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Shoppers Expected To Shell Out Black Friday Despite Inflation; Ukraine Rushes To Restore Power After Barrage Of Russian Strikes; Orion Spacecraft Snaps Selfies On Journey Beyond Far Side Of Moon; Trump Hosted Kanye West And Holocaust Denier Nick Fuentes At His Mar- A-Lago Resort This Week. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired November 25, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Hey, there. I'm Victor Blackwell. Welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. It is good to have you.

The official start of the holiday shopping season now across the country and despite inflation driving up prices, people are still out there hunting for the best Black Friday deals. Turnout at a mall in Chicago reach capacity today, forced entrances to temporary close and police to redirect traffic. The National Retail Federation expects more than 166 million people will shop across this country this weekend. That's an increase of about 8 million over last year.

CNN business reporter Alison Kosik is in the middle of the action. She's there in the madness at Macy's in New York. A lot of people around you, what are you seeing today?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. These crowds, Victor, they have not led up all day and I'm not just talking about outside here at Herald Square, outside the iconic Macy's department store here in New York City. Inside Macy's, if you walk in, take my word for it, you can barely move. It is just packed solid.

So Black Friday, yes, it is the unofficial start to the holiday shopping season and it is expected, despite higher inflation. It is expected to be one of the biggest shopping days of the year with 115 million people across the country shopping.

More than half are expected to shop in store, but interestingly enough, Adobe Analytics tells us that on Thanksgiving when people were supposed to be eating their dinners, they were shopping as well on their phones, $5.2 billion spent just in one day on Thanksgiving online.

Now a lot of shoppers I'm talking with they tell me this year is a little different because it requires a little more strategy because of the elephant in the room, it's called inflation. It's cutting into their spending power. So lots of shoppers I'm talking with are telling me they are sticking to their budgets. They are taking a look at deals and discounts and making sure that they sort of navigate that C to figure out which deals are good enough to buy those gifts for the friends and family they want to buy for. The NRF, the National Retail Federation, is pretty positive about how

the holiday's shopping season will turn out, saying that spending should rise by 8 percent. Adding up to about $960 billion for the month of November and December, Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right. Important time. Alison Kosik, thank you so much, there at Macy's.

Let's turn now to this miraculous Thanksgiving they rescue. A cruise ship passenger is alive and responsive after going overboard and staying alone in the water floating there for hours. The man's sister says that she last saw him Wednesday night onboard the Carnival Valor, it was around 11 pm. They were sailing from New Orleans to Mexico.

Well, yesterday afternoon the Coast Guard launched a search effort. That's when crews spotted him and pulled him to safety. Let's bring it out in Nick Valencia to tell us the rest of the story.

Incredible to hear that for up to 20 hours this man was just floating and waiting, what do we know about the passenger and how we survived?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Victor, this is the story of the day and it's clearly going to have a story that this man is going to be able to tell for the rest of his life. The U.S. Coast Guard says that he was a passenger on the U.S. cruise ship, the Carnival Valor, which was scheduled to take off on Wednesday from New Orleans, five- day cruise. They were on their way to Cozumel, Mexico.

And it was at 11 pm Wednesday night that this 28-year-old was at the bar with his sister when he tells her that he was going to the restroom. He never came back. His sister went to bed that night didn't report him missing until noon the next day. The cruise ship searched the vessel, they couldn't find him so at that point they reported it to the Coast Guard and a search and rescue operation was launched.

The vessel, actually, the cruise ship stopped in its tracks rerouted and retraced its route to try to participate in that search and rescue to find him. He was eventually spotted floating in the Gulf of Mexico which had about 70 degree temperature waters by a vessel, crew members from a separate vessel, he was hoisted up by the U.S. Coast Guard transported to a local hospital in New Orleans where he was treated. He said to be in stable condition and it is just crazy to think about him being in the water for up to 20 hours as Victor mentioned and this is what the Coast Guard had to say in an interview with CNN earlier this afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. SETH GROSS, SEARCH & RESCUE MISSION COORDINATOR, U.S. COAST GUARD: He was able to identify his name, confirmed that he was the individual that fell overboard. He was showing signs of hypothermia, shock, dehydration. But like I said, he was ambulatory, communicative, but gave really no clear indication of why he fell overboard.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: What do you think might have made the difference? How was he able to survive? GROSS: Will to live. I think for this particular case, we were out

there doing what we practice what we joined the Coast Guard to do, and the fact that he was able to keep himself afloat and above the surface of the water for such an extended period of time, it's just something you can't take for granted and certainly something that will stick with me forever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: Rescue work is just remarkable when you think about just how wide of an area that they were searching for, 200 mile wide search area or about the size of Massachusetts and this 28-year-old man spotted in the water. We're told as of 7am this morning that the family was unable to get off the vessel, so we don't know where their whereabouts now or if this man is by himself in New Orleans, but he has a hell of a Thanksgiving story to tell, Victor.

[15:05:04]

BLACKWELL: Certainly does, alive and responsive. Hopefully we hear that story from him. Nick Valencia, thank you for the reporting.

VALENCIA: You got it.

BLACKWELL: Let's focus on Virginia now and police in Chesapeake have released the name of the youngest victim killed at a mass shooting inside a Wal-Mart on Tuesday. Fernando Chavez-Barron, 16 years old was killed with five others after an overnight supervisor started shooting there.

Today, city officials revealed that the man posted what they're calling a death note on his cell phone. CNN's Brian Todd has that story. What do we know about that message, Brian?

VALENCIA: Well, Victor, this message is all about the shooter's grievances and his anger. Anger not just at his colleagues, but anger with himself. The city of Chesapeake says this note was found on the shooter's phone. The note discusses God, the Holy Spirit and how the author felt that his associates at work were mocking him.

Here's one passage from that note: "The associates gave me evil twisted grins, mocked me and celebrated my downfall the last day that's why they suffer the same fate as me."

Here's another: "I wish I could have saved everyone from myself. My God, forgive me for what I'm going to do."

The note also discusses how the author wished his parents had paid closer attention to what he calls his social deficits. And he said that he felt like he was "led by Satan." Now the note says this attack was not planned, but the fact that there even was a note discussing what he was going to do suggests that maybe at least some planning was involved here and city officials say the shooter's name is Andre Bing that he used a nine millimeter handgun that was purchased locally on the morning of the attack, Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right. Brian Todd there for us, Brian, thank you so much.

Let's turn to Texas now and the family of a police shooting victims say they're celebrating a Thanksgiving miracle. Erik Cantu was released from the hospital there this week. Nearly two months after the 17-year-old was shot in his parked car unarmed, he was eating in the car.

A former San Antonio police officer has been charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a public servant. He said he thought he recognized Cantu's car from a previous call. Cantu's family writes on a GoFundMe page, we didn't know what the future held weeks back. Today we know with faith and prayers, family love amazing doctors and nursing staff along with tons of future rehabilitation, that our miracle stands a chance.

Today is Mother's Day in Russia and President Vladimir Putin met with some mothers of Russian soldiers sent to fight in Ukraine. They gathered at Putin's official residence where he told them that nothing can replace the loss of a son. Well, this month the U.S. said it's likely Russia and Ukraine each have suffered about 100,000 wounded or killed troops from Putin's war.

Satellite images, look at this, they show how much Ukraine's electrical system has been impacted from Russia strikes this year. The image on the left is from January. The one on the right is from this month. The major hits to Ukraine's energy networks are happening as winter sets in.

CNN's Sam Kiley joins us now from Ukraine. How is Ukraine coping with or trying to compensate for this repeated loss of power?

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, repeated is exactly the right way to put it because there have been seven, according to the government here in Ukraine, attacks. The swarm attacks using masses of cruise missiles, 70 they say, 70 plus in the last wave a few days ago, Victor, and they're aiming at - the Russians are aiming at breaking down the energy system here in Ukraine.

Now, the Ukrainians are being remarkably resilient, they are now saying that they're hoping to get Kyiv pretty much up and running by tomorrow, even managing to connect Kherson City to the national grid. That's been disconnected now for many months after the Russians cut them off, destroyed the links and then on their way out of the city destroyed the generating capacity in that city, so close to a miracle there.

The problem is, though, that even if they get it all back and kind of gerrymander to jerrybuilt to fix, it's not at full capacity, that is two years away. They say they simply cannot get the equipment anywhere in the world to repair their network back to a pristine level, but they are proving capable of getting it back.

But every time they get it back, the country goes into scheduled cuts as they try to - power cuts as they tried to reroute electricity around the country, servicing the most important sectors, hospitals, public transport and so on. And the Russians know that every time they launch these mass missile attacks, they can degrade it that little bit further.

Winter has not really set in, in earnest. They're as - they could plummet the temperatures at any moment. We could expect it to go down by a very significant level. We're above freezing at the moment and that is when things will become critical.

BLACKWELL: All right. Sam Kiley reporting from Zaporizhzhia there. Thank you, Sam.

[15:10:04]

We're getting a fresh look at the moon. NASA released new incredible close up images of the craters on the surface there, thanks to the Artemis mission.

And a major matchup happening right now at the World Cup, the U.S. facing off against England. We are live at pubs in the U.K., also here in the U.S. We'll get fan reactions, stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:14:45]

BLACKWELL: NASA has just released new pictures of the moon. This is the first look we've had at the surface in 50 years. The images were taken as part of the Artemis one mission where the Orion spacecraft is expected to travel more than 40,000 miles beyond the far side of the moon.

[15:15:02]

Adam Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and the author of Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth. That's a heavy title. Adam Frank, always good to have you on.

Listen, these pictures, they're fantastic. What are they showing us now that we've not seen before?

ADAM FRANK, AUTHOR, LIGHT OF THE STARS: ALIEN WORLDS AND THE FATE OF THE EARTH: Well, I mean, the one thing is just that we're being able to get close enough with a spacecraft that's rated for human habitation this close. And what really I think the important thing about these pictures is they speak to the fact that we're - what's going to happen is that we're about to go into this new orbit there, the special orbit that NASA is going to try out and no one's ever done that before, no one's ever tried to explore this part of sort of this space transit system.

Humanity is right now at this stage where we're trying to flesh out, just like we had to - it took us a while to figure out how to build bridges and highway overpasses. NASA is circling around the moon taking those pictures and now it's going to get to this, what they call the distant retrograde orbit.

And it's a kind of orbit that nobody's ever tried before and it's going to be essential to sort of having a human deep space capacity. So just like it took people a long time to figure out how to build the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey, which is, this long, elevated highway, the same thing is going on with NASA right now. They're about to try this new part of space to see how - will it be stable, will it be the kind of orbit that we could really use to maybe capture asteroids and park them. So this - those pictures are really kind of part of this process of getting a human presence in deep space for the first time?

BLACKWELL: Yes. I've read those words distant retrograde orbit, I thought, sounds impressive, I have no idea what it means. I'm glad you just explained it for us why this is important. We're also seeing these selfies that the capsule cameras are taking. They're cool. What's the practical use for these?

FRANK: Well, this is a whole new spaceship, right? It's like when you buy your first car, right? You want to take a lot of pictures of it because it looks cool. But you also are hoping that everything is working on the car. So part of the reason is to actually make sure that all of these like zillion pieces of technology, really advanced technology, that it's all working. Because eventually we're going to have human beings on this spacecraft and we're going to have human beings going back and forth all the time.

So really what we're seeing here is the first shakeout of the kind of technology that's going to allow us to really have to get beyond the moon over the next five, 10, 20, 30 years.

BLACKWELL: Adam Frank, you always bring it home for us. It's so exciting. Thank you so much. Good to see.

FRANK: A pleasure.

BLACKWELL: The drama never stops over Twitter, Elon Musk says amnesty begins next week for previously suspended accounts. One expert warned it will be like opening the gates of hell. And former President Trump had dinner with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West along with a white nationalist and Holocaust denier this week at Mar-A-Lago, new reporting next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:23:11]

BLACKWELL: All right. Some new reporting just in to CNN, former President Trump hosted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West at his private Mar-A-Lago estate this week. CNN's Maeve Reston has the story.

Maeve, what is happening here?

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: So we're seeing once again that the former President seems to be a comfortable associating with people who have expressed anti-Semitic views and in this case, Kanye West started posting this week on Twitter that he had visited Trump at Mar-A-Lago and said that he had been there with Nick Fuentes, who is a known Holocaust denier and someone who has made a series of inflammatory statements over the last couple of years.

So they had dinner, apparently, Trump has now acknowledged this dinner in a Truth Social post that I will read to you. He said - the former president said, "This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-A-Lago. Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport."

But this is something that we have seen the former president do before when he is - asked about his association or his meetings with controversial figures. He claims that he doesn't know much about them or in this case that he doesn't know who they are.

Nick Fuentes is very well known for his views and in fact was on the Capitol grounds on January 6th and has been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee.

[15:24:59]

So the idea that that Trump knew nothing about his views is suspect to say the least.

BLACKWELL: Yeah. I mean, we all remember in the run up to 2016, he was asked, I believe it was by Jake Tapper about David Duke's support.

RESTON: Exactly.

BLACKWELL: And then candidate Trump said I know nothing about David Duke, although in the past having remarked on him. Mar-A-Lago is not a place you could just kind of drop in and see a former president. It's a private club and a home and the dinner went on like they continue to have the dinner with Kanye in this moment and these other men he says he did not know.

RESTON: Yep. So at - all of those facts strung together don't seem to make a lot of sense when reconciled with Trump's statement, Victor.

BLACKWELL: Maeve Reston, thank you.

RESTON: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: Elon Musk says that he will restore most of the previously banned accounts on the social media platform Twitter starting next week. The billionaire CEO polled followers on whether to offer what he called general amnesty to users who have not broken the law or not guilty of what he called the egregious spamming. The poll had more than 3 million votes, 72 percent in favor of lifting the bans.

Let's talk about this now with Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League. Good to see you again. Let me just start with your general reaction to this decision from Elon Musk.

MARC MORIAL, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE: This is what I predicted would happen at the moment he announced this transaction that he would open the floodgates, the gates to hell that the Twitter swamp would be refilled with alligators, crocodiles, serpents, purveyors and prognosticators of hate speech and conspiracy theories

And this has to be resisted, because this is a threat to many Americans and people all over the globe. Twitter had made progress not enough with its content moderation approach and had taken these folks rightfully off of Twitter. Now, Elon Musk (inaudible) is allowing people like David Duke, Ye, others who've been promoters of hatred, promoters of conspiracy theories back on this site.

And I can tell you, it's important that we resist this effort, that we take every step available to us at this point, to resist the idea that this site seems to be moving in the direction of being the most favorite site for every conspiracy theorists, hate monger, anti- Semitic, racist, Islamophobe and you name it. And even in places like Africa, where bots had been used to create hysteria and propaganda, it appears the Musk strategy is going to allow that type of activity to resume.

So, Victor, it's important that we resist this by any means necessary.

BLACKWELL: Let's talk about the resistance because you were on this letter with the National Action Network and the NAACP. The NAACP is now calling for corporations to boycott Twitter to pause their advertising on Twitter, do you support that?

MORIAL: I'm not yet decided if I'm going to support that, because what we're considering is a range of options, which would include that, include regulatory options at the FTC and the SEC calling on Apple and Google to remove Twitter from its app store, encouraging people perhaps to de-subscribe. from Twitter. I think we need to use a range of steps to rein in what Elon Musk is now doing.

So we're considering, and I know many others are calling for a variety of these things, steps to be taken to rein Elon Musk in. But Victor, at the core of the matter is that the internet and social media, which is a powerful invention and a powerful tool, is now being hijacked by people. This calls out there a need to be public policy guardrails, a set of rules and regulations, whether it's going to come from the federal government or state governments or local governments, this is the direction. There's got to be a reset with respect to how social media is being used in the world today.

BLACKWELL: And Elon Musk said that there would be this moderation council for - council formation. It has not been formed. You talked about the reinstatement of Ye, and Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Here's his justification, he tweeted: "A large coalition of political and social activist groups agreed not to try to kill Twitter by starving us of advertising revenue if I agreed to this condition. They broke the deal." Your thoughts?

[15:30:00]

MORIAL: He broke any deal that was made and I wasn't a part of that deal so I don't know what he was talking about.

BLACKWELL: Sure.