Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Buttigieg Announces First Quarter Numbers; Biden Defends Interactions with Women; Prison Reform Summit at the White House; College Student Murdered After Mistaken Uber Car; Children Suffering in Venezuela; Fairfax Assault Allegations. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired April 01, 2019 - 09:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:31:01] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right. South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg not officially in the 2020 race, but officially getting some big momentum. This morning he tweeted that his team has raised more than $7 million since launching his exploratory committee in January.

Van Jones is with me. Not only our political commentator and host of "The Van Jones Show," but you had him on and it was a really fascinating interview.

Thanks for being here.

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hey, man, you know, a star is born. It's an amazing thing to see.

HARLOW: Wow.

JONES: You know, look, three, four weeks ago, nobody knew his name. Two weeks ago you couldn't pronounce the guy's name. Now everybody, you know, Buttigieg, Buttigieg is everywhere. And I just think it just goes to show that you have, you know, two different streams in the political party, Democratic Party. Some people really want that return to quote/unquote normalcy. They're looking at a Biden. They want somebody who's tried and true. Other people really want a fresh face. And you can't have a fresher face than a 36, 37-year-old, a mayor from a tiny town, who's gay, who's a Rhodes scholar, a former veteran. I mean the guy -- you could not come up with this guy in Hollywood if you wanted to. And yet he's so genuine. And people are getting excited. I mean you could feel it when he walked into the room the -- you know, I have a live audience for my show every weekend.

HARLOW: Yes.

JONES: It was electric. It was -- this guy -- this guy is something else.

HARLOW: Really?

All right, full transparency here, Van, I completely botched his last name the first time we talked about him on this show. JONES: Yes.

HARLOW: My team totally prepared me, they totally wrote the pronouncer in there, and I botched it. But it just -- it goes to your point, right?

JONES: Yes.

HARLOW: I mean, and here I am, and I do this day in and day out, and I botched it.

JONES: Yes.

HARLOW: I'm interested if you think that star power, as you say, or rising star, et cetera, in this excitement has legs to really last throughout. If he does officially jump in, does he have what it takes to go, you know, very far?

JONES: Nobody knows. Nobody knows who's going to flame out, who's going to make it. You know, people are going to have their good days and their bad days. I guarantee you in two weeks they'll be the -- the Buttigieg backlash and we'll have to deal with that. I mean, you know -- but, you know, we're all -- we're still almost a year away from anybody getting a chance to vote.

HARLOW: Yes.

JONES: But I think that what you're going to see, when this young man steps onto the stage with all the others and it's time for the debates, which is coming up in just a few months, I think if he performs as well as he's done on television, as he's done on the town hall on that debate stage, you could have a real surge behind this -- this young guy. And that just goes to show you, listen, man, nobody thought we would have a reality show TV president. Maybe we'll have the first small town mayor, gay Rhoades scholar veteran president.

HARLOW: There you go.

JONES: It could happen.

HARLOW: There you go.

All right, let me ask you about someone else not in the race yet, and that is former Vice President Joe Biden, and the way that he has sort of evolved in his answer to the allegations by Assembly Woman Lucy Flores, who says back in 2014 he sort of smelled her hair and kissed the back of her head and made her feel uneasy and powerless. This is the first crisis of his non-candidacy candidacy. How big is it?

JONES: You know, it's just hard to know. I mean what you do know about Joe Biden is that he's from the old school of politics. He's very much a hands-on guy. He's shaking your hand. He's got his hand on your shoulder. He's pulling you close. He puts his head on your forehead, gives you a secret. And, you know, that's the way that it used to be done. You fast forward that into today's context, a lot of that stuff, you

know, you just -- it's not -- it's not what's acceptable today. And so he's got to figure out some way to explain himself that respects the new sensibilities that are out there. I don't think he has a reputation of being actually lecherous, but that doesn't mean he's not making people feel uncomfortable in this new era.

HARLOW: All right, so let me ask you about what's happening at the White House today and that is that the president is having over -- hosting criminal justice advocates. Obviously this is a huge part of your job and your role. You were integral in getting the First Step Act passed.

According to NPR, some interesting numbers. More than 500 inmates have been released since the First Step Act was passed. But NPR also reports this morning that not only did the Justice Department miss one deadline for developing these rehabilitation and training programs, you know, aimed at reducing recidivism, but that the president's budget that was released earlier this year didn't clearly request the $75 million that, you know, was to be put aside for part of this overhaul.

[09:35:21] I know some of that the White House says was due to the shutdown. But I'm just interested in sort of how you think the actual action after the legislation has been.

JONES: Well, listen, we're in the first quarter of the first year of the First Step Act, which gives you a sense of how early we are in this process.

Look, there was a budget kind of a challenge that has now I think been fixed. But the reality is, listen, it is hard to pass these bills and it's hard to implement them properly. And so groups like Cut 50 are all over that process.

Here's what I will say is that we now have about 3,000 people who are in the process of being able to come home early that would not have been able to come home. We have about 100 percent of the people who are behind bars right now have a chance to come home a little bit earlier with good time credit, which was not the case before. And we've got 100 percent of the women no longer being shackled when they're giving birth, et cetera. So there's a lot of good in the bill.

But as you and I know, passing the bill is almost impossible. Implementing it well under any administration is very challenging. This administration in particular, because you had the shutdown and you had, you know, no attorney general in place for a while.

HARLOW: Right.

JONES: It's been -- it's been a little bit of a bumpy start. However, I think it's worth celebrating. There are going to be people who were in the jailhouse that today will be in the White House. I think that's a good thing.

HARLOW: You have faith it sounds like? JONES: Well, listen, I have faith in hard work. There are good --

there are good and well people in that administration. And you have the old bureaucracy there. That's a fight. But you also have people on the outside who are going to keep pushing and pushing to make stuff work.

HARLOW: Right.

JONES: It's easy -- it's easy to talk about. It's hard to make it happen.

HARLOW: There you go.

Van Jones, nice to have you on all of those topics. Thanks so much, my friend.

JONES: Thank you.

HARLOW: Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, a fatal mistake. A South Carolina college student's body is found 14 hours after she gets into a car she thought was her Uber. It was not. Please be careful. We're going to have the latest on this story, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:41:33] SCIUTTO: Welcome back.

This morning a suspect is in custody after police say that a college student in South Carolina mistakenly got into a car she thought was her Uber. It was not. She was murdered.

And, you know, Poppy, we've all had these moments.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: The car comes up. Just be sure -- be careful.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Check the license plate. You know, it's a real worry.

HARLOW: You're completely right. I mean I just get in, right?

Surveillance video captured moments -- the moments that she was entering the car. Look at this. These are the moments. Fourteen hours later, her body was found.

Dianne Gallagher is in Columbia, South Carolina, with the latest.

What a tragic story, Dianne. What do you know?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And, look, Poppy, Jim, exactly what you guys are talking about. Here in Columbia it's resonating with a lot of people. Even those who did not know 21-year- old Samantha Josephson because who hasn't just jumped in a car that resembled what was on your rideshare app. And police say that is exactly what this University of South Carolina senior did just before 2:00 a.m. on Friday. She thought that this black Impala that pulled up was her Uber. She got in. And they say that the diver of that car had enacted the child locks on the vehicle, on the windows, on the doors. So the police say that there was no way she could have escaped even if she tried.

Now, Turkey hunters found her body roughly 70 miles from here in a rural area, different county, about 14 hours later. This was just a couple hours after her friends actually reported her missing. She wasn't answering her phone. They couldn't get in touch with her. They had not seen her since she had been separated from them that early morning.

Well, police say that roughly 25 hours after she was last spotted on that surveillance video, they pulled over, not too far from where I'm standing now, where she was last seen, a black Chevy Impala. They say the driver ran. When they caught that driver, it was 24-year-old Nathaniel Rowland. Police say inside that vehicle they found Samantha's cell phone, they found blood that was hers in the passenger compartment areas and in the backseat, the trunk area. And they say that, you know, they still don't know what happened. He did not make his first appearance, but her mother was there and spoke.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCI JOSEPHSON, MOTHER OF SAMANTHA JOSEPHSON: I cannot fathom how someone could randomly select a person, a beautiful girl, and steal her life away. His actions were senseless, vile and unacceptable. It sickens us to think that his face was the last thing that my baby girl saw on this earth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: Now, look, her father said that it is now his life's mission to make sure that driveshare or rideshare apps are better equipped for safety. But people also pay better attention. Check that tag. Make sure the driver knows your name. And make sure the driver can confirm their name to you before you get into that car, Jim and Poppy.

SCIUTTO: Those are good pieces of advice. Follow them. Got a similar story. Someone we know. Got to be careful.

Dianne Gallagher, thanks very much.

HARLOW: All right, so, to Venezuela we turn. The young faces of the crisis there. Thousands of sick children in failing hospitals. Their illnesses left undiagnosed and untreated. Look at those infants. Their parents and doctors say they are powerless to stop their suffering.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. FEDER ALVAREZ, VENEZUELAN DOCTOR: (INAUDIBLE) the mothers, and they're not going to lie to you, to have their kids dying in hospital bed because of lack of medicine and they can do nothing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:49:24] SCIUTTO: Listen to this latest look at the situation in Venezuela. Today, Venezuela is now rationing power amid the nation's latest massive blackout. There's been more than one. The country's embattled president, Nicolas Maduro, requiring people to stop working at 2:00 p.m. to save power.

HARLOW: But the job never ends for the doctors in that country's struggling hospital. The outages, the lack of basic necessities has just amplified the suffering of some of Venezuela's youngest citizens.

Our Paula Newton went inside one of the hospitals that is struggling the most to take care of these infants. Here's her report.

[09:50:00] (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Take a close look. This is an emergency pediatric ward in Venezuela, overcrowded, unbearably hot, run down, rudimentary treatment everywhere you look. And from nearly every bed and every child, a harrowing story, like this one.

Natalia Rohas (ph) has not named her baby girl born in early March during the first country-wide blackout. She's restless, feverish, doctors suspect meningitis, but there's no way to find out.

She needs several tests, Natalia tells me, and a scan of her little head, as she puts it, but it can't be done here. Scans, x-rays, the blood lab haven't been operational for months.

We have been given exclusive access to two pediatric wards by outraged medical staff who say they can take no more. There are shortages of everything medicine and medical supply, not even the special formula that malnourished Enibar (ph) is so desperately in need of. As we walk through abandoned wards with decrepit equipment, there is no sanitation, no water, little power.

NEWTON (on camera): These conditions, you have to understand, are normal in Venezuela. We have seen them again and again in hospital after hospital.

NEWTON (voice over): And now this, brush fires just outside the hospital. With no water they are left to exhaust themselves, smoke and ash coming in through the windows.

CNN contacted hospital administrators and the Venezuelan health ministry about the conditions and did not receive a reply.

When we have an emergency, she tells me, we have no way of resolving the situation in most cases. We have to improvise. It's like we're combat doctors.

And doctors here tell us they're at war in more ways than one. This pediatrician says she does not want to be identified for fear of reprisals. She says doctors and other medical staff are threatened with dismissal and sometimes even physically abused if they speak out.

It's been three years since Dr. Ronnie Vilasmul (ph) risked his career to give me a rare look inside a crumbling Venezuelan hospital. Since, he has not only been fired for speaking out, but just a few weeks ago he tweeted that authorities have come to arrest him after he met with a visiting U.N. mission to raise the alarm about hospital conditions. He is still in hiding.

DR. FEDER ALVAREZ, VENEZUELAN DOCTOR: It's definitely become worse.

NEWTON: Dr. Alejandro Crespo (ph) is a friend of Dr. Ronnie's and he says there can be no debate, Venezuela's health system has collapsed.

ALVAREZ: You can ask the mothers and they're not going to lie to you. To have their kids dying in a hospital bed because the lack of medicine and they can do nothing.

NEWTON: Medical staff tell us they feel as if they're sent into battle every day knowing they will lose, leaving weary patients to plead for their children's care.

As Venezuela's political conflict rages, this remains its front line.

Paula Newton, CNN, in Aragua state, Venezuela.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Just heartbreaking conditions there.

In other news here at home, Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax standing by his innocence as two women now publicly speak out about their accusations of sexual assault against him.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:57:22] HARLOW: All right, one of two women that has accused Virginia's lieutenant governor of sexual assault is speaking out publicly this morning, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Vanessa Tyson telling CBS that she would like to see Justin Fairfax resign. Tyson, who is a political science professor, claims Fairfax assaulted her during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. She describes the moments just after, she says she realized that she was being attacked.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VANESSA TYSON, JUSTIN FAIRFAX ACCUSER: To be honest, I was in total shock. Like --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you say anything to him? No?

TYSON: I didn't know what to say. I was just -- I was completely caught off guard. It was almost as if I was dumbstruck. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Goodness.

A televised interview with Fairfax's other accuser is expected to air tomorrow. Meanwhile, Fairfax continues to deny the accusations and says that he has even taken two polygraph tests that show that he is telling the truth.

Jessica Dean has been following the story.

And, Jessica, in addition to the public interviews, we understand that they're both asking for the Virginia legislature to hold a public hearing now.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That is exactly right, Jim. And that is really at the heart of all of this. These two women have been very vocal since the beginning that they want a bipartisan hearing, not an investigation, but open public testimony in which they can tell their sides of the story publicly in front of all of those lawmakers and really get out what they see as the truth, what happened. They also want to give Justin Fairfax his chance to say this all out loud in public as well.

So they have asked pointedly for that bipartisan hearing. So far, though, Republicans in Virginia are the only ones to come on board with this idea. So, really, this is some public pressure on those Democrats there in Virginia to come around to this idea of a bipartisan public hearing. And it's interesting to note, Jim and Poppy, that when this all happened, lawmakers -- Democratic lawmakers there in Virginia and national Democrats did call on Justin Fairfax to resign. At one point there were talks of possible articles of impeachment being filed. That never happened. And then Democrats kind of -- there in Virginia backed off of this.

So it will be interesting to see, once these two interviews get out publicly, and people start to hear these women's stories, if the consensus moves toward doing these bipartisan, open public hearings.

HARLOW: Jessica Dean, keep us posted. It's really significant. And, again, as you guys noted, we're going to hear from another accuser tomorrow morning.

[10:00:04] Thank you, Jessica, very much.

END