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Williams Vague about Retirement; Mohamed El-Erian is Interviewed about the Federal Reserve; Oregon Shooting Suspect's Online Blog. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired August 30, 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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[09:31:33]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Serena Williams is advancing to the second round in what could be, could be, her final run at the U.S. Open. Last night the 23-time - 23-time grand slam champion won her first round match in straight sets before a crowd studded with stars.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Totally was but don't say she's retiring just yet. Williams appears to be casting doubt on whether she will actually call it quits completely.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SERENA WILLIAMS, DEFEATED DANKA KOVINIC IN U.S. OPEN FIRST ROUND: Yes, I've been pretty vague about it, right? Yes. I'm going to stay vague, because you never know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: You never know. Honest answer.

CNN's Carolyn Manno was at Author Ash Stadium for all the excitement.

So, Carolyn, she raised some questions about her plans for the future. And what I think is so important is, she's human. She's the GOAT, but she's human like everyone else. And sometimes you just don't totally know.

CAROLYN MANNO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Listen, she's not immune to feeling everything that goes into this. It's hard to say goodbye, you know, and she's not one for goodbyes. And so this has been a really difficult decision for her. It doesn't mean that it's not the right decision for her personally and also with how she wants to evolve professionally, but this comes with a lot of different feelings.

On the one hand, she's relieved. She has carried so much pressure. The weight of expectations for more than two decades. On the other hand, she's really sad because she has an undying love for the sport of tennis. I mean it has been part of her identity her entire life. And so she's feeling all of these different things and she's trying to compartmentalize the best she can.

And, oh, by the way, she also playing a grand slam tournament, something that she would desperately like to win, even though she has 23 singles titles. And so she's feeling it all and she's allowed to feel it all, Poppy, like you said.

I want to play you a little bit of her from last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SERENA WILLIAMS, 23-TIME GRAND SLAM CHAMPION: I've had to like come back and, you know, you just never give up. And it sounds cliche, but that really means something. You have -- no matter what you're going through out there, and I just want people to be inspired by my story. I'm from Compton, California, and -

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Yes.

WILLIAMS: You know?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shoutout to Compton.

WILLIAMS: And I made it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANNO: She certainly has, you know. And she's so real. You always kind of know what she's thinking and feeling because she wears her emotions on her sleeve.

And, Jim and Poppy, I would say that is one of the beautiful parts of last night is, there was this incredible juxtaposition of star power. You know, she herself shining the most bright. She had this incredible celestial outfit that I think just delighted a lot of people. And her daughter Olympia was there. And - but there was also so many regular people there that had driven across the country and made t-shirts with her faces on it, you know, all over it just because they wanted to be a part of this history and to see her. And she relates to so many different people and has opened the door for the sport for so many people as well. It was a remarkable evening and it's not over yet.

SCIUTTO: Yes, to say she's made it, as she did there, is quite the understatement.

Carolyn Manno, thanks so much.

For more on Serena's legacy, her achievements, we're joined now by CNN contributor Cari Champion.

Good to have you on this morning.

CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

SCIUTTO: So you heard Carolyn mention an important statistic there, she's got 23 majors, she's one shy of the record at 24 set by Margaret Court. And I wonder, you know, she's a competitor, could that be the thing that keeps her in it?

CHAMPION: I thought that would be the thing to keep her in it two years ago when she made it her -- some years ago when she made it to the U.S. Open final.

[09:35:05]

I don't necessarily know if that's the case anymore for Serena. As she said, the word "evolve" is very important. She has so many other opportunities. I think what happened last night is that for the very first time, especially at the U.S. Open, she felt the love, she felt the appreciation. I think she was caught up in the moment. And she was really surprised by the crowd and the reception. I had an opportunity to talk to her agent this morning and Serena was just overwhelmed by the love. So, I felt as if that response had a lot to do with that moment.

HARLOW: You tweeted, the GOAT conversation is so necessary. Naomi Osaka said it best, Serena Williams is the biggest thing to happen to the sport, no qualifiers.

CHAMPION: Yes. Yes. Yes.

HARLOW: No qualifiers.

CHAMPION: No qualifiers. I say no qualifiers because, in the world of sports, we like to talk about the top five. It's always important to have a top five list, if you will. And I put Serena in my top five. Not the best female athlete, not the best in tennis. Yes, that's also true. But if I had to compare her to someone, she's a transcendent athlete, much like Michael Jordan was for basketball. And I feel as if people don't understand what she's done for the sport. She's changed it.

The best thing that I noticed last night, looking at other young players watch her play. Coco Gauff is in the audience, watching intensely. This -- she's a top 20 player. She's like, look at Serena.

HARLOW: Yes.

CHAMPION: She's done it. She's the best. She's in awe watching her play. Now, that's not something you see often from one player to the next. There's certain players that have it and that - and certain athletes who have it, and that is Serena.

It was such a special night. I have to add this too, Poppy, she's -

HARLOW: I'm only this jealous, actually this jealous that you got to be there.

CHAMPION: Yes, it was -- it was so amazing. So, I don't know if everyone noticed the passing of the torch. It was Olympia. Olympia had the braids and the beads, as Serena and Venus had the braids and the beads when they first came to tennis. And it was so shocking in this very white world, look at what they're doing. And Serena politely passed the torch. HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Cari, speaking of passing the torch, I wonder, because, of course, Serena talking there about just the amazing story from Compton to the very top of supremely competitive sports, and one that was - that excluded, you know, to a large degree, people of color here. Who, in the tennis world right now, I mean you see someone like Coco Gauff, who grew up idolizing Serena, as being able to pick that up at this moment?

CHAMPION: What Serena - and I also include her sister in this. What Serena did in terms of opening tennis to a world of young black and brown girls was so necessary, so important, and so beautiful in the sense that that is an entirely new element that's just not known. And you see a Coco Gauff or a Sloane Stephens or a Naomi Osaka, for that matter, who said, I don't mean to disrespect Novak or Rafael Nadal or evening Roger Federer for that matter, but Serena is the biggest thing in the sport. Understand the gravity of what she's been able to do. She dominated her generation, she dominated the next, and here she is playing that third generation and still not willing to give up.

HARLOW: Yes. She's remarkable. And I think I said a few weeks ago when she gave that interview to "Vogue," I think her biggest chapter in terms of impact on the world may be after this, just in terms of what she can do and what she represents.

CHAMPION: Yes.

HARLOW: So, Cari, thanks a lot.

CHAMPION: You're welcome.

HARLOW: So glad you got to be there last night.

All right, the Federal Reserve has been really aggressively hiking interest rates. Fed Chair Jerome Powell says more likely coming. Ahead, how high do they have to go, and what will it mean for a recession.

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[09:43:34]

HARLOW: Minutes from now we're going to get a look at a key economic indicator that is the consumer confidence index for the month of August. That will give us a little bit more insight into how everyone out there feels about the economy right now. On Wall Street, markets opened higher this morning after the worst two days in more than two months. That slide due to fears that the Fed could, by hiking interest rates more, send the U.S. into recession, if we're not already in one.

Joining me now to talk about it all, Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, also the president of Queens College at Cambridge University.

Mohamed, always good to have you. And if we could actually start on some new analysis that I thought was

really striking because the has - is dealing with this dual mandate, right? Price stability and maximum unemployment. But the real question is, what's the cost of bringing inflation down to, you know, the target 2 percent. And economists at RSM just put out this analysis this morning that says it will be difficult to get back to a 2 percent inflation target in the near term without triggering a recession that results in somewhere between 5 and 6 million job losses. They're talking about -- that's a staggering number in the United States. And I just wonder, do you agree with that analysis?

MOHAMED EL-ERIAN, CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISER, ALLIANZ: So, I think that that is the tragedy of the situation we're in now. Inflation has been allowed by the Fed to get out of control. And rather than just tap the brakes, they could have done that last year, they're having to slam on the brakes. And when you slam on the brakes, you cause collateral damage. And the risk here is that indeed we do go into recession, that there are many lost jobs.

And it's sad, Poppy, because this was not inevitable.

[09:45:04]

We could have avoided this. But, unfortunately, the Fed did not respond fast enough, and that's our reality right now.

HARLOW: So, the question is, is there a better alternative than the reality that you just mentioned? Senator Elizabeth Warren thinks so. Listen to what she said to our Dana Bash this weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): Do you know what's worse than high prices and a strong economy? It's high prices and millions of people out of work. I'm very worried that the Fed is going to tip this economy into a recession.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Her argument is, they don't need to raise rates a lot at this point. That the inflation now is less painful, in her mind, than millions of folks out of work, and still relatively high prices.

Do you agree with her?

EL-ERIAN: Well, where she is right is that worse than inflation is inflation and high unemployment. We had that in the '70s. It's awful. We even calculated a misery index, which is the sum of inflation rate and the unemployment rate, because it is miserable to have both.

Look, it's hard to avoid right now because the Fed is late. You can minimize the cost through three things in particular. One is, better protect the most vulnerable segments of our population, focus fiscal policy. Second, do more on the supply side to increase productivity. And, third, encourage higher labor force participation, encourage women in particular to come back into the labor force through better health care, childcare, et cetera.

Now, that's what you need.

HARLOW: Yes, but, you know, I'm trying to stay optimistic, half glass - you know, glass half full, but those are -- a lot of that would be stuff that needs to go through Congress. And that -- a lot of that is going to take a long time to achieve. And we're talking about a real near-term threat here.

I was struck by your recent op-ed in "The Financial Times" where you essentially argue, look, Fed Chair Jerome Powell got it partially right in his comments in Jackson Hole on Friday about, you know, what's going on right now, but he didn't deal with the reality of how much they missed. And I get that hindsight is 2020. But make the - make the case that it is important for the American people to hear now why specifically the Fed thinks it got it so wrong on inflation, why they were so wrong when they called it transitory.

EL-ERIAN: Well, they were so wrong because it wasn't transitory, because they didn't look into history and they didn't realize that the drivers on inflation evolve. That's what happens when you're asleep at the wheel, different things start driving inflation. And it becomes, as Chair Powell said himself, spread throughout the economy.

Now, why is it important to admit it? Because the Fed forecasts are still not taken seriously enough by economists and the markets. And if your Fed is not credible, you risk de-anchoring inflation expectation. You risk having another driver to inflation, which is the last thing we need right now.

So, it's critical for the Fed to do what other have done. The Bank of England has done that. The European Central Bank has done that. To come out and say, look, we committed policy errors, this is why we made the mistake and this is how we are better now at forecasting inflation. Without that, it's going to be very hard to limit the damage to the real economy and to inequality.

HARLOW: Mohamed El-Erian, always so insightful, thanks very much.

EL-ERIAN: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: So important to see where this is all going.

Other story we're following.

The gunman behind a deadly shooting in an Oregon grocery store may have been planning additional attacks, including one at a high school. What police are learning now from his online posts.

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[09:53:26]

SCIUTTO: Police now say that one of the victims killed in a shooting at a Safeway grocery store in Oregon was fighting to disarm the gunman. Police say that victim, 66-year-old store employee Donald Ray Surrett Jr. died heroically, probably saved several lives. The other victim, 84-year-old customer Glenn Edward Bennett.

HARLOW: And authorities are now saying the shooter may have planned other attacks. They found online blog entries from June that included an initial plan to target a high school.

Our Josh Campbell is with us.

And, Josh, authorities say the gunman may have been or was planning a mass shooting?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Poppy, that's among these disturbing new details that we're learning about this deadly supermarket shooting that occurred Sunday in Oregon. Police in Bend say that a 20-year-old suspect opened fire inside a Safeway grocery store with an AR-15-style rifle. Police later found three Molotov cocktails in his car along with a sawed-off shotgun.

Now, two people died in the attack. The shooter also died of what police are calling a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Authorities say they are aware the shooter may have posted information online regarding another planned attack. CNN has identified several online blog postings appearing to belong to the shooter in which he wrote about his desire to commit acts of violence. Now, those posts have since been taken down, but we're talking about 35 posts in total. One indicating that he was partially inspired by the school shooting in Columbine in 1999. In another post he describes himself as, quote, a ticking time bomb. And as you mentioned, he actually refers to another planned attack potentially taking place in September.

[09:55:01]

Now, authorities say they were not aware of these posts or the suspect before the attack, but they're still working to determine a specific motive in the shooting.

Finally, authorities have identified the two victims who were killed. As you mentioned, 84-year-old Glenn Bennett. He was a customer at the store. He was shot near the supermarket's entrance.

And a second victim, 66-year-old store employee Donald Surrett Jr. He's being described by police as a hero for confronting and attempting to disarm the shooter, likely saving additional lives. He himself also, sadly, killed in the shooting. Just yet another instance of deadly gun violence here in the United States.

Poppy and Jim.

HARLOW: Josh Campbell, we appreciate the update.

Today, the Justice Department will respond to former President Trump's demand for a third party to review those documents removed from Mar-a- Lago. What are the chances that Trump will get that special master? That's coming up.

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HARLOW: It is the top of the hour. Good morning, everyone, I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm