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Maria's Path and Aftermath; Search and Rescue Efforts Continue in Mexico; Trump in Alabama. Kim Jong-un Releases Statement. Aired 1- 1:30p ET

Aired September 22, 2017 - 13:00   ET

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

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Jim Acosta in for Wolf Blitzer.

Name calling and news. President Trump fires back at the North Korea dictator, Kim Jong-un, calls him mentally deranged. Now, new threats of an H bomb test.

Beneath the rubble, the desperate search for survivors in 10 buildings destroyed by a massive earthquake in Mexico. CNN is live on the ground.

Plus, Maria rages on. Millions of Americans without power possibly for months as the monster hurricane leaves a trail of absolute devastation behind.

But first, the war of words between nuclear powers, after President Trump attacked North Korea and Iran this week at the United Nations, the leaders of both countries thumbing their nose at the president in dramatic ways.

First, an extraordinary exchange of insults between the leaders of the U.S. and North Korea. This morning, President Trump called Kim Jong- un a mad man in a tweet after a statement by the North Korean leader was carried on state T.V. where he called Mr. Trump a, quote, "mentally deranged U.S. dotard and a frightened dog." That was in response to the speech at the U.N. where the president repeatedly called Kim the rocket man.

On top of that, Iran just announced a new long-range missile capable of carrying multiple warheads.

Let's talk more about the situation in North Korea, Senior International Correspondent Ben Wedeman is in Tokyo. Ben, tell us more about Kim Jong-un's response to the president's remarks and the latest threat of a hydrogen bomb coming from Pyongyang. Things are escalating quickly.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this statement from Kim Jong-un was published on KCNA which is the official state news agency. And this is really the first time any Korean leader, and there have -- North Korean leader, and there have only been three since 1945, has directed such a statement in the first- person singular.

And, really, it's just, sort of, one insult after the other. He calls President Trump a rogue and a gangster. And he ends the statement saying, I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.

Now, the original Korean actually is not dotard, obviously. The original Korean statement, it's actually old lunatic. Now, this, sort of, crude vivid language is unusual in a society like Korea where age commands respect. But in this case, Jim, the statement is oozing with the lack of it.

Now, regarding this threat about the possible use of an explosion or detonation of a hydrogen bomb, that came from the North Korean foreign minister who is attending the United Nations general assembly. He said, after this original statement was issued by Kim Jong-un, that Korea might -- North Korea might detonate a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific. Now, if that were the case, and nobody really knows at this point, whether concrete plans are being made to do so, it would be the first atmospheric nuclear test since China conducted one in 1980 in the western part of the country.

Now, we've seen, for instance, on the third of September, Korea -- North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test. It's conducted a variety of ballistic missile tests, including two in the last month over Japan. Now, if they combine the two, a missile tipped with a hydrogen bomb, that would be a massive escalation -- Jim.

ACOSTA: All right. The reality T.V. rhetoric getting a little too real. Ben Wedeman, thank you very much.

I want to discuss now here with me is CNN Political and National Security Analyst David Sanger. He is also the national security correspondent for "The New York Times" and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, Heather Conley. She's now the senior vice president for Europe and Eurasia at The Center for Strategic and International Studies.

David, how extraordinary is this? I remember I was filling in on the "SITUATION ROOM" last night when the statement came in from Kim Jong- un. It was remarkable in that it came directly from him. Typically, we hear this, sort of, tough talk coming from state media and so on. But this came directly from Kim Jong-un. What does that mean and how significant is that?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, it's unusual. He has not talked about President Trump directly very much. As you say it comes from state media. President Trump talked about him.

ACOSTA: Sure.

SANGER: But it was the speech at the U.N. that appears to have set this off. And, look, as long as it remained a war of words like this with the president this morning, with his tweet and what Kim Jong-un said, I think people would be concerned but not particularly exercised.

What's different, and you heard it from Ben's description, was this very specific threat from the North Korean foreign minister that North Korea might conduct an atmospheric test. That doesn't sound like a big difference from the previous six tests. It's a big difference.

[13:05:03] And the reason is the previous six tests have all been contained inside, --

ACOSTA: Underground.

SANGER: -- underground. Radio activities contained. You're not worried about the winds, by and large.

An atmospheric test, which the United States and Soviet Union agreed to ban in 1963, early days of the cold war, is a very different thing. Hard to control. Hard for North Korea, perhaps, to pull off. Will definitely raise the stakes to the United States about how it would respond to the north. Whether to respond preemptively. Whether to respond after such a test. it would also alienate the North Koreans, in many ways, from the Chinese who do not want to see radioactive clouds floating around the Pacific.

ACOSTA: And, Heather, just to pick up on what David was saying there. I mean, how -- what is your sense of this, when the North Koreans are talking about an atmospheric test of a hydrogen bomb. As David said, the atmosphere conditions could make this a real nightmare for that region.

HEATHER CONLEY, FORMER U.S. DEPUTY ASSOSTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: It's absolutely a regional nightmare and that's why we're seeing such extraordinary concern from the Japanese government, Prime Minister Abe and President Moon of South Korea.

I mean, this is -- again, these words are important. They matter. And we're getting a text book lesson on why diplomacy. You don't make it personal. You don't use such escalatory language. Because this is the only way you keep climbing up and this is very dangerous.

We have underestimated the North Korean threat for years now and I think we have to start taking this very, very seriously. We have to find a path for de-escalation. And using a war of words, that maybe OK for the playground, but that is not OK for an incredibly serious moment for Asia Pacific.

We've got to start deescalating this, but I just don't see where we are with our two leaders that have locked in a war of words. This is very, very serious.

ACOSTA: It's hard to find an off-ramp when the president is tweeting something like this. We can put this up on screen. Kim Jong-un of North Korea who obviously is a mad man, doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will never be -- will be tested like never before. David, you know, how do they deescalate things? It seems as though, you know, when you hear from the White House, they love this criticism that comes from the beltway, that comes from excel (ph) corridor of the president tweets. They feel as if we don't get it. He gets it. The American people get it, his supporters get it, but we don't get it. But this is not the same thing. We're talking about national security issues of the highest importance. We're not talking about political issues that, perhaps, he has a better sense of than we do.

SANGER: Well, the president, he's used his tweets in the past to appeal to his base and, as he says, frequently to talk directly to the American people. The difficulty is, in this case, you want to be talking specifically to Kim Jong-un.

And you've got to recognize that, in his culture as well, backing down is as hard as it may be or maybe even harder than it is for President Trump. And the reason for that is that the only thing that's holding the regime together right now, given the state of their economy, given the shortages of food, given the reign of terror that he's got there which the president accurately portrayed in the -- in the tweet, is this sense that the nuclear weapons that North Korea has developed have brought North Korea, this tiny, starving country, up to a level with the United States. And --

ACOSTA: It's been a real gift to him.

SANGER: It has been. And, look, we're sitting here talking about the leader of a country we would barely be referring to if he didn't have nuclear weapons. We're talking to it on par with the U.S. president.

ACOSTA: And, of course, they're watching us all the time. And, Heather, let me ask you this. I've heard it -- I've heard it said, since the president's speech, that when the president went out to the U.N. and threatened to wipe out North Korea, that he gave Kim Jong-un something of a -- of a gift again back home. Because he doesn't have to say it, the state media doesn't have to say it, they can just play the clip of President Trump saying this inside North Korea.

CONLEY: Right. No, and it does continue to give Kim Jong-un a lot of power to continue to -- as the president said in his tweet, continue to harm the people of North Korea, because it gives him a reason to keep tracking down because he has an external threat which is now the United States.

So, yes, it raises this to a level, it makes it very personal. And I have to say, in some ways, this is burying the White House's lead state. The sanctions that they've just laid down are really significant.

ACOSTA: They're real impressive, yes.

CONLEY: And they've -- that's been buried. That's important. That's what will try to break the change. So, let's tone down the language. Let's get down to the policy action and let's try to work on denuclearizing the North Korea Peninsula and not this war of words.

ACOSTA: It will be interesting to see if they can do more than just have one kind of message coming out of this White House. David Sanger, Heather Conley, thank you very much for that.

[13:10:00] I want to keep moving because it's a fast-moving news day. I want to turn now to the desperate situation unfolding in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

If you're away from your screen, you'll want to take a look at this. A dramatic rescue that was captured by the U.S. Coast Guard. Just off of Puerto Rico, you can see a rescuer is being lowered there. Take a look at this. And if you look closely at this shot, you'll see a woman and two children balancing on top of a capsized ship. There it is right there. Just remarkable. Waving their arms for help. According to the Coast Guard, all three were saved. The body of a man, however, was found inside the ship.

On land, the situation appears to be just as desperate. There's widespread flooding, some buildings that are uninhabitable and the entire island, again, is without power. The mayor of San Juan says rescue operations are still underway at this hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR CARMEN YULIN CRUZ, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO: I got an SOS from that elderly orphanage. And it was a text, like some horror movie. It said, if anyone can hear us, please, we are stuck here and we can't get out. And we have no power and we have very little water left.

So, we got there just in time. It was a very touching moment. If I can save one life, that would be good enough. But I have too many to save. So --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: CNN's Leyla Santiago is live in San Juan. Leyla, the mayor there sounding very desperate. She says a recovery plan is in place, but they had to take things one day at a time. What's the priority, at this moment? I suppose it has to be the power because it is just so widespread there on the island.

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, the power is only part of it, Jim, because officials have already told me that will take months to restore. Resources now coming in with FEMA on planes, on ships. But the priority will be distribution.

I want to, kind of, walk you around the kind of places that we're seeing right now. You can see how this home ended or a part of a home, rather, ended. And this is a roof. You can see a fan.

All of this, by the way, comes from that blue building. How do I know that? I talked to the gentleman that lives there that says, yes, this is part of my roof here. You can even see doors on the ground. People's personal lives just on full display after Hurricane Maria.

And so, when you hear the mayor of San Juan getting so emotional, I mean, it really is representative of what we are hearing and seeing on the streets. The government really dealing with a logistical nightmare because even they admit, they have not been able to reach parts of the island. And when I say reach, I don't mean just by phone, I mean by roads. These roads are flooded, filled with debris just like this. So, power a problem, communication a problem. But for the people that are coming out and seeing this type of damage, like Jose Ortega, the gentleman whose roof is now standing in front of me, it is easy to understand why they are so emotional. And he says he's waiting. He's waiting for help to arrive.

And so, that is a big priority, Jim. Resources now coming in. New York has sent a plane full of water, full of generators and food. But allocating that will be a big challenge.

ACOSTA: I can see it's just going to take months and months for them to recover down there in Puerto Rico. And, of course, you're staying on top of it. Leyla Santiago, thank you very much.

Puerto Rico, of course, is not the only island ravaged by Hurricane Maria. I want to bring on our Meteorologist Chad Myers. Chad, what an incredible storm that just devastated Puerto Rico there.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes.

ACOSTA: Take us on Maria's path and help us understand just how much damage has been inflicted so far.

MYERS: Sure. Let's start five days ago, when the storm was just a tropical storm. And the Leeward, Windward Islands here, Dominica right there. The storm was really nothing. It was 60 miles per hour. We move you ahead about 12 hours, and, all of a sudden, it's a category one hurricane.

So, the people of Dominica and Martinique saying, all right, let's batten down the hatches. This is getting worst. B But in 15 hours, this storm went to a category five right over Dominica. And this is what the pictures look like from Dominica. I was actually there in 2005, maybe 2006 on a cruise ship.

The people there were absolutely the most hospitable, lovely people ever. We went up to a place called the Emerald Pool. Swam in this beautiful rainforest. And it was just an amazing -- an amazing adventure. That's going to take a long time to recover.

Then, the storm exited Dominica and it just clipped Guadeloupe near Viaforte (ph) which is Old Fort. Old Fort and across the area here. And then, southern Guadeloupe, and there was quite a bit of damage there but not as much as Dominica.

Now, we fly you over here to St. Croix. St. Croix was the next in the line of islands to be hit by this. Significant damage in Frederiksted and the entire island itself. But a glancing blow not a center core punch of the eye itself, but the eyewall.

[13:15:07] And many time, we say the eyewall is worse than the eye. The eye is calm. But it's the eyewall that did hit St. Croix. We have a helicopter on the way with reports today to get better video of this because it's been a forgotten little place because it was so hard to get to, couldn't get there with the weather that's been the past three days. Now we move you ahead to the morning hours as it made landfall right

through Puerto Rico and across just south of San Juan. All of a sudden, from a category four to a category one, because it was so torn up, so much damage was inflicted on Puerto Rico that the storm almost killed itself.

If you go from there and we move you ahead to the Dominican Republic. And that's where we are now. Here's the flooding from the Dominican Republic. The wind damage from the D.R. There was a lot of mountain ranges that are just to the south of where that eye was and those mountain ranges caught the water and that water ran downhill.

Now we go to Turks and Caicos. That's where we are now. The damage will be on the islands that are in the eastern part of the Turks and Caicos. But that's where it is and that's the logistics of a storm that went from cat one to cat five, back to four, hit Puerto Rico. Now the one, now to two, now to three.

Jim.

ACOSTA: Incredible, Chad.

And I've been down in the Caribbean. I know you have as well. And so many folks down there tell us they watch CNN. So I know that they appreciate all the coverage we're doing and what you're doing as well, Chad, keeping on top of it.

Chad Myers, thank you very much.

MYERS: Thank you, Jim.

ACOSTA: Unfolding right now, a frantic search for survivors in the rubble from the Mexico earthquake. Why officials believe there are many still alive in nearly a dozen buildings.

Plus, President Trump with a direct warning for any Republican who votes against the health care bill. Will the holdouts listen?

And the president calling the Russian troll ads on FaceBook a hoax, even though FaceBook, Congress and Robert Mueller all disagrees. Just about everybody disagrees.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:21:02] ACOSTA: It's a race against time in Mexico City as crews franticly try to find survivors from Tuesday's earthquake. It's been three days since the quake struck, but Mexico's president says people could still be trapped and -- at least alive and trapped in 10 buildings there. With each passing hour, however, hopes of seeing more scenes like this are fading. The resilience, though, is unwavering.

Listen as rescue crews take a brief break to sing their national anthem.

(VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Remarkable how everybody is trying to stay in good spirits down there.

Let's get straight to CNN's Miguel Marquez, live on the ground in Mexico City, at the site of one of these searches.

Miguel, have there been any signs of life from what you can see at your vantage point?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Officials say there are signs of life in here. They've been able to pick up heat signatures on the back side of the building.

But I want to show you this, how delicate this is. There was a stop work order here in Quindesa (ph) -- this is central Mexico City -- because this building has become so unstable. What's happening now is that Japanese rescue crews and maybe an Israeli rescue crew that's up on top of the building now, surveying, trying to figure out how they can get ropes, how they can get access to the back of the building. They say they have heat signatures possibly from many people. About several dozen people are missing and believed possibly in this building. So, clearly, 72 hours it is critical that they get in there.

The problem is how. With the rain that they have had over the last couple of days, it has weighed down the building, all that water, and now it is very, very unstable. So getting into those floors where there might be cavities, where people might still be alive is extraordinary difficult. But you have crews from around the world here and an enormous effort to try to make that happen.

Jim.

ACOSTA: Miguel Marquez, thank you very much. Miguel doing his best. He's been whispering at the scenes the last few days and doing a lot of work covering that quake down there with all our CNN crews. He's trying to nurse that voice there. Miguel Marquez, thank you very much.

Coming up, saving Luther Strange. President Trump steps in to help the Alabama senator who has based his campaign on just one thing, allegiance to the president. Can Trump deliver the votes?

Plus, the president not hitting like after FaceBook says that they will deliver Russia-linked ads to the special council. His response, it's all part of an ongoing election hoax. That's according to the president.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:27:41] ACOSTA: President Trump heads to Alabama tonight to step right in the middle of an ugly GOP election battle. It's the Republican primary to fill the Senate seat that used to belong to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

CNN's senior national correspondent Alex Marquardt is in Huntsville, Alabama.

Alex, the president tweeted this, and we'll put this up on screen. We'll be in Alabama tonight. Luther Strange has gained mightily since my endorsement but will be very close. He loves Alabama and so do I.

Alex, the primary is on Tuesday. The president there setting some expectations that while he has helped in this race, perhaps it won't go his way. What are you hearing on the ground down there?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that is one of the strange twists in this election, that the voter who traditionally turned out for President Trump in this race are going to be going against the candidate that President Trump has not endorsed, Roy Moore.

We know that President Trump has come out in favor of Luther Strange repeatedly on Twitter, as you mentioned. He has talked about his loyalty. We all know how important loyalty is to the president.

And Luther Strange is very eager to cast himself as the president's man. In last night's debate against Roy Moore, he took every opportunity to talk about how closely aligned with the president he is, how hard he's fighting for the president's agenda in Washington.

This is shaping up to be a race of the D.C. Republican establishment against the grass roots. The super PAC aligned with Mitch McConnell has spent millions in TV ads against Luther -- against Roy Moore. Many on Capitol Hill in the GOOP don't want to see Moore's far right ultra conservative views up there in Washington.

We got a taste of his view for the country at last night's debate. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROY MOORE (R), ALABAMA SENATE CANDIDATE: I want to get free from political correctness and social experimentation, like transgender troops in our bathroom and inclusiveness.

Our foundation has been shaken. Crime, corruption, immorality, abortion, sodomy, sexual perversion sweep our land. When we become one nation under God again, when liberty and justice for all reigns across our land, we will be truly good again.

If we wait on Congress to do everything, we'll lose. It's our business to take care of our business. DACA is wrong. Dreamer is wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:30:08] MARQUARDT: So Moore there trying to play up how closely he is also aligned with Trump. We actually just saw Senator Strange walking past