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Trump Threatens to Cut GM Subsidies over Job Losses; Dem. Sen. Murphy: Time to Reset our Relationship with Saudi Arabia; Lion Air Pilots Fought Automatic Safety System Before Plane Crashed; Trump to WAPO: "I Don't See" Climate Change as Man-Made. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired November 28, 2018 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:30:00]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Threat in effect to take away subsidies from GM if you learn for instance that these jobs are going outside the country?
REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D), MICHIGAN: That is correct. We need to be supporting companies through creating jobs here, supporting jobs here. And quite frankly, I don't like the way General Motors handled this. I don't - you know the other companies are dealing with this but they care about the workers. I'm not sure they showed an ounce of support or caring for the working men and women that were impacted by these announcements this week.
SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this because you have said you want to protect the working men and women of your district here. You mentioned negotiations with UAW on possible new jobs at this plant for other product lines. What do you propose to do in Congress to support that and to support these communities as many of them will lose jobs?
DINGELL: So there are a lot of different things that we need to be looking at. You know one of the reasons President Trump won two years ago and you both know that I predicted he could win. It is because Democrats didn't talk to working men and women. We didn't show that we cared about trade. And he came in to these states and talked about bad trade agreements. We're not on a level plain field. And he said he was going to protect those jobs.
Now my problem with the president right now is that his trade policy is chaotic. It's all over the place. He doesn't reach out to people - I mean now they aren't on NAFTA. But you know you don't -- what is said in the morning isn't the same in the afternoon. Businesses need consistency. And I fear that the president is not consistent.
So trade policies are one thing. But what are we doing with the tax policy? There is one thing as we're talking about in the tax bill which helped the billionaires and didn't help working men and women. But also, one of the things that we need to do is we want to go to a green energy. How do we sell electric vehicles? The companies are building them. General Motors is no longer going to build the boat. People aren't buying them. Do you have a tax credit to help people buy them? How are we going to build the infrastructure to support that? SCIUTTO: These are all big picture conversations that have to be had. Congresswoman Dingell thanks for joining us this morning.
DINGELL: Thank you.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: You know I think she hits on a really important point. How do you message this, right, to the employees? And we read that press release, the news broke on our show and it said these factories will be unallocated.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
HARLOW: I didn't even know what that means. I don't work at this plant, you know.
SCIUTTO: But she also makes a point that there are big picture economic forces here that you have to have an honest conversation about, not via Twitter.
HARLOW: 100 -
SCIUTTO: Perhaps on the floor on the House and the Senate.
HARLOW: 100 percent really important interview. All right, so let's talk to a GM worker, worked for the company for more than 40 years, just retired. And now obviously, she worked at that Lordstown plant that is closing. Her niece and her niece's husband still work there today. Carmela Denno is with me. Good morning. Thank you for being here.
CARMELA DENNO, RECENTLY RETIRED FROM GM AFTER 40 YEARS: Hi.
HARLOW: Hi. It's good to have you.
DENNO: Good morning.
HARLOW: You retired. You suffered a layoff during your 40 years there. You have family members who still work at this plant. You know who are going to lose their jobs. GM has said, look, almost all of these workers will be offered jobs elsewhere. But that means moving your family, pulling your kids out of school, changing your life, right? I mean what is ahead for people experiencing this?
DENNO: I don't know. I have a nephew who can't take a move because of two children that he has shared custody for. So that is a hard decision for him to make to just get up and move like that. Hopefully GM does have jobs where some of these people can fill it in. It's a sad day that people are going to be losing benefits. It's going to affect the whole Tri-county area around us.
HARLOW: Yes. I've spent a good amount of time there. In Lawrence County, in Youngstown and just seen how much of the livelihood of the entire community comes from work at the plant, right, and how much that props up the rest of the economy there. You just heard from Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan threatening General Motors saying, if you move one more you know plant to Mexico, I'm not doing anything else to support you. What do you want Congress to do to help?
DENNO: I don't know what they can do. All I know is I agree with her. Our jobs need to stay here. These people are the ones that will keep the economy in this area alive. With no jobs, how can they do that? My nephew said he was afraid to buy a car you know because of payments.
HARLOW: Understandable. And I should note you are a Republican. You voted for President Trump. You are agreeing with the Democratic congresswoman on there. This is beyond politics. Let me have you listen to what --
DENNO: It is beyond politics. It's not Republican/Democrat. It is getting these people back to work, making the plants -- let's make our products here.
HARLOW: After the news of GM's layoffs came out on Monday, this is what the president said about what he has done for manufacturing in America. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The previous administration, they said manufacturing is never coming back.
[10:35:02] It's gone. You need a magic wand. Well we found the magic wand. And that's actually - that's actually going to be increasing by a lot in the next short while because we have a lot of companies moving in.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Now again, you voted for President Trump. Did he find the magic wand to these manufacturing jobs? And do you find that comment offensive?
DENNO: I find it offensive. We are the magic wand. We are the people that kept GM here all that time. We are a caring community. We are a good workforce. I feel we kept GM here, not any president.
HARLOW: Carmela Denno, thank you for being here. Thank you for the 40 plus years of work you did. And we are thinking about your nephew, your niece rather and her husband and all of those workers.
DENNO: Yes. I have a niece and her husband worked there and their son is a juvenile diabetic who needs medicine every day. And they are going to lose benefits.
HARLOW: This is the human impact of layoffs. Thank you for being with us and sharing your story.
DENNO: Yes it is.
HARLOW: OK. Thanks.
SCIUTTO: Powerful there. She said we are the magic wand, right?
HARLOW: There you go.
SCIUTTO: That's right on the ground. In another story, a key senator has flipped his position now and is now in favor of ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led conflict in Yemen. And that could spell trouble for this administration.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:41:05] SCIUTTO: This just coming in in the last several moments, a significant blow for the Trump administration's policy over the Saudi- led conflict in Yemen. Democratic Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed now said that he supports a resolution to end U.S.-backing for that war. Now, Senate aids tell CNN that a vote on that bill could come as early as today.
HARLOW: Yes and to people who opposed it 10 months ago now support it. We'll see what happens. This comes from a shocking report from Save Our Children estimating 85,000 children under the age of 5 may have died from hunger and disease since that war began in 2015. Our senior international correspondent Nima Elbagir has been covering this constantly. She joins us now. So how big is what is being proposed today if the U.S. would actually pull support for Saudi in Yemen? How significant?
NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Incredibly significant because it's not just about what it means logistically and on the ground. It is also about the message that it sends. Who would have thought that we would be actually be looking down the barrel of a War Power Resolution Act that human rights advocates tell us actually has a chance of passing.
We spoke to Senator Murphy who is one of the co-sponsors of the resolution that is expected to be before senators today. And I asked him if President Trump now has a Saudi problem. Jim and Poppy?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT), FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: We have an ally that isn't straight with us, that is murdering our residents, that is using our weapons to kill innocent civilians, that is stimulating the growth of radical extremist groups that want to hit the United States. The United States in order to maintain our own security has to reset our relationship with Saudi Arabia. And I think the House of Representatives is going to have to get to the bottom of why Donald Trump is so blind to this reality. Is there some financial connection that this president has with Saudi Arabia that causes him to bear hug this country when no one in Congress Republicans or Democrats are using the same rhetoric or taking the same position?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ELBAGIR: And this is because of the humanitarian situation. Take a look at this. This is the latest footage we have in of the aftermath of one of the latest Saudi coalition airstrikes in Yemen. It wiped out an entire family. These must be very difficult pictures for the senators who have to make a decision today to watch. Jim and Poppy? HARLOW: It is stunning. Nima thank you. You will stay on it. We will stay on it. (CROSSTALK) We'll see what lawmakers do about it. Thank you.
Some alarming new details just in about what caused that flight, Lion Air flight that killed 189 people on board just a month ago to go down.
SCIUTTO: It raises questions about other similar planes in the air now. The investigators say the pilots were locked in a battle with the plane's automatic safety system in the minutes before it plunged into the ocean. CNN international correspondent Ivan Watson has more on the new findings.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's been a month since Lion Air flight 610 plunged into the sea killing all 189 passengers and crew on board. A preliminary report published by Indonesian investigators reveals disturbing details about the brand new Boeing 737 Max 8 and its final moments.
WATSON (on camera): This graph shows the plane's erratic altitude during a flight that lasted only around 11 minutes. 90 seconds in the co-pilot radios air traffic control reporting flight control problems. Minutes later an auto pilot feature kicks in forcing the nose of the aircraft down. And 20 seconds before the crash, the pilot radios his last words saying 5,000 indicating his desired altitude.
[10:45:00] The pilots were struggling with a runaway stabilizer. So these orange dips indicate every time the auto pilot pushes the plane into a dive. The blue bumps, they are the moments when the pilot responds, manually trying to pull the nose of the plane up. And this back and forth happens more than 30 times during an 11-minute flight, a battle in the cockpit between human operators and the auto pilot.
GEOFFREY THOMAS, EDITOR IN CHIEF, AIRLINERATINGS.COM: From a passenger point of view on board the airplane, it would have been terrifying and for the pilots as well. Pitching, fighting, pitching, fighting --
WATSON (voice-over): But investigators are at a loss to explain why pilots didn't follow the same procedure performed by another flight crew on the same plane the previous day when they encountered a similar run away stabilizer problem.
THOMAS: The biggest single conclusion I draw from this report are the glaring problems with this airplane with its speed censor and angle of attack data over four previous flights and the airplane was not removed from service. That's astonishing.
WATSON: Lion Air says it cannot comment until conclusion of the investigation. The report little consolation for grieving relatives of the victims.
RINI SOEGIYONO, SISTER WAS ON LION AIR FLIGHT 610: Sadness, grieving, mourning, frustration. WATSON: Rini Soegiyono's sister and brother-in-law died on Lion Air flight 610.
SOEGIYONO: This flight is not worth it to fly. So I don't know why it's still you know flying on schedule taking all 189 passengers and crew.
WATSON: At least two families have announced lawsuits against Boeing accusing it of producing a defective flight manual and unsafe anti- stall system. The U.S. aircraft manufacturer insists the Boeing 737 Max is safe. Boeing pledges to cooperate with authorities as they continue to investigate the cause of this deadly crash.
Ivan Watson, CNN Hong Kong.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARLOW: Wow. All right. Quick break. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:51:38] HARLOW: All right. Can't make this of up. President Trump reinforcing that he does not believe climate change is at all man- made, contributed to by humans. He doubled down on this in an interview with the "Washington Post" last night and once again contradicts the National Climate Assessment released by his own administration on Friday.
SCIUTTO: Contradicts the U.S. military. They believe it. Joining us now to discuss Andrea Dutton. She is associate professor of Geology at the University of Florida. We should mention that Andrea's research was cited in the Trump administration's climate report.
So this is now a full-court press from this administration because you heard the same from Sara Sanders at the White House podium saying, well, you know this was not based on facts. This assessment basically saying that you can't do modeling, I imagine, like she's saying you can't look into the future based on the data you know now. You are an expert here. Explain how you do that and why the White House position here is misplaced.
ANDREA DUTTON, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA: OK. So I am actually a geologist. I study past climate and sea level change. So I'm a little bit like a CSI of planet earth, the crime scene investigator. And it turns out that when we look for what the evidence is of what has been causing this warming we see the finger prints of carbon dioxide all over the place.
So carbon dioxide it is basically like the world's dumbest criminal because everywhere we look we can see evidence for this. And when we run our models we know that other things affect climate change. And when we put all those other factors in, we can't reproduce the warming trend that we see on the record. The only way we can reproduce that warming trend is by adding in the greenhouse gas emissions that we have been producing. So when they say it is not based on fact, we have a mountain of scientific literature showing us that data, our models confirm it, as well. And then we hear they don't want to believe it. When they say they don't believe it I wonder if they're saying they don't want to believe it because I don't want to believe it either. To be honest, I mean we could totally agree on that point. Because that means I have to buy into the scary parts of the story, too.
HARLOW: Sure -- that are very near, right? Near term scary things that are predicted that could happen as a result. The president tweeted just about a week ago, quote, "Whatever happened to global warming?" Right? On a cold snowy day. Can you explain to everyone why this is not -- climate change is not about the weather of a day or a week.
DUTTON: Absolutely. I actually go into the elementary schools and teach this to kids at a young age that there is a difference between climate and weather. So when we talk about climate, we are talking about a long-term trend like 30 years and more. We are not talking about day to day weather or one year. So you can't infer what is happening with climate change just by looking at the weather on a single day or even within a single year, right? We have to be looking at that long term trend that is amplifying some of the extreme weather effects that we see.
SCIUTTO: I mean the president also either deliberately or mistakenly messes up the distinction between clean environment and a warming environment. He keeps saying, well we have record clean environment, doesn't get to the temperature.
I just want to ask the question for folks at home, folks like us. We got kids. We don't want to be you know slowly burned to death on our own planet here. I mean is the human race running - in the simplest term, running out of time to take the measures necessary to rein in this rise in global temperatures?
DUTTON: Right. So this issue is becoming more and more urgent by the passing day and the passing year based on the amount of emissions that we are still producing.
[10:55:03] And our administration is leading us in that direction of producing more emission by supporting coal instead of turning to clean energy. And so we're running out of time in terms of avoiding the most dangerous effects but anything that we can do and the more that we can do, the sooner the better. The sooner we fix it, the better the outcome to avoid the most dangerous effects of this.
HARLOW: Well said.
SCIUTTO: We can only hope. Dr. Andrea Dutton thanks very much.
HARLOW: Thank you.
DUTTON: Thanks for having me.
HARLOW: Of course. We are moments away from senators getting a major briefing. All senators briefing from the Secretary of State, the Defense Secretary in the murder of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, we're following it all on Capitol Hill.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
