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Francis Suarez, Miami Mayor, Joins the Long List of Republicans Running for President; Voters in New Hampshire Respond to Trump's Arrest and Indictment; A.I. Could Wipe Out Humanity by 2033, According to 42 Percent of CEOs; Spacewalks Performed by NASA Astronauts at the ISS; Interview with University of Rochester Professor of Astrophysics and "The Little Book of Aliens" Author Adam Frank; Component of Life Discovered on a Moon Close to Saturn; Number of Homicides and Suicides Among Young People Increased. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired June 15, 2023 - 10:30   ET

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

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[10:30:00]

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Welcome back. A new face in the GOP race for the White House. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has now officially launched his 2024 presidential campaign. Suarez joining a crowded field for hopefuls, and Donald Trump remains the clear frontrunner. So, how do Republican voters really feel about the now federally indicted title that Trump holds? CNN's Omar Jimenez traveled to New Hampshire to find out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEE HAYNES, NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: It's not fair. I'm all about being fair.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): In this Republican part of New Hampshire, a 37-count indictment doesn't change much for some Trump supporters.

JIMENEZ: This is from the indictment.

HAYNES: Yes.

JIMENEZ: Trump told the individuals that the highly confidential and secret. Trump also said, as president, I could have declassified it, and now I can't, but this is still a secret. What's your reaction to seeing that Trump allegedly did this?

HAYNES: Well, it's right there with Hunter Biden.

JIMENEZ: Yes, but --

HAYNES: No, that don't mean nothing, because I don't trust the DOJ. I do not trust the FBI. I hate it to say it. You all might have to come out with more info.

JIMENEZ: Anything that's in here, at this point, doesn't matter to you?

HAYNES: I will listen to it. I will not make a decision on any of it until I've heard a lot more.

JIMENEZ (voiceover): Lee Haynes isn't alone either. Many of Trump supporters we spoke to pointed to a lengthy investigation into Hunter Biden's finances, which remains ongoing. To Hillary Clinton being cleared of acting with criminal intent back in 2016 in what was described as a careless handling of classified information on a private e-mail server. To these Trump backers, it's all evidence of the double standard being applied now.

DUANE WHITE, NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: They give us, look here but don't look over here. I wish they would stop, like, it's just too much.

JIMENEZ: And even in this, there's pictures of the boxes, you know, stacked up --

WHITE: Yes.

JIMENEZ: -- and even spilled on the ground, that doesn't bother you?

WHITE: Everything you see -- you can't believe everything you see. I don't know. I'm skeptical. They told us that Russian collusion was real for how many years, and it proved through the "Muller Report" that it wasn't. So, how can I believe that at face value too?

JIMENEZ (voiceover): Even as Trump faces legal jeopardy, he remains the clear frontrunner in the GOP primary. The former president's rivals, so far, offering a range of reaction to the indictment.

FMR. GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ), U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's saying, I'm more important than the country. These are my papers.

FMR. GOV. NIKKI HALEY (R-SC), U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If what it says is actually the case, President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security.

MIKE PENCE (R), U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This indictment contains serious charges, and I cannot defend what is alleged.

JIMENEZ (voiceover): In Seabrook, New Hampshire, another red part of the state, some Republicans believe the allegations will help Trump politically.

SRINIVASAN "RAVI" RAVIKUMAR, NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTER: This is uniting the people. People are saying, wait a second here, it's not D versus R. It's us against them.

JIMENEZ (voiceover): He, too, doesn't believe what's in the indictment.

RAVIKUMAR: For you to know what is really the charge, you have to believe the charger.

JIMENEZ: So, the contents of this indictment to you are essentially disqualified?

RAVIKUMAR: Completely disqualified because it's all done by a completely tilted Justice Department.

JIMENEZ (voiceover): And despite the latest allegations, he doesn't plan to change his vote.

JIMENEZ: You voted for Trump in 2016?

RAVIKUMAR: I voted for Trump in 206.

JIMENEZ: And in 2020?

RAVIKUMAR: I voted for Trump in 2020.

JIMENEZ: And you plan to vote for him this cycle coming up?

RAVIKUMAR: If Trump is on the Republican ticket for 2024, I will gladly vote for him again.

WHITE: He was the first person to give me the vote, 56 years old. And I did vote for Trump in 2016, I voted for him again in 2020. At this point, you know, I'll vote for Trump.

JIMENEZ: You haven't seen anything at this point to change your vote from Trump?

HAYNES: Not really, but I do wait until the end before I do make the decision, you know. If he -- if Biden comes through with something stellar, who knows.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SOLOMON: And our thanks to Omar Jimenez for all of those insights.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEWS CENTRAL CO-ANCHOR: Thanks, Rahel.

This morning, artificial excellence is an existential threat to humanity. To parse (ph) that language a little bit further, A.I. puts life, all of it, in jeopardy.

[10:35:00]

That is the opinion in a new survey exclusively released to CNN that shows that nearly half of the country's top business leaders are worried that A.I. could destroy us in the next five to 10 years.

CNN's Matt Egan broke this story. What's the point then, Matt? I mean, you know, the clock is ticking.

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS AND ECONOMY REPORTER: John, I -- this does sound like the stuff out of, like, a sci-fi film, right? Which is why I thought it's so startling that some business leaders are taking this risk really seriously. So, Yale asked over 100 CEOs whether A.I. could potentially destroy humanity? Good news, 58 percent said no way, no how, OK. So, you could sleep OK at night.

But look at that on the screen, eight percent say potentially after five years, that is something that could happen. And 34 percent say, potentially 10 years from now. So, you add it together, there are 42 percent who are saying, this is not a risk decades from now, this is something in the not too distant future. And listen, this comes after we've heard a number of leading figures sound the alarm on A.I.

Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of A.I. He says that there's a risk that eventually A.I. becomes so smart that it can manipulate humans and, get this, override restrictions that are put in place. So, clearly, there's a lot of people who are concerned about this. Yale Professor, Jeff Sonnenfeld, he told me about the findings from the CEOs. He said that this is, "Pretty dark and alarming."

BERMAN: Pretty dark?

EGAN: Pretty dark and alarming.

BERMAN: Destroying humanity is about as dark as it gets.

EGAN: It is. It is. Did I mention that 58 percent who's saying, no way, no how?

BERMAN: OK.

EGAN: But listen, I think that we do have to keep in mind that a lot of people don't understand all of the potential here, the risks and rewards. But we absolutely have to take this very seriously.

BERMAN: I feel like maybe it won't destroy humanity in the next 10 years isn't a great thing to bet on, necessarily. But what can we do if we want to, you know, prevent our utter destruction?

EGAN: Well, John, I mean, obviously the doomsday scenarios, they get all the headlines. But there are these more immediate, more pressing issues that are happening right now as far as, what does A.I. mean for disinformation and misinformation? What about potential job loss. And listen, lawmakers, policymakers, business leaders, they are very divided here about how to address A.I. You hear from some who are worried that if you put in regulation, it's going to stifle innovation in this A.I. arms race with China and other countries.

But even some leading figures in A.I. are calling for regulation. Mr. ChatGTP, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, he said regular -- regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models. John, the stakes don't get much higher than this. They have to this regulation right.

BERMAN: Just to be clear, I guess I am reassured that a bare majority of business leaders thinks that humanity will be here in 11 years. Matt Egan, thank you --

EGAN: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: -- very much. Really interesting stuff. Rahel.

SOLOMON: Thank you, John. Thank you, Matt.

All right. Turning to what's ahead for us, mystery in Mexico. What we are learning about the death of an American woman and a man at a resort hotel. We'll be back.

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[10:40:00]

SOLOMON: Welcome back. And right now, NASA astronauts have stepped out of the International Space Station and are on a spacewalk. Their objective is to install a rollout solar array on the starboard truss of the International Space Station. And they're doing this as an asteroid, the size of the Brooklyn Bridge, is set to pass by early today. It's called, 2020 DB5, and it's the largest of the next five asteroids approaching the planet.

Joining us now for more perspective is Adam Frank. He's a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and also the author of the upcoming "The Little Book of Aliens." Professor, welcome to the program. So, I think we should start with the International Space Station, incredibly complicated machine, which you point out, has to be constantly upgraded. So, how risky are these spacewalks?

ADAM FRANK, PROFESSOR OF ASTROPHYSICS, UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER AND AUTHOR, "THE LITTLE BOOK OF ALIENS": Yes, people take it for granted. We've been doing this for a while. So, I was like, oh, yes, you just, you know, go out, you know, put on your suit and wonder around. But, you know, space has a lot of ways to kill you. And so, you know, anytime you go out there, it's dangerous.

And you know, you wear -- you have to bring the planet with you. You know, that space suit is this battery-operated, you know, exterior planet in some sense that you wrap around yourself. And you know, if anything fails, you're in trouble. Basically, in space, you get 15 seconds. If you were to, you know, if something were to break and you were exposed to space, you have basically 15 seconds before you pass out, and 90 seconds before you're gone.

So, you know, any time these guys step outside, or you know, women as well, step outside, it's super dangerous. And they're out there for six hours sweating in these things as they do, you know, really complicated labor.

SOLOMON: Yes, this really incredible conditions as you lay it out there. I want to turn now to this asteroid that is apparently the size of the Brooklyn Bridge passing Earth today, does not, apparently, pose any threat to human life -- A.I., a different story, apparently. But it does -- NASA did say that it's a potentially hazardous object. What does that mean practically?

FRANK: Yes, first of all, who comes up with these comparisons? Like, is there some, you know, office that says, oh, yes, this one Brooklyn Bridge, you know, that one --

SOLOMON: Right.

FRANK: -- that one's the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. But, you know, the thing here, asteroids are basically construction debris left over from the assembly of the solar system. And there is, you know, so many of them out there. And the ones that we have to worry about are what are called, Earth-crossing asteroids, meaning that their orbit takes past Earth, and there's quite a few thousands, actually, of these.

[10:45:00]

And NASA's job that NASA was tasked was finding them all. All of them that could potentially pose dangers to us. Now, this one is close enough to us that it falls into that category, but it's still is quite a bit farther out from the moon. So, it's really not an immediate danger. But we have to watch all of them because, you know, eventually, one of these is going to be in an orbit that's going to be really dangerous. And we're going to have to go out and deflect it before it gets to us.

SOLOMON: Well, speaking of moon, I saw this story today and this got my attention. So, scientists have made a new discovery on one of the largest moons on Saturn. So, this element, apparently, phosphorous. You have to have human life -- phosphorus means you have to have human life, although it doesn't necessarily mean that there is human life. It sounds like a very big deal, explain this to me.

FRANK: Yes, this is a huge big deal, right. I mean, you know, it's amazing that people need to understand, there's a couple of moons out there around both Jupiter and Saturn. One of them, the one around Jupiter has more water than Earth's oceans, OK. So, these watery moons, these ocean moons, they could be great places for life. And what we just found around Enceladus, which is the moon around Jupiter, has all of the elements that are necessary for life, carbon, oxygen, now phosphorous as well, sulfur. But we just found phosphorus which is the last one we needed.

All life on Earth uses this compound as the, kind of, biochemical framework for life. And finding it in this ocean moon, right, you know, tell us that at least it has everything it needs to do what happened Earth perhaps happening in that ocean as well. And so, it's a really, really big deal for science.

SOLOMON: It felt like a big deal to me, but I certainly don't cover this stuff as closely as you do. So, great to have you on day like today. Adam Frank, thank you so much.

FRANK: My pleasure. Thank you.

SOLOMON: John, I feel so much smarter about space now after that conversation.

BERMAN: Yes, he sold me that. He sold me on the components to life on those moons.

SOLOMON: Yes, very passionate.

BERMAN: I'm -- yes, I'm totally going long on that.

All right. Smearing paint and glue on a famous work of art. The extent of the damage and the message it was meant to send.

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[10:50:00]

BERMAN: Authorities in Mexico are investigating the deaths of a U.S. woman and unidentified man whose bodies were found in a hotel room. They were found in the Mexican resort village of El Pescadero. An autopsy determined the two were poisoned. The hotel manager says, they're not aware of any threats to guests. The woman's whose name has not been released is a 22-year-old from Newport Beach, California.

In London, a damning report from a government committee found that Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson deliberately misled lawmakers after he broke his own COVID lockdown rules, a scandal that became known as Partygate. Johnson resigned from parliament last week before the report came out, in that way, he managed to avoid a suspension. Now, the committee that investigated him is recommending he be barred from having a parliamentary pass, this would prevent him from even visiting the parliament. Johnson has accused the panel of prejudice and called it a, "Dreadful day for democracy."

In Sweden, environmental activists smeared red paint on a Monet painting at Stockholm's National Museum. They then glued themselves, you can see right there, to the glass which covered the painting. Conservatives at the museum are now inspecting the painting to determine whether there is any damage.

Rahel.

SOLOMON: All right. John, thank you.

Now, to an alarming new report from the CDC that finds young people are dying from suicide and homicide at the highest rate in decades. In 2021, suicide and homicide were the second and third leading causes of death for those ages 10 to 24.

Let's dig in to this report now with CNN's Meg Tirrell. So, Meg, what more are we learning about the study?

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Rahel.

Well, these trends, obviously, are extremely concerning on both counts. If you are look at the trends over the last two decades, really, if you look at homicide rates, they really jumped during the pandemic. That first year, 2019 to 2020, we saw an increase of more than 30 percent in the homicide rate, bringing it up to where the suicide rate is in this age group between 10 and 24.

Now, in terms of the increase in suicides in this age group, that's been rising steadily since 2007, really about 62 percent over that time period. Now, they are both at a rate of about 11 percent 100,000, or put in real numbers, that's about 7,000 deaths per year in this age group in the United States. That is really crazy to think about.

Even crazier is when you start to dig into the data by the different age categories, if you look at the youngest kids who were studied in the CDC report, kids between ages 10 and 14, you'll see a particularly troubling trend when it comes to suicide rates. That tripled between 2007 and 2018. So, this is something that mental health experts, public health experts, in general, are paying extremely close attention to. And just this week, the American Medical Association voted to make this a priority focus, helping kids get access to mental health care. Saying, "We are in a crisis situation with children's mental health right now." Rahel.

SOLOMON: That really says a lot. A crisis situation. Meg Tirrell, good to have you to break this down. Do experts say -- in the study, do experts say what can be done or, you know, how to prevent this?

TIRRELL: Yes, this is something that's getting a lot of attention. The surgeon general put out an advisory about kids' mental health in 2021, even before the one he just put out about kids' mental health and social media. The American Medical Association, this week, in adapting this policy has said, there really needs to be a focus on helping kids get the care that they need.

[10:55:00]

They decided that the studies showing that nearly half don't get the mental health care they need. And really need to increase the workforce to help with this too. Rahel.

SOLOMON: Meg Tirrell, live for us in New York. Thank you, Meg.

John.

BERMAN: If you or a loved one is suffering a mental health emergency, please call the suicide and crisis lifeline by dialing 9-8-8. It is out there.

So, this morning, we are monitoring a Pittsburgh courtroom where closing arguments will begin at any moment in the trial of the gunman accused of killing 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

And a new candidate throwing his hat in the ring for the 2024 presidential race. What this means for the Republican field?

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