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Lawsuit: White Mother Claims Southwest Airlines Thought She Was Trafficking Biracial Daughter; Zoom Tells Its Employees To Return To Office; Interview With Will Hurd, (R), Presidential Candidate & Former Congressman From Texas; 30M Under Tornado Watches From PA To TN; Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour" Boosts Local Economies. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired August 07, 2023 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY MCCARTHY, MOTHER OF BIRACIAL DAUGHTER: It's not because I have a daughter who has already unfortunately been harassed by police in her life.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not trying to do that by any stretch of means.

MCCARTHY: This isn't OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: You can hear the daughter crying in the background there. That's what she says is really the kicker here in this 10-page lawsuit. And that this thing was racially charged.

These flight attendants thought that this mom was human trafficking her daughter, what ultimately turns out was the case because the daughter was black and the mom was white.

Flight crews are often trained to look for these kinds of signs but clearly they were in the wrong here. And so Southwest Airlines really not commenting on this because it's ongoing litigation.

But I want you to just read you a quote from the suit. "Because the whole incident was based on a racist assumption about a mixed-race family. This is the type of situation that mixed-race families and families of color face all too frequently while traveling."

It's very apropos they point that out because there was a case on Southwest earlier in 2021. There was a case with American Airlines just earlier this year, a man in Seattle was mistaken as human trafficking his child. So this happens all the time.

And really the airline would say, well, this is something where it was just a plum mistake. It was something that was easy to do. The flight attendants were trying to do their job. But clearly, it was not the right outcome here.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: I was on a Southwest flight a week ago. And there's a sticker in the bathroom --

MUNTEAN: Yes.

KEILAR: -- that says, basically, if you may be a victim, you know, do something -- to say we're here to help. They're very serious about this.

The other thing, Pete, I'll throw this out there.

MUNTEAN: Yes, sure.

KEILAR: You know, when kids fly of a certain age, they don't need an I.D.

MUNTEAN: Right.

KEILAR: So that opens up another question of, you know, people being related to each other. They were in a bereavement situation --

(CROSSTALK)

MUNTEAN: They were trying to go to a funeral.

KEILAR: So potentially, there's duress going on.

MUNTEAN: Sure.

KEILAR: It's hard to know all the different things feeding into this. I wonder if the identification thing is a factor.

MUNTEAN: It plays into it. It is something that's interesting here because flight attendants and gate agents and ticket agents are trained to look for human trafficking because the airlines can really be a tool for that.

KEILAR: Yes.

MUNTEAN: And they're federally required to go through this essentially 25-minute online training every year from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation to just look for the warning signs.

KEILAR: Yes.

MUNTEAN: And so, clearly, somebody thought they were trying to do the right thing --

KEILAR: Exactly.

MUNTEAN: -- but now it ended up in court.

KEILAR: That daughter was so upset, as you can hear there. MUNTEAN: Yes.

KEILAR: Pete Muntean, thank you very much.

MUNTEAN: You bet.

KEILAR: Jim?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: As former President Donald Trump is already indicted on several fronts, he remains the party's frontrunner for the 2024 nomination, putting his opponents in a delicate position, you might call it.

Next on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, I speak to Republican presidential candidate and former congressman, Will Hurd, who said he is the only one who has been consistently critical of Trump since 2015.

And we are watching severe weather, including tornado watches impacting millions.

Do stay with CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:37:21]

KEILAR: Talk about some irony here. The very company that helped make remote work possible during the pandemic is telling its own employees, you got to come back to the office.

Zoom joining a growing list of companies that have ended their covid- era approach to working from home.

We have CNN's Nathaniel Meyersohn joining us on this.

Zoom isn't enforcing a full return to the office. But a structured hybrid approach they're calling it. Structured hybrid approach. What does that mean?

NATHANIEL MEYERSOHN, CNN CONSUMER REPORTER: Yes, Brianna. So even Zoom is a little bit tired of its employees being on Zoom all day. It wants employees who live near the office to be in the office at least twice a week.

Zoom, of course, was the pandemic stock darling. Everybody was on Zoom when they were stuck at home early in 2020 during the pandemic. The stock boomed.

But more recently, Zoom has struggled. It laid off about 15 percent of its staff. It just grew too quickly.

And Zoom is just the latest company that is trying to figure out its return-to-work policies. We see tech companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Salesforce, they're all calling their workers back to the office.

Companies are trying to navigate the hybrid work era. With more offices opening up, they want folks back at the office.

KEILAR: Yes, they certainly do. We're seeing it. As you said, even Zoom getting tired of Zooming all the time.

Nathaniel Meyersohn, thank you.

Jim?

SCIUTTO: As legal problems mount for Donald Trump, polls show the former president maintaining his grip on Republican primary voters. Most of Trump's GOP challengers have avoided directly criticizing him, fearing it might alienate his base.

But one candidate, former Texas Congressman Will Hurd, has been a Trump critic on the campaign trail and for years before that. He now joins us.

Will Hurd, thank you so much for taking the time.

WILL HURD, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hey, Jim. Always a pleasure to be on with you.

SCIUTTO: You said on Sunday that people want -- and you've been encountering voters in your campaign -- people want a candidate who, quote, "is not a jerk, is not a racist, who is not a misogynist." And you took aim at the two current GOP frontrunners in 2024.

If that is true, if your supposition is true, why do those two candidates DeSantis and Trump have far more than half of GOP primary voters.

HURD: I also added don't be a homophobe as well. That's one thing that voters want.

[14:40:01]

I think we're going to see, in 2024, what we saw in 2020 and 2022. Donald Trump lost in 2020 because his inability to grow the electorate to the largest growing groups of voters.

In 2022, Republicans did not see the red wave that all those same polls that are saying that Donald Trump has this locked, that said we were going to have a red wave. And so, campaigns always tighten the closer you get to the election.

I was in New Hampshire this week. I was block walking and somebody asked me if Donald Trump was running again for re-election. So there's still a lot of opportunity to educate voters. That's one thing that I'm looking forward to doing.

We need to have, --if the GOP wants to have a chance and an opportunity in November to take on Joe Biden and beat Joe Biden, we need to elect someone who is not consistently crying about the past but who is looking to the future on how to have unprecedented peace at a time in this complicated world. SCIUTTO: One parallel to 2016 now is the number of GOP candidates who

you might argue are splitting the, quote, unquote, "moderate vote" there.

Are there too many candidates in the race? And would you drop out if the writing was on the wall and if that might help another candidate beat Trump for the nomination?

HURD: Great question, Jim. And I'm of the opinion that more ideas is better. This country has become the greatest country on the planet through a competition of ideas. And I think we should have that.

And if your viewers want to see that competition of ideas, go to HurdforAmerica.com to have this conversation and donate at least one dollar to help me talk about these issues of the future.

But I think Governor Sununu, governor of New Hampshire, said it best that by winter, if there's not a clear path to victory, then they need to be thinking about, how do we consolidate our support around one candidate?

I think that's a right logic and something that I've said that I'm willing to evaluate when we get closer to the winter.

SCIUTTO: Have you seen any big donor money change direction? In effect, we have seen some with DeSantis' campaign, for instance, as he hasn't performed at least yet to expectations. Are you seeing donors pick a horse alternate to Trump?

HURD: Well, I think people are realizing that last summer everybody thought Ron DeSantis was the heir apparent.

And he's had a number of missteps, whether it's thinking there was an upside to slavery or hiring someone on his team that had history of being an anti-Semite to being more interested in fighting the LGBTQ community than fighting war criminals like Vladimir Putin.

So I think there's a lot of folks that there's money on the sideline to see what happens once we start getting into the fall.

As the end of summer happens in every election, voters are not necessarily paying attention because they're wrapping up summer, getting ready for school to start. And then you start seeing the campaign pick up early in the fall.

But here is what I have seen and heard. People are worried. And 65 percent of Americans think a robot will take their job. People are worried about what's going to happen in this nuclear war with China if they're able to surpass us as the global superpower.

How do we have world-class education at a time when our kids' grades in math, science and reading is some of the worst performances in this century?

I think that's what people are interested in caring about. SCIUTTO: You mentioned -- you referenced the Ukraine war and Putin. A

recent poll found that majority of Americans now oppose giving additional aid to Ukraine.

CNN reported that Putin is planning to wait out until the next U.S. election, hoping he gets a friendlier occupant in the White House.

Is the window closing for Ukraine to win this on the battlefield before politically it might lose support?

HURD: So, look, I think we should all be interested in helping Ukraine win this war as quickly as possible. Nobody wants this to be a forever war.

But Jim, what's fascinating, on the campaign trail, every place I get, I get a question about Ukraine. And when you explain why this matters, the United States after World War II built an international order that benefits us. If we don't defend that international order, it will hurt us.

And for 5 percent of DOD budget, we've been able to help dismantle the Russian military and not have to send any of our sons and daughters over there to do that.

[14:44:57]

And so, making sure that the Ukrainians have everything they need in order to win this war, which, in my opinion, this is where Joe Biden is wrong. My opinion, winning this war is pushing the Russians out of all of Ukraine, not just going back to February 2022.

And so when you explain that, people appreciate that and understand this.

And when you start telling folks that Joe Biden has been sending equipment and support in drips and drabs, if we were to be able to double down and give them everything they need to win this, then we can put them in a position to be successful and that benefits everyone.

And then let's get Ukraine into NATO as soon as they do that.

SCIUTTO: You made a case for the war that you don't often hear, at least in terms of how much attention it gets. That this is bigger than about Ukraine. You mentioned prior issues, for instance, at the border, other economic, bread-and-butter issues.

Do you find that -- are you concerned at all that the focus on race is so much on Trump and his legal troubles that there's not an opportunity for other candidates to discuss other issues and there are other candidates to emerge?

HURD: Well, Jim, I appreciate that question, too. But we all have to remember that social media and cable news is not reflective of where the entire country is. The reason I'm able to articulate these issues is because I have real-

world experience. I'm the only person in this campaign on the Republican side that's been shot at, that's been chased, that people have tried to blow up.

I have real on-the-ground experience in the global war on terrorism, trying to stop terrorists from blowing up our homeland and preventing dirty bombs in. S

o when you engage folks and hear the things they care about, these are the issues they want to talk about.

The stuff I talk about here on TV with you are not always the same that you talk about with people on the ground. And that's why we're able to grow and evolve because we're talking about things that people care about.

And we're trying to articulate a vision for the future of how, for the next 247 years, the United States of America is able to do what we've done for the last 247 years. And that's create quality life for the American citizen that's the envy of the world.

SCIUTTO: Three years from 250.

Will Hurd, candidate for president in 2024, thank you so much for joining us.

HURD: Awesome. Always a pleasure to be on.

And again, if folks want to see this kind of debate, HurdforAmerica.com.

SCIUTTO: He's got to make the pitch, Brianna?

KEILAR: Look what you made her do. Taylor Swift was already a musical powerhouse, but her latest Eras Tour is a behemoth for the economy. The Swift effect is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:52:10]

SCIUTTO: Happening now, about 30 million people from Pennsylvania to Tennessee live in areas under tornado watches. That includes here in Washington, D.C. Most federal offices will be closed in the next 10 minutes so employees can get home before that bad weather hits.

The Storm Prediction Center says that intense supercell storms, as they are known, are possible throughout the afternoon with some winds gusting up to hurricane force at 74 miles an hour.

The system has already caused damage in the Midwest. Pelle, Indiana, the winds blew the roof off his house and knocked over large trees. They come down like toothpicks in winds of that speed.

CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers is tracking it for us. Chad, apparently, I'm in the eye or path of the storm. How bad is it

going to be at the move this way?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It's the length of this. This is from Pennsylvania to Georgia, so there's a lot of people in the way all of up and down the north and south interstates.

We've already had some gusts that brought down trees in Tennessee. Hundreds of thousands of people without power already. And the winds are still blowing and moving off toward the east.

I know you had at least tornadoes on the ground, a couple them, but small and in rural areas. That's the good news. But there will be wind gust, as you said, to hurricane strength.

We have more than 30 severe thunderstorm warnings going on right now. The red area, tornado watches, which means some of these storms, if they are all by themselves, that super sell you talked about, they can rotate and put down tornadoes.

The greatest threat today is the wind gusts. This is all going to lineup and blow off to the east rather quickly. As they moved to the east at 50, you have wind even at 30 or 40. You can add those together and, all of a sudden, you are at about a hurricane.

So this is a line of weather that will roll through from north to south. A lot, millions, tens of millions of people are under some threats right now for the rest of the day -- Jim?

SCIUTTO: Goodness. Keep your head down.

Chad Myers, thanks so much.

Brianna?

KEILAR: So extreme weather is not getting in the way of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour going on right now in Los Angeles. The megastar is set to end the first leg of her record-breaking tour, but more tickets do go on sale this week for international sales and the first round of stops in the U.S.

This tour has had some unprecedented moments, causing a Ticketmaster meltdown. You may remember that. There was seismic activity in Seattle, and now, apparently helping drive the U.S. economy.

CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich is with us now on this.

This is the Taylor Swift effect. Cities hosting shows are actually reaping a huge ripple effect. How much?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: There is no denying that Taylor Swift is an economic powerhouse. One economist suggests that Taylor Swift, through her U.S. tour, could add $5 billion to U.S. GDP.

[14:55:05] And that's not just ticket sales. We're talking about the ripple effect, so we're talking about merchandise, hotels, airline sales.

And it's important to note the Federal Reserve is even taking notice of this. They said in a report that Philadelphia tourism has been a little slow to recover, but the one month in May that Taylor Swift came to town was the best month for hotels before the pandemic.

And, Brianna, who's taking notice here? World leaders. You have the mayor from Budapest, Hungary, the president of Chile, both writing to Taylor Swift, asking her to come to their cities and their countries.

And you also have Justin Trudeau, who tweeted at Taylor Swift, asking her to come to town. And, Brianna, as we know, she just added more tour dates. Toronto is on the list -- Brianna?

KEILAR: So she's listening. She certainly is. Really fascinating stuff.

Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you.

Jim?

SCIUTTO: Brianna, I can write a letter next.

Coming up, former President Donald Trump's legal team has just few hours, two, in fact, before the deadline to respond to Special Counsel Jack Smith's protective order. We will explain what that means and how Trump is responding, just ahead.

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