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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Two U.S. Members Killed in Afghanistan; Boeing Jets Allegedly Lacked Two Safety Features; Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired March 22, 2019 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:31:53] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, two U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan as efforts ramp up to bring this 17-year war to a close.
DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Do family tours and staff departures mean the special counsel is finally done? New indications the Mueller report could go to the attorney general at any time.
ROMANS: Jared Kushner using WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders. And why his attorney says it's not a problem.
BRIGGS: And for the second time in a year, Mississippi trying to ban abortions before some women even know they have a baby on the way.
Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Dave Briggs.
ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. It is 32 minutes past the hour.
Breaking overnight, two U.S. service members killed while conducting an operation in Afghanistan. Information still coming in at this hour.
Senior international correspondent Matthew Chance monitoring this for us live from Moscow.
Matthew, what do we know at this hour?
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Christine, we don't know a great deal. Just there's been a statement issued by the NATO Military Alliance, NATO Resolute Support, that's the operation inside Afghanistan involving thousands of U.S. personnel helping the Afghan military to combat the Taliban as they battle them for territory on the ground in Afghanistan.
That short statement saying two U.S. service members were killed while conducting an operation on March 22nd, that's this day. It doesn't give any further details about what that operation was actually to do with or whereabouts in the country it took place. But it goes on to say that in accordance with U.S. Department of Defense policy, the names of the service personnel killed in action are being withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified.
So it could be, you know, tomorrow until we find out the identities of these individuals. But it brings to fore U.S. service personnel who have been killed in action in Afghanistan this year alone. It's America's longest war. It's been going on for more than 17 years, more than 2300 U.S. personnel have been killed in that conflict. And 10 times as many have been left injured with some with obviously very severe casualties.
And it underlines just how important it has become for the United States and for President Trump to bring that number of U.S. forces down and bring a close to the longest running war in American history in Afghanistan. Already an order has been issued by the White House some time ago to accelerate negotiations with the Taliban, that militant group who was supposed to be defeated or at least toppled in 2001, but they've been resurgent in recent years and in recent months. Those negotiations, though, have not yet forged a peace deal and this, Christine, is the result.
ROMANS: Just tragic. OK, Matthew Chance, in Moscow, thank you for that.
BRIGGS: Also breaking moments ago, North Korea pulling out of the Joint Liaison Office it opened last year with South Korea. The statement from the South said Seoul was notified the North is pulling out with instructions from the superior authority. The move comes after the U.S. slapped two Chinese firms with sanctions for doing business with Pyongyang. It is the first move by the White House against North Korea since the summit -- that second summit between Kim Jong-un and President Trump in Hanoi ended with no agreement.
[04:35:06] Also should mention John Bolton in a tweet yesterday warned countries around the world to take notice and review their own activities to ensure they are not involved in North Korea's sanctions evasion. So it appears things beginning to escalate once again.
Meanwhile Robert Mueller has the White House and the world on edge this morning. The special counsel appears to be close to delivering his final Russia report. Beltway insiders and the president's lawyers are on alert and here's why.
CNN's Katelyn Polantz pointing out that members of Mueller's team bringing family members to the office for visits with some staff members carrying out boxes. The top prosecutor is leaving for another assignment. Plus the special counsel's grand jury has not been seen in two months now.
ROMANS: I love the stakeout with him, with his baseball cap. I mean, it's just --
BRIGGS: We are in the TMZ phase.
ROMANS: It's just like -- yes. All right. When Mueller does file his report it could take weeks for most Americans to find out what he learned. The special counsel is required to hand over his report to Attorney General Bill Barr. The Justice Department would then share portions with the White House.
CNN reported this week the White House wants to review it before lawmakers do, to claim executive privilege where it wants.
BRIGGS: White House special counsel Emmet Flood and his team have already prepared responses to whatever becomes public based on several potential scenarios. Sources tell CNN there appears to be a sense of relief within this White House that they managed to navigate the entire Mueller episode without the president ever sitting down for a face-to-face interview.
ROMANS: All right. House Oversight chairman Elijah Cummings claims several senior White House officials have used personal e-mail and messaging accounts to conduct government business. In a letter to the White House, the Maryland Democrat alleges Jared Kushner has been using the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders.
According to Cummings, Kushner's attorney says this -- it's complying with the Presidential Records Act because he takes screen shots of the WhatsApp messages and sends them to his White House account or to the National Security Council.
BRIGGS: Not clear whether Kushner communicated classified information, though. Cummings also claims former Deputy National Security adviser KT McFarland and Steve Bannon received e-mails on their personal accounts about the transfer of sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.
These new revelations come as President Trump continues to attack Hillary Clinton for using a private e-mail server as secretary of State.
ROMANS: All right. The White House rejecting a request from congressional Democrats for documents and interviews related to President Trump's communications with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In a letter to House Committee chairman, the White House counsel says the president must be free to engage in discussions with foreign leaders, without fear that those communications will be disclosed and foreign leaders must be assured of this as well.
BRIGGS: A lawmaker is looking into whether there was some attempt to conceal or misrepresent President Trump's contacts with Putin. He reportedly kept aides in the dark about the meetings and confiscated his interpreter's notes following a 2017 meeting with Putin in Germany.
In an op-ed this week, Congressman Elijah Cummings said his committee has not received any documents from the White House on any topic they're investigating.
ROMANS: Boeing paying a heavy price for two deadly crashes involving a 737 Max 8. Indonesian carrier Garuda says it wants to cancel an order for 49 of those jets. Boeing stock down 11.7 percent since the most recent disaster.
In Ethiopia, that's $27 billion in market cap gone. In the face of the crisis at his company, a new filing reveals the CEO Dennis Muilenburg made $23.5 million last year. That's a raise of 27 percent just before this very high profile crisis at the company. And now the "New York Times" reports the pilots of both doomed jet liners lacked two notable safety features that could have helped them. It seemed these safety features were only offered as extras. You have to pay extra for something to tell you that its center was malfunctioning.
CNN's Tom Foreman has more on these safety features and what the company is doing now.
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Christine. Hey, Dave. The heat around Boeing is just getting hotter. These were considered add-ons by Boeing, according to this "New York Times" article, and they would tell you, the pilots inside the plane, it would tell them if these sensors on the front of the plane were reading that the plane was headed more up or if it was headed more down, or if they disagreed with each other.
Readouts in the plane and also a warning light, these are two separate systems. Boeing now says they're going to make one of these things no longer something that they charge for, no longer an add-on but a standard part of the plane. But this is really ratcheting up the tension around Boeing because people are saying if these are safety measures, to make this plane safer, why weren't they free all along?
[04:40:07] Why weren't they considered a standard part of the plane? One of the answers is these types of add-ons are a big market for companies like Boeing out there. Nonetheless, this will make the investigations of Boeing which we know about now from the FBI, Justice Department, just go even more energetic at this point.
What are they looking at in all of this? Any sign that Boeing was taking steps that effectively by omission or co-mission allowed a dangerous circumstance to come into play, a dangerous circumstance, which has taken hundreds of lives -- Dave, Christine.
BRIGGS: Great reporting, Tom Foreman.
This weekend Trump world, though, will be remembered for the president's incessant attacks on the late Senator John McCain. In an interview Thursday with FOX Business, he slammed the deceased war hero yet again, calling McCain horrible for his 2017 vote against a measure to repeal Obamacare and claiming the Arizona Republican gave the FBI an explosive dossier on alleged Trump ties to Russia for, quote, "very evil purposes."
The president adding this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS HOST: But, Mr. President, he's dead. He can't punch back. I know you punch back.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Uh, no.
BARTIROMO: But he's dead.
TRUMP: I don't talk about it. People ask me the question. I didn't bring this up, you just brought it up. You asked the question.
BARTIROMO: Well, you talked about it this week.
TRUMP: You asked me the question.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Fact check, not true. President Trump went after McCain unsolicited twice on Twitter last week and did it again this week during a speech in Ohio that was intended to focus on the economy and national security.
ROMANS: Yes. He spent a great deal of time trashing the deceased senator and war hero there in Lima. And it was not --
BRIGGS: In front of active duty military, mind you.
ROMANS: That was part of the speech. That was not a question from the media.
BRIGGS: No.
ROMANS: All right. 41 minutes past the hour. Another "we're sorry" from Facebook. Facebook is really sorry these days. This time it's for mishandling the passwords of hundreds of millions of you. Facebook said it did not properly masked the passwords and stored them in an internal database that staff had access to. A Facebook vice president said the passwords were never visible to anyone outside of Facebook and there's no evidence anyone abused the passwords.
It has been a year of constant issues for this company. Cyber security concerns, regulatory scrutiny of the U.S. and Europe and a lengthy outage last week.
BRIGGS: At the same time misinformation about vaccines continues to appear on Facebook and Instagram weeks after the sites said they would minimize that content. Earlier this month Facebook said it would reduce the ranking of groups and pages that spread misinformation about vaccines by not including them in recommendations or in predictions when users type a search. But two weeks later, this is still an issue.
A CNN Business review showed Facebook continued to recommend content in the search bar that links vaccines with autism. A false conspiracy theory. A spokesperson for Instagram and Facebook called the effort to curb the misinformation a long-term commitment.
ROMANS: I'm always surprised how many people believe this stuff when they see somebody share it and they assume that it's real. And I'm always surprised how many people share things that are just not true. People who you know, you know.
BRIGGS: That's the stuff that spreads faster than true information unfortunately.
ROMANS: Right. Right. It's true. BRIGGS: Ahead, why you should check your freezers. Tyson recalling
nearly 70,000 pounds of popular chicken strips. We'll tell you which ones.
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[04:47:50] ROMANS: All right. College affordability, it is a popular topic for Democrats on the 2020 campaign trail. And now President Trump is joining the call to fix student loan debt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Student loan debt, I'm going to work to fix it. Because it's outrageous what's happening. But we're going to start with 43 million people in the United States are currently working to pay off student loans and we'll be talking about that very soon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Very soon. That was during an executive order signing event yesterday, that order aimed to protect free speech on college campuses. But it includes these two provisions on student loan debt. It directs the Department of Education to publish more information about graduates' income and debt levels. That makes it easier for students to make a financial choice here, to choose colleges that are best for them based on the value of the program and what they'll earn later. Trump also wants the DOE to come up with proposals that would hold colleges accountable for student outcomes.
BRIGGS: Tyson Foods recalling over 69,000 pounds of chicken strip products. They could contain pieces of metal. Their frozen ready-to- eat chicken strips were produced on November 30, 2018. There are three varieties involved including 25 ounce bags of fully cooked buffalo style chicken strips and chicken breast strip fritters with rib meat and buffalo styled sauce. Twenty pound cases of fully cooked buffalo style chicken strips may also be contaminated. All have a best if used by date of November 30, 2019. More information at CNN.com.
ROMANS: All right. A lot of health concerns and a lack of answers in the Houston suburb of Deer Park after that huge chemical fire was finally put out. Now residents were warned to shelter in place on Thursday after hazardous levels of the carcinogen benzene were detected in the air. Dozens showed up at a mobile county health clinic a few miles from the fire site complaining about burning sensations, itchy eyes and skin and stuffy and bloody noses.
The ITC Chemical Company is conducting its own air and water quality tests as are local government agencies and environmental groups. And remember it was the parents who were insisting that schools be closed because they were so worried. They were told the air quality is fine and now there's this benzene issue.
[04:50:06] BRIGGS: People had to wipe that ash off of their cars so needless to say they were concerned. Several Indiana teachers complaining they were shot with plastic
pellets during an active shooter drill. The State Teachers Association says the pellets caused welts and bleeding. The training took place at an elementary school back in January. The union in a Twitter statement says no one in education takes these drills lightly. The risk of harming someone far outweighs whatever added realism one is trying to convey here. Police say they were using an air soft gun in the active shooter training but recently stopped after a teacher was upset by it.
ROMANS: Wow. That's -- wow.
All right. Mississippi now the latest state trying to ban abortions before some women even realized they are pregnant. Governor Phil Bryant signing a bill barring the procedure once a fetal heartbeat can be detected as early as six weeks into pregnancy. The only exceptions are for a woman's life or a serious risk of impairment. Abortion rights groups have already promised a court fight.
BRIGGS: Not one state has managed to put a heartbeat bill into lasting practice. Earlier this week a judge stopped Kentucky's version from being enforced. Iowa's law was declared unconstitutional in January. Last November a federal judge struck down a different Mississippi law banning abortion at 15 weeks.
ROMANS: All right. To the college entrance scandal. More fallout this morning in that admissions disaster. UCLA men's soccer coach Jorge Salcedo resigning in the wake of bribery allegations. He is accused of accepting $200,000 to enroll two players in UCLA teams even though they did not play soccer competitively. One of the students Lauren Isaacson was a member of the women's team in 2017. She remains enrolled. Her parents have been implicated in the admissions scandal.
Salcedo rose at UCLA from ball boy to coach. He guided the team to 14 NCAA tournaments and two national championship appearances. That student appears in the girls' soccer program sometimes as a manager, sometimes as a player, wearing a uniform. She does not play.
BRIGGS: Wow. Cameras in your car could be watching you. But one automaker says that is a good thing. Volvo says in-car cameras will keep an eye on drivers and take action if they seem distracted or impaired. The Swedish automaker says the cameras would be part of a system to slow vehicles and safely park them on the side of the road if drivers become incapacitated or their attention wanders for a long period.
An ACLU policy analyst tells the "Washington Post" Volvo needs to be transparent about what the cameras monitor and said drivers should have a say in how that information is used.
ROMANS: So creep me out that airlines have cameras behind the seats. It's because why do they need that.
BRIGGS: Yes.
ROMANS: But the car, I'm less concerned about. BRIGGS: Yes, but does anyone want a car camera? Although my children
--
ROMANS: Well, I love the rear facing camera. Right. Right.
All right. Cannabis based products are in stock at CVS pharmacies in eight states, but they aren't supplements or food additives. CNN Business has the details next.
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[04:57:33] ROMANS: All right. Let's get a check on CNN Business this Friday morning. Global stock markets are higher amid a dovish Fed and Brexit concerns, although you can see that Europe has closed -- has turned down here after Asia was up.
Let's take a look at Wall Street right. Wall Street leaning down at this point. Futures pointing lower as concerns -- growth concerns continue here. But stocks had a good day Thursday. The Dow closed up 217 points, the S&P 500 advanced 1.1 percent, the Nasdaq up 1.4 percent.
Apple closed up 4 percent ahead of a major product announcement on Monday. Apple up nine out of the past 10 days. Biogen plunged 29 percent. It halted trials on a promising Alzheimer's treatment. Its worst day since February 2005. Just a couple of the movers there.
It was a really good day for Levi's IPO debut. Levi Strauss closed up 32 percent Thursday. The iconic Levi's 501 blue jeans, look at all the traders were even allowed to wear jeans on the floor, they raised $623 million from the stock sale. You know, that's against -- you're not supposed to wear jeans on the floor unless you're having your IPO on the floor.
Anyway, that's to commemorate that occasion. This isn't the first time Levi's has gone public. The 166-year-old company was publicly traded in the '70s and the early '80s. It went private back in 1985. Levi Strauss CEO said the company plans to use some of the money from that stock sale to boost its presence in overseas markets.
All right. Cannabis based products are now in CVS stores in eight states. The pharmacy chain said the products include topicals such as creams, sprays and lotions, and available in these states, Alabama, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland and Tennessee. But CVS specified it's not selling any CBD containing supplements, no food additives. We have partnered CBD product manufactures that are complying with applicable laws and that meet CVS' high standards for quality.
CBD is becoming one of the hottest ingredients in consumer products. Companies are adding the non-psycho active cannabis compound to food, beverages and skin care products.
BRIGGS: Yes, really hot when it's in coffees and teas. People are going to specialty places paying a lot of money for those.
ROMANS: Yes, that's right.
BRIGGS: All right. EARLY START continues with breaking news out of Afghanistan.
ROMANS: Breaking overnight, two U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan as efforts ramp up to bring this 17-year war to a close.
BRIGGS: Do family tours and staff departures mean the special counsel is done. New indications the Mueller report could go to the attorney general at any time.
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