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Pope Accepts Cardinal Wuerl's Resignation; Apocalyptic Destruction in Mexico Beach; Trump's Meeting with Kanye West; Dow Two Day Losses. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired October 12, 2018 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:33:23] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We are following breaking news right now.

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of one of the most prominent cardinals in the United States. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., has been under intense scrutiny for his handling of sexual abuse cases.

CNN's John Allen is live in Rome with the breaking details.

What do you know, John?

JOHN ALLEN, CNN SENIOR VATICAN ANALYST: Hi there, Alisyn.

Well, what we know is that Pope Francis, after three months of speculation since the Pennsylvania grand jury report appeared in mid- August raising serious questions about Cardinal Wuerl's handling of sexual abuse cases when he was the bishop of Pittsburgh. Pope Francis, today, accepted his resignation.

Now, two notes of interests. One, he asked Cardinal Wuerl to remain on in Washington as the apostolic administration. That is a kind of interim manager until his successor is named. And, secondly, Pope Francis release a letter, this is highly unusual for a pope to do when he accepts a resignation like this, released a letter today praising Cardinal Wuerl for the nobility of the way he's handled this situation, thanking him for his service and saying he's proud of him.

So what that would indicate, Alisyn, is that although Cardinal Wuerl, as of today, is no longer the archbishop of Washington, he certainly doesn't seem to be out of favor with the boss.

CAMEROTA: John, thank you very much for that report. Obviously, as you get more details, we will continue to follow it this morning.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we've been following the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Florida. We have seen the pictures of near apocalyptic destruction. In the coastal town of Mexico Beach in Florida's panhandle, these are the images we've seen. Little left behind.

[06:35:11] CNN's Miguel Marquez live in Mexico Beach with the very latest.

Miguel, thank you so much for getting there, first of all. Tell us what you're seeing.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the biggest problem right now is probably the temperature. It is cold. It's in the low 60s. If you are in a house where the windows are blown out and you are trying to sleep there tonight, hypothermia is going to be a real concern.

This is what Mexico Beach looks like right now. It is utter destruction. One hundred percent of this town is affected. Some of it is completely scrubbed off the face of the earth.

That is a boat on 98th, the main road that goes through town. That is a house right next to it. That is up against what looks to be an apartment building or a condominium building. And even though that is mostly intact, many of the rooms, many of the windows are blown out. The roof is off that. That is probably a loss as well.

If you keep coming this way, it is just debris. All of this debris were homes about 100 yards away near the ocean that washed all the way up here. Most of the homes along the ocean are completely gone, scrubbed down to the foundations. Just incredible to see the amount of damage from one end of the town to the other. We came in on the far end of town, the east end of town, and drove all the way up to here. This is right here near the pier. And it is just utter devastation.

John.

BERMAN: And I want to tell people, Miguel, obviously we're getting a clean picture of you now from the ground in Mexico Beach. We do have communications set up much better than we have up until this point. So stay with us all morning. You will begin to see, when the sun comes up, these clear images of just how bad it is.

And, Miguel, I know that the people there, the people who decided to stay, those few residents who rode out the storm, they're desperate to get their message out to their loved ones. Tell us about them.

MARQUEZ: Yes. So we are starting to get some cell service here. I think they've put up a temporary tower. But we spoke to one man yesterday who was literally desperate to speak to his daughter. We gave him our sat phone. Here's how that went.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUTCH ALLEY, MEXICO BEACH RESIDENT: Do not come down here. Do not. You can't get in. It's -- everything's -- it's devastating. You have -- we have a hole in our house, but that's all that's wrong with it. Grandmother's house is completely gone. It looks like a bomb (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP) MARQUEZ: He sat there listing house after house, business after business, that were just gone, begging his daughter not to come down here. There's also an area where emergency workers are setting up. Several people who rode out the storm here found their way there yesterday. They wanted me to tell the world that they are OK. Robin Rhettlof (ph). Her family's in Michigan. She wants them to know she's OK. Dawn Vickers (ph) had several family members, and three little dogs, they are all OK. Robert Brock (ph) from Florida, he's OK. David Seabert (ph), his mother evacuated to Mobile, Alabama. He didn't. He feels sorry for it now, but he wants mom to know he's a-OK. And Annette Kofield (ph) and her 92-year-old mother, their families are in Texas and South Carolina, they are OK.

Maybe the best news, though, is that some cell service is coming back. We think they've put up a temporary tower so that people can actually get some word out. But just how many people are here -- there's 165 members of search and rescue who are starting to go through here methodically. It is amazing that they have not said that there's a person injured or killed yet, but they have only begun the search.

John.

CAMEROTA: Yes, because there are still people on the missing list and you're doing such a service for everyone, Miguel, to be able to just say the people who are alive, the people who are still trying to connect with their relatives. And we know you did that last night and you'll continue to do that throughout the day. So I'm sure that they are grateful hearing that their relatives are live this morning. Thank you very much for all of that reporting.

BERMAN: And, again, just to reiterate, Miguel, great work. What Brooke Baldwin said earlier, they don't know what they will find when they get into some of these buildings. We still are concerned they might find people who were trapped there alive, or maybe not. So we are watching very, very closely. They have only just begun.

And if you want to help those affected by Hurricane Michael, please go to cnn.com/impact. We have all kinds of resources so you can get involved.

CAMEROTA: OK. People say they have never seen anything like what happened in the Oval Office yesterday when Kanye West went full Kanye with President Trump. We dissect what that was, next.

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[06:43:44] CAMEROTA: Kanye West took center stage at a bizarre Oval Office meeting yesterday with President Trump. He ranted, he cursed, he expressed undying love for the president.

Here is a small sample of the rambling monologue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KANYE WEST, RAP ARTIST: I love Hillary. I love everyone, right? But the campaign "I'm with her" just didn't make me feel, as a guy that didn't get to see my dad all the time, like a guy that could play catch with his son. There was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like superman. You made a superman. That was -- that's my favorite superhero, and you made a superman cape for me. Also as a guy that looks up to you, looks up to Ralph Lauren, looks up to American industry guys, non-political, no (EXPLETIVE DELETED) put the beep on it, however you want to do it, five seconds delay, and just goes in and gets it done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right, we're joined now by Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson. He's the author of the instant "New York Times" bestseller "What Truth Sounds Like," and a friend of Kanye West.

Professor, thank you for being here.

MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, AUTHOR, "WHAT TRUTH SOUNDS LIKE": Thank you.

CAMEROTA: As a friend of Kanye West, you've known him for some time, what did you see happening there yesterday?

DYSON: Well, it was a -- it was a sad display of not only a grab for, you know, public attention, and we can admit and acknowledge that in his own mind he's trying to do the right thing. He's trying to bring attention to mass incarceration, the disproportionate concentration of black and brown people in jails and prisons and how messed up that is, and his own understanding of what is important on the national agenda.

[06:45:17] But what unfortunately happened there is that Kanye got caught up in a stream of narcissism, one flowing from Trump, the other one flowing from him, and the two narcissisms met. And let's be honest here as well, yesterday was Mental Health Awareness Day and it seemed to be that the piece of Kanye's mental illness that is clearly on display and that of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue converged in such a powerful fashion that what looks like a public spectacle, and it is at least that, is also the reproduction of some pathologies that we need to name for what they are.

And we need -- I love Kanye West. He is -- he is a friend of mine. But at some point we have to say, enough is enough. Let's have not only mental health intervention, let's talk about the need to have coherent discourse.

You know, there's a famous philosopher named Michel Foucault who had a phrase, the insurrection of subjugated knowledges. Now, what he meant by that was, people who are on the margins get a chance to speak because they've been oppressed in culture. What we saw yesterday was the insurrection of superficial knowledge. Yes, there's some interesting things that were being said, but there was no coherent narrative. There was no through line and there's -- there was no way that he could affect public policy in an intelligent fashion.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Right, but --

DYSON: That's part of the tragedy. CAMEROTA: But doesn't that just speak to the mental health of Kanye? I

mean maybe we're over thinking this. Maybe -- I mean he has talked about it. There have been conversations about whether he's bipolar and he suffers from that. He has eluded to that. And if you heard his surreal soliloquy yesterday, there was a scattered brain quality to it.

DYSON: Sure.

CAMEROTA: There was a run-on sentence quality to it. There was a manic, frankly, quality to it.

DYSON: There -- there -- there was no doubt (ph).

CAMEROTA: So maybe it's just that simple. I mean maybe --

DYSON: Well, it's not that simple because what we're dealing with every day, and your network has documented it, if that is the case, what Kanye did yesterday sounds an awful lot what Donald Trump sounds like in many appearances in public where he's articulating an incoherent narrative about the world in which we live. And the -- and the reality is, as tragic as the Kanye West situation might be, at least he's an entertainer who is isolated from the levelers of power. On the other hand, the guy who is his side man, who was his height man so to speak yesterday, has his hands fully on the button, on the privilege, on the levers that really affect American democracy and we've got the complicity of so many other people in that national madness that has become what our politics are resolved to, to this day.

CAMEROTA: Well, look, professor, neither you nor I are mental health expects. However, mental health experts have taken a look at some of the things that President Trump has said. Some of those have gone so far as to diagnose him from afar. But I don't think that he and Kanye are in the same category. I mean Kanye -- there was a manic quality --

DYSON: No question.

CAMEROTA: To Kanye's talking yesterday. And President Trump was rendered speechless.

DYSON: Right.

CAMEROTA: I mean we never see that. He didn't know what to say, or he couldn't get a word in edgewise.

Here was just one more moment that I want to play of Kanye talking about how much he reveres President Trump.

DYSON: Right.

CAMEROTA: Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KANYE WEST, RAP ARTIST: Trump is on his hero's journey right now and he might not have expected to have a crazy mother (EXPLETIVE DELETED) like Kanye West run up and support --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: People have never seen anything like this in the Oval Office.

DYSON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I mean that's just a given.

But Kanye was talking. There was a moment of self-reflection, many, where he said, I grew up in a house without -- with a lot of female energy, without a man around, and I married into a family with a lot of female energy. And he loves Donald Trump because he makes him feel like superman, he said.

DYSON: Yes, that -- boy, that's a lot of deconstruct and unpack. You could teach an entire class on that.

A couple of things. First of all, you're right about the comparative analysis of Kanye's mental illness and supposedly that of the president's. But the tragedy again is that Kanye's is more obvious and evident. The manic -- the (INAUDIBLE) that you speak about is readily available, even to the naked eye, the untrained therapeutic instinct can discern that in the -- in the -- in the point of our -- our president, it's far more subtle and therefore far more deleterious and pernicious in the long run.

But let's be honest, the reality is, is that what Kanye West is doing is tragic and problematic and we need to call it out for what it is. And in love as his friend, I say to him, sir, stop it because you're having a political consequence that you don't intend and yet it's undermining very powerful discourse that needs to happen, distracting from serious issues that we could be addressing.

CAMEROTA: Michael Eric Dyson, we appreciate your perspective. Thank you.

DYSON: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: John.

BERMAN: I've got to say, I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what this whole Kanye West thing is on my way home from the hurricane, and I gave up trying to figure out what it is. One thing I know it's not is Hurricane Michael and the people suffering through all that storm and the devastation down there. They don't care what Kanye West says.

[06:50:05] Other big news this morning, will markets bounce back after experiencing their worst week in months? Christine Romans gives us the latest, next.

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CAMEROTA: OK, it's time for CNN Business. It was another brutal day on Wall Street on Thursday. The Dow has now

lost more than 1,300 points in the past two days. Will the markets bounce back today? The woman that knows everything and can predict the future is chief business correspondent Christine Romans.

Hi.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: We see -- hi.

Yes, expect a bounce back today. U.S. futures are higher. But it has been a rough few days, Alisyn. The Dow fell another 546 points yesterday after losing 800 the day before. That Nasdaq and the broader S&P both shed another 2 percent. That's six down days in a row for the S&P. the longest slump since before the 2016 election.

Tech stocks taking the biggest hit. Bit names like Amazon, Netflix, FaceBook. You guys, FaceBook also facing data privacy scandals. It's down more than 30 percent from its high.

Investors are concerned about two things, the U.S.-China trade war, slow growth, and then rising interest rates. President Trump often uses the stock market as his personal scorecard, so he's been blaming the Federal Reserve, which is raising interest rates, for this stock market drop.

[06:55:07] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm paying interest at a high rate because of our Fed. And I'd like our Fed not to be so aggressive because I think they're making a big mistake.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: But Trump's top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, says the president's not trying to influence the Fed, an independent agency, adding that rising rates mean a strong economy. And he's right, you know, this strong -- the economy is strong. Consumers are spending. Unemployment is the lowest in a generation. But Trump's tax cuts juiced corporate profits, like pouring gasoline on an already hot economy. The Federal Reserve is slowly raising interest rates to keep that economy from overheating.

John.

BERMAN: All right, Christine Romans, thanks very much. We'll keep our eye on the markets all morning long.

Also, the Florida panhandle, utter devastation. This town, Mexico Beach, destroyed by Hurricane Michael. We have the latest from the ground live on the scene, next.

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[07:00:01] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've never been scared of a storm a day in my life. And this one right here put the fear of God into me.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are nearly half a million people without power across Florida.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The damage is still yet to be fully understood. The top focus is search and rescue.