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Republicans Dump Trump; Death Toll Rises in Haiti; Civilians Flee ISIS-Held City; Scores Killed in Airstrikes on Yemen Funeral; Russia Vetoes U.N. Aleppo Resolution; German Police Seek Possible Terror Suspect. Aired 3-3:30a ET
Aired October 09, 2016 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A defiant Donald Trump brushes off calls to drop out of the U.S. presidential race after one of the worst days of the campaign.
Workers in Haiti scramble to get aid and clean water to victims of Hurricane Matthew and fears grow over the spread of cholera.
Plus the long road out of ISIS territory. How people in Iraq are risking their lives to escape a living hell.
It's all ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. Thank you for joining us. We're live in Atlanta. I'm Paula Newton.
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NEWTON: More Republicans are calling on their party's nominee, Donald Trump, to leave the presidential race. Major figures in the party are withdrawing their support after video of Trump bragging about groping women surfaced Friday.
There are calls to move forward with Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, leading the ticket.
But Trump himself is striking a very different tone. He was all smiles at Trump Tower early Saturday.
Now he says he will never quit and he's lashing out at the media and the establishment for their reaction to the following video. Now before we show you a short portion, we warn you, the content is graphic.
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DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful women. I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. You just (INAUDIBLE).
(INAUDIBLE). And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything.
BILLY BUSH, "ACCESS HOLLYWOOD": Do whatever you want.
TRUMP: Grab them by the (INAUDIBLE). Do anything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NEWTON: That video has put many Republicans in crisis mode. But one of Trump's top advisers, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, says he still thinks Trump will win.
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RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER MAYOR OF NYC: There is nothing that is going to cause his dropping out. That's a wishful thinking of the Clinton campaign and those people who have opposed him for a long time. He's in the race to win and he is going to win.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you make of so many fellow Republicans backing out from supporting him?
GIULIANI: They largely didn't support him in the first place. So it's not so much of a surprise.
If you look at it, they were all Republicans who opposed him and didn't support him in the past. And this was basically the insiders against the outsiders anyway.
Donald Trump is the populist candidate. Most of the people that have turned on him are members of the establishment. So I would see this as -- you want -- if you want change in Washington, you vote for Donald Trump. If you want to keep things the same, you vote for Hillary Clinton. (END VIDEO CLIP)
NEWTON: Now for many people, though, defending Trump has meant walking a fine line between supporting the man and condemning his words.
Mike Pence, who could replace Trump if some Republicans get their way, issued this statement, "As a husband and father, I was offended by the words and actions described by Donald Trump in the 11-year-old video released yesterday.
"I do not condone his remarks and cannot defend them. I am grateful that he has expressed remorse and apologized to the American people. We pray for his family and look forward to the opportunity he has to show what is in his heart when he goes before the nation tomorrow night."
And Trump's own wife, Melania, had this to say, "The words my husband used are unacceptable and offensive to me. This does not represent the man I know. He has the heart and mind of a leader. I hope people will accept his apology as I have and focus on the important issues facing our nation and the world." Now the political backlash from the video has been swift and severe. Earlier I asked Larry Sabato, director of The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, what could happen next.
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LARRY SABATO, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: This is completely unprecedented in American history. It's difficult to plot or plan it out. It really depends on what Donald Trump himself decides to do.
And so far he has said there is zero chance that he will drop his bid for president. The Republicans really can't force him off the ticket.
First, there isn't time and, second, the election is 30 days away and, third, you know, it is a little bit odd to see all of these Republican officials being shocked, shocked to discover that Donald Trump is vulgar, lewd and crass. There were only 1,000 pieces of evidence before they nominated him.
NEWTON: But, Larry, you make a really good point. And you made it to me yesterday when all of this was breaking, that, look, his base is just fine, thank you very much. They knew what they were getting into. And what they don't like is the establishment --
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NEWTON: -- not just of the Democratic Party but of the very Republican Party that is now trying to push Donald Trump off the ticket.
Do you think this could backfire?
It absolutely will backfire on the Republicans if somehow they force Trump out. It will backfire because Trump's rock-solid base, numbering in the millions, will be furious, will not vote for the new nominee and will probably not vote for the Republicans down ballot for Senate, governor, House and so on.
NEWTON: Which brings us to our next topic, I mean, the Democrats cannot believe the gift that they have. They obviously have their eye on trying to really make some gains down ballot.
Do you think that's what the Republican Party is in the game now to win, knowing that, look, the presidency, forget it?
SABATO: Essentially, Republicans who have a brain understand that Donald Trump is going to lose.
I want to stress, though, Donald Trump was losing before this. He was going to lose to Hillary Clinton by 4 percent or 5 percent. It may be larger now.
But let's not rewrite history and claim that a videotape alone has put Trump in this position. The Republicans are desperately hoping that they can hold the Senate and keep the House. They may well keep the House. The Senate, though, as Clinton's margin increases, the Democrats' chances of taking over the Senate also increase.
NEWTON: And you know the Democrats are eyeing that. They desperately want it back. Larry, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
SABATO: Thank you, Paula.
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NEWTON: Now all of this sets up quite a second presidential debate. And that's in less than 24 hours. And Donald Trump says he has no plans of missing the match-up.
There's a good chance the Republican nominee will try to deflect from the latest controversy by alleging that former president Bill Clinton's indiscretions with women were, in fact, much worse than his own. On the campaign trail Saturday, a protester heckled Mr. Clinton.
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BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Nobody can dispute the fact --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That you're a rapist.
CLINTON: -- that we need -- we need -- oh, yes?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We love you.
CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you. Don't worry about it. Thank you.
Thank you. You've got to feel sorry for them. They had a bad day yesterday. So they're trying to make it up. Give him a hand. Give him a hand.
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NEWTON: Now actor Robert De Niro is denouncing Trump, referring to him as "an embarrassment." The Oscar-winning star had some choice words for the billionaire in a video released Friday.
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ROBERT DE NIRO, ACTOR: It makes me so angry that this country has gotten to this point that this fool, this bozo has wound up where he has. He talks how he wants to punch people in the face. Well, I'd like to punch him in the face.
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NEWTON: And oh, no. It didn't stop there, with Tic Tac getting in on the responses to Trump's video. Trump mentioned that brand of mints in the video that surfaced Friday and the company objected.
Tic Tac tweeted that they respect all women and find Trump's recently revealed statements and behavior "completely inappropriate and unacceptable." Now as we have said, the two presidential candidates face off Sunday
in their second debate. It's a town hall format at Washington University in St. Louis. Moderated, of course, by our own Anderson Cooper and ABC's Martha Raddatz. That's at 2:00 am Monday in London, 9:00 am in Hong Kong.
Now officials in Haiti warn the death toll from Hurricane Matthew will rise as aid workers reach the worst-hit areas. At least 330 people have died since the storm made landfall on Tuesday. Other estimates put the toll much higher.
The hurricane flooded entire villages, wiping out crops and livestock. And it also cut off certain areas of the island. Senior international correspondent Ivan Watson is on the ground and surveys the damage from Port-Salut.
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IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is what the path of a hurricane looks like from the air. The storm left trees scattered like matchsticks on the hills.
WATSON (on camera): Look at how these trees are just stripped of foliage here. You can actually see the roofs of homes on the hilltops. The roof just blown away.
WATSON (voice-over): Hurricane Matthew killed hundreds of people and left tens of thousands homeless. We are flying over Haiti's southwestern peninsula, one of the most isolated parts of the country.
WATSON (on camera): This is the only real way that we can get a sense of the scale of the damage caused by Hurricane Matthew --
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WATSON: because Haiti does not have a great network of roads. And there are a series of islands of Haiti's coast like Ile-a-Vache -- what we're looking at right now.
WATSON (voice-over): Six years ago, this region was largely untouched by the earthquake that shattered the Haitian capital. But this time, the people here weren't so lucky.
WATSON (on camera): How is your house?
RAOUL ROA, SURVIVOR: My house go down. Everything (INAUDIBLE).
WATSON: Everything's gone?
Yes?
ROA: All the trees were going down, electrical pole was down.
WATSON (voice-over): Since the storm, residents of Port-Salut cleaned most of the debris off the roads. But at night, they sleep outside their shattered homes, in the dark. WATSON (on camera): When do you think you'll get electricity here again?
ROA: Nobody know when.
WATSON: This is a close up view of some of the damage that we could see from the sky, just one home that was ripped apart by the hurricane winds that made a mess of people's meager belongings and hurt a lot of people here too who had to wait days for emergency medical care.
WATSON (voice-over): These people survived the most powerful hurricane their country has seen in a generation, a grim reminder of the fury and power of Mother Nature -- Ivan Watson, CNN, Port-Salut, Haiti.
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NEWTON: Just some of the destruction from Hurricane Matthew. Our meteorologist, Derek Van Dam, continues to track this storm.
What a marathon storm.
Derek, how long have we been talking about the storm and how powerful and damaging it's been?
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Paula, the operative word there in your sentence being continues. We have been tracking this storm since the 23rd of September, when it formed off of West Africa.
So I believe today's the 9th of October, so we're roughly going on 16 days, over two weeks. Look at this path. Started to move across the Leeward Islands on the 28th of September and then it officially became a tropical storm, eventually a category 2 and then category 3 hurricane and then, of course, a category 4.
A category 3 to a category 5 hurricane, which is a major hurricane according to the National Hurricane Center. That was for seven consecutive days.
Then we tracked this thing across Haiti. You saw the devastation there. Cuba, the Bahamas. Eastern sections of Florida into Georgia. South and now North Carolina, so tropical storm strength for 12 consecutive days. Wow. What a monster of a storm.
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VAN DAM: But the good news here, Paula, you can see the projected path. It takes it right out in the Atlantic Ocean and does not wrap it back into the United States. So we'll say goodbye and good riddance to Matthew finally.
NEWTON: Thank goodness. Get the hell out of that --
VAN DAM: That's right, I agree.
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NEWTON: The problem, Derek, is to remind everyone, right?
Hurricane season isn't over.
VAN DAM: That's right. In fact, we've got another tropical storm out in the Atlantic right now, Nicole.
NEWTON: OK. Our fingers crossed that things will go better for the rest of the season. Derek, thanks so much for continuing to track that storm for us. Appreciate it.
Now scores of mourners are dead after airstrikes in Yemen, who --
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NEWTON: -- local officials blame for the attack. We'll tell you. That's next.
Plus: these Iraqis are risking everything to flee ISIS. We hear from civilians escaping from the city of Hawija coming up.
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NEWTON: In Yemen, the Saudi-led coalition says it will investigate reports that its warplanes were responsible for deadly airstrikes on a funeral home in the capital, Sanaa. The coalition had earlier denied any responsibility for the bombing on Saturday. At least 155 people were killed.
Mourners were at a wake for the father of the rebel government's interior minister when the bombing struck the funeral home. Journalist Hakim al-Masmari (ph) joins me now on the line from Sanaa.
And, Hakim, just absolutely horrific scenes. I'm not sure if people know exactly what the precise death toll will be. But let us know. At this point there's going to be an investigation. But these kinds of things have been going on for years now in Sanaa.
HAKIM AL-MASMARI (PH), JOURNALIST: Over the last eight months (INAUDIBLE) the Saudi-led (INAUDIBLE) coalition airstrikes that killed civilians, (INAUDIBLE) until now you have 10,500 civilians killed over 18 months.
(INAUDIBLE)
NEWTON: Hakim, I'm sorry. We're going to have to leave it there. We are having trouble with your line, which is obviously understandable.
But our viewers should go to cnn.com, where we have a lot of information, including an editorial that Hakim (ph) put together, describing exactly what's been going on in Yemen for the past several months and the dire humanitarian situation there on the ground.
And we will continue to follow what comes of this investigation into this airstrike.
A U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at halting Syrian government airstrikes on Aleppo has failed. On Saturday, Russia used its veto to block the measure, which also called for access to humanitarian aid. The veto was expected because of Moscow's support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
A Russian counter-resolution that didn't call for a halt to airstrikes failed to get enough votes to pass. Russia's U.N. ambassador was critical following the failed resolutions.
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VITALY CHURKIN, RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N. (through translator): We are participating in one of the strangest spectacles in the history of the Security Council. We have to vote on two draft resolutions of the council while we are all well aware that neither will be adopted.
Given that the crisis in Syria is at a critical stage when it is particularly important there be a coordination of the political efforts of the international community, this waste of time is inadmissible.
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NEWTON: Russia's veto comes as the U.S. secretary of state says Moscow-backed Syrian airstrikes should be investigated as war crimes. John Kerry said on Friday the strikes were a targeted strategy to terrorize civilians. A deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N. continued those accusations on Saturday.
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DAVID PRESSMAN, DEPUTY U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: Russia has the privilege of serving as a permanent member of the Security Council, with a responsibility to maintain international peace and security.
But through the campaign it describes as counterterrorism, Russia has become one of the chief purveyors of terror in Aleppo, using tactics more commonly associated with thugs than governments.
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NEWTON: Blunt language there from deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. David Pressman, who was speaking about Russia's involvement in Syria.
Now the city of Hawija is one of the last ISIS strongholds in Iraq. It's just south of Kirkuk and an offensive against the terror group is expected soon. Civilians are desperate to flee and are risking everything to escape ISIS. Our Ben Wedeman has more.
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BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They walked 17 hours through the night to reach this ridge, the edge of Kurdish-controlled territory south of Kirkuk.
An officer gives 10-year-old Amal (ph) a kiss and then a thorough search. With ISIS often inserting suicide bombers among fleeing civilians, everyone is suspect.
"The journey," says Amal, "was tiring."
And all the while she was afraid of daish, a derogatory term for ISIS.
"Hundreds, thousands want to escape," says Mahmoud (ph), "but daish is waiting to catch people trying to leave. Twice they caught me. This time I succeeded."
During the night, Mahmoud (ph), his wife and five children hid in an irrigation canal to evade detection.
WEDEMAN: Every day people come to this point, fleeing ISIS control. But it's a long and dangerous journey. Along the way, there are booby traps, there are IEDs and, according to the soldiers here, in the last month, nine people have been killed trying to reach this point.
WEDEMAN (voice-over): It's a terrifying trek but worth all the risks to escape ISIS.
"If you do something small, they jail and beat you. Anything serious and it's off with your head," says Ladif (ph).
Bashir (ph), a farmer, had only one run-in with ISIS.
"They arrested me," he recalls, "for a pack of cigarettes, fined me 100,000 dinars" -- about $85 -- "and gave me 10 lashes."
Food is expensive and scarce; medical care and education, non- existent.
"The children have missed two years of school," says Samira (ph), "and I don't know if any school will take them now."
Here they're given food and water -- and a bit of comfort -- and a cursory interrogation. Intelligence officers will question them further, checking names against a database of ISIS members and sympathizers, and then truck them to camps.
WEDEMAN: This group of people is just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the hundreds of thousands of people, who are expected to flee as the offensive against ISIS continues -- Ben Wedeman, CNN, south of Kirkuk.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NEWTON: Pro-government forces in Libya have dealt a blow to ISIS militants. Troops have seized two streets in Sirte (ph) from the jihadists. Now ISIS now controls just a small strip in its former stronghold.
Pro-government forces have been working for months to take back the city. They are getting support from U.S.-led airstrikes.
A manhunt is under way in Germany for a 22-year-old Syrian national. Authorities say he may have been planning a terror attack. Three people who may have been connected to him have since been arrested. Our Isa Soares has more on this report.
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ISA SOARES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is the man suspected of planning a bomb attack on German soil. His name is Jaber al-Bakr.
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SOARES (voice-over): He's 22 years of age, from Damascus in Syria. Police raided his apartment after receiving a tipoff from the domestic intelligence service. Within hours, they found an explosive mix of substances.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We can announce that we have found considerable amounts of explosives in the apartment, several hundred grams. In fact, it's a very dangerous explosive material. So we have to take extreme precautions, which is done at this moment.
SOARES (voice-over): These substances were so volatile that police dug holes outside the apartment and set off controlled explosions.
SOARES: At this stage police don't know whether the man on the run is himself carrying any explosives or whether he is armed. They also don't know the where, the when or, indeed, the why. So you can indeed imagine they're not taking any chances.
SOARES (voice-over): They have been cordoning off key areas and have evacuated more than 80 people while they comb through some parts of Chemnitz. Police wouldn't say how long the suspect has been in Germany or whether he was a recent arrival from Syria.
Germany remains on high alert following two attacks this summer, both carried out by refugees in the name of ISIS -- Isa Soares, CNN.
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NEWTON: And that does it for us for the moment. Thanks for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Paula Newton. "IN 24 HOURS" is next. But first, I'll be right back with a quick look at your headlines. You're watching CNN.
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