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Protests in Iran; Trump Administration's Mixed Messages on "Imminent Threat"; Iowa Voters Divided on Impeachment; Iraq Wants U.S. troops Out; Australian PM Apologizes; Utah Man Rescued in Alaskan Wilderness. Aired 4-5a ET

Aired January 12, 2020 - 04:00   ET

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

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GEORGE HOWELL, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Protests in Iran: anti- government demonstrators take to the streets after Iran admits it shot down a civilian plane.

NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): The prime minister's apology: Australia's leader says he could have done a better job handling the country's bush fires. We'll go live to Australia.

HOWELL (voice-over): And a royal family meeting to discuss Harry and Meghan's future.

ALLEN: It's all ahead here this hour. And that will be quite some meeting, one would expect.

Welcome to our viewers here in the U.S. around the world. I'm Natalie Allen.

HOWELL: I'm George Howell from CNN Headquarters. NEWSROOM starts right now.

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ALLEN: Thank you for joining us.

From Kiev to Ottawa and even Tehran, Iran's government is facing outrage after admitting it accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, 176 people on that plane, most from Canada and Iran.

HOWELL: That led to furious scenes like the scene you see here in Tehran.

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HOWELL (voice-over): A local media report a vigil for the victims turned into a mass demonstration. Video shows protesters chanting for the supreme leader to step down and even death to the dictator. Iran initially denied it shot down the plane but a top general says the jet was misidentified as a cruise missile.

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ALLEN: The country was on high alert after it fired missiles at U.S. troop sites in Iraq and that came after the U.S. killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. The U.S. president voiced his support for the Iranian protesters on Twitter and warned against a government crackdown. He also released that message in Farsi.

HOWELL: Canada, Ukraine are demanding accountability.

ALLEN: Here's what leaders from those countries are saying.

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VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF UKRAINE (through translator): I just had a phone conversation with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. He formally apologized to all of Ukraine and relatives of the dead and acknowledged the fact that Iran had shot down a Ukrainian Boeing 737.

The government will provide financial assistance to the families of the victims. The state will also make every effort to obtain compensation from the carrier, insurance companies and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I call on all international partners of Ukraine, the entire world community, to be one and persevere in the full and final investigation into all of the circumstances of this disaster. All of us need it.

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JUSTIN TRUDEAU, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: I am, of course, outraged and furious that families across this country are grieving the loss of their loved ones.

Many of these families have fled Iran, fled the regime, tried to build a better life for them elsewhere. And to have the regime that they have left behind accept responsibility for this is a bitter pill indeed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Let's take a closer look at what is happening in Iran. For that, we're joined by international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson in Abu Dhabi.

Certainly people in the streets of Tehran are very upset with the leadership there, understandably, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: The Iranian leadership took the decision to come clean on downing the Ukrainian passenger jet and it cost them international pressure. We heard there from the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and what he says is this is a very good first step for Iran. But there are many more first steps need to be taken and clarity needs to be given and this could lead to closure for the families of victims of that flight.

But perhaps the pressing issue while they deal with this international attention and the demands for a full and thorough investigation, it's the domestic pressure that Iran is perhaps going to feel in the most immediate term here by announcing that they had downed this aircraft.

And one of the leading commanders involved saying he had requested that civilian aircraft should be grounded for today. That puts the Iranian leadership in a position of appearing callous towards their own citizens on a grand scale because it was the majority of Iranians that died when that passenger jet crashed.

So this is what the protests are centering about. In essence, the leadership doesn't care about the people of Iran. This is what we heard.

[04:05:00]

ROBERTSON: This was a protest at a university in Tehran, perhaps several thousand people. They were out at dusk and into the darkness. Police did come and break up that protest.

But the very clear calls there that the leadership should accept responsibility and even the supreme leader should step down.

From what we are hearing, that is being -- those sentiments are being reflected in a couple of more moderate newspapers in Tehran today.

That said, this is not something that the regime is unused to, containing disquiet on the streets of Tehran. Hundreds of people were killed in the last few months by the leadership as they tried to deal with street protests.

ALLEN: All right. We appreciate it. Nic Robertson following developments from Abu Dhabi, thanks.

HOWELL: This incident raises a lot of questions over concerns around aviation security and to talk more about that, we have Philip Baum with us, the editor of "Aviation Security International."

Good to have you with us.

PHILIP BAUM, "AVIATION SECURITY INTERNATIONAL": Pleasure to be with you, George.

HOWELL: A commercial plane continued on over sensitive military sites during a time of heightened tensions.

What do you make of the breakdown in communication between civil aviation authorities and military officials when this happened?

BAUM: There clearly was a total breakdown of communication. It's all very well saying there was human error in firing a missile at the aircraft. But the failure started way earlier than that and that was the decision to disregard the military requests to close the aircraft and close the airspace from the moment that those strikes started against U.S. targets in Iraq.

When the Iranians knew there was the possibility of retaliatory action by the United States against Iranian targets. So absolutely, flights should have stopped and yet we saw there were quite a number of flights that departed that morning.

Aeroflot took off to Moscow; Qatar Airways departed to Doha; Turkish Airlines departed to Istanbul. And any of those could have been the targets, indeed a number of Iranian carriers could have been targeted as well. Total failure.

And Iran must be held responsible for that. Almost more importantly than the actual decision to actually fire the missile.

HOWELL: When you consider how critical that particular airport is for the nation of Iran, certainly there are a lot of questions about why that plane was allowed to fly on. Iran claims that the shootdown was unintentional. That is a claim that will be borne out through the investigation to prove it was not a deliberate target.

But even here, evidence will be key.

BAUM: Well, absolutely. I think, obviously, for the families of the victims on board, they would like to know exactly what happened and we know that the investigation is now under way.

Iran will actually have the right to take the lead on that. And I'm sure the international community will be putting extreme pressure on them for transparency. Indeed, it will be the international aviation community that must ensure that transparency is clear.

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HOWELL: Philip, just a question -- pardon me for interrupting.

Does Iran have the trust of other nations going into this investigation, given that it outright denied it from the start and then the 180, do they still have that bank of trust to work with here?

BAUM: Clearly, there is a huge trust issue. The only thing one can say is that eventually they did own up to it and perhaps owned up to it quicker than many others might have expected.

We know the Ukrainians are going to be involved in the investigation. They're the state of registry of the aircraft and the international community. The international aviation community is going to put pressure on and ensure that transparency is achieved and we find out exactly what happened.

The black box we know is already going to be examined by the French authorities. There has been agreement there. That is going to provide us with the information. But the reality, as we know, it was a military error that resulted in

that aircraft being shot down. That has happened before and that has happened to civil aviation before. The Ukrainians shut down a Siberian Airlines flight in 2001 and ended up paying compensation to the victims' families.

And, of course, the Americans did the same with the Iranian Airbus.

HOWELL: Keeping in mind, 2014, a Russian missile destroyed a Malaysia Airlines plane.

Are there takeaways from this particular incident to prevent something like this from happening again?

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BAUM: Absolutely. There are always takeaways from every tragedy. When people are looking for justice after a tragedy like this, one hopes that part of that justice is ensuring that these tragedies don't happen again.

Certainly, a lot of work has been done by the international aviation community about overflight of conflict zones and overflight of areas close to conflict zones. And I'm sure that the airlines involved, I mean, in terms of airline risk assessment, airlines can be part of that process and can evaluate risk.

And I certainly imagine that there are a lot of airlines now thinking, now how can we take proactive measures beyond what our governments are doing, to be up to the moment.

From the minute the missile strikes started against U.S. targets in Iraq, one would hope that, in the future, that foreign carriers would be perhaps quicker to respond before there is any governmental intervention.

HOWELL: Philip Baum, we appreciate your time, live in our London bureau.

ALLEN: Amid all of this, one of Iran's top Olympic athletes is defecting, That taekwondo fighter kicked her way to bronze in Rio in 2016. That makes her Iran's first and only female Olympic medalist.

But she says, on Instagram, she has left for Europe and didn't want to be complicit in "the government's corruption and lies."

She wrote, "They took me wherever they wanted. I wore whatever they said. Every sentence they ordered me to say, I repeated. Whenever they say saw fit, they exploited me. I wasn't important to them. None of this mattered to them. We were tools."

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HOWELL: As you heard, so much of this follows the killing of Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. drone strike. We take you inside the airbase in Iraq, where U.S. troops rode out two hours of missile strikes by Iran, a story you'll see exclusively here on CNN.

ALLEN: And we look at the mixed messages over why the Trump administration targeted General Soleimani in the first place and how that is playing out politically in the U.S.

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HOWELL: Questions continue to swirl over the justification for the U.S. killing of Iranian top general Qasem Soleimani. The U.S. president Donald Trump blames there was a multiple threat to U.S. embassies and bases.

ALLEN: But the State Department will not clarify what those threats were. CNN White House correspondent Jeremy Diamond has more on these mixed messages.

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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's been more than a week since President Trump authorized the targeted killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani but the president and his top advisors still seem to be struggling to get their messaging straight as it relates to the operation itself and the intelligence that led up to that operation.

Questions about the specificity of the intelligence, whether or not the administration knew where this imminent attack was being planned. Listen here to the secretary of the state and the president of the United States.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.

MIKE POMPEO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: If you are looking for imminence, you need to look no further than the days leading up to the strike.

TRUMP: We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy.

He West looking very seriously at our embassies and not just the embassy in Baghdad.

POMPEO: We don't know when precisely when and we don't know precisely where but it was real.

We had specific information on an imminent threat and those threats included attacks on U.S. embassies.

TRUMP: I can reveal that I believe it would have been four embassies.

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DIAMOND: Now beyond these questions about the specificity of the intelligence and where exactly the Iranians intended to attack the United States, the president saying four embassies, the secretary of state we don't know exactly when or where.

But this key question about imminence, how imminent this threat was to Americans in the region. Now the secretary of state has said both that it was an imminent threat but he also said he did not know exactly when or where.

This is a key question, not just for matters of transparency or for better understanding the rationale they used for this but about the legal justification for this. The Trump administration is saying legally it was authorized to carry out the strike on an Iranian general, something not authorized by Congress, because of the fact that there was an imminent threat.

And that is certainly sparking questions from Congress. Now we are also seeing the president on Saturday, expressing his support for protests that we're seeing happening in Iran.

Protesters there calling for the resignation of the country's supreme leader after Iran mistakenly downed a Ukrainian airliner over the skies of Iran.

The president tweeting, "To the brave, long suffering people of Iran I stood with you since the beginning of my presidency and my administration will continue to stand with you. We're following your protests closely and are inspired by your courage" -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, the White House.

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ALLEN: The killing of Soleimani now front and center in U.S. politics, especially when it comes to the question of what exactly this imminent threat he posed was or imminent threats because we heard different things.

For more we're joined by Natasha Lindstaedt, a lecturer in international politics at the University of Essex.

Good morning to you.

NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX: Good morning.

ALLEN: The different stories we're hearing from the Trump administration over why Soleimani was killed. Even some Republicans were skeptical over whether there was a plot.

What do you make of it? LINDSTAEDT: Well, the thing is, if there was a specific imminent threat to these U.S. embassies, as Trump has claimed, then people like secretary of state Mike Pompeo would be able to offer a lot more information about exactly what was going to happen.

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LINDSTAEDT: But they don't have this information because this may have been a vague threat and we have to, you know, understand that that particular area of the world, there are constant threats to U.S. service members. This is not something that is unusual. We don't have any proof that anything was imminent.

But what we think may have happened, if you were to read some of "The New York Times" reporting, was that CIA director Gina Haspel had offered the information to the Trump administration that, if they did they go after Soleimani, Iran's response would likely be measured.

I think that information was what helped make the decision for Trump. This was a top general and this was something that Obama or Bush didn't want to do because the repercussions could be too deadly, too dangerous.

And he was giving information that the response might be measured and this might bring Iran's to its knees. We don't have any other information about any threat being imminent or anything different from what has been going on in the region for many years now.

ALLEN: Right. And even Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee both complained about the Iran briefing they received from the White House. Lee even said it was insulting and demeaning and called it the worst briefing he had ever seen, at least on a military issue.

How does this look for Pompeo and the president?

LINDSTAEDT: They don't look particularly good; having heard what Mike Lee had said about the briefing, he complained about the briefing because it was short, only 75 minutes. They didn't offer any information. They were vague, unclear.

And the other thing that upset Lee the most was the way in which they spoke to them. They said, to the senators or people attending the briefing, don't discuss this, don't debate this. This isn't up for debate. If you do so, that is only going to make Iran stronger.

So they were very clear that this wasn't something that could be debated and, instead, everybody had to toe the line and you can't ask any questions about all these unanswered questions going on, whether there was an imminent threat and why we needed to do this now.

We're seeing a little bit of rumblings of disapproval from the Republicans in the Senate; in addition to Mike Lee, you also have Rand Paul, who also disagrees with this and there will be more and more questions coming from Democrats, of course, in the Senate, who want to know why this needed to happen now. ALLEN: Right. And all of this happening before the impeachment trial

gets underway and we'll see if House Republicans are feeling when that happens considering the questions over this incident.

Natasha, we always appreciate your insights. Thanks so much.

LINDSTAEDT: Thanks for having me.

ALLEN: Sure.

HOWELL: Turning now to the race for the White House. Iowa will hold its caucuses kicking off the presidential primary season in little more than three weeks' time from now.

ALLEN: A new CNN poll shows registered voters in Iowa are divided on whether the U.S. House made the right decision in impeaching President Trump. CNN's Kyung Lah is in Davenport, Iowa.

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KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR U.S. CORRESPONDENT: As Senator Bernie Sanders held his town hall here in Davenport, CNN released a poll of registered Iowa voters and their sentiments of President Trump and impeachment. Those polled say 45 percent disapprove of House impeachment; 43 percent approve.

Looking ahead to the Senate trial, 48 percent say Trump should not be removed from office; 40 percent say he should be removed.

Whether or not those polled say they would vote for Trump if the election were today, just 34 percent of registered Iowa voters say they would vote for him again; 44 percent say they would vote for someone else.

Spending the last few days talking to registered voters here in Iowa, here's what one Republican told us.

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JAMES TEMME, IOWA REPUBLICAN: I'm not a Trump supporter for many, many reasons. I do not have an appetite for any type of war. And what we are involved with overseas, as far as the Middle East, and what happened this week was -- Trump almost stepped on a land mine.

I think this -- what happened this week will put a lot more urgency on what is going on, more so than the impeachment hearings.

LAH: Is it possible that you might caucus with the Democrats?

TEMME: Oh, absolutely. Oh, I'm not going to vote for Trump, if he's a candidate. Absolutely not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAH: The man we spoke with says he wants to remain a Republican. He wants to vote Republican. But he will not vote for President Trump -- [04:25:00]

LAH: -- Kyung Lah, CNN, Davenport, Iowa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Six Democratic candidates will take part in the next presidential debate. See it here Tuesday 9:00 pm Eastern time.

HOWELL: Arwa Damon and her team are on the ground inside the airbase in Iraq targeted by a missile strike. Hear first-hand accounts from U.S. troops on what happened during that attack.

ALLEN: Plus, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have outlined their exit strategy but the next step is to get the royal family on board. Coming up here, you're watching CNN NEWSROOM.

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ALLEN: Welcome back to our viewers here and around the world. I'm Natalie Allen.

HOWELL: I'm George Howell with the headlines we're following for you at this hour.

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ALLEN: Hours before Iran mistakenly shot down the Ukrainian plane, U.S. troops were taking cover from an Iranian missile strike on the al-Asad airbase in Iraq. The strike was retaliation for the killing of Qasem Soleimani by the U.S. CNN's senior international correspondent Arwa Damon spoke with troops about the moments leading up to the attack.

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ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: These were living quarters, sleeping quarters, the troops that lived here lost everything. There was very little if anything that was salvageable because there was also a fire that ended up raging here for a few hours after the missile impacted in this particular area.

The reason why no one was killed, not here, not in any of the other locations of impact is because there was advanced warning. We don't know what, we don't know how that is very sensitive information. But we are told that hours before the attack even began, they knew something was happening. They just did not know specifically what it was going to be. So precautions were taken by 11:00 pm.

Troops who could hunker down or hunker down in bunker, some of them in Saddam-era bunkers. Others who had to man their posts because of the security situation. They were still out there. And then the strikes began at about 1:34 in the morning. This is the crater left behind by one of them. There are so many stories that we're hearing of heroic, so many stories that we're hearing a really extraordinary close calls.

Those who lived through this say that it's clear that Iran wasn't that concerned with trying to save us lives. A lot of these impacts did happen in places where they could potentially have caused significant U.S. casualties and this is Lieutenant Colonel Staci Coleman; we've been speaking all day.

And I mean, you were telling us what was that night like?

How do you even begin to describe it?

LT. COL. STACI COLEMAN, U.S. AIR FORCE: It's very hard to describe it. I will tell you, it was extremely scary. Some of my team and myself were hunkered down and one of those bunkers. And when the first wave started hitting you could feel the shockwave.

And even inside the bunker, the pressure was so strong that we watched our bunker doors sinking towards the inside of the bunker and then escape back out.

About seven of the impacts were in very close proximity to where we will hunker down and like I said, you could feel every last one of the shockwaves it was extremely scary.

DAMON: And very lucky or was it the training, the precautions that were taken that there were no U.S. casualties?

COLEMAN: I'd say it was all of -- I say it was a combination of God looking out for us. It was a combination of, you know, the little bit of Intel and advanced warning that we got. And then it was the smart commanders on the ground making on-spot decisions to get people out of harm's way.

DAMON: And how do you begin to describe or I mean, what this was like? And then, of course, what kind of security precautions you're having to take now given the situation?

COLEMAN: This was -- like I said, we knew something was happening, but we didn't know exactly what. As the time grew closer, we kind of thought we had an indication of what it might be, but we still weren't certain.

So we had advanced warning that there may be some rockets followed by a base incursion. And so we had to keep our security forces out to make sure that that we were safe from that.

So there were a good number of folks out along the perimeter and within the airfield keeping it secure.

DAMON: Out there on the perimeter, keeping it secure while these missiles are coming in.

COLEMAN: Yes, they were outside during every last one missile strikes.

DAMON: Well, it would seem that it was very fortunate. And also as we've been saying because of this advance warning that exist, because of these precautions that were taken, there is this sense that -- well, this phase of what is unfolding has concluded. Everyone here is still very much on high alert -- Arwa Damon, CNN, Al-Asad airbase, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Australia's prime minister admits some fault as bush fires rage and another firefighter dies fighting the flames. We'll go there live.

HOWELL: Plus three weeks alone in the Alaskan wilderness, we'll tell you how one man survived.

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HOWELL: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM.

The situation between the U.S. and Iran has put Iraq in the crosshairs of the conflict with people who are concerned about what is happening. Let's go live to Baghdad with our senior international correspondent Sam Kiley on the story.

Sam, always good to have you with us. The heightened tensions with Iraq both literally and physically caught in the middle, there seems to be a balancing among Iraq's leaders when it comes to U.S. presence in the country and Iranian influence to push the U.S. out.

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a very delicate balancing act, indeed. At the moment, you have a situation in which the Iraqi prime minister, mandated by his parliament but only by a slim quorum of overwhelmingly Shia hardline members of parliament is required to ask the United States to withdraw its troops from the country.

Now he's a lame duck president, having resigned already as a consequence of the anti-government and anti-Iranian and anti-American street protests that have been rocking this country now for some couple of months at least, George.

So you have that situation. He's already said to Mike Pompeo in his version of the conversation that he wants to begin those negotiations. Mike Pompeo said that is not what was really said in a recent phone call.

Concurrent with that you have Shia militia here, the two main ones designated by the United States as terrorist organizations, the U.S. definition, threatening to go to war effectively to drive the Americans out of the country.

And then you have a substantial part of the Iraqi body politic and, indeed, of the population, who don't want the United States to go prematurely, given that the war against the so-called Islamic State is still ongoing and that the air assets and the training, in particular, the 5,000-plus American troops still here on the ground.

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KILEY: They're a essential part of them. And from the American side, they're still prosecuting a war against the so-called Islamic State inside Syrian territory and need Iraqi bases to do that.

Amidst all this, George, you have, as Arwa has been reporting, this very accurate and substantial military attack by the Iranians on U.S. airbases, that the Americans were unable to stop. They may have been able to see them coming; they were also tipped off, according to the Iraqi government, that these attacks were coming.

So there were no casualties but as you see from Arwa's report, they were very accurate and had some pretty startling intelligence about locations and potential targets on their airbase.

That is a signal, too, that the Iranians remain -- albeit, under stringent and catastrophic, from their perspective, economic sanctions -- they remain a potent conventional force as well as having the Shia militia that could act on their behalf on the ground.

HOWELL: Sam Kiley live for us in Baghdad, Iraq. Sam, thank you for the reporting.

ALLEN: We now turn to Australia, where, amid mounting criticism, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, is admitting to making some mistakes in his response to the bush fires devastating the country.

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SCOTT MORRISON, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: There were things that I could have handled on the ground much better. These are very raw, emotional environments. I have got to say that 95 percent or thereabouts of the responses I've had in these cases have been very positive and very appreciative.

But David, these are sensitive environments. They're very emotional environments. Prime ministers are flesh and blood, too, and have an engage (ph) with people.

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ALLEN: Mr. Morrison also said he will propose a national review into the response to the disaster. The Sydney Opera House lit its famous sails with images of firefighters as a tribute to them and the ravaged communities. A 60-year-old firefighter died while on duty Saturday. At least 28 people have now been killed in the fires.

New South Wales has been one of the hardest hit states and that is where we find our Will Ripley in the town of Nowra.

We just heard from the prime minister but it still kind of seems like his apologies and confessions seem kind of on the light side.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Scott Morrison has gotten a lot of flak here in Australia, one, because he was a long-time climate change skeptic and, in his interview, he did acknowledge climate change is a factor in these wildfires although he also points to the fact that there have been arrests, 2 dozen arrests for arson.

So either way, humans are the cause, whether it be climate change or whether it be people intentionally setting. And there's also, of course, a historic drought, a record heat wave, which has been getting a little bit of a break right now.

But the question on a lot of people's mind is what happened when temperatures go back up. Last week it was well over 100 degrees here. Today it's been in the mid-60s. But hat is seasonably low; when temperatures go back to normal or back to that heat wave that has ripped much of Australia, there is a lot of concern that the fires will reignite and they have kind of slowed down for the moment.

And people are concerned that Morrison continues to defend, you know, Australia's coal industry. This is the world's leading exporter of coal and it's a vital part of the Australian economy.

It's also one of the slowest countries to enact reforms when it comes to climate change. Given the fact that they're now ground zero, living through an event that is a direct result, analysts believe, of climate change or climate change certainly being a major factor, people are saying, when is the government here going to wake up and do something to prevent this kind of problem before this becomes a regular occurrence?

You already have a fire that has burned an area the size of the U.S. states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut combined -- Natalie.

ALLEN: Yes, he almost sounds like he is still championing coal at a time when people are dying and the country is burning. It's just hard to fathom why there isn't a strong response.

What are the people there saying about the latest that he has said?

Because he certainly has been harassed and heckled when he tried to visit people who have suffered and who have lost everything.

RIPLEY: He had another firefighter die here last night, a 60-year-old father of two, who had a tree fall on him. People are angry. They called him an idiot and heckled him when he was on the ground. They've accused him of prioritizing optics over action.

When you have a situation, where thousands of people's homes and lives are potentially at risk, optics are simply not enough.

ALLEN: Will, thank you so much. We'll talk with you, again. [04:45:00]

HOWELL: Here on the U.S. East Coast, many people woke up or dealt with storms overnight. Very strong, dangerous storms hitting many parts of the United States. More than 20 million people under a flood watch and hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses out of power across several states. The storm has also created several tornadoes.

ALLEN: It's widespread, too.

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HOWELL: The British royal family will meet Monday to discuss the future of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex within the House of Windsor.

ALLEN: Yes, Buckingham Palace has been in crisis mode since the couple's stunning decision to step back from royal duties. For more about it, Anna Stewart is in London.

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ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ever since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced their intention to step back as senior members of the royal family, crisis talks have been underway within the royal household.

The queen herself instructing that these happen at pace. But palace sources told CNN that these talks may soon bear fruit. The meeting is set at Sandringham, the queen's estate, on Monday.

It will be attended by Her Majesty, Prince Charles, prince William and Prince Harry. Notably absent will be Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex; she returned to Canada shortly after the shock announcement earlier in the week.

She is expected to be dialing in to this meeting from Canada. A range of possibilities will be discussed at the meeting. Although talks have happened very fast, the implementation of any one of these plans we're told will take some time.

Opinion in the U.K. has been highly divided over the Duke and Duchess' decision. Also the way they communicated it to the public and to the royal family. Critics of the Duke and Duchess say they should not be able to earn money independently and retain royal titles.

Some say they should have to pay rent on their Grace and Favor home in Windsor, perhaps they should also have to pay security costs as well, they're likely to balloon if they live between the U.K. and North America.

Many people also say however that they should do whatever they want and live wherever they like. In the past, any royal family member that has stepped down or stepped aside has been due to scandal or divorce. So we are in uncharted territory here. However the crown appears determined to navigate it and move on -- Anna Stewart, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: We'll be finding out about that one.

HOWELL: Very personal, I'm sure, for them.

Imagine, if you could, finding yourself cold and alone in the Alaskan wilderness.

ALLEN: I would rather not.

[04:50:00]

ALLEN: Just ahead, the extraordinary story of one man's fight to survive harsh conditions. Look at him there and the SOS in the snow. We'll have the story, next.

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ALLEN: Here's an amazing story of courage to bring you. A Utah man survived alone in the Alaskan wilderness for three weeks after his home burned to the ground.

HOWELL: Just incredible. The police rescued him just last week after he flagged down state troopers in a helicopter. CNN's Polo Sandoval has the story.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From high above, it's hard to imagine Tyson Steele's sense of relief as state troopers circled above the southern Alaskan wilderness.

It's where the 30-year old survived after the remote hut he lived in went up in flames back in December. He was 20 miles away from his closest neighbor in the tiny community of Skwenta.

After his Thursday rescue, Steele recounted rushing out of the burning dwelling with only a few supplies. His beloved chocolate lab, Phil, did not make it out alive.

TYSON STEELE, WILDERNESS SURVIVOR: I sat down on the ground for a while like just -- it was cold, right. I didn't have any socks in my boots.

[04:55:00]

STEELE: And I was just wearing pajamas at that point and a T-shirt. SANDOVAL (voice-over): Fresh after his return to civilization, Steele

shared his detailed account with his rescuers. He describes sleeping in a snow cave the first two nights.

"I just huddled into that dark cave and I slept," he told troopers. "And it was warm, warmer than outside."

Steele said he later scavenged for tarps and scrap lumber to build a tentlike dome around his wood stove. You can see it in the rescue video, just feet away from his SOS carved into the snow. He rationed his 30 days of food until a request for a welfare check from France led authorities to him.

STEELE: I was grateful that all my bullets blew up because that could have been a temptation. It'd be like, I am not going to make it. I'd put myself out, right, that's a very real thought that crept up almost daily, especially real cold nights.

SANDOVAL (voice-over): Steele told his rescuers he will probably head to his family in Salt Lake City for now. His plan is to return to the Alaskan wilderness he calls home and rebuild -- Polo Sandoval, CNN, New York.

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HOWELL: Wow.

ALLEN: All right, step one, build a snow cave.

HOWELL: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

ALLEN: All right.

The day's top stories are just ahead here.

HOWELL: NEWSROOM is back after the break. Stay with us.