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Dow Down at Open; NTSB and FAA Investigation Helicopter Crash; Misinformation in America. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired April 11, 2025 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): Fifty thousand jobs here in little old South Carolina, all being affected by this gotcha businesses.

And so I just want to see us get back to normal, do the kinds of things that are necessary so that it all can be mutually beneficial. We need to be selling to China, and we need to be buying from China. And 125 percent tariff on China goods, a $10 item then becomes a $25 item. That is not good for the country or for my state.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, beyond China, you have these 90-day negotiations now underway. I mean, Congressman, do you leave open the possibility that at the end of this the United States might have a better deal in terms of trade and trade imbalances with lots of - with many of these countries? I mean, that this could be a good thing, that you would be ready to support the actions of the Trump administration in terms of what it could mean for trade and for, as you've been talking about, farmers and others in South Carolina.

CLYBURN: Well, what happens if it might not? Yes, it might be a good thing, but it might not be a good thing. We have thrown a good thing into the winds.

This man inherited a very good economy from Joe Biden. No matter what they may say to the contrary, the facts are what they are. And there are no alternative facts to this. It is a fact that this economy was the envy of the world when he became president. And now he has made this country a pariah to many people around the world. Yes, if It's a good thing, sure I'm going to support it. But if it's a bad thing, I would hope my Republican friends will come out of wherever they are and call this out and call it what it is, and let's bring the American people back together.

What people want is to have jobs. People want to be able to educate their children. They want to be able to save for retirement. And when you look at your retirement account and see that you've lost 10 or 15 percent in the last 15 days, that's not good for the future. And we ought to come back from it.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, you have been a leader - a longtime leader in the party and you've been very influential we've seen time and time again when it comes to presidential politics. There is some new reporting out I wanted to ask you about, Kamala Harris, and that she's planning to return to politics after her election loss. "The New York Times" reporting this in part, and putting it this way, Congressman, "some of her closest allies say she is leaning against another White House run in 2028 and instead toward a campaign for governor of California in 2026. Her political choice is binary, she has told people. She can run for governor or president, but not both."

Which would you like to see her run for?

CLYBURN: Well, you know, I learned early, when I entered politics, I used to work for John West, who was the governor of South Carolina. He sent me down one day and he told me, never talk anybody into running for office because if they win, it's because of their great intellect. If they lose, it's because you're the SOB that talked them into running. So, I am not going to advise her as to what she should do or should not do.

I will say this, I think that she is a tremendous talent. I think she ran a great campaign. I think she was ill served in that campaign by people who should have listened to some of us who saw and felt things. Listen to Bill Clinton when he told them what was going on. Listen to yours truly. When I was going around these rural communities, and I knew what we needed to do it and was not doing it. She was a great candidate, and I think she will make a great candidate in the future, whatever she decides to run for. But I'm not going to give any advice as to whether or not she should or should not.

BOLDUAN: Well, we know one thing, you do give advice, you just keep it very private. You just don't do it on - on television, that's for sure. And your advice can be very influential when it comes to it.

Congressman, thank you very much for coming on. I appreciate your time.

Jessica.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking just moments ago, the opening bell ringing on Wall Street. It has been a roller coaster week for stocks as investors grapple with President Trump's tariffs and their impact, both on the U.S. and the global economy.

Matt Egan is back with us now.

Matt, we've been watching, the numbers. They've been going down in the last several minutes. But walk us through what we're seeing.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Jessica, we're seeing a moderately negative start to the day after really what has been a truly insane week. We've seen dramatic plunges, like historic reversals. Wednesday was the third best day ever.

[09:35:02]

And more losses to end the week. You see the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are down.

I have to say, this is actually relatively calm given the extreme volatility we've seen in recent days.

What's notable, though, is that this is the second day in a row where we have gotten some surprisingly positive inflation news. And it hasn't moved the market at all because the world is changing so rapidly that those inflation numbers are pretty dated, and there's just so much fear and uncertainty in the market right now. We've seen the Wall Street fear gauge, the VIX Volatility Index, it's been consistently at levels that we've rarely seen outside of the 2008 financial crisis and 2020.

We've also seen investors pile into the safety of gold. Gold futures up more than 2 percent today, above $3,200 for the first time ever. This is very noteworthy.

Now, what's interesting is that what's not happening is investors are not piling into U.S. assets like they used to.

DEAN: Right.

EGAN: They're not going into U.S. bonds. We've actually seen bond prices go down. Rates go up. That's something that has worried officials in the White House.

Same thing with the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar plunging to a three- year low today against the euro. You see it's down almost 2 percent. Also down against the yen and the Swiss franc. All of these are significant losses.

This is important because while this is good news for people that - for companies that are making goods in America and trying to sell them overseas, it's not good if you're an American and you're a tourist and you're going overseas.

DEAN: Sure.

EGAN: It's gotten more expensive. It's going to be more expensive to import goods. And there's some that believe that this is a signal of a loss of confidence right now in the United States. I talked to Joe Brusuelas, the chief economist at RSM, and he said "investors and central banks are selling treasuries and dollars due to a loss of confidence and credibility in American assets. Financial chaos has its cost."

And so, Jessica, it's clear that investors really around the world, they want more clarity on where trade policy is going, how high tariffs are going to be and they just want more stability at this point.

DEAN: Yes. When you see loss of confidence in credibility when it comes to the American dollar, to the American economy, that is not - not a thing you want to see.

EGAN: No. No, it's not.

DEAN: All right, Matt Egan, thank you so much for that.

EGAN: Thanks, Jessica.

DEAN: The godfather of 3-D printed guns, pardoned January 6th rioters, a Luigi Mangione fan club.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan is speaking with all of them in his new report on extremism in America.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:41:56]

BOLDUAN: This morning, a federal investigation is now underway. A family of five and a helicopter pilot killed after something went terribly wrong in the middle of New York City - in the middle of a New York City sightseeing tour Thursday. The family had hired a helicopter charter for the tour around the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River. The tragic, final moments of their flight were caught on camera. And we do want to warn you, this is difficult to watch.

Bystanders reported seeing the helicopter spinning out of control. And then you see the video of it just simply dropping from the sky, crashing into the Hudson River, upside down.

Joining us is CNN's safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector, David Soucie.

It's good to see you, David. This is such a sad story. And the video is just - it is hard to watch. You see it just almost like falling like a rock from the sky. I mean what do you think the key questions are right now?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, it is horrific. And I couldn't imagine what this family went through and what the family is going through right now with - with dealing with this.

But, in looking at this video, after 45 years of being in this industry, I was a helicopter mechanic. I was trained as a mechanic on this particular model of helicopter. And I just can't imagine. I've never seen anything like this at all.

The first place to start is, you can see that the main rotor is separated from the - from the helicopter. And it turned upside down. The tail boom was also missing. So, the - one of the things I'd be looking at is some type of failure in the rotor blade system or what most - most likely at this point is the, the reduced RPMs. In other words, if the engine goes - fails on a helicopter, you go into an autorotation and you put the - you put the collective down and it speeds up the blades so you can land safely. In this case, a possibility would be that the rotor speed got so low that the blades started to drop down, and a quick movement can cause that blade to hit the tail boom. And that appears to me to be the most likely scenario. But again, it's too early to tell. We'll look forward to what the investigators find. BOLDUAN: Yes, and key in - in this is what eyewitnesses are saying.

Some saying that it happened so fast that by the time they went there - when they - by the time they got their phone up, it was already crashing into the water. One witness of the crash was on earlier in the show with Jessica Dean and said that it looked like the helicopter was disintegrating in mid-air before they heard a loud sound. And then there was another witness who told "The New York Times" that she heard a boom behind her, and then turned to see the helicopter plummeting. I mean, what do you make of that?

SOUCIE: Well, when interviewing witnesses, in my experience of doing so, it - the sequence of events get mixed up because your mind is thinking about what's going on, and it's so horrific and tragic that sometimes the sequence of when you heard something versus when you saw something often gets mixed up. So, I really wouldn't put too much into those witness reports, other than the fact that it was a loud boom, and that would be indicative of that tail boom, or of the main rotor hitting the tail boom and breaking that tail boom off and separating the rotor from the system.

[09:45:16]

So, I think that's a good indicator of the fact that that might indeed be what happened here.

BOLDUAN: You know, this tragedy adds to what really feels like just a bad year already for air disasters and also just so many close calls, David. Mary Schiavo was on earlier and just said that she really does believe that what she - what we're seeing, she says, is going to be just a bad year in terms of the numbers when it comes to air safety.

What do you think is going on? You have so many years of experience in this. Is there one thing that you see is a break in the system that could be quickly addressed to try to give people a little more confidence?

SOUCIE You know, I'd like to tell everyone that there isn't one single thing that's causing all these events. There isn't one single point of failure that I can see or understand.

But what's important to understand is, we all talk about statistics and how safe air travel is. And it is. And unless you're the one that's involved in the accident, then it's 100 percent for you. And so it's hard to think of it in those terms as far as, is there a trend or something like that?

And there are cyclical years. There are years when there just happens to be more accidents than the other. And I've done a lot of investigating into this over the years, and I've never really been able to find that common string unless it's something like the Boeing Max 8, where there was two strings together that happened, and they happened for the same reason.

So,, I'd like to build everyone's confidence in the fact that each one of these things, and they are horrific and they stay in your mind. But to remember that the air system is safe - the air safety system is the best it's ever been. There's tens of thousands of people making sure that happens.

So, I still have the utmost confidence in aviation. As Mary said, it's just going to be a bad year statistically, but that does happen. These are cyclical events.

BOLDUAN: It's great to see you, David, even in the midst of all of this. Thank you so much for coming in. I really appreciate it.

Coming up still for us, a new look at how extremism in America is changing and evolving. CNN's Donie O'Sullivan joins us with some of his new reporting, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:51:54]

DEAN: The godfather of 3-D printed guns, pardoned January 6th rioters, and a Luigi Mangione fan club. CNN's Donie O'Sullivan speaking with all of them, and more, in the latest episode of "The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper." Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: You mentioned Pelosi. What do you think she would be charged with in this scenario?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A simple statute. This is treason.

O'SULLIVAN: Treason?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, absolutely. And I would like to see, at the end of the due process, lawful capital punishment.

O'SULLIVAN: Would you be disappointed if, in 12 months from now, somebody hasn't been executed for treason?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the nation will be furious.

O'SULLIVAN (voice over): He says even I could be a target.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not sure yet if you are or are not on the deep state target list, because I haven't consumed all of the information that you've put forth to determine what your status should be.

O'SULLIVAN: Well, we've been hanging out over the past -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As we ruin you.

O'SULLIVAN: As you what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just like you ruined us. And eye for an eye. Look up Leviticus as a Christian man.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: Whoa! Donie, you're here now with us. What more can we expect in this new

installment of your reporting? Because that's - that is scary.

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: I always get to hang out with some of the nicest people, as you know, Jess. This special is coming on the 30 year anniversary this month of the Oklahoma City bombing, of course, which was, by Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma back in 1995.

And really what we're looking at is how, over the past 30 years, true, how the revolution in technology and social media and also how we consume and share information, how really much more easier it is to be radicalized in America today than it was 30 years ago. You know, McVeigh was inspired in part by a racist, an anti-Semitic novel, "The Turner Diaries," which was quite difficult at the time to - to get your hands on a copy of that. But now, obviously, through social media, we know a lot of people, particularly young men, are getting all the sentiments that is in a piece of racist novel like that, but served to them every day, algorithmically, through their social media feeds.

And, of course, also looking at how plans for, you know, fatal weapons, such as 3-D printed guns, are now also available online. So, you can go download the plans for a gun and literally print these things at home.

DEAN: Oh, that is so disturbing. And you make such a good point, it comes right to their feed and it probably, in their mind, feels so organic to them, like they're finding it for themselves. That sort of thing.

You also were met with some people who consider themselves fans of Luigi Mangione.

O'SULLIVAN: Yes, that's right. And I guess what we're looking at here is, obviously, you know, when it comes to extremism in this country, I mean, the issue very much so is on the right, on the far right from, you know, from Charlottesville to - to January 6th.

[09:55:07]

There isn't exactly an equivalent on the left in this moment.

And as you can see there, as part of our doc, we actually were outside the D.C. jail on inauguration night when, of course, Trump began pardoning a lot of people who took part in the January 6th riot and people began to be released. But we did go also spend some time with people who are fans of Luigi Mangione, the, of course, alleged murderer of Brian Thompson, the health care CEO. And from speaking to them, you know, we sort of - we put to them that, are they also cheering on violence? So, you'll be able to tune in on Sunday night to see what they said to that.

DEAN: We will be watching.

Donie O'Sullivan, always good to see you. And be sure to tune in. It's an all new episode of "The Whole Story

with Anderson Cooper." It airs this Sunday at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific only here on CNN.

BOLDUAN: Only here on CNN.

And thank you so much for spending today with me.

DEAN: Thanks for having me. Always good to see you.

BOLDUAN: It has been - been another busy day.

DEAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: And it is only beginning for so many of you.

Thank you so much for joining us. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. "The Situation Room," up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)