Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Obama in Ireland; Search and Rescue Continues in Joplin, Missouri

Aired May 23, 2011 - 13:19   ET

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

RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: You have been listening there to President Obama speaking in Dublin, Ireland. A very inspirational message to the people of Ireland certainly saying he feels very much at home there.

Earlier in the day he had visited his long-lost eighth cousin Henry in the Irish village of Moneygall where he shared a pint of Guinness, apparently. He's known there as that town's favorite son.

He spoke directly in this speech to the Irish immigrants who he says have faced great discrimination. He also spoke to the young people in the crowd who he's always appealed to. You may recall that during his campaign, genealogist actually from Ancestry.com first shed light on President Obama's Irish roots when he was a candidate at the time.

So this trip for Mr. Obama and his family certainly very important. Welcome to CNN, everybody and our coverage of the president there in Ireland. I'm Randi Kaye. Thanks so much for being with us.

We also have a lot of other news to tell you about today. Of course, we've been following those tornadoes in Missouri even in a season of rampage and ferocious tornadoes. We're stunned by the devastation that one tornado can do.

This hour, survives in Joplin, Missouri have two urgent priorities, even if they have little else. They want to know whether their friends and families are safe and they need to know about new storms that could be on the way.

Violent weather is again a possibility in parts of Oklahoma and southwest Missouri, along with parts of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. We'll get details from CNN's Chad Myers in just a moment.

But first, the details in Joplin, 89 people confirmed dead in a path of destruction half a mile wide and six miles long. Authorities estimate 2,000 buildings, including one of Joplin's two hospitals, are damaged, flattened or gone.

Threats to life and property persist and they may not be apparent as Joplin's mayor told CNN this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MAYOR MIKE WOOLSTON, JOPLIN, MISSOURI (via telephone): I think part of the danger is that we have power completely out in some parts of the city, not completely out in other parts of the city.

People need to be careful about getting into their homes or getting around the city in that with the power still on we have natural gas leaks, our water utility company has some breaks in the lines so there is a danger if we do start getting some fires that we won't have the fire equipment and water resources to put those fires out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: I mention, this has been a horrible and historic spring. Tuscaloosa, Alabama was victim to the deadliest tornado outbreak in decades. Just five days earlier, a giant twister hit St. Louis and Lambert Airport in particular.

Days before that, Raleigh, North Carolina was hit and another record fell. North Carolina saw 28 tornadoes that day, the most on a single day in that state's history.

So now let's go live to Joplin, CNN's Brian Todd is outside what used to be a very busy hospital complex. Brian, if you could, tell us what you're seeing there at this hour.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Randi, people coming through the wreckage of their cars right behind me here. These folks just came back to see what was left of their car. Not much obviously so you really kind of feel for them as they poke through what's left and try to get some stuff out of it.

With this car and some of the others here, look at these vehicles over here. You can see a van and an SUV just on top of a pickup truck there. You see the green "X" on the driver's side door. That signifies that rescuers have come and looked to see if any people are inside and when they mark that like that, that signals other rescuers that they found no one, that they can move on to other vehicles.

But take a look at what they've got to go through. They've got to mark vehicles and houses. Look at the scope of the devastation that they have to go through. Entire city blocks wiped out. This happened last night at about 5:30 local time, 6:30 Eastern Time. It happened just in a matter of seconds.

Entire neighborhoods wiped out. About 25 percent to 30 percent of the city in the downtown area here was pretty much leveled. Back here, this is St. John's Regional Medical Center. We've been highlighting this building because it took a direct hit from this tornado.

And we're told that x-rays from this building have landed 70 miles away in Dave County, Missouri. We saw gurneys from the building about five blocks down the street. So you've got just complete and total devastation here. Now the weather has complicated things. We've seen first responders just combing through this area over here. It is raining now. They've had severe thunderstorms rolling through this area all day, all morning and afternoon. That's making things much more complicated for rescuers so that's what they've got to deal with as well.

KAYE: And Brian, what's being done for the patients and injured that were at that hospital?

TODD: They had a patient population here of about 183 when the tornado hit. We're told they got everybody out. They haven't given us specific figures on how many were injured by the tornado and may be being treated.

What we have been told is they've taken them to other medical centers nearby, that those centers had the capacity to hold them and care for them until things can be sorted out. So I guess in the fortunate circumstance was that they had about a 20-minute gap, a 20- minute warning from when the first tornado warnings went off to when the tornado actually hit.

That's more than twice as much as they usually get so they did have some time to evacuate people from this building, some other people had some time to get out. But as you can see, for so many people around here, that 20-minute gap didn't help much because the sheer force and scope of this thing, it was a half-mile to three- quarters of a mile wide at its widest scope.

You can see all around us that it just created just enormous devastation.

KAYE: Brian, just real quickly, have they brought in any type of search dog teams? I know you've worked with them before, are they just going on foot house to house trying to find people?

TODD: Right now, Randi, they're combing doing what they call a house-to-house grid search. They break up the teams in different groups and they each kind of mark off a grid of the city. That's kind of how rescue teams traditionally do this.

We have not seen canine teams yet. I imagine they will bring in some. Just because we haven't seen them it doesn't mean they haven't been in use, but we did just kind of combed through this part of the city and we did not see any canine teams.

So right now it appears they're searching on foot for the moment.

KAYE: All right, Brian Todd for us, bringing us the very latest there from Joplin.

We also want to bring in now Chad Myers. As Brian said, the skies, Chad, are certainly ugly. They've been threatening throughout the day. Are these people in for more bad weather?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: They could be. Except that the weather that just rolled through there in the past hour or so did something we call wreck the atmosphere. It used up the energy, used up the moisture, used up the heat, and so that may be good news for the rest of the day.

Because there will be more tornadoes today across parts of Arkansas, maybe Kansas, and even sneaking into parts of Missouri. But when it is cold, when it's rained, when it's not 80 degrees with a relative humidity of 75 percent, the chance of a tornado actually comes down.

It is the heat of the day, it's that humidity. Here's Joplin right there. There's the weather that's just kind of slid down from north to south. There is still more weather back up here into Oklahoma, and that could sneak up into Joplin, but any rain is certainly not a good thing.

Here's the tornado from last night. Here's Joplin, Missouri, very tall -- or small little words right there, but you talk about a hook echo, talk about the hook was a perfect hook. It was a major meso cyclone, big hail through in here, low pressure in here.

The tornado on the ground right through Joplin and that big bright spot is not hail, that's actually insulation, shingles, boards, things in the air. Actually the radar picks up stuff in the air, picks up raindrops. Raindrop's really small.

Think about how it might pick up a 2x4? It really reflects quite nice. That's debris from the storm. I know we have people with loved ones and people they know. Really the storm moved south of downtown Joplin, 20th Street.

If you know someone from Joplin or northward, the northern half of the city is doing OK. That's it -- OK. Now it's neighbors helping neighbors.

KAYE: Yes, and when the fire chief there, I guess says that that tornado cut his town in half, I guess he certainly meant it.

MYERS: He did.

KAYE: All right, Chad. We'll check in with you again a little bit later on.

Our "sound effect" is the closest I hope you ever come to a monster tornado. While the devastation of Joplin was in progress, several people huddled in the back of a convenience store, and then when the windows blew out, they moved to a walk-in refrigerator.

It was a smart move. I'm going to play you some very dark, very scary cell phone video. Then we'll actually hear from the man who shot it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ISAAC DUNCAN, TORNADO SURVIVOR (via telephone): Basically the only thing that was left standing was the cooler that we were in. Everything around it was gone. It actually tore a few holes in the refrigerator.

So we climbed out of one of the walls at the end of the refrigerator, and when we crawled out, it was -- everything was just flattened, trees, houses, everything around there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: And on the phone with us now is Governor Jay Nixon from Missouri. Governor, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.

A lot of people are very worried about people in your community and in your state. Can you give us the very latest on the situation there? Are you getting what you need in terms of help?

GOVERNOR JAY NIXION, MISSOURI (via telephone): Absolutely. We have 500 firefighters on the ground right now doing search and rescue. We also brought in our top teams from around the state and city of Columbia that worked after 9/11.

We have had five families this morning that we saved from the rubble and that dug out. We are continuing that. It is raining hard down there and making it very difficult for dogs and other searchers to work.

The number of folks that we've lost continues to rise, but the bottom line is we still believe there are folks that are alive underneath the rubble and we're working hard to save them.

KAYE: At this point, what is the total number of people that you have lost, the current death toll?

NIXON: The most recent is somewhere north of 89 would be official, but we see -- I just got off the phone with a nursing homeowner there who said there were 15 still missing or unaccounted for.

I've talked to hospital leaders. I've talked to city managers. It is very, very clear that we still have a lot of work to do down there, but we do believe that there are people underneath the rubble and we're working in a way that can maximize the folks that we can get to safety.

KAYE: You know, I look at these cars that have been tossed around there and I look at all the debris on the ground and I'm just curios, how do you have a means of even just getting around there to go house-to-house.

How difficult has that been and have you been able to move that debris out of the way to get to these folks?

NIXON: It's been very difficult. We've had to go, you know, walking with dogs and with hand-held devices. You have to move through there very gingerly because you could cause something to fall. With big equipment, it's necessary to move bigger pieces afterwards. But the bottom line is (AUDIO GAP) successful this morning in finding five families buried under refuge. The bottom line is we believe folks are down there and we want to be careful as we move through, while at the same time expanding our shelters for folks who have lost their home, as well as making sure there's medical care for those who have had significant injuries.

KAYE: Yes, I wanted to ask you about that because you've lost certainly one hospital. Have you had to set up triage centers, sort of these make-shift hospitals in tents or anywhere in the area?

NIXON: Yes, we have. Also, we moved out all of the patients that survived out of the hospitals there. Also, the other longer-care patients out of the hospital that was still standing. So, to get that emergency room and that facility up and operating and fully capable of taking more people.

We also have brought folks from as far away as Springfield, Kansas City and other areas to make sure there are medical personnel in the area. But it's a very challenging situation, especially with the continuing rain, the lightning and front that's there right now. Folks have to work in very difficult conditions.

KAYE: And what are you doing, if anything, to prepare for the coming storms that may be headed your way even?

NIXON: Well, the -- obviously we watch it very, very carefully. We had to take everybody inside this morning for a period of time because of the danger. They're back out even though it is raining now. And it's -- we're trying to find out that are still alive and save them. That's -- and the folks that have been injured, get them to the health care they need.

But we are convinced as we've seen by five recoveries of families this morning that there remain folks that are buried under these huge piles of rubble and we're going to do everything we can to find them.

KAYE: I'm curious what the communication is like there in terms of cell phones or text messages. I mean, if there are people who are buried under there, are those services still up and running?

NIXON: Seventeen cell towers were knocked over when the tornado came through. We moved our mobile communications team down with their van down from Columbia and Jeff City. But that's for first responders. So individuals are going to have a very difficult time with those cell towers on the ground getting coverage.

But our first responders through that system we've set up are able to communicate and have an organized search of the area. It's going to be very difficult for individuals over the day or probably the next couple of days to get any calls in or out of there though.

KAYE: If you can, just update me on the situation there with the broken natural gas lines that I understand caused several fires overnight as well.

Are they still giving you trouble? NIXON: We had a number of fires overnight. Hopefully that has subsided. There's been a lot of -- we got water pressure back so being able to fight those fires down. And plus it's raining like heck.

But you never know when another gas line's going to burst open because so many houses have been ripped apart and there still smells like gas out there. Our first responders indicated it is. We've shut off major gas lines coming in there but there still may be gas on the ground, it could be still flammable.

KAYE: You know what really struck me, Governor, as I was listening to the press conferences today? I was listening to the first responders, including, I believe, the fire chief there in Joplin, who these people also have lost their homes and their belongings and yet they're still out there trying to work and rescue others. Meanwhile they don't even know what their situation is at their own home.

NIXON: This is a tornado that hit the center of the town. It not only knocking out a hospital, a nursing home, a school, but also many businesses and homes. The tragedy will be suffered by many in the region, but Missourians come together under difficult time times and with folks helping from around the region, we're going to get through all this rubble, we're going to find the folks that are still surviving and we're going to do everything we can to keep them alive.

I think that's the focal point. When I talk to the city manager this morning they were trying to maintain focus on getting folks that were out there that were alive, that were having a hard time communicating, especially with the wind and rain, to make sure we have a thorough search of the area.

KAYE: And Governor, before we let you go, I just want to ask you, do you need anything? If our viewers want to reach out, what would you like? What do you need?

NIXON: I spoke with the president this morning. I've spoken with a number of governors also, the local officials down there. We're asking folks that if they want to help, just go to our state web page at mo.gov. You go there. We have a Red Cross button right there that will go directly to help folks here.

We're going to have a long recovery. With the number of firefighters down there, we're going to have to have a lot of help from churches to feed them and work them through our faith-based network. So far they've been very strong for us and we thank them. But if folks from around the country want to help, go to mo.gov, hit that button. Those dollars will go directly to help tornado victims in Joplin, Missouri.

KAYE: All right. Governor Jay Nixon, we certainly appreciate your time and certainly wish you the best of luck in getting through this and whatever whether may be heading you way, as well.

Thank you, Governor, for your time. NIXON: Thank you.

KAYE: We will have much more from Joplin, Missouri, straight ahead. These pictures were taken by a woman who barely made it out of town before that twister hit. And we are going to speak with her next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has sent a search and rescue team to Joplin, where a tornado killed at least 89 people last night.

Jennifer Parr managed to get herself and her dog out of town, though, just before that twister hit and she joins us now by phone.

Jennifer, you say that this was a last-minute decision to get out right before the storm hit.

What convinced you that it was time to go?

JENNIFER PARR, TORNADO EYEWITNESS: Well, I heard the sirens go off. They finally stopped after a couple minutes. It seemed like the storm was going to go to the north of where my house is, but then I started hearing hail so I called my mom and said, mom, I'm not coming over. She was kind of not sure if she wanted me to venture out, but I made the decision, got me and my dog in the car, started heading south. Went east on 26th Street, and then south on Main Street and at Main Street and 32nd Street, the wind started moving my car around. It was just real scary.

KAYE: So did you make it to your mom's?

PARR: Yes, I did. I made it OK.

KAYE: And then I know that eventually you went back in to town and we have some pictures that you actually took when you went back into town.

Can you tell us a little bit about where you took these photos and walk us through them a bit?

PARR: Oh, yes, I can. Me and my mom, a couple of hours after the storm had gone through we went in to Joplin. We immediately saw complete devastation. As we were trying to get towards my house, a lot of the roads were blocked. We got put on some of the back roads and I couldn't even tell where we were. It was just very unrecognizable. We finally made our way through the St. John's parking lot where we were able to park and we had to walk about four blocks to my house. I started taking pictures in the St. John's parking lot --

KAYE: What struck you most about that hospital parking lot and what you saw? PARR: The cars that were piled on top of each other, all the windows blown out of the hospital. It just -- it was unreal. I almost felt like I was on a movie set. As you can see, one of the pictures with the cross and the hands. That was the only thing that was there that was untouched.

KAYE: And what about your own home when you got back to your house? What did you find there?

PARR: As I started working my way north towards my house, it's about three blocks north from 26th Street, things started not having quite as much damage. When I finally made it to my house, parts of the roof were missing, all the windows were blown out. I was able to go inside an pretty much everything in my house was all blown around and twisted around.

KAYE: Wow. Well, Jennifer, we really appreciate your iReport and sending us those pictures and we certainly wish you and your family well and hopefully you will all get through this.

Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

PARR: Thank you.

KAYE: Meanwhile, President Obama starting his Europe trip with a toast and a sip and our Ed Henry is tagging along to bring us all the frothy details. That is next with Ed.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAYE: Earlier this hour you heard some of President Obama's speech in Dublin, Ireland. The president, or as they're calling him, the hero, Barry Obama, has been getting the whirlwind tour in his day in Ireland, the first stop his European trip.

And senior White House correspondent Ed Henry joins us at this time every day. And being in Ireland, well, that hasn't stopped this, of course.

Ed, it's been a pretty busy day, first day, certainly for the president. We heard him speak in Dublin at the top of the hour. He was pretty fired up to a lot of us it sounded like he was on the campaign trail.

ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It really did. It felt like a campaign event to us on this end, covering it here in Ireland because you saw the huge crowd. There were people shouting the Gaelic version of "Yes, we can." There were campaign-style signs. You heard the fiery introduction by the Irish prime minister. It almost sounded to me like the president when he spoke was talking about Ireland winning the future, the theme he's been talking about with the U.S. winning the future back home.

Bottom line is, his Irish eyes, if you will, are no doubt focused on the Irish-American vote. There's some 40 million Irish-Americans back home in the States, and the president made a point of going to this tiny village, Moneygall, where his great-great-great grandfather lived and came to the States in the mid-1800s. That's the immigrant story that so many Americans, whether it is Ireland, Italy -- you name the European country or other countries around the world.

He also had, by the way, a sly little reference to the birthers in his remarks. When he said, when you run for president, people start poking around in your past. It would have been nice to know this information about his roots and whatnot a little bit earlier. A little sly reference there to the birthers.

And by the way, I want to make sure -- you probably know this, because I know you've done a lot of research on this, but a lot of viewers may not have. Do you know it takes 119-and-a-half seconds to pour the perfect Guinness? Apparently Guinness sent in a master brewer to make sure that the president's pint of Guinness was just perfect --

KAYE: Does that include the perfect amount of froth as well?

HENRY: You know, the staff and the press will have to do it after the president leaves the pub. For security reasons, we can't be there.

KAYE: Oh, there he goes! We're watching video of him drinking it down.

HENRY: You know, the funny part is that -- you can hear the roar from the people in the pub. He slammed some money down on the bar and said, "I want it to be known that the president of the United States pays his bar tab." He also wants to make sure that nobody thinks that he's a freeloader.

KAYE: That is great! Guinness for the president.

But Ed, of course on a much more serious note, the president visited Alabama, as we know after the devastating tornado there. Is he able to keep up with what's going on in Joplin, Missouri from there in Ireland?

HENRY: Absolutely. He obviously has to be extremely careful. This happens to the president no matter where he's traveling domestically or internationally. To be hoisting a pint of Guinness while people back home are suffering. He obviously wants to have a little bit of fun over here, but he has to be thinking back to that. We're told that aboard Air Force one he was getting briefings as he was flying overnight as the immediate damage was being known.

He also spoke to the governor as you just did, Governor Nixon in Missouri, and has instructed the FEMA director, the Federal Emergency Management Agency director, Craig Fugate, to get there on the ground so the federal response is as quick as possible.

By the way, another event that's intervening here. My colleague, Brianna Keilar, just gave me new information saying that Air Force one is going to leave Ireland a few hours early because of some of that volcanic ash spreading around Europe, some concerns about planes potentially being grounded. This happened when we were with the president in Asia several months ago and he was moving around. And now as well. He'll be leaving Ireland a little bit early, but we're told his schedule in the United Kingdom tomorrow still on schedule just as it was, but he'll leave Ireland a little early, Randi.

KAYE: Yes. That volcano in Iceland is certainly causing some trouble I guess, even for the president. All right. Ed Henry for us in Ireland, Ed, thank you. Appreciate it.

HENRY: Great to see you.

KAYE: You as well.

Prisoners fighting to save their prison? Yes, you heard me right. But it's not a board or government they're fighting. It is the Mississippi River. Behind the scenes with the criminals' fight, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAYE: They're breathing more easily in New Orleans today. Forecasters say the Mississippi River has hit its crest there, three feet below the tops of the flood walls. The river level at New Orleans is expected to remain relatively stable over the next few days. Authorities there continue to watch the floodwalls for possible leaks, though.

Elsewhere in Louisiana back water flooding continues to be a worry. In Butte La Rose, prisoners there have been helping to stack sandbags. A mandatory evacuation order is scheduled to go into effect there at noon tomorrow.

Prisoners are at work northwest of Baton Rouge. In Angola, Louisiana, the inmates there have a personal stake in the fight. Just before heading to Missouri to cover the tornado, CNN's Brian Todd filed this report from the floodzone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They hoist and haul sandbags. Wedge barrels into the earth to catch seeping floodwater racing against a cresting Mississippi River that surrounds them on three sides to save their community.

But these aren't typical volunteers. They're murders, rapist, drug dealers. The worst offenders in the state of Louisiana. And the place they're trying to save is their own prison.

DARREN JARVIS, ANGOLA INMATE: This is God's work. If it's going to happen, hey, my man (ph). Can't nobody stop it. But if we can help ourselves, let's do what we can.

TODD: Darren Jarvis is serving a life sentence for cocaine distribution. He's one of about 2,500 inmates, half the population here, working to shore up a levee threatened by the floodwaters

(on camera): Is there any bitterness, though, that you're helping to save the institution that's housing you?

JARVIS: Actually, no.

TODD: Why not?

JARVIS: You know, well, there's a lot of worse places you can be. I'm a multiple offender. This is my third conviction. And at the same time, I've never been in a place that allows us the privileges we receive here in Angola. I would hate to see what it would be like if I had to go somewhere else.

TODD (voice-over): In some places on the grounds, it's too late.

(on camera): In many places around here, you can't tell where the river ends and where the prison grounds begin. But this is a good illustration. This is the outer ring levee that normally protects the prison grounds from flooding. You can see it's been breached. That's normally a road with the telephone polls there. There's a guard shack over there. Now they've got 18,000 acres, 26 square miles. A lot of it is already flooded, but some of it's still left to protect, and that's what they're scrambling to do.

(voice-over): Angola's already evacuated about 2,000 prisoners.

(on camera): How tough is it to evacuate and get people displaced in a place like this?

WARDEN BURL CAIN, LOUISIANA STATE PENITENTIARY-ANGOLA: Well, our plan is to run up on the levees. This is 18,000 acres. This is as large as Manhattan. Think about evacuating Manhattan - boom! We're not as many people, but still, we have to get them on the levees because we won't know where the breach is if it were at night. We just know we're filling up with water.

TODD (voice-over): As they work away, the prisoners have to worry about the predators. We see gators and water moccasins on prison grounds already flooded. Warden Burl Cain says they've been shooting other animals that have sabotaged their work.

CAIN: Anything that bores a hole in that levee, it's got to go. The armadillo, beaver, anything. (INAUDIBLE), hogs. Now, we won't shoot the gators.

TODD (on camera): Why not?

CAIN: I just like the gators. We can't shoot the gators.

(LAUGHTER)

TODD (voice-over): In fact, he says he considers the gators extra guards. The legend here even before these floods was if you escape and the guards don't get you, the gators will.

Brian Todd, CNN, Angola, Louisiana.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KAYE: Setting the field for 2012. Another Republican contender makes it official. Who is in and who is out, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAYE: The Republican field for 2012 is taking shape with another formal announcement today. Though this one really didn't come as much of a surprise. CNN senior congressional correspondent Dana Bash joins me from Capitol Hill with a CNN Political Update.

And Dana, Tim Pawlenty, now a formal contender.

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. The former Minnesota governor made that official at the first caucus in Iowa. He told the crowd he is a fiscal conservative not afraid of hard choices.

Now, he's not as well known, not as charismatic as others. But he tried to make clear he wants to make up for that with some seriousness and sense of purpose.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIM PAWLENTY, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Fluffy promises of hope and change don't buy our groceries, make our mortgage payments, put gas in our car or pay for our children's school clothes or other needs.

So, in my campaign, I'm going to take a different approach. I'm going to tell you the truth. And the truth is, Washington, D.C.'s broken.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now Randi, with others like Mike Huckabee and Mitch Daniels out of the race, Pawlenty is clearly trying to position himself as a leading candidate who doesn't have the baggage that some Republican voters may not like from Newt Gingrich, whether it's his personal life or now his Medicare comments, Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care plan or the fact that John Huntsman did work for President Obama, Randi.

KAYE: And speaking of Medicare, Dana, it's going to be a major issue going ahead. But today, one Republican senator actually broke party ranks. What happened there?

BASH: That's right. It's Scott Brown of Massachusetts. He announced that he is against House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan's Medicare plan. He said that this plan which, of course, would change the system and would instead have people buy private coverage, he's worried that it would drive up costs for seniors.

Now, why is he announcing this now? Democrats, as you well know, feel they have had great political success hammering House Republicans on this issue. So, they said they're going to bring this up for a vote in the Senate this week to try to put people on record. Scott Brown is one of the few Republicans who's probably facing a tough re- election battle. And he says he's against it. Another, Olympia Snowe, probably will vote against it, too.

KAYE: All right. Dana Bash with the update. Thank you. And your next update from The Best Political Team on Television is just an hour away.