Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Inflation Eases to 7.7 percent in October, Better Than Expected; Big Companies Begin Layoffs, Hiring Freezes; Storm Surge from Nicole Floods Florida Homes, Businesses & Roads; Balance of Power in Limbo with House & Senate Too Close to Call; Fake Twitter Accounts Surge Amid Paid Verification System. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired November 10, 2022 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:34:18]
ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: A major economic report out and the good news is inflation is easing. The bad, prices are still sky high, up 7.7 percent year to year.
Right now, though, Wall Street's loving the good news part of this equation. Up over 800 points for the Dow. But how should the rest of us read this? Are we nearing the peak?
Matt Egan is here to break it down for us.
Take it away.
MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Ana, we finally have some good inflation news. Now, it's kind of crazy. You wouldn't normally say that about 7.7 percent year over year for inflation. Because if you look back over 40 years, that's still one of the highest readings we've seen.
But everything is relative. And this is a big improvement from the 9 percent inflation we've seen. It's actually the coolest reading in nine months.
[13:35:05]
And if you look under the hood, there's positive developments, We saw core inflation, which strips out food and energy, unexpectedly slowed sharply month over month.
And some items are actually going down in price. We saw price declines month over month for apparel, for airfare, used cars, fresh fruit.
Moody's economist, Mark Zandi, he told me today's report, while it shows that inflation is still painfully high, he said inflation is, quote, "definitively moderating."
He thinks, unless oil prices go crazy or something happens in China with COVID lockdowns, he thinks inflation will be, quote, "much lower" a year from now, which would be good news. And that's sitting well with investors on Wall Street.
CABRERA: OK, fingers crossed. That does sound like really good news.
Unfortunately, however, we're also starting to see big companies enact big layoff, right?
EGAN: We are. When CEOs are worried about a potential recession and cut costs. And one of the fastest ways to do that, unfortunately, is to lay off workers. So we have seen that, especially in the tech sector.
Lyft laying off a lot of workers. We've seen Twitter cut half of its staff. Meta, Chime. And then some companies are not cutting jobs but they're just not adding them anymore. Amazon, a corporate freeze on hiring. Apple hiring freeze as well.
And, you know, this is actually what the Federal Reserve wants to do. They want to cool off this jobs market because it's been too hot. It's been so hot it's been pushing up inflation.
So even though that doesn't sit well for people who are unfortunately losing their job, this is what the Fed was hoping for.
This is not playing out, though, in the broader economy. Jobless claims, they are still historically low. So we need to keep an eye on that and see whether or not that continues.
CABRERA: OK, thank you so much, Matt Egan.
EGAN: Thank you, Ana.
CABRERA: I want to get to Florida now. And unfortunately, so sad here. Two people are dead because of Tropical Storm Nicole.
We have video of bridges closed. Curfews now in place, and the governor extending a state of emergency to include all 67 counties. Nicole damaging areas that haven't even recovered from Hurricane Ian back in September.
In central Florida, several beachfront homes collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean. Further south, crashing waves took out a section of this fishing pier. This is in Lauderdale-By-the Sea.
And check out this restaurant in Stuart, Florida. It was completely flooded when high surf breached the seawall there.
CNN Meteorologist Tom Sater is joining us now.
OK, what's next? Where is the storm headed?
TOM SATER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Right up the entire east coast. And this is going to spread a lot of flooding rainfall. Remember, leaves are down on the entire east coast. Get to the north, the winds will blow more down. If you live near a drain, a storm drain, please clean it out. Listen, this is very rare. We've only had three hurricanes to ever
make landfall in the month of November before this one. This is the very first hurricane during the month of November to hit the east coast of Florida since 1935.
We always say, Ana, every tropical system has its own characteristics. People will be shocked when they see more of the damage. We've gotten -- tractor trailers blown over on those roads.
In Jacksonville, water rescues, submerged car, homes, businesses. Down toward Orlando, flooding. St. John's River already flooding. Tampa, Skyway Bridge shut down. Over to St. Pete, downed power lines, downed traffic signal. The fatalities, as you mentioned.
Tornado watch extended to the north until 7:00 p.m. I expect that to go even further into North Carolina.
Here's our damaged area with the possibility of tornadoes. That's going to be a big deal. These storms are moving at 60, 65 miles an hour.
The storm surge area is critical. Like you mentioned, from the six- foot surge we had at Port Canaveral, three to five in many other areas.
Dozens and dozens of homes and businesses are condemned because the waves have been moving in and eroding the structural base.
Wind advisories continue all the way up to the north. Here's Ian's track, 43 days apart. We did not have enough time to fix the beaches. Sometimes it takes months, even a year. So it's vulnerable.
And, of course, this path right through the same area is really creating the problems.
Flood watches, it's the St. John's River, just getting below flood stage from Ian, now back above. Can you think of the people who live here?
Here's the track as it moves north. This is a big deal here because we have a cold front approaching. When the cold front moves in from the west, it will enhance the rainfall, squeeze out a lot more.
Look for massive flooding in the mountains of the Appalachians, North Carolina into Virginia. And back behind it, snowfall. We've got blizzard warnings into the Dakotas.
How many times you get a blizzard warning, ice storm warning and, at the same time, you have hurricane warnings? Now those have been allowed to expire.
But this is not over with. There will be more power outages. Already over 300,000 currently. Surprise, surprise. November storm.
CABRERA: Crucial information you're delivering there.
Thank you very much, Tom Sater.
[13:39:43]
We knew the economy would drive voters to the polls. What we didn't know, how big the abortion issue would play in the election. Our polling guru, Harry Enten, break down what the polls got right and didn't.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CABRERA: More now on the all-important midterm elections and the battle for control of Congress. That crushing red wave, that really both parties expected, didn't happen.
Republicans will likely win a majority in the House, a modest one. It's not there yet though. And the Senate is still too close to call. Three races undecided.
[13:45:05]
Let's break down the numbers with CNN senior data reporter, Harry Enten.
OK, so how odd is it that Democrats did relatively well considering how unpopular or the low approval rating of the president?
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: This is bizarre, frankly. I mean, if you look right now, you looked at our exit poll Joe Biden's approval rating was 44 percent.
You look at the last three times you had a president whose approval rating was in the general area, you're talking about seat losses, you know, 40, 63, 54.
This is going to be well less than that. They might keep it to a net loss of, let's say, 10 seats or less. That's unbelievable.
And I think there's some clue in the exit poll as to, somewhat, why that occurred. Take a look at those who said they somewhat disapproved of Joe Biden's job performance, and then say, OK, who did they choose in their vote for Congress?
This is 11 percent of the electorate. Sort of small but it's an important size. They actually voted for Democrats by four points.
So there's this portion of the electorate that didn't like what Biden was doing but didn't hate it and decided to go with Democrat.
CABRERA: Why? Why?
ENTEN: Why did they decide to go with Democrats? Because this turned into a choice election.
If you look at our exit polling and say, OK, did you have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, Republican Party, neither or both, and essentially what you see favorable views of both the Democratic and Republican Party were basically equal. They were basically equal.
And so what occurred here was that voters were basically said we'll have a choice here. And we're going to actually kind of split our decision here.
Normally, it's all about the party in power, but this election, for any number of reasons, did not turn into that. Instead of being a referendum that we're so used to in midterm elections, it turned into a choice.
CABRERA: The other issue that we kept talking about leading in was the economy being the top of mind for voters and even the exit polls really confirming that.
And, yet, it doesn't seem like it was so cut and dried that that would translate into pickups or big support for Republicans since they are the party out of power currently.
ENTEN: Yes, if you look at the exit poll, I think the net was so surprising to mem or one of the many things, to be honest, that was so surprising is, yes, inflation was the number-one issue.
There was all this talk, OK, abortion, will it be up there? And most polls, inflation was well above abortion. But in our exit poll, it was basically equal. It was basically equal.
So that although voters who chose inflation as their top issue overwhelmingly went for Republicans, they were canceled out by the overwhelming number of voters who said abortion was their number-one issue and they went overwhelmingly are for Democrats.
And this was especially true among women voters. Because if you look at our exit poll, among women voters, what was the number-one issue? It was abortion. It was abortion.
And I think that this is something that kind of got lost on all of us. There was all of those special elections after Roe v. Wade was overturned in which Democrats were not only doing as well as Joe Biden in these districts, they did better.
And it turned out, it translated on Election Day.
CABRERA: Harry Enten, thank you so much.
ENTEN: Thank you.
CABRERA: I don't know how you're standing.
(CROSSTALK)
ENTEN: I have no idea to be honest.
CABRERA: -- to be able to talk that fast.
(CROSSTALK)
CABRERA: Yes, and so clearly.
ENTEN: Thank you.
CABRERA: Thank you.
ENTEN: (INAUDIBLE)
CABRERA: All right, Elon Musk vowed to clean up Twitter and purge bots and bogus accounts. So why are fake accounts thriving and making this platform even messier? That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:52:39]
CABRERA: What do former President Trump and basketball star, LeBron James, have in common? Well, just hours after Twitter launched its new paid verification system, fake accounts using their names and likeness popped up.
And we just learned the company's cybersecurity chief called it quits.
Let's get to CNN's Donie O'Sullivan.
So, Donie, that didn't take long. How easy is it to create a fake Twitter account and make it look real under this new system?
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, things are getting really messy and really confusing on Twitter right now, Ana.
In the past 24 hours or so, we've seen so many fake accounts pop up, pretending to be people, pretending to be very famous people, and getting that blue verified check mark. For years, that mark has meant that it's the real person so you know this person is who they say they are.
So what's been going on? I want to show you a few of the fake accounts that have popped up. A fake account for Nintendo, the video game company, showed Mario there, their iconic figure, giving the finger.
(LAUGHTER)
O'SULLIVAN: We have heard -- because it's offensive, I guess.
Also we have -- we saw somebody set up a fake Donald Trump account. This person, Brian Whelan, saying he was able to verify a fake Donald Trump in less than two beers. But really getting at the point there that he was able to do this quite quickly.
And, finally, just over the past day or so, Twitter has given a blue check verified mark to Jesus Christ, with the handle there, @jesus.
As you can see, things are getting a bit confusing at Twitter under Elon Musk -- Ana?
CABRERA: We have been joking about this, but there could be serious consequences to these fake accounts.
O'SULLIVAN: Absolutely. You think about -- see how easy it was to make those accounts. Think about in terms of emergencies or natural disasters, even politics, calling elections.
You know, we rely so much on Twitter accounts, whether it's in disasters to get information from emergency services or on election nights or even during an election campaign.
Think how easy it is going to be for somebody to spin up an account to make it look like it's belonging to a campaign or something official or is something affiliated. We even saw that with the Trump account.
[13:55:05]
Look, there's serious consequences that could come of all of this. We have seen pretty much everything that Musk has brought into the company as they talked about changing again. So this might change by the end of the day, the end of the week.
But it is kind of causing a bit of unnecessary chaos on the platform -- Ana?
CABRERA: It makes you wonder. How does this platform survive all of this?
Donie O'Sullivan, thanks for being on top of it for us.
That does it for us today. Thanks so much for joining us. Stay with CNN for all the developments on the midterm elections.
Our special coverage continues right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:34:18]
ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: A major economic report out and the good news is inflation is easing. The bad, prices are still sky high, up 7.7 percent year to year.
Right now, though, Wall Street's loving the good news part of this equation. Up over 800 points for the Dow. But how should the rest of us read this? Are we nearing the peak?
Matt Egan is here to break it down for us.
Take it away.
MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Ana, we finally have some good inflation news. Now, it's kind of crazy. You wouldn't normally say that about 7.7 percent year over year for inflation. Because if you look back over 40 years, that's still one of the highest readings we've seen.
But everything is relative. And this is a big improvement from the 9 percent inflation we've seen. It's actually the coolest reading in nine months.
[13:35:05]
And if you look under the hood, there's positive developments, We saw core inflation, which strips out food and energy, unexpectedly slowed sharply month over month.
And some items are actually going down in price. We saw price declines month over month for apparel, for airfare, used cars, fresh fruit.
Moody's economist, Mark Zandi, he told me today's report, while it shows that inflation is still painfully high, he said inflation is, quote, "definitively moderating."
He thinks, unless oil prices go crazy or something happens in China with COVID lockdowns, he thinks inflation will be, quote, "much lower" a year from now, which would be good news. And that's sitting well with investors on Wall Street.
CABRERA: OK, fingers crossed. That does sound like really good news.
Unfortunately, however, we're also starting to see big companies enact big layoff, right?
EGAN: We are. When CEOs are worried about a potential recession and cut costs. And one of the fastest ways to do that, unfortunately, is to lay off workers. So we have seen that, especially in the tech sector.
Lyft laying off a lot of workers. We've seen Twitter cut half of its staff. Meta, Chime. And then some companies are not cutting jobs but they're just not adding them anymore. Amazon, a corporate freeze on hiring. Apple hiring freeze as well.
And, you know, this is actually what the Federal Reserve wants to do. They want to cool off this jobs market because it's been too hot. It's been so hot it's been pushing up inflation.
So even though that doesn't sit well for people who are unfortunately losing their job, this is what the Fed was hoping for.
This is not playing out, though, in the broader economy. Jobless claims, they are still historically low. So we need to keep an eye on that and see whether or not that continues.
CABRERA: OK, thank you so much, Matt Egan.
EGAN: Thank you, Ana.
CABRERA: I want to get to Florida now. And unfortunately, so sad here. Two people are dead because of Tropical Storm Nicole.
We have video of bridges closed. Curfews now in place, and the governor extending a state of emergency to include all 67 counties. Nicole damaging areas that haven't even recovered from Hurricane Ian back in September.
In central Florida, several beachfront homes collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean. Further south, crashing waves took out a section of this fishing pier. This is in Lauderdale-By-the Sea.
And check out this restaurant in Stuart, Florida. It was completely flooded when high surf breached the seawall there.
CNN Meteorologist Tom Sater is joining us now.
OK, what's next? Where is the storm headed?
TOM SATER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Right up the entire east coast. And this is going to spread a lot of flooding rainfall. Remember, leaves are down on the entire east coast. Get to the north, the winds will blow more down. If you live near a drain, a storm drain, please clean it out. Listen, this is very rare. We've only had three hurricanes to ever
make landfall in the month of November before this one. This is the very first hurricane during the month of November to hit the east coast of Florida since 1935.
We always say, Ana, every tropical system has its own characteristics. People will be shocked when they see more of the damage. We've gotten -- tractor trailers blown over on those roads.
In Jacksonville, water rescues, submerged car, homes, businesses. Down toward Orlando, flooding. St. John's River already flooding. Tampa, Skyway Bridge shut down. Over to St. Pete, downed power lines, downed traffic signal. The fatalities, as you mentioned.
Tornado watch extended to the north until 7:00 p.m. I expect that to go even further into North Carolina.
Here's our damaged area with the possibility of tornadoes. That's going to be a big deal. These storms are moving at 60, 65 miles an hour.
The storm surge area is critical. Like you mentioned, from the six- foot surge we had at Port Canaveral, three to five in many other areas.
Dozens and dozens of homes and businesses are condemned because the waves have been moving in and eroding the structural base.
Wind advisories continue all the way up to the north. Here's Ian's track, 43 days apart. We did not have enough time to fix the beaches. Sometimes it takes months, even a year. So it's vulnerable.
And, of course, this path right through the same area is really creating the problems.
Flood watches, it's the St. John's River, just getting below flood stage from Ian, now back above. Can you think of the people who live here?
Here's the track as it moves north. This is a big deal here because we have a cold front approaching. When the cold front moves in from the west, it will enhance the rainfall, squeeze out a lot more.
Look for massive flooding in the mountains of the Appalachians, North Carolina into Virginia. And back behind it, snowfall. We've got blizzard warnings into the Dakotas.
How many times you get a blizzard warning, ice storm warning and, at the same time, you have hurricane warnings? Now those have been allowed to expire.
But this is not over with. There will be more power outages. Already over 300,000 currently. Surprise, surprise. November storm.
CABRERA: Crucial information you're delivering there.
Thank you very much, Tom Sater.
[13:39:43]
We knew the economy would drive voters to the polls. What we didn't know, how big the abortion issue would play in the election. Our polling guru, Harry Enten, break down what the polls got right and didn't.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CABRERA: More now on the all-important midterm elections and the battle for control of Congress. That crushing red wave, that really both parties expected, didn't happen.
Republicans will likely win a majority in the House, a modest one. It's not there yet though. And the Senate is still too close to call. Three races undecided.
[13:45:05]
Let's break down the numbers with CNN senior data reporter, Harry Enten.
OK, so how odd is it that Democrats did relatively well considering how unpopular or the low approval rating of the president?
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA REPORTER: This is bizarre, frankly. I mean, if you look right now, you looked at our exit poll Joe Biden's approval rating was 44 percent.
You look at the last three times you had a president whose approval rating was in the general area, you're talking about seat losses, you know, 40, 63, 54.
This is going to be well less than that. They might keep it to a net loss of, let's say, 10 seats or less. That's unbelievable.
And I think there's some clue in the exit poll as to, somewhat, why that occurred. Take a look at those who said they somewhat disapproved of Joe Biden's job performance, and then say, OK, who did they choose in their vote for Congress?
This is 11 percent of the electorate. Sort of small but it's an important size. They actually voted for Democrats by four points.
So there's this portion of the electorate that didn't like what Biden was doing but didn't hate it and decided to go with Democrat.
CABRERA: Why? Why?
ENTEN: Why did they decide to go with Democrats? Because this turned into a choice election.
If you look at our exit polling and say, OK, did you have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, Republican Party, neither or both, and essentially what you see favorable views of both the Democratic and Republican Party were basically equal. They were basically equal.
And so what occurred here was that voters were basically said we'll have a choice here. And we're going to actually kind of split our decision here.
Normally, it's all about the party in power, but this election, for any number of reasons, did not turn into that. Instead of being a referendum that we're so used to in midterm elections, it turned into a choice.
CABRERA: The other issue that we kept talking about leading in was the economy being the top of mind for voters and even the exit polls really confirming that.
And, yet, it doesn't seem like it was so cut and dried that that would translate into pickups or big support for Republicans since they are the party out of power currently.
ENTEN: Yes, if you look at the exit poll, I think the net was so surprising to mem or one of the many things, to be honest, that was so surprising is, yes, inflation was the number-one issue.
There was all this talk, OK, abortion, will it be up there? And most polls, inflation was well above abortion. But in our exit poll, it was basically equal. It was basically equal.
So that although voters who chose inflation as their top issue overwhelmingly went for Republicans, they were canceled out by the overwhelming number of voters who said abortion was their number-one issue and they went overwhelmingly are for Democrats.
And this was especially true among women voters. Because if you look at our exit poll, among women voters, what was the number-one issue? It was abortion. It was abortion.
And I think that this is something that kind of got lost on all of us. There was all of those special elections after Roe v. Wade was overturned in which Democrats were not only doing as well as Joe Biden in these districts, they did better.
And it turned out, it translated on Election Day.
CABRERA: Harry Enten, thank you so much.
ENTEN: Thank you.
CABRERA: I don't know how you're standing.
(CROSSTALK)
ENTEN: I have no idea to be honest.
CABRERA: -- to be able to talk that fast.
(CROSSTALK)
CABRERA: Yes, and so clearly.
ENTEN: Thank you.
CABRERA: Thank you.
ENTEN: (INAUDIBLE)
CABRERA: All right, Elon Musk vowed to clean up Twitter and purge bots and bogus accounts. So why are fake accounts thriving and making this platform even messier? That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:52:39]
CABRERA: What do former President Trump and basketball star, LeBron James, have in common? Well, just hours after Twitter launched its new paid verification system, fake accounts using their names and likeness popped up.
And we just learned the company's cybersecurity chief called it quits.
Let's get to CNN's Donie O'Sullivan.
So, Donie, that didn't take long. How easy is it to create a fake Twitter account and make it look real under this new system?
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, things are getting really messy and really confusing on Twitter right now, Ana.
In the past 24 hours or so, we've seen so many fake accounts pop up, pretending to be people, pretending to be very famous people, and getting that blue verified check mark. For years, that mark has meant that it's the real person so you know this person is who they say they are.
So what's been going on? I want to show you a few of the fake accounts that have popped up. A fake account for Nintendo, the video game company, showed Mario there, their iconic figure, giving the finger.
(LAUGHTER)
O'SULLIVAN: We have heard -- because it's offensive, I guess.
Also we have -- we saw somebody set up a fake Donald Trump account. This person, Brian Whelan, saying he was able to verify a fake Donald Trump in less than two beers. But really getting at the point there that he was able to do this quite quickly.
And, finally, just over the past day or so, Twitter has given a blue check verified mark to Jesus Christ, with the handle there, @jesus.
As you can see, things are getting a bit confusing at Twitter under Elon Musk -- Ana?
CABRERA: We have been joking about this, but there could be serious consequences to these fake accounts.
O'SULLIVAN: Absolutely. You think about -- see how easy it was to make those accounts. Think about in terms of emergencies or natural disasters, even politics, calling elections.
You know, we rely so much on Twitter accounts, whether it's in disasters to get information from emergency services or on election nights or even during an election campaign.
Think how easy it is going to be for somebody to spin up an account to make it look like it's belonging to a campaign or something official or is something affiliated. We even saw that with the Trump account.
[13:55:05]
Look, there's serious consequences that could come of all of this. We have seen pretty much everything that Musk has brought into the company as they talked about changing again. So this might change by the end of the day, the end of the week.
But it is kind of causing a bit of unnecessary chaos on the platform -- Ana?
CABRERA: It makes you wonder, how does this platform survive all of this?
Donie O'Sullivan, thanks for being on top of it for us.
That does it for us today. Thanks so much for joining us. Stay with CNN for all the developments on the midterm elections.
Our special coverage continues right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
