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CNN International: Up to 2,000 People Buried in Papua New Guinea Landslide; Severe Weather Risk for 120 Million in Several Parts of U.S.; Closing Arguments Set for Tuesday in Trump's Criminal Trial; Gaza Health Minister: At Least 35 Killed in Rafah Strike; President Zelenskyy Makes Urgent Plea. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired May 27, 2024 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Irons everywhere. It was all dark. It's really one of those things you never expect, you know, until it actually happens.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like a punch to the stomach, really. I mean, this is my community. I know people that work here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The heartbreak of a family losing a two-year-old and a five-year-old child.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, I think there's probably a feeling of fatalism, but not of surrender. You can make a lot of arguments that if you wouldn't buy a used car from this guy, you can't face a criminal verdict on him.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: To President Biden and to President Xi, we do not want the U.N. Charter to be burned. Burnt down just like these books.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Max Foster.

FOSTER: Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers joining us from the U.S. and all around the world. I'm Max Foster. It's Monday, May the 27th, 9 a.m. here in London, 6 p.m. in Papua New Guinea, where the death toll from last week's massive landslide now appears far worse than initially feared.

In a letter to the United Nations, an emergency official says as many as 2,000 people were buried alive. CNN's Ivan Watson joins us now from Hong Kong. I mean, it's taken us a while because of the scale of the devastation, but also access to the area.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. I mean, to now be more than three days into this disaster, and to see the projections or the estimates for the death toll to have risen so sharply to now, according to the Papua New Guinea government, more than 2,000 dead. That suggests, A, that the scale of this was much bigger than perhaps anybody had understood at first, and B, how hard it has been to get people to the place, to the rescue and the salvage operation.

We are starting to hear from some of the survivors of this disaster that took place at 3 o'clock in the morning local time on Friday. So that would have been when people were at home. That is when the side of a mountain spilled down and landed on this remote village.

Take a listen to what one survivor had to say.

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EVIT KAMBU, LANDSLIDE SURVIVOR (through translator): I have 18 of my family members buried under the debris and soil that I am standing on, and a lot more family members in the village. I cannot count. I am the landowner here.

Thank you to all those who've come to help us, but I cannot retrieve the bodies, so I'm standing here helplessly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: So part of what the authorities are doing is there are estimates there that if 100 houses may have been buried and each one could have had 10 to 20 relatives inside sleeping, that's where they're coming -- we're hearing from some aid workers to perhaps these numbers of perhaps more than 2,000 people having been killed in this landslide.

And so you have the acting director of the Disaster Management Center who's written to the United Nations and to the international aid community asking for help and going on to write, quote: The situation remains unstable as the landslip continues to shift slowly, posing ongoing danger to both rescue teams and survivors alike.

An aid worker that we've spoken to has described this community not only as rural, but most of the residents there would have been, in the words of this aid worker, subsistence farmers, that their homes would have been constructed, as they described it, with, quote, bush materials, so not necessarily very sturdy when the side of an entire mountain comes down.

And one question here is we don't even know what truly caused this massive disaster. Was it a tremor in an earthquake prone area? Was it the large amount of rainfall or perhaps a combination of both? Or as one geologist put it, you add possible deforestation, which would have made things more unstable as well.

The road to the disaster area also cut off by the landslide, which has added to the challenges and the complication of trying to come to the aid of this stricken community -- Max.

FOSTER: Ivan Watson, thank you for that grim update.

Now, more than 120 million people across the United States face the risk of severe weather in the coming hours.

[04:05:00]

On this Memorial Day holiday, more than half a million homes and businesses are without power, and at least 18 have died in four states. That includes four children in Cook County, Texas, where a tornado hit overnight.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott visited one of the hardest hit cities in Cook County on Sunday to survey the destruction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): We will piece our lives back together, get back to business, rebuild families. There's only one thing that cannot be rebuilt, and that's the loss of life. That's why we always stress to everybody, whatever you do in any type of storm, put life first. Protect life at whatever cost you can because life is irreplaceable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: In St. Louis, Missouri, a major league baseball game was delayed by nearly two hours due to the severe storms in the area. Arkansas, along with Texas and Oklahoma, one of the hardest hit states following last night's severe storms, which killed at least eight people and prompted Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders to declare a state of emergency.

The worst may be far from over as well. Large portions of the country are bracing for possible damage and destruction on this Memorial Day, which saw a near record number of travelers over the holiday weekend. Reporter Amy Kiley has the latest.

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AMY KILEY, REPORTER (voice-over): The storm system responsible for a number of deaths over the weekend is putting more than 120 million people at risk of severe weather today. That could make Memorial Day perilous for people trying to get home and for others not going anywhere.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All I could say through the whole thing is I'm glad that we're alive.

KILEY (voice-over): The National Weather Service says it issued a rare kind of tornado watch last night for parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee. It indicates high confidence of at least EF2 strength and long lived tornadoes.

TARI SUEMNICK, HOME DAMAGED BY FALLEN TREE: We have been blessed with an outpour of people stopping by, calling and texting and all the help we can get.

KILEY (voice-over): The fatalities are largely from storms that hit Arkansas and Texas between Saturday night and yesterday morning. A two year old and three other juveniles are dead in the Lone Star State. ABBOTT: Texans across the state are saddened by the tragic loss of life.

KILEY (voice-over): Officials also report more than 100 weather related injuries in Texas.

FRANK GARCIA, SURVIVED TORNADO IN TEXAS: You see -- you see videos about tornadoes. You see people retelling them just like how, you know, I'm retelling them now. But it's really one of those things you never expect. And, you know, until it actually happens.

KILEY (voice-over): I'm Amy Kiley reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOSTER: Donald Trump says he could have won the Libertarian endorsement if he wanted it, based on what he describes as the enthusiasm showed him at the party's convention. To be clear, this is the enthusiasm that he's describing. Those are booze mixed with some of the cheers as the former president took to the stage on Saturday in Washington.

In fact, he faced heckling throughout his relatively short 34 minute campaign speech, including when he tried to sell attendees with this approach.

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The Libertarian Party should nominate Trump for president of the United States. Wow! Only do that if you want to win. If you want to lose, don't do that. Keep getting your three percent every four years.

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FOSTER: In fact, Chase Oliver, who got just over two percent of the vote when he ran for governor of Georgia, won the nomination. He beat out both Trump and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Meanwhile, we're nearing the end of Trump's historic criminal hush money trial. Closing arguments are set for Tuesday, starting with the former president's attorneys, followed by the prosecution. Afterwards, the judge will instruct the members of the jury on the charges they must consider. Then they'll begin their deliberations likely on Wednesday.

Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. CNN spoke with one of his former attorneys on whether he believes Trump's team is prepared for the possibility of a guilty verdict.

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JIM TRUSTY, DONALD TRUMP'S FORMER ATTORNEY: I think so, because it's a Manhattan jury pool. I mean, the reality is that the numbers don't favor him. Only taking three days or three and a half days to pick a jury on something this high profile is very worrisome.

Even having a couple of attorneys on the jury could kind of cut wildly in either direction. So, you know, I think there's probably a feeling of fatalism, but not of surrender. I mean, again, you can -- there's stuff to attack in terms of whether the entries are even false when it says legal services rendered.

But beyond that, to go into Cohen as the star witness is just, you know, you can make a lot of arguments that if you wouldn't buy a used car from this guy, you can't base a criminal verdict on him.

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[04:10:03]

FOSTER: Thomas Gift is the founding director of the Center on U.S. Politics at University College, London. Thank you so much for joining us on this public holiday here in the U.K. and in the U.S., of course. So we're going into this, you know, probably be the final week. When do you when do you think we would get a verdict? Because I know it's hard to answer, but it's a question many people will be asking.

THOMAS GIFT, DIRECTOR, CENTRE ON U.S. POLITICS, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF LONDON: It's great to see you, Max. I do think that we could get a verdict as soon as this week, but it could be a couple of weeks. It ultimately just depends on how convinced the jury is or not of the facts that they have seen over the last few weeks.

So it could be just something that's very, very quick. But I expect that it's going to take more deliberation because there are 34 felony counts here. There's a lot for the jurors to go through. And so I don't think that it's going to be something that is immediate.

FOSTER: In terms of how these processes work, obviously, you're not a lawyer. You're not working on the case. But, you know, what's the jury expected to consider?

Do they have to be precise about the evidence, which obviously Trump's team was quite successful in in knocking along the way? Or is it is it the overall picture that they come away with?

GIFT: Well, I think that it's really the details and the devil is in the details. He faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Falsifying business records in New York state can be considered a misdemeanor.

But essentially what you had was a Democrat district attorney, Alvin Bragg, linking this to a federal campaign finance law. So it's all going to be whether Trump technically violated these different issues.

Of course, you're going to be looking at it. The jury is going to be looking at it in the context of the entire case. But they are going to have to go count by count.

FOSTER: And what does it mean for Trump if he wins or loses? I mean, how do you think it will affect his campaign? GIFT: Well, Max, I really do think that this trial is kind of background noise for most voters. It's not shaping public opinion very much as much as it's just reinforcing preexisting perceptions of Trump. This was supposed to be a blockbuster trial with the personalities and the salacious details and a president whose political future was on the line.

In some ways, it's actually delivered inside the courtroom with some of the drama. But I do think that it hasn't really captured the attention of Americans. Recent polling showed that just one in six voters were following the trial closely.

And, of course, those voters are the ones who are already most interested in politics and therefore most likely to have a clear opinion on Trump. I think if Trump's guilty, his voters will frame it as a witch hunt. If he's innocent, they'll frame it as an exoneration. And if it's a hung jury, it'll be met with indifference. So I'm not sure if it's going to fundamentally change the dynamics of this race.

FOSTER: And what about Stormy Daniels? Obviously, so much of the focus is on Donald Trump. But do you think the American perceptions have changed about her? How do you think this would affect her going forward?

GIFT: Well, I think that she's going to be eager to kind of put this behind her. Americans, I think, whether it's Michael Cohen or Stormy Daniels or any of the other personalities who actually stood on trial, I think people kind of view it through the lens of partisan politics. Obviously, there's a lot of hoopla. There's a lot of sort of bias in terms of that. So I'm not sure how it's going to affect perceptions of Stormy Daniels. My guess is that we're probably not going to be hearing much from her anyway in terms of American politics. So most of the focus is going to be on Trump.

FOSTER: And he's -- you know, he sees opportunities, doesn't he, everywhere. What's the opportunity in this for him, even if he does get found guilty? Is it that familiar argument that the mainstream or the establishment is out to get him?

GIFT: Well, we have to recognize that Trump is not a typical politician, whether that's the cult of personality or something else. He's really not damaged by misconduct the way that other elected officials are. I think in large part, that's because Trump is able to effectively leverage this grand of grievance politics.

You know, there have been so many scandals, big scandals, small scandals, medium sized scandals. Everything from the Access Hollywood tape to multiple impeachments. Voters really knew what they were getting with Trump.

They know what they're getting with Trump now. And there's been ample opportunity for Republicans to distance themselves from his unethical behavior. But the MAGA base is stuck with him.

He's been able to effectively frame this as a witch hunt. And I don't expect that we're going to see anything different here than what we've seen with every other scandal that Trump has encountered.

FOSTER: Are there cases coming up? There are others, obviously, which you think should be more concerning to him.

GIFT: I do, Max. I think timing wise, Trump really couldn't have asked for more in having this case first. It was always substantively the weakest. I think it was a bit of a stretch for the district attorney to put this into a federal case.

[04:15:00]

The prosecution's case is predicated almost entirely on the testimony of Michael Cohen, who's since essentially admitted to larceny. And then there are all these questions that the jury is going to have to sift through about whether the hush money was paid to shield Trump's family from the allegations, to deflect criticism on the campaign trail or both. I think regardless of whether you think Trump is guilty or not, it's sort of a complex case. It's not a slam dunk.

And I think whenever you look at some of the other cases, Georgia case, where Trump is actually on recording saying, find me so many more votes, or with January 6th, where Americans can see very vividly all the events that unfolded. This is just a little bit more ambiguous. And I think Trump is exploiting that ambiguity to his political benefit.

FOSTER: OK, lots more to cover, but we'll be coming back to you. Thomas Gift, thank you so much.

Up next, what Israel is saying about a deadly strike on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. We'll have a live report for you just ahead.

Plus, another harrowing ordeal for passengers as turbulence hits a Qatar Airways flight this time. We'll look at why these incidents appear to be on the rise and what's causing them.

And later, despite an hour's long rain delay, racing fans were treated to a thrilling finish the Indianapolis 500.

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[04:20:04]

FOSTER: The Gaza health ministry says at least 35 people have been killed in an Israeli strike in the southern city of Rafah. Gaza officials say the strike hit a camp filled with tents for those displaced by the war and caused a fire that left many people injured with burns. The Israeli military claims it was targeting a Hamas compound and killed two senior Hamas officials.

Nada's been looking at that, but particularly the video, and you're unable to show most of it.

NADA BASHIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Some of the video that we have seen coming out of this strike in Rafah is simply too graphic, too distressing to show. It is some of the most horrifying video I have personally seen over the last seven months of covering this war.

As you mentioned, at least 35 people killed. Dozens more have been injured following this strike around the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah. This is an area which was known to be filled with civilians who had been sheltering in these tents.

As we know, more than a million people were displaced to the southern city of Rafah per the orders of the Israeli military who told civilians to move south. As we saw in the last few weeks, there have been evacuation orders from the Israeli military telling people in parts of eastern Rafah to evacuate towards the coastal area of Gaza. But this was not one of those neighborhoods that came under an evacuation order.

This was supposed to be a safe zone for civilians. Clearly, that is not the case. We've heard from the health ministry saying that there are no hospitals left with capacity to treat all those injured and all the casualties.

We've heard from the International Committee for the Red Cross. They've said that they've seen an influx of patients with severe burns. It is a deeply distressing situation.

Now, as you mentioned, the Israeli military has said that it struck what it has described as a Hamas compound. They said they killed two senior Hamas leaders. But as we know, this was an area densely populated with civilians, including women and children, who were among the casualties.

The Doctors Without Borders organization has said it is horrified by what took place yesterday, again reiterating its call for a ceasefire. And we have heard further criticism from both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, not only of the Israeli government and military, but also, crucially, of the United States, who they say have facilitated Israel's actions in Rafah, despite the fact that we saw the ICJ ruling yesterday -- last week ordering Israel not to push forward with any sort of military offensive in Rafah.

FOSTER: I mean, that's what's happening on the ground. Obviously, that's also exactly what the Americans and other allies have been saying they're worried about, isn't it? The fact that there's a targeted operation, but it's not targeted effectively enough because so many civilians are being caught up in it.

BASHIR: Yes, absolutely. And we did hear from President Biden. He told CNN that if Israel does plan to go into Rafah, if indeed that does take place, then the U.S. will not be supplying the weapons for that.

Whether this counts as a red line for Biden, whether we see tougher action from the U.S. administration remains to be seen. Of course, we haven't seen that full-scale ground offensive, but we are now seeing these civilian areas, these tents, these shelters established for those displaced in Gaza, for those civilians being targeted and struck by both shelling and airstrikes. So this could be a red line for the U.S., but that remains to be seen.

FOSTER: And just quickly, any hope for ceasefire talks at the moment?

BASHIR: Talks continue to stall. We are expecting them to resume in Cairo on Tuesday, but, again, that back-and-forth is on go. We've heard again from the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu saying that they will not accept any sort of deal that calls for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, that calls for a full ceasefire until they have succeeded in eradicating Hamas.

But, of course, Hamas continues to push for that full withdrawal. At this stage, it seems, those talks continue to stall, despite officials saying that there has been some progress.

FOSTER: OK, Nada Bashir, thank you.

At least 16 people are dead after Russia bombed a crowded hardware store in Kharkiv on Saturday, but that number could still rise. We have new video from inside the store, but a warning, it is disturbing.

Officials have said there were nearly 200 people in the building when it was hit. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says hundreds of first responders rushed to the scene after Saturday's attack. The remains of 10 people have been identified, but eight others are still missing, leaving some family members desperate for answers.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I am looking for my mother and sister. My dad managed to crawl to the other side. I was in the toilet. I came out a minute later and there was fire everywhere. I think it was impossible to survive there. They were laying there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Mr. Zelenskyy gave his condolences to those who lost loved ones. He also urged the U.S. and China to attend a peace summit in Switzerland next month.

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[04:25:00]

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: To President Biden, the leader of the United States, and to President Xi, the leader of China, we do not want the U.N. Charter to be burned, burned down just like these books. And I hope you don't want to either.

Please show your leadership in advancing the peace, real peace, not just a pause between the strikes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Zelenskyy went on to say that more than 80 countries have already agreed to attend the summit.

Now, three Asian powers held their first summit in years on Monday. We'll tell you about the meeting between the leaders of Japan, South Korea and China ahead in a live report.

And it was a chaotic start to the Monaco Grand Prix, but the race ended with one driver finally winning on home ground. Details next.

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FOSTER: Welcome back to CNN News. I'm Max Foster. If you're just joining us, here are some of today's top stories.

The death toll from last week's massive landslide in Papua New Guinea now appears far worse than initially feared. An emergency official says up to 2,000 people were buried alive under mud and debris. Rescue efforts are ongoing in the remote region where the landslide occurred.

More than 120 million people across the U.S. face the threat of severe weather in the coming weeks.