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Food, Water, Hope Running Out Inside Besieged Steel Plant In Mariupol; American Killed Fighting For Ukraine Freedom; Alabama Deputy, Murder Suspect Missing In Alabama; Tornado Rips Through Wichita Suburb; Officials Restrict Outdoor Watering In Southern California; Russia Now Using Submarines To Launch Missile Attacks; FDA Chief: Misinformation Is The Leading Cause Of U.S. Deaths; Rents Skyrocket Nationwide, Up 20 Percent On Average Over Two Years. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired April 30, 2022 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:42]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
YURIY RYZHENKOV, STEEL PLANT CEO: Basically, a beautiful striving city was turned into a concentration camp by the Russians in less than two months. You can say it's genocide which is happening there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We are not considering the terms of surrender. If there is no choice but captivity, we will not surrender.
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS REPORTER: Rents are rising across the country. Up a record nearly 20 percent on average in two years.
(On-camera): How many properties do you think you've explored?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thousands. Thousands.
YURKEVICH: So where does that put you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Puts me on the street.
JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Eighty of those messages are between Mark Meadows and FOX personality Sean Hannity.
SEAN HANNITY, FOX HOST: We better get this right or we will lose the country.
GANGEL: By December 6th, he and Mark Meadows are now talking about life after Donald Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Alabama authorities are searching for a murder suspect and the corrections officer who removed him from jail.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's obvious. The question is, did she assist the inmate in the escape? Was she overpowered and kidnapped?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM on this Saturday.
And we begin this hour in Ukraine. It is 11:00 p.m. in Mariupol and one question hangs over the city's last holdout of resistance. Can they survive another night?
New satellite images show nearly every building in a sprawling steel plant complex is reduced to rubble. And underneath it all, hundreds of traumatized desperate women and children wasting away in a basement that's now a bunker. The food, water and medicine stockpiled before the war are running out. And the CEO of the company that owns this plant says hope is running out, too.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RYZHENKOV: They are telling us that it's a humanitarian disaster there. That the city is being destroyed, basically a beautiful thriving city was turned into a concentration camp by the Russians in less than two months. You can say it's genocide which is happening there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: A short time ago Ukrainian commander who is also trapped there says about 20 civilians were evacuated today, but their fate is unknown. Some 100,000 civilians remain trapped in the city.
And Russia has released video to show it has at least one submarine lurking in the Black Sea launching cruise missile attacks on Ukraine. The Russian boasts is apparently designed to intimidate and follow some Russian advances this week including strikes on Ukraine's rail lines and supply routes.
Let's begin our coverage in central Ukraine with CNN's Nick Paton Walsh.
Nick, let's turn your focus south to the humanitarian crisis in Mariupol. What is the latest on evacuations from the steel plant?
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Pam, as you were saying earlier, yes, there appear to have been a small number of women and children according to one Ukrainian official who have begun their evacuation journey. That was supposed to start they said at 6:00 a.m. but it seems the convoy taking them out didn't arrive until 6:25. And Russian state media has said that these are in fact individuals from the Azovstal steel plant and they do apparently include six children.
The question is which way do they go because evacuation from Mariupol isn't simply towards Ukrainian held territories. The east of where I'm standing, the town of Zaporizhzhia, that's where the Ukrainians want them to go. It could also mean a darker journey east towards Russia where there have been filtration camps set up for those taken out of Mariupol. So this is obviously a key question. The second one being whether this is the start of something or a rare
exception. For weeks now, the talk of humanitarian corridors out of Mariupol has reverberated around that city and all of Ukraine to try and bring those 100,000 civilians caught in increasing levels of disease, not to mention the intense bombardment that's left the city unrecognizable. And so the question I think the issue now is whether or not we are seeing some sort of change in Russia's perspective.
[16:05:00]
They've come under pressure from the United Nations secretary-general who visited the Kremlin directly to talk about this partially, and I think there may possibly be some pressure upon Russian occupiers to deal with the number of civilians they have in the midst because of this growing issue of disease.
I should point, the noise you're hearing behind me here, Pam, is here in Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is an air raid siren. We've been hearing those intermittently over the past days. No explosions with them but I have to say this is the longer one that we're hearing tonight -- Pam.
BROWN: Yes. That's very ominous. So, Nick, there have been explosions in Odessa. What have you learned about that?
WALSH: Yes, it appears according to officials there that the airports, the international airport on the outskirts of town, was indeed hit, perhaps its runway in fact struck. A number of explosions reported around that city. A combat plane seen in the sky, that may be possibly related to the submarines activity in the Black Sea you were showing earlier. We don't know when those videos were released or what they were fired at, or if indeed, you know, that is an accurate video from that specific time.
But it's important to put Odessa in context. It is of course a key target for the Kremlin. Russian-speaking city that's on the Black Sea coast of a million people, a cultural and economic hub. But it's a huge task for them to even remotely attempt something like that. That is something they sort of taunted a couple of weeks ago. Maybe the second phase of their operation, it would have involved them headed west to try and take the Black Sea coast entirely.
Well, they've been trying that for months and failed at the first major city they run into, Mykolaiv. So this may be about trying to keep Ukrainian officials guessing as to what Russia's actual goal in its renewed offensive in the south actually is. Are they headed west towards even the border with Moldova where Russia-backed separatists breakaway area, where we've seen some military activity over the past days.
Are they headed for here, the president's hometown, Kryvyi Rih, or are they headed east? That's where I would put my money, east towards the other Russian offensive in the Donbas to link up with that -- Pam.
BROWN: All right. Nick Paton Walsh, thank you for bringing us the latest there in Ukraine. Well, the mother of a former U.S. Marine killed fighting for Ukraine
is talking about his death. Willy Joseph Cancel had been working with a private military contracting firm and fighting with an international brigade. President Biden mourned Cancel's death and noted that he leaves behind a wife and infant.
CNN's Brian Todd has more on the Americans who have joined the fight.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He is a 22-year-old American and leaves behind a wife and 7-month-old baby. Former U.S. Marine Willy Joseph Cancel killed on the battlefield in Ukraine. That's according to Cancel's mother, who spoke to CNN.
REBECCA CABRERA, WILLY JOSEPH CANCEL'S MOTHER: And even before he left to go to Ukraine, you know, he was proud because he wanted to do the right thing, and you know, fight alongside the underdogs and help them with things like he thought was important.
TODD: Neither Cancel's mother nor U.S. officials could provide information on how or where Cancel was killed.
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We know a family is mourning. A wife is mourning. And our hearts are with them.
TODD: Cancel's mother tells CNN he was working a full-time job as a corrections officer in Tennessee when he signed up to work for a private military contracting company shortly before the Ukraine war broke out.
When the conflict began, she says, Cancel agreed to go. He flew to Poland on March 12th and crossed into Ukraine shortly thereafter. She says he was being paid while he was fighting there.
DOUGLAS OLLIVANT, FORMER ARMED CONTRACTOR AFGHANISTAN: That's a horse of a different color than his being directly in some kind of Ukrainian-foreign legion. And that begs the question, who is the client of this private contracting company? Is it for the government of Ukraine?
TODD: No immediate answers to those questions. And U.S. officials say they don't have an exact count of how many Americans are fighting in Ukraine. A Ukrainian Defense official told CNN in early March that at that time more than 20,000 people from more than 50 countries had express a desire to join the fight.
CNN has interviewed some Americans who volunteered. Former TV analyst Malcolm Nance described fighting in a special Ukrainian unit called the International Legion.
MALCOLM NANCE, JOINED UKRAINIAN ARMED FORCES: It is not just people running around grabbing rifles and going on the battlefield. It is a unified force that is a component of the Ukrainian Army that is deployed on the battle front.
TODD: But another American fighting there, James Vasquez, told CNN he was moving around loosely.
JAMES VASQUEZ, U.S. COMBAT VETERAN FIGHTING IN UKRAINE: Right now, I am pretty much a ghost. Me and a British soldier, him and I, have been kind of like going from unit to unit, you know, wherever we're needed the most.
TODD: But U.S. officials are again warning Americans don't go to Ukraine to fight.
JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: This is an active war zone. This is not the place to be traveling to.
TODD: State Department officials say Russian forces could single out Americans fighting in Ukraine.
[16:10:03]
One official warning that captured Americans could be subject to, quote, "heightened risk of mistreatment."
OLLIVANT: And it is not hard to imagine a situation, in which a captured American is tortured, is executed on the battlefield or is just sent back to Moscow to be some type of pawn for political exchange.
TODD (on-camera): At the time she spoke to CNN, Willy Cancel's mother said the people who notified her of his death said his body had not been found. Cancel's mother said the men who were with him were trying to recover Cancel's body but that it was too dangerous.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: A nationwide manhunt is under way right now after a sheriff's deputy in Alabama disappeared along with the murder suspect she was reportedly transferring to court. Officials say longtime corrections officer Vicki White told other deputy she was driving inmate Casey White for a mental health evaluation but the pair never made it. And it turns out no mental health evaluation was even scheduled.
CNN's Nadia Romero is following this for us.
So, Nadia, these two have been missing now since 9:30 yesterday morning. Do officials suspect the officer was in on it? What do they think is going on here?
NADIA ROMERO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Pamela, that is the big question. Right? Because she has been with the department for such a long time. And the sheriff says that some things just aren't adding up. She said she was going to take him on a medical evaluation, but there was no medical evaluation or hearing on the books. So there are questions as to if she is an accomplice or if she simply someone that was taken hostage.
We still don't know that answer. But here's what we know about Casey Cole White, there he is, 38 years old. Very distinctive looks, right? The one with his hair, the one without hair. But here's one way to identify him. He is 6'9" so he should stick out in any crowd especially if he is trying to be unnoticed. He's a very tall man. So that's what you should be looking for if you think you're in the area or you may be coming across him.
Now we know that he has a long rap sheet of violent convictions. He was sentenced and serving more than 75 years. Look at those charges. Burglary and attempted murder and kidnapping. Those are the charges that he was convicted of when he left with Vicki White.
Now this is the corrections officer who had been with that county, Lauderdale County, there in Alabama for some 16 years. She was also an assistant director of corrections. And the sheriff said she should have known the policy that two sworn officers should have been with that inmate escorting him at all times. He also says that he just doesn't know if she is a part of a scheme to help him escape or she was simply overpowered by the inmate.
Now this is a major concern for the families who have been impacted by the crimes and alleged crimes of Casey white. Take a look at 59-year- old Connie Ridgeway. Connie Ridgeway was killed back in October 2015. She was murdered in her apartment. And a very small community, it rattled that community, and it wasn't until five years later until 2020 that the sheriff's office says that Casey White, the escaped inmate, well, he confessed to killing Ridgeway.
Listen to one of her sons Austin explain the emotions that have come up again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AUSTIN WILLIAMS, SON OF MURDER VICTIM: It does kind of bring it all back together, you know, the shock, and you just kind of wonder how it's possible. But there is a part of me that knows that justice will be served and you just kind of have to leave to God and leave to the law enforcement to do their jobs to bring him in. It's not something I thought I would experience again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMERO: So Casey White is facing capital murder charges in connection to the death. He confessed to killing 59-year-old Connie Ridgeway. That was Austin Williams' mother. But he also of course now, Pamela, faces more charges because of this escape. The FBI also investigating -- Pamela.
BROWN: All right, Nadia Romero. Thank you, Nadia.
Coming up this hour, Angelina Jolie is supporting Ukraine with a low- key trip there. Meantime millions of people in Southern California brace for water shortages as the west faces a record drought.
And next hour, to forgive and forget? We'll debate whether student debt should really be written off.
And then, in our 6:00 p.m. Eastern hour, with recession fears growing, I'll ask our economic expert how you can protect your money.
You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:18:45]
BROWN: Multiple tornadoes touched down in the central U.S. last night. Here is some of the damage caused by just one that ripped through a suburb of Wichita, Kansas. A home destroyed, cars battered and beaten, and a family left to salvage what they can from the rubble.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really sad. I hate seeing my family cry because they lost everything. I hate all these things are like gone. I keep thinking like what now and like I have nothing. But like trying to stay positive because last night was really terrible. A lot of tears. So it is just hard to see.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Meteorologist Gene Norman joins me now live from the CNN Weather Center.
Gene, this line of storms is still moving. What are the areas under threat right now?
GENE NORMAN, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, Pamela, anywhere from southern Wisconsin down to the boot hill of Missouri, under tornado watches until 8:00 Central time. The threat of tornadoes, the threat of hail as large as a golf ball and winds up to 70 miles an hour. You're already starting to see some of the storms erupting in that area. And in fact the threat stretches from the Great Lakes all the way down into eastern Texas throughout the overnight.
So let's time it out for you. Watch the storms as they approach Chicago.
[16:20:01]
And even though Chicago and St. Louis are not in the watch it wouldn't surprise me if new watches are issued as the night goes on. Watch those storms push to the east. Indianapolis by around 11:00 and the in the pre-dawn hours possibly Cincinnati stretching all the way down to let's say Jackson, Mississippi. But we're not done yet.
Unfortunately, Pamela, we've got a new storm threat on the horizon for Sunday and Monday. So we're going to kick off a new month where the old one left off with more tornados, the possibility of tornados and especially in the Texas panhandle as well as unfortunately Monday in sections of Wichita that were just hit last night.
And speaking of those storms from last night, the National Weather Service is out doing a damage survey right now so they can kind of assess the strength of these storms. A couple of EF-0 to EF-1 tornados in northern Kansas. We're still waiting for the survey results of the tornado that struck near Andover with the pictures that you're seeing on the screen right now. And unfortunately we're in a drumbeat of a lot of tornados this season.
March set a record. April was over 200. And we're on our way to that same tendency as we start the month of May.
BROWN: Yes, that's not a good sign for the future.
NORMAN: No.
BROWN: All right. Gene Norman, thank you.
Well, the historic drought in the west has authorities in Southern California taking drastic measures. Outdoor watering in three counties is now limited to just once per week. It's the first time water officials have ever implemented such a strict rule.
CNN's Camila Bernal is in L.A. for us. So, Camila, that's an unprecedented restriction. How much worse could this get?
CAMILA BERNAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A lot worse. Officials, Pam, are telling me that it could get to the point where many in Southern California won't be able to water their lawns at all, but officials telling me that they are hopeful that people listen to these warnings so that we don't get to that point. But, look, no matter where you look, it's becoming a lot easier to see the evidence of this mega drought in this region.
And in particular in Lake Mead which provides drinking water for more than 25 million people. The water levels are so low that its original valve that was put in in 1971 now sits above the water. So officials knew this was going to happen and in 2015 they started building a new valve that would go deeper into Lake Mead. And that's what's in operation right now. It started operating this weekend, they say, you know, things are going as planned, people are still getting their drinking water.
But the thing is that this highlights the problem and how big this problem is, how low the water is. Not just in Lake Mead, but in many of the lakes and reservoirs in the region and in Southern California. That's -- or in California as a whole. And that's why beginning June 1st, at least six million people will be impacted because they are now being told to only water their lawns once a week. And as we mentioned, it could get worse.
That's what the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California told us. We spoke to the general manager and here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ADEL HAGEKHALIL, METROPOLITAN WATER DISTRICT OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: If I don't see the response between now and September, then I will go in a mandating a full ban of outdoor watering across the service area that is impacted. That is serious and I'm ready do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERNAL: And there will be fines for people who do not reduce their water usage. Different cities will manage it differently. But at the end of the day, what they told me was look, we are running out of water and people need to listen. They need to conserve water because it could get a lot worse -- Pam.
BROWN: Camila Bernal, thank you very much.
And you're in the CNN NEWSROOM on this Saturday. Still ahead, key moments so far in Russia's war in Ukraine. War analyst Mason Clark joins me in a moment with his thoughts. Stick around.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:28:18]
BROWN: Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie has made an unexpected visit to Ukraine. She visited a boarding school and medical institution in Lviv and met children affected by a Russian missile strike on a train station helping transport refugees. A Ukrainian journalist says she saw Jolie during a coffee run in Lviv, apparently many in the cafe didn't even notice her. Jolie is a special envoy for the U.N.'s refugee agency but a spokesperson says her visit to Ukraine was personal.
Well, Russia now admits attacking Ukraine with cruise missiles fired from submarines. Russia's Defense Ministry has released this video and it shows a cruise missile launch from a diesel submarine somewhere in the Black Sea.
Mason Clark joins me now. He is the senior analyst and Russian team lead at the Institute for the Study of War.
Hi, Mason. Is this a new tactic by Russia in this war?
MASON CLARK, SENIOR ANALYST AND RUSSIAN TEAM LEAD, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR: Thank you for having me. So we don't know for sure whether or not the Russian Navy has used submarines to date in its invasion since February 24th. We know they've been using this type of cruise missile, the Caliber, from surface warships for quite some time.
There is a good chance that they were already using submarines, but this is just the first time that they've acknowledged it, likely to score propaganda victory and talk up the various weapons that they're using. But they used submarines throughout the Russian intervention in Syria, particularly in 2016 and 2017 to conduct very similar Caliber cruise missile strikes.
BROWN: So this is right out of the Russian playbook in a sense.
Why do you think they're just starting to do this now in the war? You know, we're so many months into this. What do you think this indicates to you?
[16:30:00]
In large part, I do think that it is almost a flexing of their capabilities in the leadup to May 9th, which is Victory Day and a very important holiday that the Kremlin sort of centers a lot of its narratives around.
As well as likely they are having to bring in new capabilities that they may not have originally deployed for this war, as it has gone on certainly longer than the Kremlin has wanted, and they are having to use these new munitions with surface warships possibly running out of their own stores or, as we saw a couple of weeks ago, being threatened by Ukrainian defenses.
BROWN: I want to talk about the Ukrainian counter-offenses. We're seeing Russia escalate. But we've also seen a lot from the Ukrainian counter-offenses being able to push Russia back and make Russia change its war strategy.
Tell us about that and how effective they were, particularly in Mykolaiv, why that was so important.
CLARK: Sure. So just today, and in the last 48 hour, we've been seeing in the northeast part of the country a number of attacks around the city of Kharkiv, which has been partially encircles for some time.
And the Ukrainian forces there are likely trying to force the Russians to send reinforcements intended for their offensive in the east to shore up those defenses and prevent the Ukrainians from pushing further out.
But as you noted, Ukrainians have had a number of successes so far in the war. And one of the most key was in mid-March, it was around March 18, I believe, when they finished it near that city of Mykolaiv, which is on the southern coast of Ukraine.
Over the course of a few days, Ukrainian forces pushed the Russians back around 90 kilometers. It was the first major Ukrainian counteroffensive in the war.
And pretty much ended Russian efforts to drive down to the key city of Odessa, which was almost certainly a major Russian goal at the start of the war.
Since then, Russian forces in Kherson, which is sort of the main city east of Mykolaiv, have been largely on the defensive trying to maintain their current positions against further counterattacks by Ukrainian forces.
BROWN: You mentioned Odessa. Odessa is being hit hard right now by the Russians. It is clear that that is part of Ukraine that Russia wants to take as part of its strategy.
You believe though another key moment is a briefing by a Russian spokesman on March 25th. Tell us about that.
CLARK: Sure. So that was done by the spokesperson of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Sergei Rudskoy, to sort of sum up the Kremlin's desired framing of the first month of what they still continue to call the Special Military Operation, not a war, in Ukraine.
It was noteworthy in that it was the first claim by the Russian military that their focus was going to be on eastern Ukraine.
Rudskoy claimed that the Russian operation around Kyiv was just a feint intended to distract and degrade the Ukrainian military, but that the real focus would be capturing Donetsk and Lugansk Oblasts in the east of the country, which we are now seeing the Russians do.
But very importantly, that was just incorrect. The Russian war aim at the beginning of the invasion on February 24th was a decapitation strike essentially to capture Ukraine's capitol of Kyiv and force the Ukrainian government to capitulate.
That failed fairly early on. And they still struggled on throughout much of March trying to capture the city before withdrawing around April 3rd and 4th.
But very crucially, that March 25th speech was the first acknowledgement that the Kremlin was revising its objectives in the war and shifting to the east. Even though it came a week or two after that operation around Kyiv had largely failed.
BROWN: Do you think Russia will use nuclear weapons during this war?
CLARK: Unfortunately, we cannot fully rule it out. I think it's -- to be very clear, it is very unlikely.
But there's a possibility that the Russian military will use some sort of tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, likely to try to force the Ukrainian government into surrendering and dissuading NATO and the U.S. from any further aid.
But we've seen no indications of active preparations for the use of a nuclear weapon. And it would be a major, major escalation that we don't see coming anytime soon.
BROWN: Yes, certainly. So it's a long that would happen is what I hear from you, but there is a non-zero chance.
Mason Clark, thank you very much for coming on.
CLARK: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
BROWN: Well, coming up, dying for what they believe. Why the FDA commissioner believes that misinformation is killing more Americans than anything else.
[16:34:33]
You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Now for a headline impossible to ignore. The FDA commissioner says he thinks misinformation is, quote, "the leading cause of death in the U.S." Take that in.
Dr. Robert Califf says he believes that it is at least partly to blame for our falling life expectancy and is now more than five years shorter than other wealthy nations.
He went on to say, "It is beyond my imagination that we could have a free vaccine that reduces your risk of death by 90 percent. And yet, a substantial portion of our population will not take it."
From lies about scientifically sound vaccines to lies that fueled the assault on the U.S. capitol, we're living in a society where conspiracy theories are now firmly mainstream.
Elizabeth Williamson is a writer at "The New York Times." She also wrote "Sandy Hook, An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth."
[16:40:06]
Elizabeth, welcome.
I want to start with your book. You wrote about how online conspiracy theorists claim that the government staged the Sandy Hook shooting. I mean, to most of us, that is ludicrous. It's actually disgusting frankly.
Why did that take root?
ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON, FEATURE WRITER, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": So the Sandy Hook shooting, because of the magnitude of the crime, was really kind of a watershed moment in the gun debate.
It was seen that way by both sides. Whether you were for or against additional gun legislation, Pamela, you were engaged by this particular event.
And people rightly thought that this would be a moment in which there would be a very heated debate over gun legislation.
And for people who opposed that legislation, denying the Sandy Hook shooting became a kind of tool in their toolkit part of the battle.
They began to spread the lie that this was an elaborate hoax, that it was a pretext by the federal government to deprive Americans of their firearms.
BROWN: I will never forget personally speaking to a player who was in the NFL -- I will not name names -- well-known player, who actually mentioned the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory to me.
And I remember being taken aback, like you believe that?
I mean, it just was fascinating to me, as a journalist, to see people of all different backgrounds and positions in society believing this. Sandy Hook families have been suing Infor War's Alex Jones for calling
the school shooting a hoax.
Explain what you mean when you call this a foundational moment for misinformation and disinformation. It seems like that it was really in some ways a pivotal moment when it comes to conspiracy theories.
WILLIAMSON: Absolutely. The shooting occurred not only as we just discussed at this pivotal moment for the gun debate, but it also was a moment in which social media usage among Americans had increased exponentially from the time of the last major school shooting, which was in 2007 at Virginia Tech.
There was none of that conspiracy theorizing around that shooting, which was horrific. And 32 people died in that shooting. But there just wasn't the uptake.
And so in 2008, at the time of Virginia Tech, for example, there were 20 million global Facebook users. By the time five years later, when Sandy Hook happened, there were one billion global users of Facebook.
Twitter, there were 5,000 tweets a day in 2007. And five years later, during Sandy Hook, there were 5,000 tweets every second.
So we just had this sort of delivery mechanism for these conspiracy theories. We had the moment where people who opposed new gun legislation found it convenient to just say that the shooting never happened.
And we had a kind of political moment in the country where people were ready to embrace -- we had already seen people embrace the racist Birther lie about President Obama. And so it was fertile territory for this to this root.
But then you swiftly saw other myths take root. Like Pizzagate and QAnon, coronavirus myths that you just mentioned, and the 2020 election lie and then the attack on the capitol.
BROWN: I have family members that believe in Pizzagate. And there's no way that I can talk them out of it, even providing the facts.
WILLIAMSON: Yes.
BROWN: And I've heard that anecdotally from so many others.
I wonder, though, how much of it is about like politics and people trying to like, you know, do it for political motivations? And how much of it is about like emotions, right?
You can't accept and process such a horrible thing happening like the Sandy Hook shooting, like this is the only way that you can kind of move forward.
WILLIAMSON: That is a great question, Pamela.
So in the very beginning, after the shooting, a lot of the people who didn't want to believe that it happened were young moms, as a matter of fact, who had children around the same age as the children who were killed, first graders, five and six years old.
Those people were there for anybody who could tell them that these little children hadn't died in that way. But they were pretty swiftly convinced.
And then what people were left with was this sort of hard knot of people who got a lot of psychic income from spreading this myth. It sort of elevated them. They became, you know, citizen journalists and online investigators.
[16:45:00]
And they gathered in big groups on social media. And they built each other up. They enhanced each other's self-esteem. They had a sort of importance and a sense of social belonging that they built around spreading this lie.
And so it has gone ever since, with every one of these big misinformation campaigns.
BROWN: And look at QAnon right there. It is just incredible to see how that has just picked up like wildfire and is spreading across the world.
Elizabeth Williamson, just a fascinating conversation. I hope you will come back on the show to further discuss this. So much more to talk about with this issue.
WILLIAMSON: Thanks, Pamela.
BROWN: Naomi Judd, of the Grammy-winning country duo the Judds, has died we just learned.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SINGING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Naomi and her daughter, Winnona, ruled the country music charts in the 1980s. The Kentucky natives won five Grammy Awards. Naomi was also the mother of actress, Ashley Judd.
Her daughters announced her death in a statement, writing, "Today, we, sisters, experienced a tragedy. We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness. We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief. And we know that, as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory."
Naomi Judd was 76 years old.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:51:11] BROWN: America is facing a housing affordability crisis. Over the past
two years, rents are up about 20 percent across the country.
CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich spoke to Florida families who are being forced out of their homes.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAURA GUILMAIN, FLORIDA RENTER: Less and less and less.
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS & POLITICS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Laura Guilmain and her daughter, Carson, have 30 days to find a new home.
YURKEVICH (on camera): How many properties do you think you've explored?
GUILMAIN: Thousands, thousands.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): For three years, Guilmain has been paying $2,100 a month for this three-bedroom in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. But last month, she got a letter from the landlord.
GUILMAIN: Due to unforeseen circumstances --
YURKEVICH: Her new rent, $3,200 a month.
An attorney for her landlord tells CNN rising property taxes and mortgage rates are to blame.
GUILMAIN: I freaked out. We can't afford it. Can't do it.
YURKEVICH: There's a housing affordability crisis. Home prices are sky high, forcing more Americans into a competitive rental market.
Guilmain, a single mom and disabled veteran, is reliant on rental assistance from Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.
She already had fewer options, but now landlords looking to capitalize on rising rents are less willing to accept the strict guidelines of her rental voucher.
(on camera): How critical is the HUD voucher to your existence?
GUILMAIN: That is our existence. Without it, we would be homeless.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): Rents are rising across the country, up a record nearly 20 percent on average in two years, double that in cities like Memphis, Tampa, and Riverside, California.
But the Miami Palm Beach area tops them all at 58 percent, nearly three times the national average.
GUILMAIN: When there's a hurricane, it's illegal for gas stations to jack up the prices. Why is there not a cap in the state of Florida? Why am I looking at a 43 percent increase? YURKEVICH: In fact, it's illegal in Florida to impose rent controls.
SARA ESPINOZA, FLORIDA RENTER: Actually, it gives me a lot of anxiety.
YURKEVICH: Sara Espinoza is facing a 106 percent increase on her rent in Coral Gables, Florida.
ESPINOZA: Put it together.
YURKEVICH: For 22 years, she's called this three-bedroom home. She raised her son here.
She says the $1,700 she pays in rent is below market value, but the $3,500 her new landlord is charging is out of her budget.
ESPINOZA: It's not reasonable at all. I guess right now everyone is just price gouging because people need somewhere to live.
YURKEVICH: She set a new budget of $2,800. This week, she found an apartment right next door. But it's smaller and overbudget by $400.
(on camera): How's that rationalize in your mind?
ESPINOZA: It doesn't. It doesn't rationalize at all. I just think it's very unfair. It makes me upset.
GUILMAIN: You know how many people have reached out?
YURKEVICH (voice-over): For Laura and Carson, their search continues with no prospects in sight.
(on camera): So where does that put you?
GUILMAIN: It puts me on the street.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN, Miami, Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: American veterans traveling to Ukraine to help and to fight. What is driving them? I'll ask a former Marine who was there and did just that.
[16:54:38]
Plus, the search for dozens of people missing after a building collapsed in central China.
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BROWN: Devastating images coming out of China. Five survivors have been pulled from the rubble of a six-story building that collapsed Friday in Changsha. Rescue crews are searching for dozens more people believed to be trapped.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
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BROWN: Chinese state media reports the building housed a restaurant, cinema, hotel and several apartments. And that the owner has been detained of suspicion of illegal construction.
[16:59:57]
The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.
I'm Pamela Brown in Washington.
The top stories, new video emerging from Ukraine.
