never going to be forgotten. This is a wake-up call for everyone, you know, you don't know when you see the person for the last time.

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our special CNN coverage here of the worst terror attack in America since 9/11. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me here.

This entire community I think is still walking through this. Still very in shock. In mourning. It will be for some time to come after the shooting inside the Pulse Nightclub there. If you can see the black sign just over my left shoulder, just about half a mile away or rather half block away.

As we learn the identities of a number of victims, also learning their stories from loved ones, from friends. And that includes Kimberly KJ Morris. She was a bouncer at Pulse nightclub and she did not escape the deadly rampage here in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Her friends say she was the kind of person to know who would have helped everybody else out before actually looking after herself.

So joining me now is KJ's best friend and former partner Star Shelton.

Star, I'm so sorry. My condolences to you. And thank you so much for joining me.

STAR SHELDON, BEST FRIEND/PARTNER OF SLAIN PULSE BOUNCER: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: Star, just begin with Saturday night. I mean, you all were constantly in touch. You lived together in Hawaii before she came back here to take care of what I understand is her mom and her grand mom. But you were texting with her Saturday night, correct?

[15:35:00] SHELDON: Yes, that's correct. At around 12:30 a.m. Orlando time, I did send her a message. I knew that she would be working at Pulse that night. And I just wanted to check on how she was doing in the hours on her shift. And I sent her a message saying hi and that I missed her. And around 12:38 Orlando time she did respond with a text message that said, oh, I miss you, too. So I was very thankful that I was able to get that message to her and that she was able to respond to me, as well. I did not hear from her again after that.

BALDWIN: And how did you hear?

SHELDON: I was awakened the next morning. I did receive two text messages from two of her very, very close friends in Massachusetts asking me if I heard from her because of what had happened at Pulse. At this point, I was not aware of what happened. I immediately did get up. I turned on the news and social media. Just to kind of see what was going on and then I found out about this deadly shooting that did occur at her workplace. I immediately tried to call her cell phone and text her and see if I could get through to her. Unfortunately, her phone was going directly to voicemail.

BALDWIN: What, Starr, was that feeling like when you were trying to incessantly call your dearest, dearest friend and she wasn't picking up?

SHELDON: I was scared. At first, I kind of just thought, well, maybe her phone died with all the commotion or maybe it fell somewhere and it got broken or, you know, and she was able to get out or she is hiding or she might be at one of the hospitals or something. So at first I really just believed that maybe her cellphone died but that she was still OK.

BALDWIN: And so, as the bouncer, and I know she was so proud of her job and I want to ask you about that. She is thrilled to be, I know, so involve in LGBT community here in Orlando. Would she - I mean, she would have been essentially right at the entrance.

SHELDON: Yes. I did hear from her family members that did speak to her boss there that has confirmed that she was actually inside of the club. So I'm not sure if she was by the door or further in the club. I'm not sure of those details. But she did love her job and she just loved to be a part of LGBT community.

She was also a bouncer back in Massachusetts at -- in Northampton at the Diva's Nightclub and she was very well-known there in the community there and she did a lot of drag queen performances. And so I know the community there is really hurting and missing her dearly. And she just started working there at Pulse about two weeks ago. And she was so excited to start working there and to be a part of that community. And she was really going to get involved and try to do drag king performances there as well. So I know that she was just quite excited to be there. And she is such a great person. I know that, you know, she definitely would have helped everybody that she could at the last moment.

BALDWIN: I will take your word for it. I'm sorry, I never got to meet KJ.

Starr Sheldon, and I'm so sorry and thank you so much for your time. SHELDON: Thank you.

BALDWIN: So many people lives just gone. And so many others, dozens of others remain in area hospitals. Operations under way on some of them. Fighting for their lives.

Our chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is actually at the Orlando regional medical center.

And, Sanjay, I mean, in those initial hours when you initially have reports of perhaps a shooting and then all of a sudden this influx of people on -- you know, the middle of morning, how were they able to handle that?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, it's amazing, Brooke, the way they were getting information initially. First, they thought it was maybe a few patients that were going to come in with gunshot wounds which was a lot, but not that unusual. This particular hospital has taken care of situations like that before.

But then they started to get more and more as you well know. And then there was sort of this break in the action for a period of time. You remember, Brooke, because of this hostage situation that was taking place in the club, there was several patients that came in quite a bit of time after that. So you almost had two separate incidents for the hospital. And it was a very difficult thing to handle. What do they do? They started calling for more and more backup and resources.

There was one trauma surgeon initially there on call. He called two more trauma surgeons. Eventually there were six trauma surgeons and they have been operating until just recently as you mentioned, Brooke. I got a chance to spend some time with them in the trauma bay where they were taking care of the patients for the first time they let people actually see the particular area. And they really described everything that happened moment by moment.

There was one moment in particular, Brooke, I want you to listen to this where the doctor explained how he was trying to communicate with some of these patients. Take a listen.

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DR. CHADWICK SMITH, ORLANDO REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER: Some of them were awake and they were frightened.

[15:40:02] GUPTA: What did they say to you?

SMITH: Confused. Several people asked if, you know, if they were going to die. Where their friends were. Where their loved ones were. And, you know, just everybody kind of came together, tried to reassure them at the same time. There were some patients, unfortunately, that due to their injuries they were unable to be saved. And tried to make them as comfortable as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP) GUPTA: I mean, Brooke, you can get an idea of what it was like in there. Again, beyond the triage, trying to figure out who would likely survive and who would not, who would likely need an operation, when that operation would be performed? Just those types of conversations, Brooke, that Dr. Smith that you were just hearing from was having with these patients trying to reassure them in the midst of all of this. It is just very challenging on all levels.

BALDWIN: I am just so mindful in covering horrendous stories like this. It is the doctors, the nurses, it is the first responders, the police, it's everyone involved in this. And they will never be able to un-see what they saw.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the hospital angle, thank you so much.

Coming up next, new images today of the shooter's home as we learn more about the why in this equation. Why would someone want to do this? And his 911 calls pledging allegiance to ISIS.

This is CNN special live coverage here in Orlando. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We will be right back.

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[15:45:53] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I still think that I'm going to, like, wake up and everything's going to be normal but it's not. This is what happened. I -- there's no going back. You can't change the fact of what this guy did. And it's always said that God gives his hardest battles to his strongest people but he gave his strongest community a hardest fought battle and we are standing up and we are fighting. That's all we can do. All we can do is fight.

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BALDWIN: OK. That must have been -- welcome back. I'm Brooke Baldwin live in Orlando here.

New details on investigation of this massacre inside of a nightclub. We are learning that this 29-year-old gunman tried to buy military grade body armor just weeks before opening fire into a crowded nightclub with a semiautomatic assault style rifle. Thus far, investigators have not found any evidence of direct communication with ISIS. Although we do know that the shooter did call 911 multiple times apparently one of those phone calls from when he was in the club here. He pledged allegiance to the terror group as he was murdering innocent people. We also know that this terrorist traveled to Saudi Arabia. Not just once but twice. But apparently was on a pilgrimage.

So let's bring in CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem and CNN military analyst lieutenant general Mark Hertling who calls Orlando home 15 miles away. So you never thought you would be, you know, doing this. None of us ever wanted to do something like this.

And nice the see you all. But I'm looking at you first because I know that he was on some sort of list. He had been investigated by the FBI. And so, just recently, this guy goes in to go buy body armor, military grade body armor. They don't let him. Why didn't an alarm bell go off then?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Because basically the dots are not connected. Sometimes laws prohibit the dots from being connected. And FBI interview does not constitute guilt. Two FBI interviews do not constitute guilt. So that when the background checks were occurring for the guns, there is no way for the FBI to say, look, of all the people you don't want to give guns to, this is one of them, right?

And then the body armor, that is just a decision by the vendor at this stage to determine that. You know what, we are not going to give it to this guy. So there's a lot of gaps in how we can address limiting the capability of people with bad motives to kill lots of people in a short period of time. So, we can focus on the motivation but it's also as you are reporting on the means. Access to weapons that kill lots of people.

BALDWIN: I said this before, and there is whole piece in "Washington Post" today and we have covered too many of the mass shootings where the AR-15 seems to be the weapon of choice for these deranged most of the time young men.

On the investigation, but also on what we have seen even out here, they have extended the crime scene while we were listening to Donald Trump. They were actually all the ATF were out here looking for brass, right? Because they're still -- why? Why now?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: You are going to see multiple sweeps in the terms of trying to find the brass, the cartridges from the ammunition.

BALDWIN: All the way out here?

HERTLING: All the way out here. Potentially. They just want to make sure. If they missed something and a week from now someone comes up with a cartridge, they are going to say you missed something and might change the dynamics of the crime screen. So yes, they are going sweep once, twice, three probably four times for any kind of brass just to make sure they got it all.

BALDWIN: And what about the bearcat? You are saying on the commercial break, the fact that apparently it was -- there were not multiple entrances, right, and exits so there was this massive six- foot tall wall that the police had to slam down.

KAYYEM: What we realized after September 11th is that local law enforcement, all the people that you are meeting and interviewing here are really on the front lines. So what the department of homeland security has done over the years is given lots of money to local jurisdictions to buy things and plan for incident like this. It turns out, Orlando got about 65 million since the department started doing this and one of the purchases they made was that bearcat. So people can see how the federal government can support local and

state efforts. But in the end it is local police officer who is the front lines. Right. There is no military here.

HERTLING: This is tough, Brooke. Because that is tough notion. When you talk from a military perspective about clearing a building that is the term we use when we use putting infantry men in to make sure nothing wrong is going on, there's usually a window, a door, a small room. What you have over there is a large auditorium. There were 350 people packed in there. It was 2:00 in the morning. It was dark. There's no windows in that building. There's one entrance. So when you are talking about delays and people second-guessing the police, now, they are always going to find different ways to do it and better ways to do it. That was a tough action. That was a really hard action going in there.

BALDWIN: In the last hour, just you know, getting off the plane today and seeing everyone excited to go to Disney World. You can see her with the Mickey Mouse hat. And I thought never in million years that I would be here having to do this.

OK, Juliette, thank you so much. And General Hertling, I appreciate it very much as well here.

And now, we will be right back.

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[15:52:55] HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: -- inflammatory, anti-Muslim rhetoric and threatening to ban the families and friends of Muslim-Americans as well as millions of Muslim business people and tourist from entering our country hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We cannot continue to allow thousands of upon thousands of people to pour into our country, many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer. Many of the principles of radical Islam are incompatible with western values and institutions.

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BALDWIN: All right. This mass shooting in Orlando, pushing terrorism back on the campaign trail.

Joining me now to discuss this is CNN political commentator Carl Bernstein.

Carl Bernstein, nice to see you, sir. Let's just get right to it. Your thoughts on the tone and substances on both the speeches today, both Donald Trump and Secretary Clinton.

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: First, I thought Trump was predictably abhorrent and I though he was terribly, terribly effective in a way he hasn't been until now, that his speech will appeal to independents, even some Democrats and certainly Republicans because Hillary Clinton, Obama and the Democrats are very late to acknowledge by name that there is a real threat of Islamic terrorism in this country and all over the world. And they have been very reluctant to use the word Islamic terror and it's coming back to haunt them.

BALDWIN: What about Hillary Clinton? I mean, she is saying this is not about semantics.

BERNSTEIN: I think she has got real semantic problems. And that it comes very late in trying to parse things at this point. The important point that Barney Frank, the former liberal gay congressman from Massachusetts made today is that the left and the Democrats have got to start acknowledging the problem of Islamic terrorism, call it for what it is and come up for a real strategy with dealing -- for dealing with it.

And the impression Trump gave today with some effectiveness, despite his almost neo fascist rhetoric is that the Democrats have not done that. There's a long way to go. There is no movement in this country. And Trump got to this by American-Muslim peace-loving community to stage anti-terror marches. Why isn't there a million person Muslim march on Washington against terror that we are going to have an anti-Muslim program in this country. If Trump continues to say some of the things he says and if the American-Muslim community, indeed, Muslims all over the world do not believe in the terrorist agenda of quote "radical Islam," don't start doing things in their own backyards.

BALDWIN: Carl Bernstein, thank you.

BERNSTEIN: That's what Barney Frank was talking about.

BALDWIN: I know. We talked to him just the other day. I know.

Carl, thank you. I'm sure we will talk again. Thank you, sir.

Before I let you go here in Orlando, though, many of the people who were killed and wounded were Latino. And even though Pulse nightclub was set to stage haven for everyone and the LGBT community, Saturday night was Latin night.

So here with me now, Ramon Escobar. He is a CNN executive. He knows Florida very well. He knows the Latino community. HE knows the gay community.

I mean, when you heard, what were your thoughts?

RAMON ESCOBAR, CNN VICE PRESIDENT, TALENT RECRUITMENT AND DEVELOPMENT: Well, I think all of us were shocked and upset. Because one of the things about this community in particular that I don't think a lot of people have talked about is the overwhelming amount of Latino population here.

You know, over the last ten years, we have seen an explosion of Puerto Rican growth here. There are people think of Miami, think of Cubans, well Puerto Rico is what Orlando, what Miami is to Cubans. So incredible growth. Now as you know, there is a bankruptcy on the islands of Puerto Rico so now even more Puerto Ricans are coming. Four out of every five of the victims I think when we are all done here are going to be Latino. And I will tell that the biggest portion of the movie from Puerto Rico. So, you know, for those of us who know Orlando, we knew the moment you heard it was Latin night, you know, they were playing (INAUDIBLE), these are all, you know, Puerto Rican, Caribbean type of music, you know. It is what you come out --.

BALDWIN: Having a good time.

ESCOBAR: Well, anyone who know Puerto Ricans and knows Latino, they will be having a good time. So what's why it was such a shocker for all of us.

BALDWIN: Something else I thought about, and I understand you thought about it as well. There was a lot of young people and everyone has different relationships with their family and, you know, I mean, some of these folks, I imagine, were out.

ESCOBAR: And you know, this is something that we don't talk a lot about in our community, especially in the Latino community. And that is that for many Latinos who came out, they felt safer. Some of them did. Probably at that club because, you know, they didn't have to talk to their mom or maybe they haven't come out to their (INAUDIBLE), who they haven't come out to their grandmother. It's a very safe place.

So that's why everyone feels so violated because it's not just about a gay bar, it's about a place you go and you discover that everyone is just like you and you let your guard down. And everyone let their guard down in the Latino and gay community because they felt comfortable. And we know -- we are trying to figure this out now. We are trying to confirm but we know there are probably one, two, maybe more who found out that their children were gay at the same time they found out that they were dead.

And so it's something you don't hear a lot about but that's why I think so many people's hearts are so heavy right now. And the last thing I would say is the Puerto Rican population here, this place has embraced Orlando because it's a big population and, you know, stone wall in New York, what a lot of people don't know about stone wall is that it was really Puerto Ricans and blacks, gays and transgender who really led the stone wall riot. If you do your gay history, and here we are in 2016 and it's Puerto Ricans who I think are making a stand today in what happened at the pulse.

BALDWIN: Before I let you go in 30 seconds, with all of your excellent points you're making, what kinds of conversations should we have out of this?

ESCOBAR: Well, I think what we need to understand is this is complex and we have to lean into it. Because right now there is a bunch of people at another location who don't speak the language, who don't speak English and they are trying to understand their children. And you know, we have got to be more patient. We don't have those conversations about other shootings where people are walking in and just discovering not that their child is dead but a whole other stuff that they didn't know.

So I think, you know, what we need here is conversation. We need dialogue. We need to not be afraid to talk about these things, gay issues. You know, this story has everything the shooting involved so many issues in America today. The gay issue, the Latino issue, which we have heard both about those in our election. It has everything else. Terrorism. It's sort of touching every single, you know, hot spot in America today.

BALDWIN: We should go find some of those families as I'm looking at the hospital down the road.

Ramon, thank you so much for sharing that. We haven't talk about and we should be.

ESCOBAR: Yes. (INAUDIBLE).

BALDWIN: (INAUDIBLE).

And thank you so much for being here with me here. I'm Brooke Baldwin live in Orlando.

Special coverage continues right now with Jake Tapper - Jake.