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Elon Musk Completes Twitter Acquisition; Biden Touts Economic Progress Ahead of Midterms; Warnock and Walker in Tight Georgia Senate Race; Police in Arizona Say No Apparent Political Motive in Burglary; GDP Growth in 3rd Quarter Higher than Expected; South Korea: North Korea Fired Two Ballistic Missiles; Putin Downplays Fears of Nuclear Standoff with West. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired October 28, 2022 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us in the United States and all around the world. I'm Max Foster in London. Just ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Great economic report today. The GDP report. Things are looking good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're coming after me today. They're going to come after you tomorrow. But I can tell you right now, they can't take me down because I'm a bad man. And I can tell you that right now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you're talking circles and doing all of that mess. You know, the thing is, listen, you can get rotated all you want, I lost my damn son. And your anger is not out match mine here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Max Foster.
FOSTER: It's Friday, October 28th. 9 a.m. here in London, 4 a.m. in New York and 1 a.m. in San Francisco. The city where Twitter is based.
Elon Musk now owns the influential social media platform according to a source familiar with the deal. And according to two sources one of his first decisions was to fire three top executives including the CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk has suggested Twitter could be in for a major shakeup now that he's in charge including possibly allowing former U.S. President Donald Trump back onto the platform. But one expert told us earlier the content moderation is a challenge for other social media companies as well.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VITTORIA ELLIOTT, PLATFORMS AND POWER REPORTER, WIRED: Especially when we're talking about issues of content moderation, of hate speech and all this stuff, this is stuff that every social platform struggles with, has continued to deal with when you are dealing with, you know, cultures, language, politics from all over the world on your platform and you're trying to figure out how to make that work. How to deal with it legally. How to deal with it morally and how to deal with it contextually. That's something that legal scholars and technologists and anthropologists have still have not figured out fully how to deal with. The challenges Twitter faces are in many ways ones for the entire sector and no one has quite figured it out yet. I don't think it's necessarily likely that a new CEO is going to magically solve that either.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: On Thursday Musk tried to address some concerns related to his own ship telling advertisers the platform cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.
And hours ago, he also tweeted, the bird is free.
I'm not entirely clear what that means. Twitter will be suspended from the New York Stock Exchange though when trading resumes in the coming hours because it will now be privately owned. One business expert says the acquisition will only add to Twitter's existing problems.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JASMINE ENBERG, PRINCIPAL ANALYST, INSIDER INTELLIGENCE: I expect the ad business to continue suffering from impacts of many of the problems that it and the rest of the social media companies have been dealing with. Twitter is a last essential platforms for many advertisers. It's one of the places that they may pull first when there are ad cuts or when their budgets are tightened. And so, I expect to see that there will be quite a bit of advertising pullbacks, both in terms of the macroeconomic headwinds, as well as concerns related to the Musk ordeal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: 11 days to go until the U.S. midterm elections and millions of Americans are voting early, nearly 14 million in total. Control of the House and Senate are up for grabs and 36 states are picking governors. Florida leads the pack with close to $2 million ballots cast. California, Georgia and Texas have all seen more than a million early voters. Among them former President Jimmy Carter. A spokesperson says the 98-year-old cast his absentee ballot on Tuesday.
The current U.S. president is claiming progress in the economy and his closing message before the midterms. At a speech in Syracuse, New York Joe Biden warned that Republicans would cut Social Security and Medicare if they take power in Congress. And he bragged about his record of keeping and creating jobs.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: 9,000 jobs from PhDs and engineers, HVAC technicians, machine operators with an average salary of $100,000 a year. And tens of thousands more jobs across the supply chain.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: More from CNN's Jeremy Diamond.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[04:05:00]
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, President Biden on Thursday touting this $100 billion of investments from the semiconductor manufacturing giant Micron right here in Syracuse, New York. The president talking about his economic record and manufacturing boom that has happened under his watch.
But really the president is speaking 12 days away from the midterm elections was also seeking to sharpen the contrast with Republicans. Making this a key political argument ahead of the midterm elections. Democrats have seen warning signs flashing across the country in polls and all of the major races.
And what the president did was he was touting his economic record but he was looking to contrast that with what he said a Republican majority would do if elected. The president saying that Republicans would repeal key cost savings measures in the Inflation Reduction Act which the president warned would be reckless and irresponsible. And the president also said that Republicans would be messing with the full faith and credit of the United States and threatening a government shutdown over Medicare. Listen.
BIDEN: Republican leadership in the Congress has said, and made it clear, and if they don't get their way, if I don't vote to shut down -- excuse me, if I don't vote to reduce Social Security and Medicare, if I don't support that, they're going to shut down the government. Refuse to pay America's bills for the first time in American history. To put America in default. Again, read this, this is what they're saying. Unless we yield to their demands and cut Social Security and Medicare.
DIAMOND: And that was a doubling down of the message that we've increasingly heard from the president as we been nearing those midterm elections. Remember, voters say that inflation and the economy are top of their list of concerns. And that's why the president is trying to turn this election from the referendum into an election about choice. Choice between Democrats and Republicans.
The president on Thursday was also speaking in a key Congressional district, the 22nd Congressional district in New York which is a top election here and the president certainly hoping that by touting the jobs and investments coming right here, that he can help put the Democrats over the line.
Jeremy Diamond, CNN, traveling with the president in Syracuse, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE) FOSTER: Democratic heavy hitters are visiting other battleground states as well like Georgia. Later today former U.S. President Barack Obama will rally for the state's Democratic nominee for governor Stacey Abrams, as well as Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Now they're trying to hang on to their seats. Warnock is a tight race against Republican former NFL star Herschel Walker. He's accused of pressuring two women to have abortions. Walker denies the allegations.
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HERSCHEL WALKER, GEORGE'S REPUBLICAN NOMINEE FOR U.S. SENATE: So, come at me where you might, because let me tell you, they come after me today, they're going to come after you tomorrow. But I could tell you right now, they can't take me down because I'm a bad man. I can tell you that right now. God prepared me for this moment right here and I'm ready to go.
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FOSTER: Earlier the Senate's top Democrat was caught on a hot microphone expressing concern about the Georgia Senate race to the U.S. president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): The state where we are going downhill is Georgia. It's hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker.
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FOSTER: Georgia is key to Democrat's hopes of maintaining their razor thin majority in the 50-50 Senate where the U.S. Vice President has the tie breaking vote currently.
Of all the national races in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, the battle to become Arizona State Governor is grabbing a lot of attention. And that overheated political environment, which was apparently a random burglary quickly took on a sinister overtone. Now CNN's Kyung Lah is in Phoenix with those details.
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KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Here's what Phoenix police are releasing about this investigation. The police say they have arrested a suspect, 36-year-old Daniel Mota Dos Reis. He has been booked on one count of third-degree burglary. And here's what police are not saying. They are not connecting the arrest of this man with any sort of political motivation against Democrat Katie Hobbs. This appears to be a simple crime.
But this isn't the assumption that the Hobbs campaign was working on yesterday when they sent out a statement in the immediate aftermath of this burglary. The campaign was connecting the simple crime with the rhetoric, the hostile rhetoric that has become enigmatic of the Kari Lake campaign. This appears to be an unfortunate burglary and not related to politics at all. So, Kari Lake standing before a news camera shortly after police
announced the arrest took a victory lap before cameras.
KARI LAKE (R), ARIZONA GUBERNATORIAL NOMINEE: She's willing to make up complete bogus stories. She knew that I had nothing to do with that break-in and yet she perpetuated that lie.
[04:10:00]
LAH: An Arizona Republican operative characterized this entire 24 hour episode in this way.
Hobbs is the victim of a small burglary but Lake is the winner in this story.
Kyung Lah, CNN, Phoenix, Arizona.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Donald Trump is under investigation on so many fronts that it could be confusing to keep up with all of them. On Thursday the former president's legal team and federal prosecutors were seen at the federal court house in Washington. Neither side divulged anything about what went on in that secret court hearing. But the speculation, it was related to the Justice Department's efforts to recover classified documents it believes are still and Trump's possession.
The U.S. Supreme Court could have the final word on another critical inquiry. But as of right now, Donald Trump must surrender his tax returns to Congress. That's because a federal appeals court on Thursday turned down Trump's request to delay handing over his financial records. Unless the case is taken up by the Supreme Court, the tax documents could be delivered in a week.
Now it just got harder for Americans to afford to buy a home meanwhile, as mortgage rates rose again this week topping 7 percent for the first time in 20 years. The average 30-year fixed rate mortgage is 7.08 percent this week. That's up from 6.94 percent the week before. The rapid rise fueled by the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates is an effort to slow the soaring inflation.
Meanwhile, the nation's GDP figures came back better than expected in the third quarter raising hopes that the U.S. may dodge a recession -- at least for now. CNN's Rahel Solomon whose the details on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: The U.S. economy bounced back over the summer. The Gross Domestic Product rose by an analyzed rate of 2.6 percent in the third quarter. Topping analyst estimates of 2.4 percent. It's the first quarterly increase this year after two consecutive contractions. The growth was mostly fueled by higher exports and lower imports.
Government spending also helped with sharply higher defense spending. President Biden touting the latest GDP figures saying, quote, we've got further evidence that our economic recovery is continuing to power forward.
But the report also showing signs of stress, in housing and consumer spending. Housing investment plunged in the quarter and the growth of consumer spending, which accounts for more than 2/3 of U.S. economic activity, well that slowed to just 1.4 percent pace amid hot inflation. To put that in perspective, it was 2 percent in the previous quarter. The GDP data will likely have little impact on the Federal Reserve which has been trying to tamp down inflation. Fed officials are expected to press on with rate hikes at their policy meeting next week.
Rahel Solomon, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Shares of Amazon fell after the company predicted its holiday sales will be lighter than expected. The e-commerce giant reported revenue of $127 billion for the third quarter, up 15 percent from a year ago but it says inflation and fears of a recession could dampen holiday sales.
Apple beat expectations with third quarter sales just over $90 billion amidst worries that demand for U.S. iPhone sales will be weak. But CEO Tim Cook says the third quarter produced record revenue for the devices.
Shares of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, plunged on Thursday. They fell more than 20 percent after the company revealed a second straight quarter of decline. Meta reported third quarter review of more than $27 billion, that's down 4 percent year over year.
Still ahead this hour, nearly 4-hour rant from Russian President Vladimir Putin. What he's saying about nuclear weapons in Ukraine and who's to blame for the world problems.
Plus, familiar patterns are playing out on the Korean Peninsula. A North Korean missile test and a South Korean military drill. Details in a live report.
And antisemitic comments have proven quite costly to Kanye West over the past few weeks. But sources say the rapper has a disturbing history of admiring the man who tried to exterminate the Jewish people from the planet. Details ahead on CNN NEWSROOM.
[04:15:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOSTER: The South Korean military is calling North Korea's latest missile launch a serious provocation that threatens peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula as well as a clear violation of U.N. resolutions. South Korea says the North fired off another two ballistic missiles earlier today. By CNN's count this is the 28th launch by Pyongyang so far this year, a major increase. And there are concerns a nuclear test could be next. Let's go straight to CNN's Kristie Lu Stout watching all of this from Hong Kong. How concerned and what intelligence do we have about possible nuclear tests?
KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, concern is rising. Tension is rising in the region after North Korea has fired two more ballistic missiles. This is, as you just said, the country's 28th such test so far this year. And it comes just as South Korea is wrapping up these joint military exercises on the east of the country and just days before the start of a large-scale U.S./South Korea Air Force military exercise to kick off on Monday, October 31.
This is what we learned earlier today from South Korea's joint chiefs of staff. They said it was around noontime local time. That was when North Korea fired these two short range missiles from the east coast of its country traveling about 230 kilometers. The South Korean military has been on high alert. The U.S. military as well. We have a statement from the Indo Pacific command of the United States. Let's bring it up for you.
In it they say, quote, while we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel and territory, or to our allies, the missile launches highlight the destabilizing impact of the DPRK's unlawful WMD and ballistic missile programs. The U.S. commitments of the defense of the ROK and Japan remain ironclad, unquote.
North Korea has been carrying out a flurry of missile tests. Earlier this month they fired a missile over Japan, the first such test since 2017. And so far, this year North Korea's fired the highest number of missiles since Kim Jong-un took power back in 2011.
[04:20:04]
We also know tension has been rising between the North and the South. Earlier this week both countries were exchanging warning shots at sea. Earlier this month we had South Korean border planes scramble in response to North Korean military jets edging close to their shared and highly militarized border.
Concern also growing about the prospects of another nuclear test by North Korea. We been hearing that harsh rhetoric from the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. If and when that happens, it would be the first such test since 2017. It was a time of peak tension. And according to the U.S. and its allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, they say that in the event of another nuclear test, they have already prepared, already agreed, quote, to an unparalleled response. Back to you -- Max.
FOSTER: Kristie, thank you for the update.
STOUT: You've got it.
FOSTER: Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be playing down fears of a nuclear standoff with the West. He denies threatening to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine. Saying he was only responding to nuclear blackmail from Western leaders. Mr. Boudin also says Western elites are blaming Russia for the world's problems.
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VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): We are standing at an historical frontier. Ahead is the most dangerous, unpredictable and at the same time the most important decade since the end of World War II. Power over the world is what the so-called West is banking on in its own game. But this is a dangerous game. It's a bloody game and it's a dirty game.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Well, the White House says U.S. President Joe Biden has no intention of meeting with Mr. Putin at the G-20 summit which is next month in Indonesia. The head of Ukraine's presidential office meanwhile claims Russia's operating death camps in occupied areas of the country. Andriy Yermak says the -- Andriy Yermak says Moscow's forces killed about five dozen soldiers who were captured in Mariupol. He wants the United Nations Mission to investigate any areas where Ukrainians are being held against their will. Russia is making similar accusations against Ukraine saying that soldiers are being tortured in captivity.
Let's go live to Paris where CNN's Melissa Bell has been going through all of this and trying to get the truth out of it. Melissa, what's going on?
MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I want to say something we've heard before, not just the statements made in Croatia by Andriy Yermak about those filtration camps. Something that's been widely documented, Max, not just by Ukrainian authorities. Bear in mind that Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating potential war crimes not just on the Ukrainian side of the line and the Ukrainian held territory but have over the course of the last few months have been building cases with the information they can get from informants, from what communications they can have with Russian controlled parts of Ukraine about potential war crimes being made there.
Those include many being committed in the so-called filtration camps. Widely documented as well by Western intelligence agencies. The American State Department has put out reports about this. These are the camps in which Ukrainians are held. They are interrogated. They are sometimes beaten, tortured and sometimes made to disappear from entirety. Some are then sent further into Russian territories. Some make it out back into Ukrainian-held territories with stories of what they've been through.
So, this is something that's been widely documented and it's part of what Ukrainians are trying to remind the world about. It isn't just a war that is about a frontline that they hope continues to shift in their favor. It is also, Max, about what's happening on the other side of that frontline in those annexed territories that Russia is desperately trying to cling onto and in which it has held those referendums. This was also about making sure that people in favor of the occupation were left behind in a position to vote in what was widely considered a sham referendum that has led to the annexation of these territories. And so, these filtration camps systems, of course, a violation of human rights, but also a fairly methodical attempt by Russia to allow those annexations -- that annexation in those four regions but also part of that line on the other side of which it is very difficult for anyone to get any access to any true information -- Max.
OK, Melissa Bell in Paris, thank you.
Parts of Ukraine's capital are in the dark following the latest barrage of strikes on the country's energy system. Some power facilities caught on fire as Russia knocked out at least 30 percent of the region's power supply on Thursday. Electricity was later restored in some areas but officials now say more than 1/4 million homes in the Kyiv region are still without power. And a complete blackout in the capital was avoided only by imposing severe power cuts.
[04:25:00]
Some Kyiv residents showing they can count on one another no matter how tough things get though. This man is leaving bags with essential supplies on the elevator of his high rise building. Officials have warned residents to avoid using elevators during air raid emergencies. But walking 15 or 20 stories is simply not an option for many people. So, this man drops bags with essential supplies for them including water, energy bars, a flashlight and even bubble blowers for kids. His wife says that in some way difficult times are bringing neighbors together.
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LIUDMYLA LOGGINOVA, PREPARING FOR POWER OUTAGES IN KYIV (through translator): We talk more. We smile more to each other. Yes, it brings us together rather a lot even though this is a I bad occasion for doing so. Still, people want to support each other. Now we know who and where people's wives and children are.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Now in the U.S. hospital beds are filling up as America is hit with a triple threat of respiratory viruses. What the experts are saying straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOSTER: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Max Foster. If you are just joining us let me, bring you up to date with our top stories this hour.
Elon Musk has completed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. That's according to a source familiar with the deal. One of his first news as the new owner was to fire top executives, including CEO three people including the CEO Parag Agrawal. Musk has reportedly said he plans to cut nearly 75 percent of Twitter's staff.
Brazil will vote for a new president on Sunday in a runoff election. Leftist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is challenging the far right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro . Neither candidate received more than 50 percent in a first round vote earlier this month. The election comes with Brazil's economy.
