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U.S. Sending Patriot Defense System to Ukraine; Economic Forecast; Winter Storm; Interview With White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired December 15, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States is all in on Africa and all in with Africa.

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JOHN KING, CNN HOST: The Senate unanimously passing a bill banning the popular TikTok app from government devices, the Chinese-owned software company raising national security concerns.

A wave of governors, all Republicans, have already issued TikTok bans on state devices. A spokesperson for TikTok says they hope lawmakers will pursue a plan that -- quote -- "actually addresses national security concerns."

Thanks for your time today on INSIDE POLITICS. We will see you tomorrow.

Ana Cabrera picks up our coverage right now.

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Hello. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York. Thank you for being with us.

It is not done yet. Right now, the massive weather system we have been talking about all week is targeting millions of people in the Northeast. The danger there is ice, millions more under a severe weather threat, the South already torn apart by tornadoes, this twister one of nearly 50 reported over the last 48 hours.

In hard-hit Louisiana, at least three people have died, as the scope of devastation now settles in. We're getting a look at heartbreaking scenes as the holidays fast approach. Look at this.

Meantime, a few hours north, feet of snow are now being feared from this same system.

Meteorologist Jennifer Gray is in the CNN Weather Center with what's hitting next.

But, first, let's go to Nick Valencia. He is in Marrero, Louisiana, where a state of emergency is in place. Nick, what happened there?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're inside the home of one of the tornado survivors here in Marrero, which is in Jefferson Parish, where one person did die as a result of this tornado.

This is the home of Trent Theriot. And this is what's left of his dining room. This tornado came right through his front porch, and really right through his home.

I want to introduce you to Trent.

Trent, you were in the closet right here when it hit. I mean, what happened? Describe to me what you went through.

TRENT THERIOT, TORNADO VICTIM: Yes, sir.

Me and the dog was watching The Weather Channel, Margaret Orr, and she said, it's about a half-a-mile from where I'm living at right now. Get in your closet, safe spot. So we got in here.

And, all of a sudden, maybe about minute or so after that, just a strong gust of wind come through the front door, front of the house. The tornado came through the front. And we in here locked up in here, me and the dog. And all of a sudden, everything just blew up just like a bomb.

VALENCIA: How long? Blew up like a bomb?

THERIOT: Blew up like a bomb. About 20 seconds, but it seemed longer than that.

VALENCIA: And you were actually trapped inside your closet.

(CROSSTALK)

THERIOT: Trapped inside. Everything was turned over in the closet. The electricity was still on. And the gas was leaking. The gas main, the gas line was still leaking from the front of the house into the house with electricity on.

And me and the dog was stuck in here. And so my neighbors across the street and some other fellows kicked the door in and kind of got us out of here. And thank God for that. They saved us.

VALENCIA: You were telling me that you thought that it might have been the end for you.

THERIOT: Yes, sir. I was -- it was scary, yes, because when I smelled the gas and the electricity, it was not nice.

VALENCIA: It's incredible. When you look around the damage of your home, your entire roof is gone. We're getting sun down on us because your roof is missing.

THERIOT: Yes. Yes. When I got out... VALENCIA: What do you think when you look around your home here? It's

like two or three feet off its foundation.

THERIOT: Yes, the house shifted like two or three feet, like you said, off the foundation, and like I was riding on a train. It just -- it shook and I just prayed the lord to get me out of here. And thank you Jesus that he did, and I'm here for another day.

VALENCIA: Thank God.

And you were telling me you made it through COVID. You were hospitalized with COVID. You made it with pneumonia, hospitalized with pneumonia. And now you're a tornado survivor.

THERIOT: Yes, sir.

VALENCIA: You feel like you're meant to be here?

THERIOT: Oh, yes. Yes.

VALENCIA: I would too. I would too.

THERIOT: Yes. Yes.

VALENCIA: Good gracious.

And in the few seconds that we have left, just describe this community, what it has gone through in the last 24 hours.

THERIOT: This community's been through a lot, through different hurricanes and tornadoes.

And people have been through a lot with work situation, people out of jobs and stuff like that, crime. And...

VALENCIA: And only to live through this, with Christmas next week, right around the corner.

THERIOT: Yes. Yes. Yes.

So...

VALENCIA: You got to be grateful to be alive.

THERIOT: That's right.

VALENCIA: Amen.

THERIOT: Thank you, Jesus. Like I said, I'm here for another day. Thank you.

VALENCIA: Well, Trent, thank you so much for taking the time with CNN.

A lot of the neighbors here showed up, Ana, because he is a beloved member of this neighborhood. There's so many people outside just thanking God today, grateful that Trent's alive. This is amazing that no more than one person -- any loss of life is tragic, but looking around in this neighborhood.

We will give you a more of a preview next hour. But it's just remarkable that not more losses of life happened, that there were more people -- there weren't more people injured in this area, Ana.

CABRERA: And, clearly, the spirit of that community is not broken.

Thank you, Nick.

Let's bring in Jennifer Gray now.

And, Jennifer, what do we need to know about the threat today?

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, we still have a severe threat. It's down in Florida now. These storms are on the move.

And, as you mentioned, the wintry side of this is being -- is also a major threat. So we will zoom down on the tornado threat you can see across Central Florida, Tampa, Orlando experiencing the storms, Tampa finally in the clear. But those will be traveling southward.

[13:05:07]

And then you can see all of the snow that's falling across the Northeast. The big cities are being spared. This is mainly west of I- 95. But, as you mentioned, that ice threat is a real concern. We have seen a quarter of an inch of ice accumulation across portions of West Virginia, maybe even into Pennsylvania.

And so that's going to be a huge concern, making travel nearly impossible. We could see power outages because of that as well. So here are your winter storm alerts. You have that ice storm warning and then winter weather alerts, winter storm warnings, watches and advisories all in place.

So here's your forecast radar as we go through the evening hours. By 8:00 tonight, you can see all the big cities in all rain. It's going to be a cold rain, feeling pretty miserable. But we're also going to see some pretty heavy snowfall across interior sections of the Northeast and then spilling into New England as we go throughout the morning tomorrow into the afternoon.

I think we can finally say goodbye to the system, Ana, by the time the weekend rolls around. But this one has definitely been a force to be reckoned with, creating all sorts of hazards.

Yes, it almost feels like no state has been untouched.

GRAY: Right.

CABRERA: Thank you, Jennifer Gray. hand you have an important role, especially as people head out for the holidays, that travel about to pick up soon. We will touch base with you as you get more information. We have some fresh economic numbers to share with you today. They show

the weight of these higher prices we have all been experiencing finally hitting the holiday shopping rush. Consumer spending in November saw its sharpest monthly decline of the year.

And, remember, that was a month with those record online sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You can see how the markets are reacting, stocks taking a plunge on that news, down more than 900 points right now, the Dow, combined with the Fed's latest indication, that rate hikes aren't going away anytime soon. So that's all different factors. That could be the reason we're seeing this happen right now in the markets.

Let's bring in CNN's Matt Egan to walk us through the latest numbers.

Matt, it seems like every time we get good news, we get bad news thrown right back at us.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes, Ana, this was an ugly retail sales report. Let me run you through some of the numbers here, retail sales up by 6.5 percent year over year. Now, that sounds good. But this is not adjusted for inflation.

And we know consumer prices were up by more than 7 percent. So that's adjusted real sales were actually negative. This, though, was the number that got everyone's attention. Month-over-month sales were down by 0.6 percent. That was unexpected. If you look on the chart, here we are. This is the worst number since the end of last year.

It was weak across the board. We saw sales declines for autos, for apparel, clothing, building materials, even online shopping, all of them negative. So, the only positives were bars and restaurants and food and beverage.

Ana, these numbers suggest that consumers are starting to crack under the pressure of high inflation. And that is bad news in an economy that is driven by consumer spending.

CABRERA: We also got new unemployment numbers today, something the Fed is also watching closely. What do they show? And what does the Fed say?

EGAN: Right.

So, initial jobless claims, this is new claims for unemployment, this is a good number. It went down by 20,000 to 211,000. Some context, that is actually a three-month low. You can see it's way down from the beginning of last year. That suggests that a lot of employers, they don't want to let go of the workers they have because we're in the middle of a worker shortage.

But let's go back. The other figure here is continuing claims. This is the total number of people filing for unemployment benefits. It only went up by a little bit, but this is a 10-month high. And that suggests that people are staying unemployed for longer, that hiring has slowed down. And that is what the Fed is trying to get at. And if you look at the Fed forecast, yesterday, they put out new

numbers. They see the unemployment rate going from -- up from a historically low level of 3.7 percent today to 4.6 percent next year. That is not high overall. In the last three recessions, we saw much higher levels of unemployment, but that still implies 1.6 million more people would be considered unemployed.

None of this sitting well with the market. Let's check in on the Dow and the market. We see the Dow is down 950 points, almost 3 percent, S&P. We're seeing even sharper losses here for the Nasdaq. And we look at the Big Board, almost 1,000 points now for the Dow. It's actually near session lows.

I think the market is in kind of a weird place right now, Ana, where good news is bad and bad news is bad. And what I mean by that is, good news is bad because it means the Fed is going to have to be even more aggressive, more rate hikes. Bad news is bad because it raises the specter of a recession.

CABRERA: And we just all want to stop living on the edge and feeling like we're teetering or walking on eggshells.

Matt, thank you so much.

EGAN: Thanks, Ana.

CABRERA: Turning now to Ukraine and a stark warning from Russia today as the Biden administration finalizes a plan to send Patriot missile systems to Ukraine.

Moscow calls it a -- quote, unquote -- "provocative move" that would increase the risk of direct U.S. military involvement.

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Let's discuss with retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton now. Colonel, thanks for being here. Some people may remember the prominent role Patriot missiles played in the Gulf War back in the '90s. But for those, who don't explain what these systems do, and why Russia might be concerned about them.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Sure, Ana, absolutely.

One of the key things that they did during the Gulf War was, they hunted Scuds. And if people go back, during that time period, the Iraqis were using the scud missile to, in essence, terrorize the countries in the Gulf region, particularly Saudi Arabia, and, of course, American forces in that region.

So fast-forward to the present day. We have different variants of the Patriot missile and the Patriot missile system. It's really a whole system that is based on a series of radars that are used as part of a complete picture. And what it's designed to do is, it's designed to go after medium- and high-altitude targets, including aircraft, incoming missiles, especially cruise missiles, and also go after drones. And it's been able to really seal off a lot of the air defense areas

in countries as diverse as Israel, as well as places in Europe that -- when they get ready to do exercises for this -- the system. So, it's a highly effective system. And it is something that requires a great deal of training as well.

CABRERA: So, how is it different, though, than what the U.S. has already sent?

LEIGHTON: So, the systems that are already here, both from the U.S. and from NATO, are designed to go after really medium- and low- altitude targets, systems like the German IRIS-T system, as well as the NASAMS system, which the U.S. sent.

These systems are pretty good when it comes to lower-flying aircraft, and they're also -- they also don't have as many of the more expensive high-powered missiles and radar systems that are associated with the Patriot system. They are accurate. They're very good at what they do. But they're not as big and they're not as powerful, if you will, as the Patriot system is.

That also includes the radars that are associated with each of those systems.

CABRERA: I see.

We know that the U.S. has provided systems like this to Poland, a NATO ally, but the U.S. was initially hesitant to provide these to Ukraine. What do you think changed?

LEIGHTON: I think the main thing that changed, Ana, was the fact that the Russians are targeting the civilian infrastructure of Ukraine, and they're doing so in a very systematic fashion.

Before this, it was more of a haphazard targeting effort on the part of the Russians. And the U.S. made the calculation that the Ukrainians could hold on without the protection that is afforded them by the Patriot system. Now they see how critical the hits have been against the critical infrastructure, and putting Ukraine in the dark, with hitting the power, hitting the water supply, hitting the sewage systems.

Those kinds of things really affect the ability of Ukraine to conduct this war. And the U.S.' main goal is to keep Ukraine in the war effort. You could make the argument that we should have done this a lot earlier. But that's the past, and now, looking toward the future, it's very clear that the U.S. needs to do this in order to help protect Ukraine and keep it in the position where it can safeguard its sovereignty.

CABRERA: It's extra, extra heartbreaking to know what is happening there in Ukraine for the Ukrainian civilians right around the holidays, the Kremlin saying there's no plan for any kind of temporary cease-fire for Christmas.

Does that surprise you? LEIGHTON: Not really, just based on the way in which, Ana, they have

gone and attacked civilian targets, both systematically and haphazardly.

It's all part of their strategy. It would be nice if they did have a Christmas truce, because that is something that would bring a degree of civilization to something as terrible as this war. But we can't expect it to happen. We can't expect to go back to the truce that the soldiers put together in World War I, where the Germans and the Brits played soccer and made peace during that brief period in 1914.

That's the kind of thing that we probably won't see unless local Russian soldiers and Ukrainian soldiers take the initiative in a tactical way on that day.

CABRERA: The brutality just has no limit, it seems.

Colonel Cedric Leighton, thank you so much for joining us.

Are you ready for a holiday COVID surge? The White House warning Americans to brace for a potential jump in cases, as hospitals nationwide already struggle with an explosion of RSV and flu on top of COVID.

The White House COVID-19 response coordinator, Dr. Ashish Jha, joins us next.

Plus, some of the most explosive claims yet. Netflix drops part two of Harry and Meghan's controversial docuseries, and some of the accusations are really jaw-dropping.

And an American college student has now been missing for more than two weeks in France. His parents have no idea where he is.

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What they told CNN in an exclusive new interview.

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CABRERA: Sick of the world tripledemic yet? Hang tight. We have a long way to go, because flu, RSV and COVID cases are all ticking up.

And now the White House is unveiling a plan specifically to combat COVID before another big wave. The Biden administration is restarting that free at-home COVID test program. That means you can order up to four free tests for your household.

The administration also plans to boost efforts to try to vaccinate high-risk people and offer federal resources to local health departments.

Joining us now is the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, Dr. Ashish Jha.

[13:20:04] Thanks so much for being with us, Dr. Jha.

How bad do you think this winter could be?

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Yes, first of all, thanks so much for having me.

Here's what we know. We have seen in each of the last two winters COVID cases rise up. We're seeing, obviously, we're in the middle of probably the worst flu season in a decade. And we have got a lot of RSV out there still. So what happens next is very much up to us, Ana.

I think if we -- if people go out and get their flu vaccine, if people go out and get their updated COVID vaccines, things will be much better. Obviously, if that doesn't happen, then there's more concern and more risk out there.

CABRERA: After Thanksgiving, we saw that huge spike in hospitalizations from the flu. So it's not just COVID. It's the flu. It's RSV, which we know has been overwhelming children's hospitals.

What's the biggest threat right now?

JHA: Yes, so all three of those viruses continue to be a challenge.

The good news here is, RSV does look like it is turning down. And in the last couple of weeks, we have seen evidence that RSV numbers are coming down. But there's still a lot of flu. And then COVID numbers are rising pretty significantly over the last couple of weeks.

And so all of them remain a challenge. And the good news, again, is, we have got terrific vaccines against both flu and COVID. So we can do a lot here. This -- we are not helpless, so this is not a cause for concern. And, to me, it's a cause for action. And if people take action, and get themselves immunologically up to date with updated vaccines, it's going to make an enormous difference in the weeks and months ahead.

CABRERA: I mean, on that note, only about 14 percent of the eligible population have gotten that updated booster shot.

The president basically said the pandemic was over back in September. Did that hurt the administration's efforts to get people vaccinated?

JHA: Look, the president has been very clear that COVID continues to be a challenge. Obviously, it's not the same disruptive force it was two years ago or even 20 months ago, when the president took office. We have made a lot of progress.

But it continues to be a challenge. And the key message out of this administration is that people have the ability to protect themselves, their families by getting these updated vaccines. It makes an enormous difference. And we have got to keep getting that word out. And the good news is, by the way, they still are free. They're widely available.

So people should really avail themselves of this free and very, very safe and effective vaccine.

CABRERA: So, on one hand, you're saying, don't be overly worried. But then, on the other hand, you're starting up the free at-home test kits again, which was something that had gone away, in part, we were told, because of funding concerns.

So why did the administration feel it was necessary and important to bring back the free tests? And what is your best advice for people who do test positive at this stage in the pandemic? What should they do?

JHA: Yes.

So, several questions there, so let me be very clear. The message here is, what happens in the weeks and months ahead is largely dependent on us. If people go out and get vaccinated, if people, when they turn positive, get treated, then things will be better. If they don't, then we are going to have some very tough weeks and some very tough months ahead.

Now, in terms of COVID tests, we paused it because we want -- we were running through our supplies. We wanted to make sure we had some tests available if -- in case there was an increase in the winter. This is the moment we were waiting for. We're seeing that increase now. We're opening up COVIDtests.gov, so people can go and get those tests.

But if you test positive, I think everybody should be evaluated for treatment. If you're 50 or above or if you have any kind of chronic conditions, you should be seriously evaluated for treatment. In my mind, it is now standard of care that elevated risk, people with elevated risk should be getting treated.

CABRERA: And, as far as masks, do people need to start masking up again?

JHA: You know, look, there's a variety of tools that we have to keep infection numbers lower, testing, masking, vaccinations, treatments, improving indoor air quality.

My point on this has been very clear. Masks work. They help. In crowded indoor spaces, I wear a mask. And I think we should see them as one part of a list of tools that we have that can keep infections lower.

CABRERA: The military COVID vaccine mandate is about to end. Currently, it is one of 15 vaccines required, depending on where you're serving. Do you think it's a mistake? What do you see as the consequences?

JHA: Yes, so, in terms of vaccine mandates, I have felt really strongly these are decisions that should be made by leaders of those organizations about what the -- what is appropriate for them.

I think there are companies, if you want to have a vaccine mandate for your employees because you think that's what makes your employees safer, same thing with health care, that's where the decision should be made, should be done at that local level, at that individual organizational level.

And that is really what I think is most important at this moment.

CABRERA: But we're talking about the military here, not a private company.

JHA: Yes.

CABRERA: So, where do you stand when it comes to the military vaccine mandate going away?

JHA: Well, I have been very clear on this for a while, that I think this is a decision made -- should be made by military leaders.

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Military, as you said, mandates a whole host of vaccines. And they do it because they think that's what is most important for protecting their troops. Again, military leaders should continue to make those decisions.

CABRERA: Dr. Ashish Jha, thank you so much for your time, and wishing you the very best around the holidays for you and your family.

JHA: Thank you. You too.

CABRERA: OK, so we knew the tea was hot, but now we know just how bitter it is.

The final episodes of "Harry & Meghan" reveal just how ugly things got as the couple split from the royal family.

Stay with us.

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