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Voters in Seven States Head to Polls for Primaries Today; Officials Say, Mariupol Being Quietly Closed Amid Cholera Fears; Hospitals Grapple With Shortage of Crucial Part of Imaging Tests. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired June 07, 2022 - 10:30   ET

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

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Today is the biggest primary day of the year so far, as voters in seven states head to the polls, California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Our Political Director David Chalian is here with all of the answers on all of the big races, as he always is. So, you have got so many eyes, David, on Los Angeles and San Francisco for different reasons. Explain.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes. Well, we're going to learn a lot about this intraparty, Democratic Party conversation, about how the party is positioning itself both from a policy point of view and a message point of view on crime.

This is what we're seeing. You mentioned that L.A. mayor's race in Los Angeles, right? It's nonpartisan opening primary, they way they do it in California, the top two finishers likely to go into the general election. There they are, Rick Caruso, a Republican turned Democrat billionaire real estate developer versus progressive Congresswoman Karen Bass. And Caruso has basically made cleaning up Los Angeles of crime and homelessness as the center of his campaign.

In San Francisco, you have a D.A., a district attorney there who may be recalled. Chesa Boudin, you see right there, he has the job that Kamala Harris once had. You remember, she was seen not that long ago as perhaps too tough a prosecutor.

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There was all the hash tag, Kamala is a cop. Well, now, this whole notion of a progressive prosecutor is now very much on the line here because, indeed, of an uptick of crime. And he may be recalled from his job for being too progressive, too lenient against criminals.

So, I do think these two local California races are going to have a broader national sort of impact in terms of this issue of defunding the police or soft on crime or what have you.

SCIUTTO: All right. So, Montana, you have a former Trump cabinet official, Ryan Zinke, actually forced out by the Trump administration, right, for alleged corruption here, resurrecting his political fortunes perhaps?

CHALIAN: He is. He is seeking to be a Congressman from Montana again. With the Decennial Census, Montana got an extra congressional seat out of it. So, there was a new district created in Montana, and Ryan Zinke is running to get a seat back in Congress after that episode you noted, Jim, with the Trump administration.

HARLOW: David, also on Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate for Senate, John Fetterman, who is recovering from a stroke, is rolling out his first two general election ads. One of them is airing on Fox. Here is a clip.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Washington, D.C. attacked towns like this for years. They wrote bad deals to send away our jobs, approved the drugs that kill our kids. We need help. They just talk.

Not John Fetterman. For 20 years, he's lived in a place like this, building, pushing, fighting.

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HARLOW: What do you make of this strategy?

CHALIAN: Well, using a veteran there to make the argument on Fox News to their viewers, on behalf of Fetterman instead Fetterman itself is interesting. But this is the strategy that Barrack Obama left behind to the Democratic Party when he left the White House, Poppy. He said you have to campaign everywhere. Even if you're not going to win in those places, you have to try and mitigate the losses. And that's what Fetterman is trying to do, by speaking to the red portions of Pennsylvania on Fox News in an attempt to mitigate those losses there and run up the score, of course, with the Democratic base. You have got to be talking and campaigning to everyone.

SCIUTTO: And, by the way, those issues that he identifies there, those are bipartisan issues when you think about them, shipping jobs overseas, et cetera, is kind of a backlash like things like NAFTA.

CHALIAN: Yes, economic populism that courses through both parties.

SCIUTTO: Interesting strategy there. David Chalian, thanks so much.

Coming up next, new images of smoke rising in the Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk, the new frontline of Russia's war, it is so bloody out there. We're going to have an update on the state of the battlefield.

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SCIUTTO: Don't avert your eyes from this war. It continues on. The situation growing more grim in the devastated city of Mariupol. Health and safety conditions there deteriorating severely under Russian control. An adviser to Mariupol's mayor says there are, quote, corpses everywhere, because the dead aren't being buried. The city now faces the possibility of a cholera outbreak.

On the frontlines, the battle moving to Severodonetsk, where Ukrainian and Russian forces are in street-to-street battles, and they're bloody, thousands of civilians still trapped there, the casualties among the military forces there also enormous.

Let's speak now to Major General Paul Eaton, CNN Military Analyst, former Commanding General of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team in Iraq. General, good to have you back.

I wonder, when you look at the battlefield, look at all the inputs, and I know you've been following this closely, is Russia winning in the east right now?

MAJ. GEN. PAUL EATON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Russia is approaching stalemate right now but they've shifted their approach. They're doing World War II-type Russian warfare. And it's heavy artillery, creeping as close to the artillery impacts as they can, and they're gaining some terrain.

But, as you mentioned in Mariupol and what we're seeing beginning in terrain that they have covered down on, once you gain terrain, you've got to keep it. And we have seen a developing insurgency in terrain that the Russians have rolled past, and this is not going to play well for them. Counterinsurgency map is pretty simple.

SCIUTTO: I've heard for some time from folks who know better than me, frankly, but just attest it that Russia can't sustain this assault for too long. Weeks, months, you know, is the question. What is too long? But do you see any sign of them reaching some sort of limit here? Because, as brutal as it is, they're still getting a lot of artillery in, they don't seem to be too concerned about their own personnel losses.

EATON: Indeed, there's a term, culminating point, whenever you attack. The Russians have apparently, if they have not run out of smart weapons, they don't have a whole lot left. So, what they're using is artillery stores that date back to the cold war. And the U.S. sanctions are definitely having an impact as far as modernization of anything that they have. So, they will culminate. They don't have the logistics to support indefinitely, and they're going up against a very determined enemy.

I would also like to bring up -- go ahead.

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SCIUTTO: I was just going to ask you about a different topic just because we have limited time, just to bring it back to this country for a moment. Because you have quite a powerful commentary on Twitter yesterday, speaking specifically about the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, given your experience in war and saying that, in no uncertain terms, this is a weapon of war that does not belong in the hands of civilians. I wonder what compelled you to make that comment and tell our viewers why you believe that.

EATON: Jim, thank you. The reason -- the tipping point for me was Robb Elementary. And I find it deplorable that in this country, we don't know where to draw the line on the Second Amendment rights to all Americans. At what point do you allow advanced weaponry into the hands of civilians who -- and we allow it to happen with civilians who are not prepared to use the weapon appropriately.

Very much the case in Texas and the AR-15 and the M-4 Carbine are almost the same -- carbine are almost the same fire. American soldiers do not use burst fire. They use single shot with good optics, good training and they are devastating. The AR-15 in the hands of a modestly trained or even novice, as we have seen, can be a horrific weapon. The round is a weapon of war. The rifle is a weapon of war, period.

SCIUTTO: Well, you have seen warfare close up in Iraq and elsewhere. Major General Paul Eaton, we appreciate you joining this morning.

EATON: Jim, thank you very much.

HARLOW: Powerful to hear from him, especially on that in this moment.

Still ahead, it is not just baby formula, supply chain issues are causing shortages of critical items and a critical item used to help diagnose patients from everything from cancer to blood clots. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains, next.

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HARLOW: So, right now, supply chain shortages are hitting so many aspects of the health care system. COVID lockdowns earlier this year would force the closure of a G.E. health care plant, have led to a shortage of contrast dye.

SCIUTTO: Yes. You might not know where this turns out but it's used by doctors in hospitals in diagnostic scans, like the MRI. It's led to a delay in diagnosis and treatment for many patients. That has consequences.

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, he has been investigating the issue. So, Sanjay, tell us where this comes up and, without it, what the impact is.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, it's contrast dye that's injected into the blood stream. It's I.V. contrast dye. It has iodine in it, which makes it more easily imaged. And that's sort of the key. If you want to look at a blood vessel specifically and you have this iodine-based dye in it, it's easier to see. Someone has a stroke, for example, you can find where the blood clot is that's causing that stroke.

In my world, this is a brain scan without dye. Now, take a look at what happens when you inject dye into the blood stream. That area in the upper right corner, that's a big white mass, it turns out to be a type of brain tumor known as hemangioma, may have been hard to see otherwise.

If you look at the abdominal area, liver, for example, on the left, the liver is in the upper left corner, that looks normal, pretty uniformed. Inject dye and you see two areas that actually represent cancer, a type of cancer of the liver there. So, that's an example of how important this is, especially when you're monitoring people for cancer, things like that.

As you mentioned, that plant in Shanghai, early April through just this past week, it was shut down two months. And that's where a lot -- about half the hospitals in this country are dependent on that specific dye.

HARLOW: That's the difference potentially between detecting cancer and not, right? I mean, how many patients are we talking about with potential delays to either detection or treatment?

GUPTA: If you look at all the scans in any given year in the United States that require dye, it's in the tens of millions, maybe close to 30 million, 40 million. Half the hospitals, again, dependent on the dye from this plant.

This gives you an idea of just how isolated some of these supply chains are, that plant two months down. So, it's thousands of patients whose scans are probably delayed as a result of this. They'll get their scans ultimately but delayed. And as you point out, months, that can mean a big difference.

SCIUTTO: One of the issues in the formula shortage, right, is limited suppliers. One made 42 percent of it, so, one issue there that you basically stopped the whole supply chain. I wonder, do you see similar patterns here? What can be done to prevent this from happening again?

GUPTA: This is one of the biggest lessons, I think, in health care, beyond the obvious ones, is just the supply chain and how stymied we can get by things. We see this with raw ingredients from medicines. There were two nasal swab makers in the world. I mean, nasal swabs, you don't think of until all of a sudden the entire world needs nasal swabs, one in Maine, one in Italy.

It's going to create a pressure on the health care system to diversify these supply chains. I mean, we have seen too many times now what happens, the FDA commissioner was testifying about this exact issue just a few days ago.

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So, I think that's where some of these solutions probably lie.

HARLOW: I had no idea until that report. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks very much.

GUPTA: Thank you.

HARLOW: Thanks to all of you for joining us today. We will see you right back here tomorrow. I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim sciutto.

At This Hour with Kate Bolduan starts right after a quick break.

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