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Hurricane Michael Reporting from Florida; Kanye Visits the White House; Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 11, 2018 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer, it's 1pm here in Washington, thanks very much for joining us. Utter dump devastation, that's the best way to describe parts of the Florida panhandle hit by hurricane Michael. Houses have been blown away, or in some instances swept away. Several roads are buckled and covered in debris.

Within just 24 hours, an area that is home for some and a family vacation spot for so many others is now unrecognizable. And that is just what we know about the areas that are accessible. Some of the damage you're about to see has been, and can only be viewed by air. Our Brooke Balwin gave us a tour.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN: We have just now flown over Mexico Beach and it's gone. It's gone. I want to -- we're going to get Lionel (ph) to show you guys exactly how bad it is, but I mean, it's -- it's obliterated. And it's awful to look at. I mean, just as we watch the deterioration along the coastline, it was bad in Panama City Beach, but I've never seen anything like this.

This home, used to be about a football field away, right along the water. The storm and the wind carried it 100 yards this way and landed it on it's side like straight out of "The Wizard of Oz".

Scott Boutwell, come on in, sir. You have been incredible, what were you seeing -- describe, we've been talking the last hour, but what were you seeing float past your window?

SCOTT BOUTWELL, HURRICANE SURVIVOR: Well what we seen was first was the cars started floating by and stuff. And all the debris was in the air, and the wind was just so strong and stuff. And then next thing, the water -- when the water came in, houses started floating in front of our home, and stuff you know?

And so -- and then once you've seen that then everything just went black. I mean, you couldn't see anything anywhere, the storm was so strong. We had furniture in our house that wasn't even our furniture. That surge had brought stuff in so bad, and it's like the walls collapsed and everything and stuff, and so like you say the only thing I could find of ours was my briefcase.

I never imagined this was what was going to happen to our home here. And so it's hard to grasp, I mean where do we start now? I mean, what do we do? I mean, there's nothing left here.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BLITZER: All of that footage was from Mexico Beach on the Florida panhandle where FEMA is calling "Ground Zero". Our Brian Todd is on the scene for us, he's joining us now life. Brian, when you were flying over you said Mexico Beach had been obliterated. Now that you're on the ground do you still feel that way?

BRIAN TODD, CNN: Wolf we've been trying to get to Mexico Beach, via land and we have not been able to get there. Everything has been shut off, either by massive downed trees and power lines, or by law enforcement.

We have tried to navigate these roads all morning and right now we're about 50 miles away from Mexico Beach and we are still trying to get there, we're still inching our way forward, but not too hopeful at this point because again, between roads blocked with massive trees down and teams trying to cut through them, and then power lines that you have to zigzag around, plus law enforcement blocking us -- we've not been able to get through yet.

We did hit one road block where law enforcement told us that the only people they were letting through were first responders and the power crews. So it seems to be inaccessible by land right now, we're still trying Wolf, but it's not too hopeful of getting there by land.

It does give you a sense of just how horrible it must be for the people who stayed back, because they're not only dealing with the devastation but now they seem to be at least fairly isolated unless first responders can get there by air, or possibly by boat. Land access though, really very limited if you can get there at all.

BLITZER: Awful, awful situation. All right, Brian we'll check back with you. Brian Todd reporting.

CNN's Diane Gallagher is in Panama City, another area hit hard by this deadly storm. Dianne it's the first full day since Michael hit, what are you seeing?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN: You know, Wolf, every single block looks something like this. There is at least one structure that has just been ripped from the ground by those winds of Hurricane Michael, but people woke up or -- you know, they woke up to see the damage on their homes. They felt that damage, because a lot of people here rode that storm out. I have three of them here with me right here. This is Becky, her son Phillip and her grandson Chris with me. And Becky, you live right behind here, and your home is -- talk to me about riding that storm out.

[13:05:00]

BECKY, HURRICANE SURVIVOR: It was scary, my children wanted me to leave. But there -- when I have an animal, and you have -- they only have so many places that you can put them (ph) -- I don't have cages, so I had to ride it out. GALLAGHER: What was that like?

BECKY: It was rough, to see my air conditioner about bounce out the wall. Sit on the floor, the floors shake -- in my tub -- just so that I could be safe. But I tell you what, I'm an old girl, I rode my Gladden broom (ph).

GALLAGHER: Becky, I appreciate your sense of humor. Now Phillip, you weren't going to stay, but you did because you didn't want to leave your mom?

PHILLIP, HURRICANE SURVIVOR: Yeah, I wasn't -- I wasn't going to leave my momma behind. And if she's staying, I was staying. And like, my trailer got completely wiped out, so --

GALLAGHER: I'm not sure if you guys are seeing video of this mobile home park or not, but I will tell you that when we came through -- Phillip, it doesn't exist anymore. Phillip's trailer is no longer there. There is some of the siding of it, and there's a mattress there and some of his belongings -- but it no longer exists. What was it like for you?

PHILLIP: It was a nightmare, but you know, things -- it's just items, it can be replaced, but a human soul can't.

GALLAGHER: Now, I think a lot of people are going to hear that though and they're going to say then why would you risk that by staying there?

PHILLIP: Well --

BECKY: That's our home.

GALLAGHER: What was that?

BECKY: That's our home.

PHILLIP: That's my momma. And some -- and a lot of people take a lot of things for granted. But when you only have one parent that's alive you're going to do what you've got to do to stay. Because if she wasn't going -- I wasn't going, I'm sorry that's just how it is.

GALLAGHER: And that then meant that your son, Chris, also stayed through this. Chris, come over close to me real quick. How old are you?

CHRIS: I'm 12.

GALLAGHER: You're 12? Can you talk to me about what it was like, because look, your grandma's like, "I rode Michael on the broom," did you feel that way though?

CHRIS: Yes, because it was just -- because we seen the (inaudible) me and my daddy, we spent like about 2 hours watching in front of windows because how the heavy wind was going and everything. And we just saw like, three trees land on all three of our neighbor's yards and everything. And it's -- and that really got me scared and everything.

GALLAGHER: I mean, Chris, you're only 12 years old -- I have to ask, were you afraid that you were going to die?

CHRIS, HURRICANE SURVIVOR: Yes. Because I have like a life still to live, or my future (ph) -- and my dream job, I want to be a construction builder. So I just --

GALLAGHER: There's a lot of those construction workers who are out helping right now, Wolf. I do thank them, they're going to need a lot of help.

In fact, their community -- I've seen help come through. I have seen the power line -- the power trucks coming through. I have seen flatbeds with generators on them. We've seen the National Guard, we have seen different agencies from all over -- a lot from Louisiana, I just saw some (inaudible).

But I can tell you that in their particular neighborhood where all but one home was significantly damaged or completely destroyed, I haven't seen them go back there yet. Now the good news is is that there was only one injury, which is incredible. But obviously they are hurting, they don't have water, they don't have food at this point -- everything they own has been destroyed.

And a lot of these people don't have anywhere to go, Wolf, and that is a situation we are seeing in parts of Panama City right now, it looks awful. Those things can be replaced and rebuilt, but a lot of these people don't know what they're going to do for the next couple days, or even next couple weeks.

BLITZER: And I take it Dianne, hundreds of thousands of customers don't have power right now, no electricity. And that's going to be the case for a while.

GALLAGHER: Yeah, that is going to be the case for a while. Now I can say that, look, they had them staged, Wolf. They had almost 20,000 of these workers when it came to utilities and powers (ph) who were staged around here, and we have seen them steadily coming through here. But except for emergency facilities like hospitals, the emergency operations center -- things like that, we have not seen any of this power come back on for anybody.

And look, it's extensive, Wolf. I am looking around here and almost all of the power lines surrounding us are down. We are, you know, trying to avoid downed power lines around here.

The winds came through and they just snapped these poles -- they are across roads which makes it hard to get over and through to repair things. The trees, they have had to try and get those out of the way to try and repair those as well. So in order for them to bring the power back, they have to be able to get to it and that is another problem they're dealing with here.

BLITZER: Lots of problems right now. All right, Dianne, we're going to get back to you. Dianne Gallagher is in -- on the scene for us in the Florida panhandle.

CNN is on the ground in Mexico Beach in Florida. We're getting our first live pictures from there as well, take a look at the destruction, the devastation. We're going to go back there, have a live report.

Also, the president -- he's meeting now with Kanye West inside the Oval Office and we're told the scene turned rather surreal very quickly. We're going to play the videotape for you when we come back.

[13:10:15]

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[13:14:30]

BLITZER: Turning now to politics, and one of President Trump's most famous fans stopping by for lunch at the White House today. I'm talking about Kanye West. Kanye West and Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown came to the White House to talk about African-American employment, training programs, prison clemency and crime in Chicago.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KANYE WEST, RAPPER: You get more money for having more kids in your home. And then we got rid of the mental health institutes in the '80s and the '90s, and the prison rates just shot up. And now you have Chiraq, what people call Chiraq, which is actually -- our murder rate is going down by 20 percent every year (ph).

And we just talked to the superintendent, met with Michael Sachs (ph), that's Ron's (ph) right-hand man. So I think it's the bravery that helps you beat the game called life. You know, they try to scare me to not this hat - my own friends. But this hat, it gives me - it gives me power, in a way.

You know, my dad and my mom separated so I didn't have lot of male energy in my home, and also, I'm married to a family that - you know, there's not a lot of male energy going on. It's beautiful, though, but there's times where - you know, it's something about - you know, 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 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 who looks up to you, looks up to a rapper and looks up to American industry guys, non-political, no bullshit - put the beep on it, however you want to do it, five second delay - and just goes and gets it done.

Right now, you gave me the heart to go to Adidas, because at Adidas - when I went in, in 2015, we were a $14 billion company, losing $2 billion a year. Now we have a $38 billion market cap. It's called the "Yeezy effect." And I went to Kasper, we had a meeting in Chicago, and I said, "You have to bring manufacturing onshore and stay in the core." It's not about the borders - the core of Adidas - and Chicago is the core of middle America.

And we have to make middle America strong. So I had the balls, because I have enough balls to put on this hat. I mean this Adidas thing made me a billionaire, and I could've lost $200 million walking away from that deal, but even with that, I knew it was more important for me to take the chance of walking away from that deal than to have no fathers in Chicago with no homes.

And when we do have prison reparation (ph). we're known to this (ph) - it's habilitation, not rehabilitation, because they have habilities in the first place. We never had anyone that taught us - or teach us. In fact, we had no one to taught us, right.

So it's more important than any specific deal, anything, that we bring jobs into America and that we provide a transition with mental health and the American education curriculum that Dennis (ph) worked on.

Larry Hoover also has a curriculum that he's worked on. We have Montessori curriculums that we worked on. We (inaudible), the Waldorf (ph) Establishment has a curriculum. We have meditation. There's a lot of things affecting our mental health that us makes us do crazy things that puts us back into that trap door called the 13th Amendment.

I did say "abolish," with the hat on, because why would you keep something around that's a trapdoor. If you're building a floor, the Constitution is the base of our - of our industry, right, of our - of our country of our company -- would you build a trapdoor that if you mess up and you - accidentally, something happens, you fall and you end up next to the Unabomber, you end up - you got to remove all that trapdoor out of the relationship - the four gentlemen that wrote the 13th Amendment -- and I think the way the universe is perfect. We don't have 13 floors, do we? You know - so the - the four gentle that broke the 13th Amendment didn't look like the people they were amending. Also, at that point, it was illegal for blacks to read, or African-Americans to read. And so, that meant, if you actually read the amendment, you get locked up and turned into a slave.

Again, so what I think is, we don't need sentences, we need partners, we need to talk to people. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was connected with a neurophysiologist that works with the athletes in the NBA and the NFL, and he - and he looked at my brain three parts.

I'm going to go ahead and drop some bombs for you. Ninety-eight percentile IQ test, I had a 75 percentile of all human beings, but it was counting eight numbers backwards on piece (ph), so I'm going to work on that one.

The other ones, 98 percent, Tesla for it (ph), you know. So he said that I actually wasn't bipolar, I had sleep deprivation which could cause dementia ten to 20 years from now, I wouldn't even remember my son's name. So all this power that I get - and I'm talking my son to the Sox's game and all that; I wouldn't be able to remember his name from a misdiagnosis. And what we need is - we can empower the pharmaceuticals.

That's one thing. I've never stepped into a situation where I didn't make people more money. So we empower pharmaceuticals, we can empower our industry, we can empower our factories.

[13:20:00]

We can bring not only Adidas onshore, but bring FoxCom (ph) and set up a factory, in I think, Minnesota. Fifty-three thousand...

TRUMP: Wisconsin.

WEST: Yeah, Wisconsin. They've got 4,000 jobs, people making $53,000 a year. And one of the things we've got to set (ph) is for Ford to have the highest design, the dopest cars. The most amazing. I don't really say dope, I don't say negative words, I try top flip them -- we just say positive, lovely, divine, universal words. So, the flyest, freshest, most amazing car. And what we want to start with is -- I brought a -- I brought a gift with me right here. This right here is the iPlane 1. It's a hydrogen powered airplane and this is what our president should be flying in. Look at this, here (ph).

TRUMP: Go get rid of Air Force One. Can we get rid of Air Force One? No, you don't like that?

WEST: Well, we're going to have Apple, an American company. work on this plane. But you know what I don't like about -- it's not that I don't like. What I need Saturday Night Live to improve on or I need the liberals to improve on is, if he don't look good, we don't look good. This is our president.

TRUMP: This is true (ph).

WEST: He has to be the freshest and the flyest, and the flyest planes, the best factories and we have to make our core be empowered. We have to bring jobs into America, because our best export is entertainment and ideas. But when we make everything in China and not in America, then we're cheating on our country and we're putting people in positions to have to do illegal things to end up in the cheapest factory ever, the -- the prison system.

TRUMP: I'll tell you what, that was pretty impressive. I hate to say this, Jim, do you want to say something? What do you do after that?

BLITZER: Pretty extraordinary meeting in the oval office at the White House. The president of the United States with Kanye West. I want to get some analysis. Joining us right now from the White House, CNN political analysts, April Ryan, also with us, CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger. April, you're there, what did you think?

APRIL RYAN, CNN: Wolf, you know, you and I have covered this place. You know, when I started, you were here. This is something that we -- its very different. You know, the cameras were there. We -- I -- I don't remember hearing this kind of monologue, if you will, of someone meeting with the president. But this is someone that the president wants to hear from. Kanye West did acknowledge in this conversation that he had or this monologue, that he has some issues, mental health issues, but he also said that the president -- he looks to the president as a father.

He also talked about Chicago and the crime rate there and talked about unemployment. H talked about the 13th amendment and slaves not being able to read. He was all over the place. But what I do get from this is that the president brought him along with Jim Brown and Kid Rock in, to learn. The question is, will the president -- does he believe that he can learn from Kanye with this -- Kanye West.

And Wolf, I'm going to give you a little something. I've talked to someone who's very familiar with the Kardashians -- or used to be -- text messaging with Ray J. You know you Ray J is, he's -- he was close with Kim Kardashian. He said. I think its great -- a great opportunity for young black entrepreneurs and artists to talk one on one with the president of the United States of America. And he goes on and says, but in watching the tape that Ray J was watching from CNN, he did say he's a little concerned.

There is a concern right now. I mean, what I heard did not sound like someone coming clearly to talk to the president about issues that are -- that are in the black community, and particularly on matters of prison reform that Jared Kushner is pushing the president on.

BLITZER: Gloria, let me get your reaction.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN: You can tell the president was pretty uncomfortable with this -- with this monologue. And you I agree with April, there was some kind of father thing going on there because he said like, this guy made me feel like Superman, and I was -- my parents were separate and I'm surrounded by a lot of women. And -- and that he sort of in a way sees Trump as a father figure and was -- was willing to come out and say that.

I mean look, the reason Trump -- Donald Trump had him there is that he holds up Kanye West as an example of his appeal to black Americans, and that's what he wanted today. I'm not so sure he got that, but he does use it that way and sees Kanye -- he has said that -- that Kanye's support has increased his popularity.

We haven't seen that in our own polling among African-Americans, he claims it's 25 percent. We haven't -- you know, we haven't seen that. So for the president, I mean, he wanted to use this as a way to bolster his support.

[13:25:00]

He also is for prison reform, unlike his own attorney general who is not. That's why Jared and Ivanka were there, because they're very strong on that. But I don't think he expected this kind of a performance, Wolf. I really don't. BLITZER: April, have you seen a 25 percent increase in support for

President Trump among African-Americans as the president claimed earlier?

RYAN: I haven't seen it and I'm -- I'm hearing the exact opposite, particularly after the Kavanaugh confirmations. People are talking about going to the polls. I mean, you hear those who say you know, they support President Trump, but I'm hearing more overwhelmingly and seeing through stats that African-Americans that more overwhelming that African-Americans are definitely trying to take part of a blue tsunami.

But when it comes to issues of Kanye West bringing black people to President Trump, that is -- that's a misnomer. Kanye West has made the large portion of the African-American community upset about his comments about race, about his comments about slavery. So at this point, Kanye West, he's exposing himself more and more in the highest office in the land. This is not just a moment on TMZ, this is not just a moment on E! with Being the Kardashians or whatever that show is. This is for the world to see. The world saw Kanye West in the raw.

BORGER: This was a reality T.V. show we were watching.

RYAN: It's sad.

BORGER: There were no planned remarks, right? I'm assuming that from -- from Kanye West, right, April? And so the president was sitting there, his family was sitting there, the -- the press pool was sitting there, and they were completely stunned, I believe, by Kanye's sort of 10 minute monologue. And don't forget, this is the same person who said that George W. Bush hates black people after Hurricane Katrina.

RYAN: Yes, he did, yes, he did.

BORGER: So, it's interesting that he had a shift towards the Republicans. I think the president seemed stunned, but it is reality T.V. It is -- it is unrehearsed and we just watched it as it -- as it unrolled and I think there are some people in the White House who would like to rerack (ph) that.

BLITZER: Let's not forget why -- we're less than four weeks away from the mid-term elections. April, you wanted to make a final point?

RYAN: Yes, really fast. I mean, you know, we've all worked here before in some way, shape or form. And you know, we got upset when -- when Kellyanne Conway put her feet in the sofa with the black HBCU presidents who came to the oval office. I mean, I remember some instances where people also got upset when people were not wearing jackets in the oval office.

This is taking it to another level. These curse words, it wasn't -- he wasn't cursing at someone, but to use these words. There's a sense of decorum in that room. There is a respect for the office and for the man, no matter who it is. And it's taking it to another low. BLITZER: All right, April and Gloria, we're going to have more on

this. We're also standing by to go live to what FEMA is calling hurricane Michael's ground zero. Look at this, live pictures coming in from Mexico Beach, Florida. The beach town is complete decimated by the storm. Our Brooke Baldwin is there. What she is hearing, what she is seeing, right after this.

[13:28:19]

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