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Key Inflation Measure Stays Near Record High; Kori Schake is Interviewed about Russia; Federal Trial Begins in Arbery Killing; Skater Blames Mix-up with Grandfather's Meds. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired February 15, 2022 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:30:42]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: A new report bringing news no American wants to hear. Those numbers show another key inflation measure remains near historic highs.

CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans joins us now.

Christine, another disappointment for the administration and for Americans.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: This is really a pattern now.

ROMANS: It really is. And it's starting to feel more entrenched, quite frankly, because you look at near record producer price inflation. This is factory level inflation. So these are the kinds of numbers and prices that will be passed on to you.

And 9.7 percent over the past 12 months. And look at, Bianna, the month over month, 1 percent. We usually measure these things in tenths of a percent.

GOLODRYGA: Right.

ROMANS: This is a big move just from December to January. You look at the chart, and you can just see that it is -- it feels like sky high inflation. That is near a record. They've only been keeping these numbers since like 2010. It's not like the consumer price number.

We do know that these factory level inflation pressures have been passed on to you. You are paying higher prices for just about anything. We saw that consumer inflation report earlier this week, gasoline, used cars, food at home, electricity. We know from companies, from their earnings calls, they are passing these higher prices at the factory on to you. They still are managing to score great, great earnings in this Covid recovery. They're even buying back stock in some cases and giving their CEOs, you know, raises for managing well through the pandemic. But you, the consumer, are starting to feel it.

Also, really closely watching oil prices. This is the big factor here for the stock market, at least today. Oil prices have cooled just a tiny bit because of this -- I guess this reporting that maybe the Russians are pulling some troops off of this -- off of this -- off of the front. But there's a lot of skepticism, frankly, about, you know, these head games from Vladimir Putin and what it's going to mean for energy supplies and for stability in Europe. So that's something really important to watch in terms of your money.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, we know how fluid these market jitters are as well.

ROMANS: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: They just jump up or down on any news report that flashes by.

Christine Romans, thank you.

ROMANS: Nice to see you.

GOLODRYGA: And, Jim, like she said, oil prices not helping Americans as they continue to go up given the looming crisis in Russia and Ukraine.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Higher oil prices, they help Vladimir Putin. He sells a lot of it.

New this morning, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says that he has not seen any evidence of Russian de-escalation on the Ukraine border. This despite the Kremlin claiming that some Russian troops have returned to their bases. Stoltenberg did, however, note that there are some signs from Moscow that diplomacy should continue.

Joining me now to talk about all of this is Kori Schake. She's director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, also former deputy director for policy planning at the State Department.

Good to have you on. Thanks for joining.

KORI SCHAKE, DIRECTOR, FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY STUDIES, American ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: It's a pleasure.

SCIUTTO: So, let's look at the combination of signs in the last 24 hours. The latest this morning is a Russian claim of moving some troops, a small percentage of troops away from the border. But you also had the Russian president and foreign minister saying publicly that they are still open to negotiation. When you couple those two signals, do you see a genuine pause perhaps in the crisis here?

SCHAKE: No, I think it's an adroit move by the Russians to try and dent allied solidarity. The Biden administration and the other 29 NATO allies have done a terrific job so far of crafting a common policy, remaining in step with each other. And it looks to me like what Vladimir Putin is trying to do is take a tiny little step that's militarily irrelevant, given the forces that they have, and try and break that solidarity.

SCIUTTO: The U.S. intelligence review remains position -- view remains consistent, that is that Russia has arranged a highly capable combat force, has planning in place for a comprehensive invasion of large parts of the country, including encircling here in Kyiv, the capital, within 24 to 48 hours.

How long can Putin, can Russia maintain the threat of that force, sitting out there, how long can he keep it there if he doesn't issue an immediate order to invade, to keep that possibility at least open?

[09:35:04]

SCHAKE: That's a terrific question. And I don't honestly know the answer. My guess is quite a while, right? They are putting contract soldiers, not conscripts, into the 130,000 troops that they've moved forward to threaten the Ukraine with. And so they're likely to be able -- and with oil hovering around $100 a barrel, Russia's raking in money while they are destroying Ukraine's economy, right? It's difficult to ensure air travel into Ukraine and other things. So Russia's imposing economic costs on Ukraine while reaping the benefits of the disturbance of oil markets.

SCIUTTO: The British foreign secretary, earlier today, said that a Russian attack on Ukraine, quote, would not stop at Ukraine. I'm going to be speaking to the prime minister of Estonia, of course a member -- an eastern member of the NATO alliance. And Estonia and the other Baltic states have a similar view, that if Putin were allowed to take over Ukraine, that he wouldn't stop there. His next aim would be eastern NATO allies that also used to be former Soviet republics.

Do you think that is a correct impression, that that's the precedent that would set?

SCHAKE: Well, I would certainly be worried about that if I were the prime minister of a front-line NATO state because once Russia has toppled the post-war order in Europe, by using military force to change state's boundaries, then everything is open to question and America's NATO allies will need an awful lot of reassurance and probably a lot of presence of American, British, German, other allied troops before they feel secure again, which is, again, a big victory for Vladimir Putin to destabilize the post war order in Europe.

SCIUTTO: That's a victory for Putin. A loss for Putin would be something -- we've seen some signs of happening here -- that is some unity within the NATO alliance in terms of standing up to the threat of the invasion, but also some movement of NATO forces further east into eastern NATO allies, which is exactly what Putin's claims is a threat to him.

There's a tendency to treat him as a brilliant and flawless manipulator and strategist, but he makes mistakes. I wonder, do you think he may have had his bluff called here?

SCHAKE: I sure hope so. I was pleasantly surprised to see Secretary Biden announce an economic package to help Ukraine keep its currency stable and shield against what Russia is trying to do, which is create a zone of instability on Russia's borders where states can't be successful and can't be stable and can't be prosperous. And the challenge for the countries of the NATO alliance and beyond is not to let Russia succeed at that, to expand the zone of stability and prosperity that NATO expansion has brought to former Warsaw pact countries and former Soviet republics. That's what Putin is afraid of.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SCHAKE: And you're exactly right, Jim, he's the father of Ukrainian nationalism. He -- the threats Russia has been -- has been posing for Ukraine have pushed Ukraine westward.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SCHAKE: And that's good for Ukraine, and it should be good for Russia, but that's not how Vladimir Putin sees it.

SCIUTTO: And the memories still raw here. I saw earlier today the portraits of the many dozens of people who were killed during protests here against the pro-Russian government in 2013, 2014, and the Mydon (ph) martyred according to some Ukrainians to Russia.

Kori Schake, so good to have you on this morning.

Well, Russia is claiming at least some of its forces surrounding Ukraine are returning to their bases. Ukraine says, in the simplest terms, we'll believe it when we see it.

CNN's live coverage of the developing situation here in Ukraine continues just ahead.

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[09:43:59]

GOLODRYGA: A local civil rights activist is accused of trying to assassinate the democratic candidate for mayor in Louisville, Kentucky. Investigators say 21-year-old Quintez Brown walked into Craig Greenberg's campaign headquarters on Monday and opened fire. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but Greenberg says a bullet grazed him so closely that it ripped his shirt and his sweater.

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CRAIG GREENBERG (D), LOUISVILLE MAYORAL CANDIDATE AND TARGET OF SHOOING: If too much senseless gun violence in Louisville and across the country, and I hope that incidents like this can bring people together as opposed to divide us further apart, bring us together to work on violence intervention programs, to work on addressing the root causes of crime, to work on providing mental health treatment to those who need it.

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GOLODRYGA: Police have not revealed a motive for the shooting and according to the "Louisville Courier Journal," where Brown was once an intern, he went missing last July but was found safe after about two weeks.

And the judge presiding over the federal hate crimes trial for the three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery has now ordered the jury to be sequestered for the course of the trial.

[09:45:06]

The 12 member panel was finalized yesterday and consists of eight white, three black and one Hispanic juror. The prosecution is expected to call its first witness this morning.

So let's go straight to CNN national correspondent Ryan Young, who has been following this story for us.

Ryan, prosecutors telling jurors that the defendants have a history of using racist terms.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they do. And something I want to tell everyone here. You think about the state case. We got to see every single day video from inside the court. With this being a federal case, we will not get those sort of updates on a day to day basis. We can hear and, of course, go into court and see what's going on, but we can't provide what's happening in terms of that video like we did during the state case.

But in this we're starting to hear from some of the text messages that were actually sent back and forth between some of these men. Obviously, they were found guilty in the state case. This is that federal case.

In fact, let's put on the screen some of the text messages that were shared in court just yesterday. You see this from Travis McMichael, zero n-words work with me. They ruin everything. That's why I love what I do now. Not an n-word in sight.

Obviously, we're not going to use the language they were using.

Gregory McMichael, talking about the civil rights leader Julian Bond (ph). I wish he'd been put in the ground years ago. He was nothing but trouble. Those blacks are nothing but trouble.

And another text message from William Bryan. He goes, my daughter has an n-word now.

So you see some of these words that were being used in text messages. The difference here in the federal cases clearly, they're trying to show that these men had racist motivations for chasing down Ahmaud Arbery and shooting him that day.

Of course the defense is saying, no, they were concerned about their neighborhood.

The woman who's been really at the center of all of this has been Ahmaud Arbery's mother, who's been pushing so hard to make sure her son got justice. In fact, take a listen to some of her words yesterday after court.

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WANDA COOPER-JONES, MOTHER OF AHMAUD ARBERY: I think that we'll get another victory out of this. I think it's going to be a long, long, hard trial. A whole lot of hard evidence is going to come into play. So I've got to be prepared for that.

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YOUNG: Yes, I think that's the thing that everyone was concerned about. This case will have a definite different racial tone. And people were worried about the community. The faith leaders in that community have been working well with each other, black, white, Jewish, have all been talking about what could come forward in this case to make sure that the community doesn't see anything that didn't happen during the state case. The trial has actually started just in the last 20 minutes or so. We're getting some of the information. Both sides will be talking -- you talked about that jury being set and sequestered. It will be interesting to see how fast this moves along. Let's not forget, it's been two years since the day Ahmaud was killed.

GOLODRYGA: And since that murder, his mother has been sitting there fighting for justice for her son every single day.

YOUNG: Absolutely.

GOLODRYGA: Ryan Young, thank you.

YOUNG: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Thank you.

And still ahead, the Russian teen skater accused of doping, back on the ice this morning, and now back in the lead after Russia claims a mix-up with her grandfather's medication caused a positive drug test. We are live in Beijing, coming up.

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[09:52:31]

GOLODRYGA: This morning, teen Russian figure skating star Kamila Valieva is in first place after competing in the women's short program in Beijing. The 15-year-old skater was cleared to compete despite a drug -- failing a drug test. She's now blaming that failure on a mix- up with her grandfather's medication.

CNN international correspondent Selina Wang is live in Beijing this morning.

Selina, you just came out of that figure skating event. What's the mood there as she was competing?

SELINA WANG, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It was electrifying. People were literally on the edge of their seats waiting for her to perform. There was loud applause for her before and after her performance, mostly coming from the Russian delegation side, what appeared to be Russian media on our side.

Now, she did stumble, however, in her opening jump and she appeared to be struggling to hold back tears when she finished. She had this solemn expression on her face. She did, however, still come in with that top score. And it was just a reminder that we're talking about a 15-year-old here who has been thrust into the spotlight, incredible stress because of this doping scandal. And it was a very stark reminder of how young she was when I saw her walk off and immediately clutch on to her stuffed animal.

Now, a wider investigation right now is being done over this doping scandal, including the adults that surrounded her. Many say she is a victim of Russia's system of state sponsored doping.

Now, in fact, earlier I spoke to the founding member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, and this is what he had to say about the Russian system and what needs to be done.

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DICK POUND, FOUNDING PRESIDENT, WORLD ANTI-DOPING AGENCY: Maybe it's time for a -- a timeout for Russia in the Olympics. You simply say, sorry, you will not be invited to the next games. You will not be able to host any, you know, Olympic sport events and so forth. That will get their attention.

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WANG: Now, earlier today, we got more details from the IOC saying that Valieva defended that positive test by saying that it was a mix-up with her grandfather's medication. We don't have any further details on that excuse, but these are the facts we do know, which are, one, that other Olympians who have used this drug have been banned from competition and, number two, that this is a drug that doctors say boosts endurance and blood flow.

Outrage, meanwhile, continues to grow over the fact that she was still allowed to compete despite having tested positive less than two months before the games with some athletes saying that this is making a mockery of clean competition.

[09:55:03]

Others say that it is tainting this moment that other athletes and figure skaters have worked so hard towards. And I was sitting there watching these other skaters pour their hearts out, it is devastating to know that even if they make it in the top three, they likely will be deprived of that medal ceremony.

Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Look, it's hard not to feel for Valieva. She's 15 years old. Clearly under a lot of pressure. But this is just about an issue of fairness. And Russia has gotten a free pass for so many years. Perhaps the next Olympics, as that one analyst said, that they shouldn't be invited and maybe they will finally learn their lesson.

Selina Wang, thank you.

Well, breaking news.

CNN has just learned Russia says it has started withdrawing some troops from around Ukraine, but major drills are continuing.

CNN's live team coverage continues up next.

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