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New Day

Historic Hurricane Devastates Florida Panhandle; Turkey Has Audio & Video Evidence of Journalist's Murder; Trump's Legal Team to Answer Written Questions from Mueller. Aired 6-6:29a ET

Aired October 12, 2018 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This hurricane was an absolute monster.

[05:59:17] BRYAN WADDELL, FLORIDA RESIDENT: This was probably the scaredest [SIC] I've ever been in my life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is literally like a giant bomb went off.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you think about it, their lives are (UNINTELLIGIBLE). What do you do?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The allegations against Saudi Arabia now sparking an international crisis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think they did it, and unfortunately, I think that he's deceased.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was a murder, it appears, and we're silent.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: If it turns out to be Saudi Arabia, there will be all hell to pay.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Friday, October 12, 6 a.m. here in New York.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: It's great to have you back. I'm very glad that you were there for us --

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- for the storm, but I'm glad that you're back.

BERMAN: It's strange being back. It's a little odd, because when you're down there, you have tunnel vision. You only can see what's around you. We had no TV for 48 hours. Of course, the power was all out. And you only see what is around you. And we knew it was bad. I knew the situation was bad at Panama City

where we were, but it wasn't until we drove out and we saw all the trees down, all the buildings destroyed, just how extensive the damage was that it really seeped in.

And then, you know, this is the first time I've seen the pictures from Mexico Beach.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: It's just horrible.

CAMEROTA: It looks like a bomb went off there.

BERMAN: It really does.

CAMEROTA: And we're going to be able to show you some aerial pictures, video, thanks to Brooke Baldwin, the first of their kind.

BERMAN: You know, it's hard to describe the scope of the devastation all over the Panhandle. This is just some of it. This is Mexico Beach, an entire city really gone. The fishing villages near it, beach resorts, towns, so badly affected.

Hurricane Michael just punished the Panhandle with historic force. Countless lives and communities in ruins, peoples' lives in shambles. Businesses they worked to create for decades just gone. All along the Gulf Coast, this is the scene.

At least six people have died from this storm. That number, it could very well rise. We just don't know, especially with the communication systems being as -- as compromised as they are. There've already been hundreds of rescues, more than 1.4 million customers are without power in seven states.

Interestingly enough, it's not Florida. That's the problem. The power outages are in North Carolina and Virginia. The recovery from this storm, it will take years.

CAMEROTA: And there's another story that we're following, a major development in the apparent murder of missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi. A source tells CNN that the Turkish authorities have audio and visual evidence proving that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside Saudi Arabia's consulate in Turkey.

His disappearance creating an international crisis. And now a bipartisan group of U.S. senators are threatening to block a major arms deal with Saudi Arabia. They're also calling for the White House to investigate. But it's complicated because, in part, of the Trump family ties to the Saudi crown prince.

We have a lot to cover, but let's begin with Brooke Baldwin. She is live in Destin, Florida. Brooke brought us, as we said, the first aerial pictures of the hard-hit Mexico Beach area yesterday.

Brooke, tell us how you got those -- that video up in the helicopter and what you're seeing around you.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure. Good morning, Alisyn.

Yes, you know, yesterday was just extraordinary. You know, we were one of the first journalists rolling into Mexico Beach sort of along with the National Guard.

The challenge for us here on the ground is the roads were simply impassable because of downed electrical lines and downed trees because of those 150 mile-an-hour winds from the Category 4 hurricane.

And so I was able to secure us a helicopter yesterday morning, and as we flew over what's known as Florida's Emerald Coast, sort of leaving here in Destine, really relatively unscathed; flew over where John Berman would have been in Panama City Beach.

And then, once we hit Mexico Beach and saw it with our own eyes, to quote someone who lost his home, who kept saying this word over and over and over, it's gone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN (voice-over): From the air it's clear, much of Mexico Beach is gone. From the ground, we see up close the devastation to the seaside city, home after home on the stretch of beach destroyed. While most of the 1,200 residents evacuated, a small number stayed behind. We don't know yet how many survived the near direct hit from Hurricane Michael.

Scott Boutwell didn't make it out in time. The bridges closed, and he was stuck.

(on camera): How does it make you feel to look around at everything just leveled?

SCOTT BOUTWELL, SURVIVED HURRICANE MICHAEL IN MEXICO BEACH: Well, the thing is, you know, this is a small little town, you know. This is our little town. And so every restaurant is gone. Every store is gone. And then all my neighbors, everybody's home is gone. So when you think about it, you know, all of these -- their lives are gone, you know, so how do you -- what do you do?

BALDWIN (voice-over): Scott says he lost most of his possessions, but he will stay and rebuild.

BOUTWELL: So the stuff that I thought I had, you know, this stuff -- all the stuff of value, it's even gone here, you know. It's hard to talk about it.

BALDWIN: All over the area we heard this constant, high-pitched beeping. They are fire alarms buried in the rubble, warnings that perhaps came too late.

Again and again I heard from survivors here who told me they're simply grateful to be alive. These three friends were searching for one of their homes. It was hard for them to even recognize the street. [06:05:09] (on camera): There are just no -- there are no words?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, there's not. There's so many memories here.

BALDWIN: This woman, Sherry, says she didn't have time to grab anything but some clothes and her jewelry box.

(on camera): And to see this feels like what?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't describe it. It's just terrible. It's -- I just can't describe the feeling, and I know I'm not the only one here that feels the same. They've lost everything.

BALDWIN (voice-over): Mexico Beach is virtually cut off from the rest of the state, though emergency crews are working throughout the area. Roads are still blocked, power is out, and cell service is nonexistent.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Halle, it's Mama. I'm OK. I'm OK. It was a lot more and a lot rougher than we thought. How are you guys?

BALDWIN: Our satellite phone was the only way for these women to contact their loved ones.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love you, too. Bye. There's OK.

BALDWIN (on camera): Oh, your daughter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: You know, the fact that we're able to share our satellite phone with as many people as we were, and I really credit these two guys actually working this camera this morning, Lynnel (ph) and Taka (ph), because they kept handing our satellite phone to, you know, the various people we were meeting, because the challenge was we were basically in a bubble for six hours yesterday in Mexico Beach with no cell service.

And so with the satellite phone that, you know, is used in mass destruction areas and war zones, we were able to hand it over and let people reach out to their loved ones and speak to them and tell them they had survived this Category 4 hurricane for the very first time, guys.

BERMAN: It's so important to be able to do that, Brooke, and relieve one of the burdens that's on these people when they have so much hanging over them. It's such a feeling of helplessness. Where to start? Where do you begin to rebuild?

I have a couple questions. You know, you were there in the devastation. We keep hearing the death toll six people from Hurricane Michael across all these states. Is there a search-and-rescue effort? Is there a concern there might be people still trapped in those buildings?

BALDWIN: Totally. You know, I was talking to -- I saw Miami Fire and Rescue. I saw New Orleans, a couple other local jurisdictions. And it was the Miami guys who were telling me yesterday that they were going door to door to door. I kept asking, "Do you have a number for me?"

And they said, "No, Brooke, it's still too early." You know, again, we were there so early with the search-and-rescue teams. They were just able to set up and were going door to door. So they -- they said certainly expect that number to rise. It's just -- it's impossible to know.

One of the other challenges I thought that was interesting was not only were they trying to hear, you know, cries, barking dogs to know who may have survived the storm in some of these homes that were leveled. But also, there were people that had ridden out the storm, and there was a couple with kids who didn't want to leave their homes, who had ridden out the storm.

There was this one family with two young kids who were just so terrified. They didn't want to leave. The fire and rescue crews were so terrified. Because they were worried, they didn't have water, dehydration issues. They were like the survivors would then become the patients. So they were busy also coaxing people out of their homes.

CAMEROTA: Yes. John -- I mean, John, you talked to people like that. And I thought it was eye-opening, because I think that the tendency, if you don't live in a hurricane zone, to think, well, people are just being stubborn. They just don't want to leave their belongings.

But in fact, there's all sorts of complications. Money, having nowhere else to go, having no relatives. Elderly people you're trying to take care of. Big pets you're trying to take care of. I thought that that was very helpful.

Brooke, again, had you not commandeered a chopper through your persuasive powers, you know, I don't think that our viewers would have been able to see the vast devastation as early. I mean, you were some of the first eyes on this.

BALDWIN: Yes, you know, you get creative when you're on the ground covering stories like this. I know I wanted to go to the hardest-hit area. I had a -- I had a helicopter on the brain, and I wasn't going to let it go.

And so our crews showed up yesterday morning very, very early at the executive airport here in Destin and basically made some friends with the folks at the front desk, who led us to the helicopter hangar, who led us to a guy who knew a guy who happened to be in town. He normally flies the Grand Canyon. Who knew how to fly this particular kind of helicopter. And we essentially said, "Listen, you know, we have to show the country how bad it is. Please, can you get us up and fly?" And he agreed.

And so you know, just even -- once we were up in the air and landed, the FAA had then closed the airspace. We were able to land before it was shut. It's shut now for days. And so we actually had to get permission from the FAA to get out of there so I could, you know, get you the pictures that you've just have seen.

[06:10:10] And also logistically the challenge. I mean, there's, like I said, no cell service in that part of Florida, and so for us to -- we were actually getting our live shot up because of a sweet soul, this man who had a quarter of a tank of gas left who survived in Mexico Beach who wanted the story out so badly that he let my two photojournalists hook up our inverter to his battery in his car that had been crashed by a tree trying to get away from the storm to juice up our inverter so that we had a functioning computer to hit the satellite to go live. That's how we made it happen.

BERMAN: Brooke, the people there, did they all ride out the storm or were people trying to get back to Mexico Beach any way they can, even walking across the bridges in the road?

BALDWIN: Yes. It was a combination. It was certainly the -- the gentleman you saw in that piece did choose to ride it out. He thought it was a Category 2. We actually just had a flooring and carpenter guy in, because he just finished his new home in Mexico Beach. And he didn't want to leave his precious new home.

And then the woman you just saw who was walking in, she had ridden it out in a town, Port St. Joe, just around the bend, and so she was walking with her two friends, who we shared the satellite phone with. They were walking in from the ocean, because there's no way of getting into Mexico Beach at the time that we were there.

And she had been seeing, you know, her home for the first time. And it was a combination of people. You know, I saw this little girl hanging on tight to the back of a golf cart, who had ridden out the storm with her family, clutching her rooster. And I just -- I remember seeing the smile on her face, saying, "We found him! We found him!" You know, it's -- it was a combination of all of the above, but it was in a mandatory evacuation area. People should have left, but obviously, some people just didn't want to.

CAMEROTA: Brooke, we are grateful for your resourcefulness and for you bringing all of these stories to us. Thanks so much for the good work.

BERMAN: I know you're going back again today, so Brooke, once again, terrific reporting. Thank you so much.

BALDWIN: Yes, I will be back there today for my show. Thank you.

BERMAN: Obviously, when you look at pictures like this, you want to know how can you help. Well, we do have a way. If you want to help the people who have suffered through Hurricane Michael, go to CNN.com/impact. We have all kinds of resources there available. We will hook you up with the right organizations and the right charities so you can make an impact.

CAMEROTA: And if you're wondering how on earth this part of Florida will ever rebuild, ahead on NEW DAY, we will talk about the federal response to Hurricane Michael with FEMA administrator Brock Long and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. BERMAN: All right. Other news this morning, Turkey now says they

have audio and video evidence that a missing journalist was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. This is a huge international story, a huge problem for the Trump administration, and we have these these new breaking developments, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:16:53] CAMEROTA: OK. Now to one of our other top stories. A source close to the investigation into the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance tells CNN that Turkish authorities have evidence that he was murdered inside he Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Pressure is intensifying on President Trump to confront Saudi Arabia about this, and CNN's Nic Robertson is live in Istanbul with more. What is the latest, Nic?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, what we're hearing from a source who's close to the investigation here, he says that Turkish officials have briefed some of their Western allies on the evidence that they have from inside the consulate. That evidence shows very clearly that Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside there.

The source who was brief by one of those Western intelligence officials that has seen the evidence, both audio and visual, described them as being incredibly shocked by what they've seen. They hadn't seen anything quite so horrific as this: an assault, violence, a violent struggle that clearly ends with the death of Jamal Khashoggi.

Of course, for the Turkish authorities, this is a double-edged sword. This is the evidence that they have that backs up their claim that the Saudis actually killed Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudis deny that.

But of course, the Turkish authorities, how they got this audio and visual material from inside the consulate raises questions about -- you know, about their operations with western embassies and consulates across this country. So it's a double-edged sword.

However, as the investigation continues, we know that Turkish investigators have pledged to form a working group with Saudi officials, and that Saudi delegation has just arrived in the country. But it's hard to imagine how they're going to make progress here. The Saudis deny responsibility and have so far refused to let Turkish investigators inside the consulate. The Turkish investigators, we understand, want a forensic team to go in. And they know precisely the rooms inside the consulate that they want to see -- Alisyn, John.

CAMEROTA: Nick, thank you very much for the update. We'll check back with you.

Joining us now, we have CNN political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson; staff writer at "The New Yorker" and CNN global affairs analyst Susan Glasser; and CNN senior political analyst John Avlon.

John, I want to start with you, because this would be complicated for any U.S. president. OK? There's so many entanglements with Saudi Arabia. But particularly for Donald Trump because of his family ties and because he seems so wed to whatever this arms deal was. He keeps mentioning how the U.S. is going to be getting a lot of money from Saudi Arabia, so he doesn't want to, you know, somehow tinker with that.

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And they're being forced to confront a situation that they wish didn't exist. The Trump administration has been big on Saudi Arabia. The relationships are personal.

Jared Kushner has spent a lot of time with the -- the -- MBS, the head --

CAMEROTA: Crown prince.

AVLON: -- the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. So there are ties that are personal. They are political. They're geopolitical in terms of being a lynchpin to the Middle East strategy. And they're financial, as you just pointed out with these deals.

So the Trump administration is going to have to confront evidence they don't want to deal with. They don't seem to have had a fully-baked strategy, but Congress can force their hand, both potentially on the arms deal but also, more significantly, using the global Magnitsky Act to impose sanctions. That is something the administration might not want, but they may have no choice, because if the U.S. doesn't lead on this, the international order erodes.

[06:20:10] BERMAN: Because the last 18 months has been a solid record of Congress standing up to this administration --

AVLON: That is a fair point.

BERMAN: -- on major issues.

I have to say, over the last 24 hours, I've been following the story or trying to, mostly on Twitter, on e-mail. And there was a statement the president made that I read that I could not believe he said out loud. I could not believe that it was true.

So I demanded to see video proof that it actually happened, and it's the president diminishing Jamal Khashoggi, this individual, this Saudi journalist who apparently, maybe was killed inside the consulate there. Let's just play S-18, where the president says, "This didn't really happen here." Play that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's not our country, it's Turkey. And it's not a citizen, as I understand it, but a thing like that shouldn't happen.

(via phone): You don't have American citizens, but that in this case doesn't matter.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: Why on earth, Susan, is the president of the United States

diminishing the importance of this individual who is missing and most probably dead?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Look, it's the death of human rights of American volumes as a -- as a factor in foreign policy.

We've been talking about President Trump's transactional view of the world; what does "America first" actually mean in practice? I think what you just heard there is what it means in practice. He has a very narrow zero-sum, you know, "does it benefit me," narrow definition of what that is that he is applying to foreign policy.

He's also personalized American foreign policy in a way that you see is now, to a certain extent, going to come to haunt him and his son- in-law, Jared Kushner, because they've bypassed traditional means of American policy. There is no ambassador, even, in place -- we're almost two years into the administration -- in either Saudi Arabia or Turkey. Kushner himself was managing the portfolio of this important relationship with the Saudis.

Trump, as you know, made it his very first trip in the world. Traditionally, American presidents have gone to Canada, our close friends, but instead, as you know, he's been in a feud with Canada and made Saudi Arabia his No. 1 first stop of his entire presidency.

So this is personal for Trump, because he's personalized it in a way that I think now that there's a bigger scandal on a bigger question about the extent to which we have enabled Saudi bad actions in the world. You know, this is going to be right laid at the doorstep of the Trump White House, as opposed to, you know, being something that the rest of the American government feels accountable for.

CAMEROTA: And Nia, just on the personal side, because I'm not sure all of our viewers know what Jamal Khashoggi was doing, who he was. But he was a journalist, of course, and speaking out against the crown prince.

And so here are some of the recent headlines: "Saudi Arabia Wasn't Always This Oppressive. Now It's Unbearable," "Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Wants to Crush Extremists, But He's Punishing the Wrong People," "Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince is Acting Like Putin." I mean, these were all in the past year. "Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Must Restore Dignity to His Country by Ending Yemen's Cruel War."

So he -- the crown princes, this got the crown prince's attention, and they did not like this. And he know -- I mean, we're getting all this new information about Khashoggi knowing that he could never go back to Saudi Arabia, knowing that he was in danger, knowing that he perhaps would be detained.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. And those headlines go against what MBS has been trying to do. Remember, he went on this charm offensive in America, back in April of 2018, of this year, met with all sorts of folks, including Oprah, met with a whole bunch of newspapers. He was on -- he talked with the folks at "TIME" magazine.

And the question always was, was this just a charm offensive that was meant to kind of repair the kind of image of Saudi Arabia? Or was it actually something real? Was he going to deliver on reforming Saudi Arabia?

And you saw some glimmers of that, right? Women can drive, things like that. But on the whole, and those, I think, headlines attest to the very oppressive regime that exists in Saudi Arabia. I mean, it's a very restrictive country, particularly for women, particularly for foreigners, particularly for people who aren't Muslim. In that, I think, is at odds with the image that, oftentimes, the president seems to want to embrace about this country.

And obviously, the personal relationships there, John talked about those, and we'll see what happens. But he seems to be, certainly, at odds with Congress. I think the question is, will he be at odds with his own administration?

We've seen that in some ways with, for instance, folks in the administration tougher on Russia. Obviously, Congress tougher on Russia in terms of the rhetoric and in terms of the sanctions. Will we see a split here, as well, with Trump and Jared Kushner, essentially being on an island and everyone else being somewhere else in terms of wanting to criticize and punish Saudi Arabia, should evidence prove that they had a hand in the killing of this journalist.

BERMAN: Another question for the president is will he be at odds with history? Right? And I think we all have to reassess what Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince, was really all about it. It may be that he was never about the reform that he claimed to be about. We don't know.

We do know the president of the United States went to Saudi Arabia and told them, with the whole world watching, "We're not going to meddle. We're not going to tell you how to run your country. You don't tell us how to run ours."

And so they took him literally, and seriously, perhaps. And now, there's this.

AVLON: Yes, John, to your point, John, when the president gave his speech at the U.N. this year, the core idea was sovereignty, right? But that translates and a lot of people heard that as saying, "This is not a freedom -- freedom agenda administration. This is not a human rights administration. This is saying, 'Whatever you do in your own borders, go ahead, because America and this president is not going to pass judgment.'" That's advocating leadership, formerly known as the free world, and it leads to exactly this kind of vacuum that countries and autocrats can exploit.

BERMAN: Lindsay Graham says there's going to be hell to pay.

AVLON: Yes, well, something tells me you don't have great confidence in that. BERMAN: What is he going to do? Is he going to, like, walk slower on

the 8th tee? I mean, how is Lindsey Graham going to make them pay hell for this? I don't think they're going to pay Dairy Queen. What's the Senate going to do here, John? What can they do?

AVLON: What the Senate can do is invoke the global Magnitsky Act, which 22 senators have written a letter to the president, bipartisan group. That means the president's got 120 days to investigate this.

This is exactly why the Magnitsky Act was put in place. And it can compel sanctions. But there's a long walk, and as you know the president and other politicians bet on short attention spans.

CAMEROTA: Susan, there's been so much news, as we always say, over the past few weeks, between Brett Kavanaugh, between Hurricane Michael, that we've lost the thread, perhaps, or our viewers have, of where everyone is with the Mueller investigation.

So now the latest development that we've just learned is that President Trump's lawyers are preparing answers to Mueller's questions, so written answers, I assume. What do we know about where Robert Mueller is?

GLASSER: Well, look, on one level, I think what this suggests is that Mueller has decided not to press forward with what could become a full-blown constitutional and legal confrontation with the White House to demand something more than merely written answers.

Previous testament -- previous presidents, as you know, have testified, you know, more expensively and answered questions directly from prosecutors, as Bill Clinton did. giving depositions. So, you know, Mueller, if he pressed on this, might have been in a legal fight. He's now backed away from that and agreed to these written answers.

I think it's significant in that it suggests we're moving towards the end of, at least, the fact gathering in that part of the investigation that he's going to ask President Trump about.

Obviously, we're not going to see any dramatic moves between now and the election. It's just a few weeks away. So you're not going to see Mueller doing anything, but I've been saying to everybody, you know, get ready for what happens after November 6. You know, we're going to be talking a lot about Mueller starting then.

BERMAN: Nia, it was interesting to me that the president's legal team decided to get this information out there when they did. I'm very curious about the next 27 days, how he'll handle Russia?

HENDERSON: Yes, you know, the thing is, there was a very different approach to Russia that we have been seeing for many months, which is Rudy Giuliani was always on TV. In some ways I miss him, right? He hasn't been on in so long.

And they seem to be playing a different strategy at this point, because a lot of the polls showed that that didn't really help in terms of the public's viewing of the Mueller investigation. Ao they seem to be playing a very different game. They're cooperating at this point and, obviously, answering these questions after months of saying they weren't going to answer the questions in the way that Mueller wanted to. So we'll see how this ends.

But I think Susan is right, after election day, we'll see what Mueller comes out with.

BERMAN: Nia-Malika Henderson, Susan Glasser, John Avlon, thank you very much.

We've got some breaking news just in this morning, a very busy morning. One of the most prominent cardinals in the United States resigns after intense scrutiny. People have been watching this case very, very carefully, very closely, and now it's over. Breaking details, next.