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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Explosion Lights Up NYC Skies; Wet and Snowy Weather Moves East; No End in Sight to Shutdown; Dow Recovers; Black Man Kicked Out of Portland Hotel. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired December 28, 2018 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:01] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Disputes over fees, you know, they are common. As television viewership declines, media companies are demanding more for their content to make up for the lost of revenue.

JOE JOHNS, CNN ANCHOR: So, there you go.

EARLY START continues right now.

(MUSIC)

ROMANS: An unplanned holiday light show. A transformer blows up, lighting up the sky above New York. And the skies won't be quiet either today. A very messy end to the holiday week.

JOHNS: Eight hundred thousand federal workers are not going to get relief anytime soon. The government shutdown is going to reach into 2019.

ROMANS: The stock market not finishing the year quietly. Dow roaring back 900 points, bouncing from big losses to close up in the final hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JERMAINE MASSEY, CLAIMS HOTEL STAFF HARASSED HIM: Why? Why are they coming?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To escort you off the property.

MASSEY: Because -- and I'm staying here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: Just get out.

Allegations of racial bias at an Oregon hotel. A black guest asked to leave the lobby. His lawyer says the only thing he is guilty of is calling his mother while black.

ROMANS: Doubletree owned by Hilton. Let's see what the hotel chain is going to do to make sure that doesn't happen again? JOHNS: That's absolutely right. I'm Joe Johns. Welcome to EARLY

START.

ROMANS: I'm Christine Romans. It is Friday, December 28. It is 5:00 a.m. in the East.

All right. Much as it looked like an alien invasion, it was not. Or so we're told. See for yourself.

The skies of New York City lit up with the eerie blue glow by a transformer explosion at the power plant in Queens. A spokesman for Con Edison telling CNN a substation experienced a brief electrical fire after a couple of transformers tripped offline. It doesn't seem routine to these folks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Oh, my god.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: That was the view miles away from Manhattan. This was the view miles away in Manhattan. The light visible as far as New Jersey.

The unearthly effect enhanced by the relatively low cloud covered, 2,000-foot ceiling. The explosion is powerful enough to shake buildings and rattled windows. There were power outages which shutdown LaGuardia Airport in Queens. No flights took off for an hour. The airport switched to a back-up generator and resumed normal operation at 10:20 last night.

ROMANS: Right. Also in the skies above New York, the storm system we have been tracking all week. A very messy day in store for the Great Lakes, and the Eastern States. Just like in the Midwest and South yesterday, two deaths have now been reported.

In Louisiana, a 58-year-old woman died after a tree fell on her camper trailer. Another person died in Kansas in a crash on I-70 in blizzard conditions there, the shutdown in the interstate.

JOHNS: This system stretches the U.S. from north to south. In South Dakota, snow and sleet fell across the state, icing roads and limiting visibility. The Nebraska State Patrol closed about 130 miles of I-80 due to snow and ice and high winds.

And in Kenner, Louisiana, rain, high winds were the apparent cause of the electrical explosion with pyrotechnics like you have never seen.

Meteorologist Ivan Cabrera has your Friday forecast.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN CABRERA, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Hey, guys. Good morning.

Still looking at a flood threat from the Deep South, all the way across the north. The good is, it's not going to be a big winter storm for the east along 95. But it has been and will continue to be across the Midwest, not because of additional snow and because of the snow already fallen. Blizzard conditions are possible.

And then 50 million of us, as we've been talking about from Louisiana all the way to Jersey under a flood threat because of the heavy rain which has fallen and the heavy rain still to come, anywhere from two to four inches across the area.

Look at future cast radar here. Very slow-moving storm. We still have rain to deal with as we head through the weekend. We'll have another system actually, another impulse coming in and that will allow for even heavier rainfall across the South. I think that will be the area which has the potential to pick up four or a half a foot of rainfall.

As far as temperatures, look at winter. Upper Midwest where we have been snowing, temperatures in the single digits for highs and 20s in Minneapolis. That cold air will eventually make it across the Northeast. By the time we get into next week, we'll have temperatures beginning to tumble with the milder air, by the way, continues across the South.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: All right, Ivan. Thank you for that.

Another stunning, head-scratching, rollercoaster, terrible cliche day on Wall Street. Stocks staged a major comeback late in the day. The Dow closed up 260 points. But it had been down 611 earlier in the day. This is a huge, you know, almost 5 percent reversal.

You know, a big 5 percent move is not unheard of. The Dow has staged only 13 5 percent rallies since the financial crisis. S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed higher. Investors are looking for certainty. And there is a cloud of chaos around the slowing global economy, trade policy and recent moves by the Federal Reserves.

[05:05:00] President Trump, we're told, has been buoyed by the recent market boosts. A source telling CNN the president called his advisers from Air Force One on his way back from Iraq after markets closed higher Wednesday. Remember that 1,000-point rally on Wednesday? The president liked it.

He often uses the markets as his own personal barometer and political standing. In his phone calls, the president repeated that he believes the American economy is doing great.

The economy is strong, but consumer confidence number got some attention. It has fallen this month, as benefits from last year's tax cuts fade. The Conference Board says its consumer confidence index fell to 128.1 in December, the lowest since July.

Thursday's gains don't erase what has been a dismal December for Wall Street. Three major averages are all down big for the month.

JOHNS: A dysfunctional U.S. government is going to end 2018 not functioning. It is now day seven of the partial government shutdown. At this point, it is guaranteed to spill into the New Year. Both the House and Senate adjourned on Thursday with no deal on the table.

With the president back from his surprise trip to Iraq, he has now returned to Twitter with a whopper of a claim. And on Twitter, he seems to be ignoring the pain that's about to get worse for 800,000 unpaid federal employees.

CNN's Abby Phillip at the White House with the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Joe, President Trump is back in Washington after saying earlier this week the federal workers supported his plan to keep the government shutdown until he gets border wall funding. The president is announcing those who are not getting paid in this government shutdown are all Democrats.

Now, that statement drew a rebuke from one of the largest unions representing federal workers who said this in a statement today: A government shutdown doesn't hurt any one political party or one federal employee more than another. It hurts them all. It hurts their families and it hurts all of our communities.

But even as there continues to be this blame game and back and forth with the two parties, we are no closer to finding out what it will take to end the shutdown. The president yesterday repeatedly refused to say how much he would accept in border wall funding and whether he would come down from his original proposal of $5 billion to $2 billion.

Now, the White House is issuing a statement saying that the president is not backing down from his desire for more border security. Even one of the president's top allies suggested yesterday that the president has not heard much from Democrats and this shutdown could last for many days to come -- Christine and Joe.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Abby Phillip at the White House.

The impact of the shutdown is about to get very real for federal employees working or sitting at home unpaid. Credit cards from holiday shopping, rent, electricity, a lot of people have bills to pay in the New Year.

And get this, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management tweeted advice to federal employees on how to deal with the precarious financial situation.

ROMANS: One suggestion for federal employees offered to perform chores in exchange for rent payment. One sample letter provided by the government to a landlord reads, in part, I would like to discuss with you the possibility of trading my services to perform maintenance, for example, painting, carpentry work in exchange for partial rent payments.

JOHNS: The Navy Federal Credit Union now offering help on how to request or receive or repay loans for anyone who's pay is affected by the shutdown. The effects are also stretching into space. NASA's Horizon probe is on target for the New Year's Eve rendezvous, with the most distant object ever to be explored by the humankind, but due to the shutdown, no live NASA webcast.

ROMANS: All right. House and Senate Democrats are calling for action after the deaths of the two migrant children in U.S. custody. Democrats in the House calling for Customs and Border Protection oversight hearings and for Homeland Security to preserve the documents connected to the deaths.

On the Senate side, the ranking Democrat on Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein, is calling for hearings on CBP's treatment of immigrant children. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will visit the U.S.-Mexico border today following the death of Guatemalan 8-year-old Felipe Gomez Alonzo in border control custody. And the boy's mother is now speaking out.

CNN's Dan Simon is in El Paso, Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Joe, Secretary Nielsen is headed to the border and her stated purpose to examine the medical screenings that are taking place in the border control situations. Obviously, with two children who had within the past month, she is facing the crisis and one of the things she has ordered her agency to do is offer enhanced medical screenings. She wants to witness that process first hand. She will be in El Paso on Friday and in Yuma, Arizona, on Saturday.

In the meantime, we are getting a better understanding of why this father and son made this entry into the United States. The mother spoke to "Reuters". One of the things she told them is they were under the impression if you travel with a child, you have a better chance of gaining entry into the country. She says she was essentially encouraged by neighbors to do this.

One of the quotes she gave "Reuters" was lots of them have gone with children and managed to cross, even if they are held for a month or two.

[05:10:06] And it is statements that critics say that is the problem with U.S. immigration policy that it incentivizes bringing children across the border, that if you're a family from a country that does not border the United States, you are not automatically deported. Oftentimes family members go free while immigration proceedings are pending.

Christine and Joe, back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Dan Simon.

The president is now seizing on the murder of an officer in California as police vow to pursue the suspect relentlessly. Corporal Ronil Singh was gunned down during a traffic stop for a suspected DUI Wednesday morning. Newman police chief Randy Richardson says Singh was his first hire.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANDY RICHARDSON, NEWMAN POLICE CHIEF: Please remember the man. Please remember the husband. Please remember what he was. What he came to this country to do.

His 5-month-old, he will never hear talk. He will never see his son walk. He doesn't get to hold that little boy, hug his wife, say good night anymore because a coward took his life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: It's heartbreaking.

The Stanislaus County Sheriff Department is leading the investigation and has identified the suspect. The sheriff would not release the suspect's name, but says he is in the country illegally. And that led President Trump to take to Twitter where he linked Corporal Singh's death for the need to border security.

JOHNS: An interesting ripple effect emerging from President Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria. The U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militia now inviting the Assad government to retake control of the northern city of Manbij in northern Syria. Why? To protect against when they call it a future Turkish invasion.

ROMANS: Early in the country's civil war, the Kurds fought the Assad regime, but gradually, the Kurds turned their efforts to fighting ISIS with backing from the U.S.

Now, the president has announced withdrawal of U.S. forces, leaving Kurds isolated to fend for themselves. Turkey considers Kurds militias to be terrorist groups. So, one consequence of U.S. withdrawal appears to be giving territory back to the Assad regime.

All right. Twelve minutes past the hour.

The teenager who says actor Kevin Spacey groped him in the bar in 2016 took Snapchat video of the alleged assaults. The criminal complaint says investigators have that video.

(COMMECIAL BREAK)

[05:15:45] JOHNS: A guest at an Oregon hotel is alleging racial bias after he says he was harassed by staff for taking a phone call in the lobby of the hotel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oregon police will be here in a minute.

MASSEY: Thank you. Call them. I'm waiting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

MASSEY: They are coming why? Why are they coming?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Escort you off the property.

MASSEY: Because what? And I'm staying here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: OK. So, Jermaine Massey was in the lobby of the Portland Doubletree Lloyd Center where he checked in. After he told the hotel staffer he was taking a personal call in the lobby. A guard started to question his presence.

Police continued to arrive and Massey was asked to leave. The officer escorted him back to the room to gather his belongings and offered assistance to find a different hotel, but Massey declined. The hotel's general manager says the incident is unfortunate, adding they have reached out to Massey. Massey's attorneys characterize the incident as calling his mother while black.

No comment yet from the employees in the video.

ROMANS: Doubletree is a Hilton property. So, one wonders if Hilton will be doing some training with its folks there.

All right. Graphic new details are coming to light about the sex assault accusations against actor Kevin Spacey. And we should warn you, the story has sexually explicit language. The criminal complaint from Nantucket, Massachusetts, alleges that Spacey bought a teenager a number of alcoholic drinks in 2016 and bragged to him about the size of his penis. He later reached over and started to rub the teen's thigh. Spacey unzipped the young man's pants and rubbed him both inside and over his pants.

The accuser even took a brief Snapchat video of this alleged assault. Investigators, we're told, have that video.

CNN's Miguel Marquez has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Joe, despite what seems to have been a very heavy night of drinking with Mr. Spacey and his accuser, the accuser in the police report indicates that he had the frame of mind to actually take video of it. Snapchating part of the assault, he says, to his then girlfriend.

Now one of the things the accuser says in the report is he told Mr. Spacey he was 23 years old. In fact, he was 18. All of this happening at the Nantucket club car restaurant after he got off his bus boy shift that night in July 2016.

The accuser's mother spoke about this incident last year.

HEATHER UNRUH, MOTHER OF ALLEGED VICTIM: The victim, my son, was a star struck, straight, 18-year-old young man who had no idea that the famous actor was an alleged sexual predator.

MARQUEZ: CNN has tried to speak to Mr. Spacey or his representatives about these charges. We have not heard back from them. But, Mr. Spacey himself shortly after the news broke of these charges put out a video on his Twitter feed and just the tone, the style, the substance of it was jarring given the assault charges against him.

KEVIN SPACEY, ACTOR: You wouldn't believe the worst without evidence. You wouldn't rush to judgment without facts, would you? Did you? If I didn't pay the price for the things we know I did do, I'm certainly not going to pay the price for the things I didn't do.

MARQUEZ: Mr. Spacey does his video in his Frank Underwood character. Netflix that produces "House of Cards" says it had no comment about the video. It is not clear what the point of it is, but given the timing of the charges, and the video Mr. Spacey released, it is notable and certainly was noted and remarked upon not only in Hollywood, but around the world.

The arraignment for Mr. Spacey in this particular case is set for January 7th -- Christine, Joe.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Miguel Marquez.

In a reversal, the three who tried to attack an NYPD officer in the subway are going to be charged. Early Sunday morning, a woman told the officer, five drunken men harassed her. The video shows when the officer confronted the men, they went at him. The men were arrested for a nuisance office. The Manhattan D.A. declined to prosecute at the time, but police say the D.A. was not aware of the attempted assault on the officer at the time.

[05:20:06] Now, two of the men have been arrested, a third turned himself in Thursday.

ROMANS: All right. A man in desperate search for a kidney for his wife went public. Sort of. How this gesture ended up viral around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: All right. You never know what kind of life changing event can happen when you look for laundry detergent. A CNN producer was doing just that when she saw a man with a note on his backpack, saying his wife needs a kidney, including his phone number. Now, the producer snapped a picture and posted it on Twitter hoping it might help and it did. JOHNS: Within a week, more than 23,000 retweets and 35,000 likes.

The man has since been identified as Raymond Thompson. He and his wife and 4-year-old daughter live in Brooklyn. Thompson says after the photo went viral, he started getting calls as far away as Australia.

ROMANS: Thompsons hope testing for a match can start next month. Instead of giving money, they are urging people to become organ donors. One in five people waiting for a kidney last year found a match.

And I'll tell you, last hour we did this story, and I shared my mother had a liver transplant two years ago. Our family would not be whole today if it were not for the sacrifice of another family. A viewer saw that and posted this.

I just wanted to show this again. Stephanie died May 7, 2018. She was 32. She needs a liver transplant, but never got one. Please become an organ donor. Everyone deserves a chance of life.

So true. You know, living donor for kidney. Deceased donor or a liver.

[05:25:01] Please, please, sign up.

JOHNS: As part of estate planning, too. It's common sense, advance directives, living wills.

ROMANS: Tell people around, yes.

JOHNS: Yes.

All right. Clemson got dealt a big blow ahead of the college football playoff, and the semifinal against Notre Dame.

ROMANS: Coy Wire has more in this morning's "Bleacher Report".

Hey, Coy.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Christine, hi, Joe.

The Tigers feared it and now it's official. They'll be without three players against the Irish after tests showed small amounts of the banned substance. And the biggest for them is superstar defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence. The junior is not just one of the best players on the team, he's one of the best in all the college football. He is projected as a future first-round NFL draft pick.

He has not practiced with the team since Clemson learned of the initial positive test last week. The players -- they are denying wrongdoing. The coach Dabo Sweeney, he was quick to defend them yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DABO SWEENEY, CLEMSON HEAD COACH: These are three great young men that I believe in and I know without a doubt have not intentionally done anything to jeopardize their opportunity or the team. I want to make that clear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WIRE: How will the suspensions impact Saturday's first semifinal at the Cotton Bowl between the Tiger and the Irish? Vegas still has Clemson favored by two touchdowns.

The other semifinal showdown in the orange bowl which is Alabama and Oklahoma, which is likely the last football game of Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray's life. Sooner sports star and quarterback has already signed a $4.6 million deal to play baseball with the Oakland A's.

And he says now, though, he is completely focused on trying to take down the defending national champs.

(BEGN VIDEO CLIP)

KYLER MURRAY, OKLAHOMA QUARTERBACK: I don't need extra motivation. I'm not worried about the odds. The game comes and time to play.

QUINNEN WILLIAMS, ALABAMA DEFENSIVE LINEMAN: He's the real deal. He can do it all. (INAUDIBLE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WIRE: The players are getting ready and so are the fans. One representing each of the semifinal teams are living together on the billboard in San Jose for 12 days. That's 45 feet off the ground, near the site of the national title game.

They have a sleeping bag, a TV. They're going to be watching the game and they have a chance to win prizes. Two of them are going to will be voted off Saturday. The survivors stay up until the title game when they get the opportunity to support their team.

Don't worry, Christine and Joe, there is a bathroom and shower down there below. The experience is streamed online.

JOHNS: OK, that's a lot of loyalty, I would think.

ROMANS: All right. I don't like my sports that much.

Thanks so much, Coy Wire.

WIRE: You're welcome.

ROMANS: All right. Twenty-seven minutes past hour.

Transformer blows lighting up the skies above New York. More action in the skies today with the major storm heading east.

JOHNS: And the government shutdown is a problem for the new Congress. I bet you know that. Eight hundred thousand unpaid federal workers left waiting for help.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)