Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

CARE: Rafah Operation "A Disaster Of Monumental Proportions"; 33 Arrested As D.C. Police Clear Protest At GWU; NYT: RFK Jr Says Doctors Found A Dead Worm In His Brain; Immigration Crisis Front And Center In Small Wisconsin Town. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired May 08, 2024 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

DEEPMALA MAHLA, CHIEF HUMANITARIAN OFFICER, CARE: No military -- sorry -- no medical workers come in and no medical evacuations happen.

Yes, the news about Kerem Shalom opening is welcome. But it is not clear if aid will flow because we have not heard of any update about drugs, slash, aid coming in from Kerem Shalom.

Even if that happens regardless, the lifeline is Rafah. Because the scale at which drugs and medical aid and humanitarian aid is needed, we need an opening like Rafah. And then there are several other crossings.

The northern part of Gaza is on the brink of famine. People are dying due to starvation, dying as we are speaking. Kids are dying. New ones get to die.

I have heard a lot of stories about when a child was born and then died before any registration could be done, as if the baby never, ever existed.

In the north of Gaza, there's a crossing called Erez, which means we have the possibility of bringing it into Gaza to save lives through the Kerem crossing but that is blocked.

Open the border crossings. Let the aid in. Don't kill humanitarian workers, protect civilians, and civilian infrastructure, and release the hostages.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: Deepmala Mahla --

(CROSSTALK)

MAHLA: Can we save all the lives, which are on the brink of -- sorry.

DEAN: No --

MAHLA: I think -- do we still have the time left to save all the -- all the lights which are on the brink now? Perhaps not. Because things have reached that far.

So I say this to convey how urgent the situation in is (INAUDIBLE) for letting aid in and for releasing hostages.

DEAN: Thank you so much for your update there and for speaking with us. We appreciate it.

MAHLA: Thanks for having me.

DEAN: Up next, dozens of arrests overnight at George Washington University after police cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment. Did the officials take action because they were about to face a congressional grilling? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:36:31]

DEAN: Police in the nation's capital have now cleared out a pro- Palestinian encampment at George Washington University. Officers moving in early this morning arresting dozens of people.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: The school is just one of a number of colleges across the country that have faced these protests in recent weeks as people rally against the Israel-Hamas war.

Let's go live now to CNN's Gabe Cohen at George Washington University.

Gabe, this particular encampment had been set up there for -- for about two weeks. Tell us why police finally decided to take action after they hadn't when they had had some requests from the school.

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brianna, that's been a really unique aspect about this encampment that the university has repeatedly over the last couple of weeks asked the police department to come in and clear the camp.

But the city has declined to do so, essentially saying they didn't want the optics of arresting protesters at what they saw as a relatively peaceful and contained protest.

But clearly something changed leading to that dramatic scene overnight, 33 people arrested, and some facing charges for trespassing, others for assault on police officers.

Police using tear gas on -- some pepper spray, I should say, on some of those protesters not far from where were standing. And if you look back there, you can see the yard where there were dozens of tents over the past couple of weeks. Now, entirely gone.

So you ask what changed. What we heard from D.C.'s police chief, a little earlier today, who laid that out, and said that she believed the protests had become too volatile to continue.

She gave a couple of examples, saying that a campus police officer had been allegedly assaulted in recent days and that protesters in the camp had been gathering items that could be used as weapons, although the police department hasn't clarified exactly what those items were. And I should say, and that protesters were occupying, were found

inside one of the campus buildings, multiple of them, and potentially probing to occupy one of the spaces. Similar to what we saw at Columbia up in New York.

And so all of that led the police department to make this decision, as far back as Monday, that they were going to clear this camp.

But of course, so much frustration from these students who have been involved in these protests.

Take a listen to what one told me a little bit earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NORA, STUDENT PROTESTER: We are here. We are strong. They can mace us, they can brutalize us, they can pepper spray us, but the movement is here. It is stronger than ever. Our energy has not dissipated. As a matter of fact, it has comeback -

(APPLAUSE)

(CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: And just, Brianna, what remains to be seen is what those protests actions will look like later tonight and into the days ahead.

KEILAR: All right, Gabe, thank you so much for that report from G.W.

And coming up, Robert Kennedy Jr says that doctors found a dead parasitic worm inside of his head -- this was years ago -- but not before it had eaten part of his brain and died. It turns out this can actually happen.

Obviously, so many questions about this particular story. We have Dr. Sanjay Gupta with us to talk about that and answer these questions. He's going to join us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:44:18]

DEAN: A startling statement from Robert F. Kennedy Jr has come to light. He said doctors found an abnormality on his brain scans in 2010 that was, quote, "caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died." The quote is from new reporting by "The New York Times."

KEILAR: Yes, "The Times" says that Kennedy made the statement during a deposition as part of his divorce proceeding back in 2012. He was describing experiencing severe memory loss and mental fogginess a couple of years before that.

He said that he is fully -- he says that he's fully recovered from the parasite and that he has no after effects.

Of course, a lot of questions about this. We have CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, joining us.

[14:45:00]

You're a neurosurgeon, Sanjay. You've actually operated on these kinds of cases when it comes to these parasitic worms and their removal. Tell us about this. It's not that common.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's not that common, although it does happen. Typically, it starts off in people that may have eaten pork that is under cooked and the little eggs or larvae, they can get into the food supply.

Ultimately, if those get into your bloodstream, they can travel all over the body. And this does happen, especially in places where those types of eating habits are more common.

Let me show you an image of this so just so you have a visual of what we're talking about here.

You imagine this tiny little egg, little larvae gets into areas of the body, in this case, the brain. And they may grow a little bit. Those are the purple spots you're seeing there in the brain.

Sometimes they won't cause any symptoms at all. People won't even know that they have them. Sometimes people might have headaches. Sometimes people could develop seizures.

It's not really associated with brain fog or memory problems, per say, but they can be problematic.

A lot of times there's nothing to do about it. They're not causing symptoms. Sometimes there's medications, parasitic medications, or sometimes you have to do an operation, as you mentioned.

And here's a brain model here. So you can imagine that sort of near the surface of the brain, if you had one of these cysts, you'd make a little bony opening in the skull and basically remove that cyst, which, which sort of represents this, this parasite. And that is sometimes necessary as well.

So it does happen. It is rare. I think you don't really describe it as having eaten the brain as much as sort of living there in the brain. And possibly causing these problems.

DEAN: Kennedy also says he was diagnosed with mercury poisoning at one point.

GUPTA: Yes.

DEAN: How concerning is that? And what kind of impact would that have?

GUPTA: Yes. And again, were just going on these records from this deposition, so I had I don't know. Mercury poisoning, sometimes the term is a bit of a vague term. Sounds like his mercury levels, when they tested it, were much higher than what the EPA considers safe.

And I'll tell you that the symptoms that I think sort of prompted all of this for RFK Jr, the cognitive issues, memory issues, more likely to be caused by mercury than, for example, that parasite we were just talking about.

Typically -- and I think he noted this that you can get it from potentially being exposed to chemicals or, in his case, eating too much of these predatory fish.

Generally, the advice is to just basically cut back on the amount of these fish that you're eating. You know, pregnant women think about this a lot. But you can get very high levels of mercury even through your diet, as he seems to be suggesting.

KEILAR: Yes. And then there was something else in here, because he had said about with the mercury that he'd had cognitive problems.

GUPTA: Right.,

KEILAR: And this was during the deposition, so 12 years ago. "I've short-term memory loss. I have longer-term memory loss that affects me."

He said also as well that he had suffered for decades from atrial fibrillation --

GUPTA: Right.

KEILAR: -- which is something, of course, that can obviously increase the risk of stroke or heart failure.

He said he'd been hospitalized four times for episodes but did he had not had an incident in more than a decade and he believed that condition had disappeared according to "The Times."

Tell us about that and if AFib really can just disappear.

GUPTA: Yes. So it sounds like it was pretty serious, obviously. Decades that he dealt with this. Hospitalized for four separate instances.

The answer to your question is yes. It can resolve, even on its own. But more typically, what happens is you're given certain medications to try and address the atrial fibrillation.

But to also reduce the chance that you're going to develop blood clots, which are often associated with AFib. And those blood clots are really what can lead to problems like stroke.

Another thing that can happen, especially if someone is hospitalized, is they can do something known as cardioversion. Well, essentially, it's placing a little bit of electrical shock on the heart to try and take the heart rhythm out of atrial fibrillation.

So any of those things are possible. It is possible that it resolved on its own. More likely that he took medications that maybe helped resolve, may still be on those medications.

And then finally, the -- the more aggressive procedure, actually applying electricity to the heart, is something that's done as well.

DEAN: It's all very interesting.

Thank you so much for the context, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

GUPTA: You've got it.

DEAN: Thanks so much.

Still ahead, could popular weight loss drugs help women who are trying to conceive? We've got new data. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:54:07]

KEILAR: President Biden is in Wisconsin today trying to win over voters who may have grown frustrated with the economy.

But our Whitney Wild found out that's not the only issue driving voters in that swing state.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In rural Whitewater, Wisconsin, more than 3,000 miles from her homeland of Nicaragua, Maria Abiles has finally found a sense of calm.

MARIA ABILES, MIGRANT FROM NICARAGUA: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WILD: "It's quiet," she says. "We don't have to worry."

She ended up in this college town of around 15,600 people because her two adult children live here.

(CROSSTALK)

WILD: At a local charity, she and other migrants pick up free food and clothing.

Abiles is among the roughly thousand migrants who've arrived here over the last 2.5 years from Venezuela and Nicaragua.

ABILES: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WILD: "I'm a single mother," she says. "Things are very rough over there. I want to have a better life."

Brianne Brown is a member of the city's Common Council. She said most of the migrants who make their way to Whitewater learn about it through word of mouth.

[14:55:06] BRIANNE BROWN, COMMON COUNCIL ALDER, WHITEWATER, WIS: About 2021 is when the police started noticing that they were finding families in barns, right? And overcrowding. They were finding like five or six families in one apartment.

WILD (on camera): And that has never happened before?

BROWN: That has never happened before.

WILD (voice-over): She says the population influx is straining police resources.

BROWN: What our police officer the most right now is pull people over and explain to them that they shouldn't be driving if they don't have a driver's license.

They ended up getting a translation service. And that was very, very helpful, but very, very expensive.

WILD: Whitewater's police chief wrote a letter to state and federal officials, including President Joe Biden, in December asking for funding to manage what he called a "critical humanitarian issue. "

Chief Daniel Meyer said, "No matter what their legal status is or what brought them here, these people need resources like anyone else. Police are struggling to meet their needs while also serving longtime residents, Meyer wrote.

Citing the surge in unlicensed drivers and overcrowding living situations as serious concerns. He also describes some crimes linked to migrants, including the death of an infant, sexual assaults and a kidnapping.

Meyer's letter received a bipartisan support, including from Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin and Republican Congressman Bryan Steil, who represents Whitewater.

REP. BRYAN STEIL, (R-WI): What the national media has often focused on is our nation's largest cities. The impact that this is having a smaller communities, like Whitewater, Wisconsin, is equally significant, if not more so.

WILD: Steil's district leans red with spots of bright blue. He says immigration has quickly become a top issue.

STEIL: This year, I hear it from everyone across all political stripes.

LUIS ISLAS, BUSINESS OWNER: And I suspect people from all over the world. OK? Let's just change speaking, you know?

WILD: Luis Islas is a Whitewater resident who migrated from Mexico decades ago. He's built a business here and is frustrated by the situation.

ISLAS: Like how about brotherly respect in Mexico. OK? And care about eight times (INAUDIBLE) and been tonight.

WILD (on camera): Does it make you angry?

ISLAS: Not angry. I mean, it's just unfair.

WILD: How much part of the conversation is immigration here right now? I mean, is that really top of mind for people who are living in Whitewater?

BROWN: Yes, I think so. Yes. I mean, I think most of them are paying really close attention and they really -- we're a small town.

WILD (voice-over): With one journey behind Abiles, another begins. While two of her adult children are here, she left her two other children 12- and 15-years-old back in Nicaragua.

ABILES: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

WILD: "I don't have any money now," she says. "I'd like to work and hopefully bring them here."

Whitney Wild, CNN, Whitewater, Wisconsin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DEAN: Whitney, thank you.

And be sure to watch Erin Burnett with her exclusive one-on-one interview with President Biden tonight at 7:00 Eastern. It's only on CNN.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)