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5,000-Plus Dead as Rescuers Dig Through Debris for Survivors; Tonight, Biden Delivers State of the Union to Divided Congress; DOJ Says, Neo-Nazi Leader, Maryland Woman Plotted to Destroy Baltimore. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired February 07, 2023 - 10:00   ET

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

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour. I'm Jim Sciutto.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Erica Hill.

Heartbreaking images continue to come out of Turkey and Syria this morning. Rescuers there doing their best to dig through tons of debris hoping, looking for survivors after Monday's massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake and a number of incredibly strong aftershocks. I do want to warn you before we just show them to you, to images you are about to see are disturbing.

As of this moment, more than 5,000 people that we know of have been killed, including this 15-year-old Yermak Hanser (ph). Her father who you see here sitting in a destroyed building clutching her hand after she was crushed under layers of rubble.

SCIUTTO: That poor man, that poor little girl. For those who did survive, the conditions just brutal. They're stuck outside in freezing temperatures, now waiting for help, some help to come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have two nephews in the wreckage behind me. Around 2:00 yesterday, this building collapsed. There are possibly hundreds more of buildings like this. Thousands are currently under the rubble. The Turkish authorities won't let them save us by our means, but they won't send anyone to help either.

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SCIUTTO: Officials that more than 100 aftershocks have rocked the area, including one that was nearly as strong as the original earthquake, just as massive. And look at those buildings just collapsing into dust before our eyes.

CNN International Anchor Becky Anderson, she is in Gaziantep, Turkey. We spoke to you earlier. You were outside a building where they were trying, hoping to make a rescue there. Describe what you are seeing this morning.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Yes, Jim, it is heartbreaking. It is sounds, if they may, just about to call for quiet once again. This building behind me has completely collapsed. And as the search and rescue teams here understand it, they believe that there are more than 15 people still in the rubble beneath this building.

If you just looking to the building on the left-hand side, you can see the extent of the building as it stood just some 40 hours ago before that earthquake at 4:30 in the morning on Monday, and they are now just turning that generator down. So, I am going to stand out of the shot, because they are going to call for quiet. It sounds as if they may now be once again hoping for an extraction.

We will wait for -- they have kept the generator on, which means that they have not asked for silence as of yet.

They have heard the voices, Jim, of three people during the period of time that we have been here. So, they are hoping that they will be able to extract people alive still from here.

There is hope. It has been, what, 40 hours now. It is bitterly cold. It is just about minus one here at present and it was bitterly cold here at 4:00 in morning on Monday when this earthquake struck. But there are pockets beneath this building where people could still be alive.

Over the years, when we have been reported on this, it's become clear that people do survive if they are warm and if they have got water, they can survive for as many as 13 days. But, obviously, search and rescue becomes a recovery situation the longer that things go on.

And we have been talking to people who are gathered here and people just behind me here with their blankets on, and this group of people over here from this building. We have just been talking to a gentleman whose mom and dad live in this building. He was in tears. He is just hoping that his mom and dad may survive this.

But, yes, it is a desperate situation here in Gaziantep, which is (INAUDIBLE), which is to the west of Gaziantep, apologies, just watching the van behind me, as people really just hope for some good news at this point. Jim?

HILL: And, Becky, there's also, we know, dozens of countries have committed to sending aid, some of those teams too are already in the region. But part of the challenge in some of the areas is not just having enough people in the ground there but actually getting to some of these areas, right, Becky?

ANDERSON: You are absolutely right. We came a in with the Emirati team. The UAE have sent a search and rescue team, they've sent equipment, huge equipment, ambulances and search and rescue vehicles.

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And so we came in on that aid flight overnight.

And they are one of, as I understand it, as many as 50 countries sending in equipment, sonar devices, dogs, assets on the ground, equipment, to ensure there is much done as possible in the situations like this.

But you are absolutely right to point out. Gaziantep is a relatively new town and has relatively good services here. The buildings are relatively new and relatively robust. And I have to say, as we came in from the airport, a lot of the buildings retained their structure and it is not clear as were coming in from the airport that all buildings, by any stretch of the imagination, have been affected.

But there are some areas in town where clearly you can see the sort of devastation that you see behind me, and that is all up and down this area. So, those teams coming in are absolutely crucial, because the Turkish authorities are absolutely stretched in a relatively modern, relatively robust city like Gaziantep. So, you can only imagine what has happened in towns and cities away from here, perhaps as close to the epicenter of this earthquake but by no means as robust to say older buildings, buildings that weren't built to withstand a quake like this, and don't forget at 7.8, and that was the first quake.

There have been, as you are rightly point out, more than 100 aftershock, some of which have been almost as big as that original aftershock. I mean, it is unclear at this point just what sort of devastation exists outside of this area. And spare a thought for those in Northwestern Syria, in Aleppo and Italy (ph). I was just talking to a gentleman whose sister lives there. They have no water, no electricity, no gas or fuel. They are in a mosque. The family that I am referring to are sheltering in a mosque. She has reported that the buildings around her are absolutely devastated in Aleppo and very little aid, as we know, is getting into that area, much easier to get the aid into here. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Well, I'll tell you, that image of the father holding his daughter's hand, it will be impossible to forget. I hope you get some good news there of extractions. Becky Anderson, thanks so much.

Well, I imagine that you want to help. For more information about how you can help the victims in the earthquake in both Turkey and Syria, please go to cnn.com/impact. There are a lot of vetted charities, that are good ways to do your part.

HILL: Tonight, President Biden heads to the Capitol where he'll deliver his second state of the union speech, his first, though, in front of a divided Congress.

SCIUTTO: That's right. It's going a Republican speaker behind him.

CNN has learned that the first lady has invited some 26 guests to tonight's address. They include Paul Pelosi, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, of course, attacked in his home recently, the parents of Tyre Nichols, the Monterey shooting hero, Brandon Tsay, and U2 lead singer. CNN's M.J. Lee live at the White House. I mean, the real question here is what is the president's message tonight? How does he hope to move the politics in Washington?

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim and Erica, this is a speech that has already been weeks in the making, and we, of course, expect those final touches to be made in the coming hours. And we heard the president saying himself yesterday that he sees tonight as an opportunity to talk directly to the American people and have a conversation with them.

And White House officials have made very clear that this will be an important moment for the president to talk about the progress made over the last two years, whether it is on the economy or COVID. They see this moment as a real turning point. But this is not going to be just sort of a status check on where the country stands right now from the president's perspective.

It is also just going to be an incredibly important political speech for this president, because we expect it to serve as sort of a preview and dry run for re-election announcement that we do expect to come in the coming weeks.

So, as we expect him to look back on the last two year, we also expect that he will try to paint sort of an affirmative vision and a picture of what he still wants to get done in the next two year, but keep in mind that there will be somebody sitting behind him for the first time in this setting, and that, of course, is House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Just a reminder, all throughout the night that the president now confronts a newly divided Congress, and we saw McCarthy yesterday giving a prebuttal of sorts one of the issues that the two men have already clashed on, and that, of course, is raising the debt ceiling.

So, as much as the president we expect to emphasize some of the things that he would like Congress to get done in the next two years, there is going to be a big reminder tonight that the political environment that he is facing in the next two years is going to be entirely different than what he has had in the last two years.

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SCIUTTO: M.J. Lee at the White House, thanks so much.

So, here with me to discuss more about the president's speech, Republican Strategist Doug Heye and Democratic Strategist Maria Cardona. Good to have you both here this morning.

All right, Maria, the numbers are not looking good for Biden. 62 percent of Americans think has accomplished not very much or little or nothing. And most of those in his own party do not want him to run in 2024. How does he change minds tonight?

MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Tonight, he is going to start by talking about all of the massive accomplishments that he has been able to do in the last two years with the Democrats in Congress, and, frankly, some of the Republicans as well. He is going to talk about all of those, Jim, because those accomplishments, those laws will be game-changing. The fact of the matter is that a lot of them have not implemented, so Americans aren't feeling it. But they will start feeling it now.

And so he is going to talk about it tonight. The cabinet is going to fan out across the country tomorrow, and they are not going to stop talking about everything that they have been able to accomplish with the American people moving forward.

And the other I would say is, we were talking about this a little bit earlier, this is a president who has lived underestimated every single time he sets out to do something. This is where this man I think thrives, right? Every single time that he has put forth a plan, an agenda, has run for office, people say he can't do it, he is not popular enough, they don't like him enough, he's not effective enough, and every single time he doesn't just get it done, but he surpasses people's the expectation.

I think that's what's going to happen tonight. I think that's what's going to happen in the next two years. And the contrast with Kevin McCarthy in the back, I think, is going to remind people what Kevin McCarthy had to go through to get there, striking a corrupt bargain, who knows how many deals he had to break with the MAGA extremists in his party, and that's is going to be a big contrast with the massive accomplishments of the last Democratic Congress. First is what this Republican Congress can get accomplished.

SCIUTTO: All right. Doug Heye, a Republican point of view here. Maria, of course, as she always does, has a point there. In the midterm, something about Biden and Democratic messages worked, right, to overperform there, but, as you know, elections are won and lost among independents and perhaps some moderate Republicans. Can he change any of those minds tonight?

DOUG HEYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is not clear if he can. And so much has changed in the past three months since we had the election. The week after the Election Day, we often say in politics there is the rhetoric versus the reality. Republicans say it. Democrats say it. The rhetoric coming out of the elections was, the Republican Party is dead. And it's because of extreme candidates and extreme MAGA, if you want to say that, fine.

But now we're at the reality. Democrats had the victory rallies after they lost the House, but we are going to see Kevin McCarthy as Republican speaker. That's the reality now. It means the Biden legislative agenda is over, essentially, as far as getting things through on Capitol Hill. So, he has got pressure points of things like the debt ceiling. He can talk about what he's done and there are accomplishments that he can tout, but politics is very much about Janet Jackson. What have you done for me lately? And that's going to be very difficult for Biden moving forward over the next year or two.

SCIUTTO: Okay. I mean, he's got a point. Maria, he is not going to be passing any of these massive legislative bills you mentioned with Republicans controlling the House. And, by the way, he's got simple things to do, like raising debt limit just to keep the country from falling off the fiscal cliff.

CARDONA: But I think that's exactly the point, Jim. People are going to be able to compare what this Congress led by Kevin McCarthy, who's being led by the MAGA extremists, are going to get done versus what the Democratic-controlled Congress with Biden in the presidency were able to get done. You just said it. If nothing gets done, that's a huge comparison.

And it's not going not going to be a good comparison for Republicans because what are they going to run on? We investigated Hunter Biden's laptop, we tried to impeach Secretary Maryokas. That is not what American people voted them into office with a very slim majority to do. They promised when they ran in the midterms, they promised solutions on inflation, on the border, on crime. What is the first thing they announced? We want to impeach Secretary Mayorkas because we don't agree on the border policy.

SCIUTTO: Now, I asked the president's White House senior adviser, Keisha Lance Bottoms, last hour, Doug, about his outreach to Republicans. And that's something that Biden has done even sometimes against the advice of his own party. Here was here answer and I want to get your response.

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KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER FOR PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT: He has extended the olive branch to Speaker McCarthy. He's had him at the White House. He has extended the olive branch to Republicans. We saw he and Mitch McConnell in Kentucky together. So, the president wants to work together. The question is will Republicans be able to work with this president to get things done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Is that a fair question?

HEYE: It is a fair question. Look, in 2013, Joe Biden was in the Time 100, and the statement that was written about him was written by Eric Cantor, or more specifically by me.

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So, I know a bit about how Joe Biden works bipartisanly and has always tried to. He worked with Jesse Helms when Helms was the foreign relations chair. That is part of Joe Biden's DNA but that's also Washington of 10 years ago or 30 years ago. That's not Washington in 2023. That's a real challenge for Biden moving forward. It takes two hands to shake and it is not clear if that's going to be able happen in these politics today.

CARDONA: They said that last Congress. He was able to get the PAC Act, the CHIPS Act, the infrastructure bill. So, again, I do think it will be incumbent upon to Republicans if they want to just kneel at the altar of their MAGA extremists, they're not going to get anything done. And the American people are going to blame the Republicans and not Joe Biden because of his history and not Democrats because they were able to get a lot done when they were in power.

SCIUTTO: Or even one (INAUDIBLE) will the president use the extreme MAGA Republicans label, which was something that McCarthy has asked him not to do. Doug Heye, Maria Cardona, thanks so much.

CARDONA: Thanks, Jim.

HEYE: Thank you.

HILL: And just a reminder, CNN's live coverage of the state of the union begins at 8:00 P.M. tonight with Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper. Be sure to join us.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, the Justice Department says a neo- Nazi leader and a Maryland woman plotted to destroy Baltimore, destroy Baltimore by taking down its power grid, their motivation and exactly how they were stopped.

HILL: Plus, Florida lawmakers introducing a bill that would give Governor Ron DeSantis control over who governs Disney's Orlando area theme parks. How could that work?

SCIUTTO: And is Ticketmaster ready for Beyonce? Her concert pre-sale, it started, it's underway right now. How are things going any better than the Taylor Swift fiasco? We will give you an update.

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SCIUTTO: The Justice Department has now charge ad neo-Nazi leader and a Maryland woman with conspiring to attack Baltimore's power grid. The DOJ says it was part of a racially-motivated plot to destroy the city.

HILL: Joining us now is CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller. So, experts and the FBI here, John, have been warning. We have talked with you about the warnings about this sort of attack, and now here we are.

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: We really have been talk about this since December, white nationalist groups, neo-Nazi groups really focused on attacking the power grid. Why the grid among all of the kinds of critical infrastructure, they feel it is the most vulnerable, because those attacks can be with sniper rifles and rudimentary explosive, low-tech, low-cost and potentially high impact.

And what is the goal? The goal is if they can cause cascading, sustained, multi-day, multi-week blackouts, they think that that can push towards what they call accelerationism, accelerating the fall of society, riots, looting, race wars, the toppling of the government and so on. It is sounds farfetched but we have seen a marked increase in 2022 of attacks, vandalism, sabotage of power plants across the country.

HILL: So, this is just one episode, right? This is one place that we are talking about. You talk about that increase. How concerned do officials remain about other areas of the country invulnerabilities?

MILLER: Well, that is a problem. Because while they remain extraordinarily concerned and they're investigating many of these incidents, and not all of them can be tied to this, but there is a lot of conversations going on in the darkest corners of the internet, including instruction books with how-tos in terms of how to attack a power plant.

This case is a great example of a prevention. You have Brandon Russell, former head of the Atomwaffen Division, now running something called the new socialist order, fresh out of prison from his stint for possession of explosives related to a plot to topple the Florida power grid. And then you have got a woman he met online who says she is dying of liver disease and wants to do an attack before June, has nothing to lose. And they have all kind of bought into this ideology.

The trouble is the internet takes these tiny groups and binds them together with more people than they would find on their own by the globalization of the internet.

HILL: Yes, it is a scary thought. Anyway, it will certainly keep you busy, unfortunately, as we know. I appreciate it.

MILLER: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: Another story we are following this morning, major courtroom development in the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial. Right now, one of Murdaugh's former law firm colleagues testifying about some of his alleged financial crimes, the judge in this case already heard all this testimony last week, but the cleared the way for the state to present that evidence to the jury.

HILL: CNN's Randi Kaye is following the trial for us. She is in Walterboro, South Carolina, outside the courthouse. So, what will the main focus be of this financial testimony, Randi?

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erica and Jim, this is Jeanne Seckinger. She is CFO of Alex Murdaugh's former law firm, and she has really been put on the stand by the state to show the financial pressure that the state says Alex Murdaugh was under the day that his wife and son were both killed. Jeanne Seckinger will testify that Alex Murdaugh was in the law firm that day, that she confronted him about a funds that were missing, nearly $800,000 in funds that were missing. And he left the law firm for the day soon after that. So, that is part of the alleged financial crimes testimony that has now been cleared for the jury to hear.

But yesterday, I should tell you, there was another woman on the stand whose testimony really could be key. She was a caregiver for Alex Murdaugh's mother, and she was at her house at the night of the murder.

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She said that Alex Murdaugh came there. And she gave a lot of testimony about not only about what Alex Murdaugh was wearing but also how he was acting that night, also whether or not he had blood on him. She said that he came to the house about 9:00 P.M. That is around the time of the murders. But she did share this very significant conversation that she said she had with him following that. Listen to what she told the court.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And just to be clear, what was the statement you said about how long he was here?

MUSHELL SMITH, CAREGIVER FOR ALEX MURDAUGH'S MOTHER: 30 to 40 minutes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But his phrase was, I was here. Are you --

SMITH: I was here 30 to 40 minutes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why did you call your brother after that?

SMITH: Because he is assistant chief of police at Brownsville (ph). So, I called him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that statement by Alex Murdaugh affected you?

SMITH: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How?

SMITH: I was nervous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: She seemed to be suggesting that Alex Murdaugh was putting some pressure on her to say that he was there longer that evening. She also testified about a blue tarp and a blue raincoat, which we will hear much more about today and whether or not that had gunshot residue on it. Back to you.

SCIUTTO: Goodness, alarming story. Randi Kaye, thanks so much.

Still ahead, parts of the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon the U.S. military shot down over the weekend, they are now at an FBI lab in Virginia. China is claiming the debris belongs to them, not the U.S. We are going to have the very latest on all of this, coming up.

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