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Live Coverage of the Hurricane Matthew; Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Facing Off in Their Second Debate. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired October 07, 2016 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:31:16] BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Hello there. I'm Brianna Keilar. Back to our hurricane coverage and Victor Blackwell in Jacksonville, Florida in just a moment.

But first, let's talk politics because we are two days to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton facing off in their second debate. This one is Sunday night. It is going to be a town hall. The audience is going to be able to asked questions plus this format allows candidates to walk around so town halls can be pretty tricky. Think George H. W. Bush checking his watch, right? Or Al Gore invading George W. Bush's personal space.

A lot can happen when Clinton and Trump meet again. Let's talk about it now. Joining me we have CNN's senior wife correspondent Jim Acosta and we also have James Fallows, national correspondent at the "Atlantic."

First to you, Jim. You had Donald Trump last night. He had this town hall which by all description, including from those close to hi said it was a practice for Sunday. And yet he insists it was not practice, but either way. How did this go? And what does this tell us about Sunday?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is interesting, Brianna because earlier in the week his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway was saying that you know the town hall format is tailor made, for Donald Trump and then lo and behold we had this town hall event in New Hampshire last night but it wasn't really a true town hall. There weren't citizens standing up and asking questions. These were questions that were being fed to a conservative talk show host who was then asking these questions of Donald Trump. And even Donald Trump during the event as you said stated that this was not a dry run for Sunday's debate. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They were saying this is practice for Sunday. This isn't practice. This has nothing to do with Sunday. We're just here because we just wanted to be here. And, you know, Hillary, frankly, they talk about debate prep. That's not debate prep. She's resting. She is resting. And I want to be with the American people. I want to be with the people from New Hampshire and she wants to rest.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ACOSTA: And it is true, Brianna. You know, Trump has been doing more events than Hillary Clinton over these last few days. Today he came out and spoke with members of a national border patrol union. But, you know, we should point out Donald Trump is in debate prep today. He has been meeting with Kellyanne Conway, Steve Brannon, his campaign, other top campaign adviser with him, as well as Chris Christie and the RNC chair Reince Priebus. So he is doing some debate prep as well.

KEILAR: OK. He is doing debate prep.

But, James, we understand he's not doing maybe the same kind of traditional debate prep top say, Hillary Clinton is doing. You know she's at a hotel in Rye Brook New York working on this. She is probably practicing almost the format. Trying to connect with the individual voters. Donald Trump didn't really have that opportunity last night. This is something that can be a little bit tricky. And we don't know if Donald Trump has been preparing that way. How does he need to navigate that and really connect with these voters?

JAMES FALLOWS, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, THE ATLANTIC: Well, it's really strange for me listening to his clip about almost taking pride in not practicing and taking pride and then rejecting the idea of rest. It's really surreal. This is a hard thing to do. Answering questions before tens of millions of people in real time with a possibility for error and knowing how many campaigns have been helped or hurt by missteps. The idea that you would not want to practice for that or not want to be at your best is -- takes us back maybe to Richard Nixon in his famous 1960 debate against John Kennedy where John Kennedy made sure he took the afternoon off, were sitting in the sunshine, you know, Nixon sort of sneered at the idea of practice and looked worse. So I guess we will see in the first debate it didn't seem to work out there that well with Donald Trump to come out without training. We'll see if it works out better this time.

KEILAR: OK. And then I want to ask you, James, about the hurricane because this could be affecting things in Florida. Hillary Clinton is doing better there. Good news for her, not good news for Donald Trump. But you have to voter registration deadline both for mail in and on person on Tuesday. We look at how there are hundreds of thousands of people without power. You can see how that might complicate things. And the Clinton campaign has had a request to adapt that, be rejected by the Republican governor. When you look at that, do you think that that is just -- that's how it goes? These things don't get adjusted or do you see politics at play and that there could possibly be an effect of this.

[14:35:36] FALLOWS: You know, I don't know of exact moment president for this because I don't know of a hurricane that has come at this exact moment, the registration cycle. But just speaking as a citizen as rather than part of any political affiliation it seems against the American tradition. You want to make it easier for people to register. When there are hurricanes, you extend deadlines for everything, for people paying their bills, for school assignments, for all sorts of accommodations. So I would think as a citizen I would want the governor of any state, Republican or Democratic one, to make it easier rather than harder for people to sign up.

KEILAR: Yes. You are certainly seeing the Clinton campaign thinking it will work to their advantage to have that extended. Perhaps Republicans are concerned about that as well.

All right, James Fallows, Jim Acosta, thank you so much to both of you.

And coming up, we are going to v the latest on hurricane Matthew, some of the worst yet ahead here in the coming hours, maybe even next hours. We take a look at these live shots out of Jacksonville, Florida. There's hospital there that is deciding to evacuate patients and staff. We're also going to talk with a dad who is stranded with his family at Disneyworld. Pretty chaotic scene there.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:41:36] VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: I'm Victor Blackwell live in Jacksonville, Florida.

We are still several hours, three to four hours away from seeing the worst of hurricane Matthew. But the conditions here have deteriorated considerably in the last couple of minutes. The wind has really picked up. Now although the bridge behind me, the main street bridge, officially has not been shut down and other bridges along the inter- coastal have been just standing here, I can tell you it is not safe to drive across that bridge.

We also know that JSO, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, is, advising everyone to stay exactly where they are tweeting out just a few moments ago "do not go outside until you get clearance from the emergency operations center." So people across the city are now being told to stay exactly where they are because of the threat of downed trees and downed power lines. We have seen here pictures tweeted out. We have seen video of the trees down. One at Edgewood cemetery which is not far from where we are now in Jacksonville.

We do also want to tell you about some emergency operations and efforts that were taken by Baptist Health, a chain of hospitals here in Jacksonville. I have on the phone with us John Wilbanks who is the chief operating officer there with Baptist Health.

John, give us an idea of the evacuations. We know at Baptist beaches there is gnaw saw, how many people are we talking about?

JOHN WILBANKS, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT/ CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, BAPTIST HEALTH (on the phone): OK. Yes. So we are a five-hospital system and our two outlying coastal community hospitals are Nassau (ph) and they transferred 15 patients to our Jacksonville campus downtown. And then our beaches campus have transferred 51 patients to Baptist south which is again inland.

BLACKWELL: So I understand that people that you have people who are instead of being with their families right now either here in the city of those families who have evacuated working to take care of those patients. How many people do you have working and give us an idea of the situation now.

WILBANKS: OK. So, what we have is a detailed plan, all hospitals do, to deal with emergencies. And so, in our emergency operations plan we have what we call pert teams, which is prepared emergency response teams. And so people volunteer to come and staff through the duration of the incident and then a second team comes after the event. That number is dependent but we have probable around 550 people on the campus taking care of these patients at this point.

BLACKWELL: Do you have any update on if those facilities that have been evacuated, if they are being impacted now? If they are flooding, if there's damage there?

WILBANKS: We do know that they are impacted to some degree but we are not aware of any major damage at this point. We have a very skeleton crew in each place. And so -- but at this point there's no visible damage at juncture. We have a little bit of leaking here (INAUDIBLE).

BLACKWELL: All right, John Wilbanks there with Baptist Health, the health system, hospital system here across Florida.

John Wilbanks, thank you so much.

You know, we are in Florida on a what would have been a three-day weekend for many families who are coming here to spend some time with their families, maybe go to amusement parks. Now although we have talked a lot about the impact on the coast, here in Jacksonville, Daytona, Cocoa beach, on up into Savannah and Charleston, inland there are effects as well.

Let's go inland now to Orlando where we have a father who is there with his family at Disneyworld. Supposed to be the happiest place on earth, unfortunately not on this weekend. He is now hunkering down waiting to get food, to try to get some assistance for his family.

Let's go now to Robert Bruce.

Robert, give us an idea of what you're experiencing on the weekend that was supposed to be fun for your family.

ROBERT BRUCE, TOURIST RIDING OUT STORM AT DISNEY WORLD (on the phone): Well, it started off fairly well. The weather started kicking in yesterday around 5:00 or so. Disney closed up shop around 5:00. And we are at (INAUDIBLE) at the time. When they thought weather was going to progress and get even worse they decided the shut down the parks Friday. Fortunately for us, we had Monday through Thursday, we were doing (INAUDIBLE), the four men parts. We had planned to visit universal on Friday.

We just spent the day indoors. It's been raining most of the time. And Orlando is lucky that they didn't get the brunt the way that they thought. Services have been shut down for quite some time. We had a car rental to ought to go visit some friends in Jacksonville for the next three days and we were fortunate to find a different car after Hertz have shut down. But we are waiting on word on how bad Jacksonville is now before we visit them.

My extended family, that is with us as well, my parents and mother-in- law. They had flight cancellations and they are now flying out of Tampa so they were able to get arrangements made. So it is your patient things have been panning out for people inland. It's just been mainly wet and very kind of chaotic when everything was shutting down. There was very little food to begin with. And as you saw from the video there was a lot of people waiting in line for quite some time to be able to get in and through.

[14:47:03] BLACKWELL: And you have come to Florida from Nebraska, I understand?

BRUCE: Yes, yes. So bad weather isn't necessarily foreign to us.

BLACKWELL: Yes. I hear that. Listen, Robert, I hope things get better for you. You say things started out well. It's good that you have your family there safe with you. And, yes, we will all wait to see what happens here in Jacksonville, still three to four hours out. If things get worse, if things get better, give us a call. You know to get to us.

Robert Bruce there for us in Orlando. Robert, thanks.

Now, we know the storm here in Florida is now a fatal one. A report from officials in St. Lucie County that overnight, a 50-year-old woman suffered cardiac arrest and died. Now we are told that's being considered storm-related because it was at the height of the storm there and first responders were unable to get to that woman. But we know beyond the woman here in Florida more than 280 people, according to Reuters, have died in Haiti. The situation dire there.

We will take a quick break then we will get an update on the response and what officials are seeing across that country.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:52:14] BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell live in Jacksonville. We are still three to four hours here from seeing the worst of hurricane Matthew. What it has for the first coast of Florida but we can look at its wake and see this is a deadly storm.

Already, one report from officials in St. Lucie County of one storm- related death. But if we go to the island nation of Haiti, there are more than 200, nearly 300 deaths being blamed on this storm.

Let's find out what the situation is there now. We have with us on the phone from Port-Au-Prince, rather by Skype from Port-Au-Prince, freelance journalist Yvetot Gouin.

Yvetot, thanks so much for being with us. Give us an idea of the situation there as first responders try to get to the people who still need help.

YVETOT GOUIN, FREELANCE JOURNALIST (on the phone): Hi Victor. It's an ongoing process, right. I mean, the storm ended just two days ago. But every single day, there are new things being discovered. There are new information coming out. They were able to access the more remote areas to identify when help is need, how many people have perish. So it is a day-by-day, hour-by-hour situation.

BLACKWELL: Yvetot, I was in Port-Au-Prince last year. And there were still so many impacts and effects from the earthquake in 2010 that had not been repaired, some infrastructure problems, of course. Is the most of the damage we're seeing in Port-Au-Prince or the outlying provinces there?

GOUIN: There's hardly any damage in Port-Au-Prince, Victor. All of it is in the south, southern part of Haiti, many coastal communities. Couple of some larger cities down in the south have either been leveled or nearly leveled or completely flooded so the damage is extensive. It's staggering, in fact. And so I'm not surprised the number will go up, to be quite honest.

BLACKWELL: All right, still the latest number we have from Reuters is 281 deaths being blamed on this hurricane.

Give us an idea of the response that we are seeing Yvetot?

GOUIN: It is starting to pile up. It is start to build up. And right now I'm at the airport. So it has reopened since yesterday. And I know there are most airplanes coming in. Reliefs - they are relief supplies, medical choppers. So there's lot more air traffic, especially today. Especially today. So we are hoping that it is going to sort of increase because as they get further and further into discovering the damage there is - I suspect we are going to need a lot more help than what we are seeing currently, but it's starting to happen, thankfully and thank God.

BLACKWELL: All right, Yvetot Gouin there joining us, a freelance journalist who is in Port-Au-Prince saying that most of the damage and the disruption outside of Port-Au-Prince and some of the other provinces.

And we heard from President Obama earlier today asking the Americans to remember the people of Haiti, you know, as people here in Florida and up and down the coast look to what we have seen overnight. And some may say that many communities dodged a bullet. Haiti did not dodge that with more than 280 deaths there.

We will continue our live special coverage of hurricane Matthew still a solid category three storm. Live from Jacksonville after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:59:48] BLACKWELL: I'm Live in Jacksonville, here awaiting, unfortunately, hurricane Matthew still a strong category three storm with sustained winds of 120 miles per hour.

I can tell you, we have been feeling pretty strong tropical storm force winds here where we are in San Marco just alongside the St. John's River.

Let me give you an idea closer to the beach, what is being felt the storm surge there as predicted, now five to nine --.