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CNN This Morning

Musk Launches Poll Asking If He Should Step Down From Twitter; Hawaiian Airlines Flight Turbulence Injures 36, 11 Seriously; CNN: Department of Energy To Shift U.S. Light Bulb Market To Efficient Less; American Tourists Stranded In Machu Picchu Amid Deadly Unrest; Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired December 19, 2022 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: So we'll get back to benefits. We'll see if we can do it.

But you -- look, I know it's serious. I know how you feel. You use Twitter a lot more than I do. I'm not taking away from the seriousness of Twitter. I think it's very serious, especially as you know, how I feel about people who are in countries where there's limited media.

I think that he should take it more seriously. And I think he's playing with us. He's doing what Trump does, right? Trying to put up polls, trying to change the news cycle, trying to get more interest in Twitter. And I just think that it should be taken a lot more seriously than he is. I think we have it.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: And a lot of it has been those polls. One thing that -- I think Ben is back with us now this morning. One thing to ask about is, you know, this idea that Elon, when he puts these polls out there, he's already kind of decided what he's going to do. Like he's already decided that he's going to step down as a thing.

Ben, what is your sense of whether or not that is what Elon was doing here? Did he already decide to step down as CEO? And does it really have that much of an impact on the company itself?

BEN SMITH, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF SEMAFOR: I mean, I don't think that that he is -- he seems like he's living moment to moment. And, you know, I mean, he is -- he has this experience of Twitter, there's a lot about adulation. And if you look at what he's -- how he behaves on there, he is largely replying to people who are saying, you are great. And he says, I am, or here is a wise quote from Elon Musk. And he says, very wise.

So I don't know if he thought he would lose a poll like that. But I think it'll have a huge impact on Twitter. I mean, it's been around obviously, just sort of out of his pocket for the last couple of weeks. And you can tell that he's -- that there's no one around him who ever -- who can -- who would just able to say, boss, I'm not sure that's a good idea, just based on a series of terrible ideas. He's sort of acted on and backed off. Totally strange situation. LEMON: Yes, something. I just want to say, can you -- can you put this in context for us? Because I'm sure you heard Kaitlan and I speaking. Look, I think that there, obviously, is a huge place in society, for Twitter, especially if you look at journalists, especially if you look at people like the women of Iran, if you look at countries where people don't have a free press, like there is a huge plays for Twitter.

I think that he should be taking it more seriously. I think that these polls and all these antics is just to, you know, it's very -- it's right out of the Trump playbook, which is what I feel and that he is manipulating the media in order to get attention.

So can you put this into perspective? Should we -- should journalists pull out their Trump playbook in order to deal with what Elon Musk is doing at Twitter? Is it a -- is it a page out of the same book?

SMITH: You know, I think that's a really good observation. And there's one particular thing Trump would do, which is he would just violate some long-standing norm in order to largely get attention and drive, you know, the keepers of the norms, including journalists, totally nuts, and get a ton of attention and then sort of walk it back.

And I think one difference, I mean, Kate [ph], you covered this with Trump's first term in particular, is that Trump actually didn't really know how to be an executive yet. And he would say he was going to do something caused massive outrage and then not do it.

One thing about Musk is he knows how to run a company, just in a technical sense. He knows where the buttons and the levers are. And so when he has made an outrageous decision, he's been able to implement it very, very fast.

And you've seen, you know, his decision sort of ripple through the actual functioning of the operation. That was actually kind of not true of the West Wing in 2017. It was much more Trump saying things people being outraged, and then nothing happening.

I mean, you know, what you say about Twitter is important, it's certainly true. It's been this vital, vital part of the public conversation for 10 years. But it's not like a rule of nature that there has to be one big social platform that everybody in the world is on. I think it's -- and, you know, most of human history, there has not been one. And I don't think it's -- would be that weird if we went back to a situation where there's lots of different places people express themselves.

COLLINS: Well, so it looks like if you actually sit down.

LEMON: Yes, look, that's a very good point. Because I remember during the Trump years when you were there, you know, Trump would tweet something and then get Kaitlan into the camera. And then you know, you get to the camera, and we report it. And then as you said, sometimes things would happen, but pretty much most of the time nothing really happened. But it certainly did change the news cycle for the day, and it kept reporters working on their toes, like every single day. There were like 10 different things that happened when Trump was president.

COLLINS: Yes. One, I think is just the idea of like roll this capricious stage of rolling by, you know, Twitter poll, and we'll see if he abides. I mean, he did say in a Delaware court when he was testifying, I think last month, that he did not plan to run Twitter. He wanted to have a different person. We'll see if he actually does that.

LEMON: Ben, we appreciate you waking up early with us. Thank you so much. Get used to this as long as you're covering Elon Musk and Twitter. Yes.

SMITH: Yes. No sleep, no rest for the weary.

LEMON: All right. Thank you.

So you got to get see the story that we're going to talk about next. It's a flight to paradise. It became a nightmare. More than 30 Hawaiian Airlines passengers injured after severe turbulence. We're going to have a very latest for you.

[06:35:01]

COLLINS: And first on CNN, pushing the U.S. light bulb market in a greener direction. We'll tell you what it means whether or not -- what it means next time you'd have to replace a burned out bulb.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back to CNN this morning. We are live from Washington D.C. You can see the beautiful Capitol there. And straight ahead here, we're just ahead of the final public hearings for January 6. The committee now meeting today, going to happen in a couple of hours. Much more on that.

Also coming up, a scary moment high in the skies. You have to check this out. What happened on a flight to Hawaii that sent passengers to the hospital? We'll update you on that one.

Plus, Americans stranded in Peru amid deadly protests. What is the U.S. doing to bring them home?

And live from New York, it's Saturday Night for the very last time. Cecily Strong says goodbye to SNL. You're going to see the emotional moment straight ahead.

[06:40:01]

COLLINS: Also this morning, at least 36 people have been injured on a Hawaiian Airlines flight, 11 in serious condition after the plane encountered severe turbulence on a flight from Phoenix to Honolulu on Sunday. One of those who's taken at the hospital is a 14-month old baby.

CNN's Pete Muntean is here with us.

I mean, these images are remarkable of what happened on this flight.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You can see the mess on board. I mean, this had to be really, really extreme turbulence on this Hawaiian Airlines flight. An Airbus A330 like this was about a quarter of a million pounds. So for airlines to say that they encountered severe turbulence and for all these people to get hurt, this had to be some really, really extreme occurrence of air moving this airplane.

What we know now from Hawaiian airlines is that 20 people in total were taken to hospitals, 17 passengers, three crew members. This was an Airbus A330. This flight from Phoenix to Honolulu. And we can tell from the flight aware track that some of this happened only about a half hour before the plane landed.

I want you to listen now to one of the passengers on board. Her name is Kaylee Reyes, and she said her mom was not wearing her seatbelt and was pushed up to the ceiling by this extreme force of the turbulence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAYLEE REYES, PASSENGER ON HAWAIIAN AIRLINES FLIGHT: The plane shook and then like it went into a sudden drop, kind of like how you would go into a drop on a roller coaster.

My mom wasn't buckled. And so I turned to my right and I saw that she was like -- she hit the ceiling and she hit the floor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: Hawaiian airlines is investigating this. So as the FAA. Hawaiian says that it will inspect this airplane fully before it flies again, just because the extreme force is on an airliner like this.

You know, the NTSB has been looking into this for a long, long time. They said between 2009 and 2018, about a third of all air carrier incidents, involving airliners, have to do with turbulence. So this is a huge problem. A lot of different causes of it, thunderstorms, rising currents of air, different speeds and layers of wind, wind shear. So that's a huge problem here.

They're trying to sort of get a wrangle on this. But this sort of underscores why flight attendants tell you and the flight crew tells you, keep your seatbelt buckled even if the air is smooth. You never know exactly when it's going to hit. They're trying to get better at forecast in this. A lot of advances in that technology. Although clearly we're not there just yet.

LEMON: But you know what it speaks to the durability --

MUTEAN: No doubt.

LEMON: -- of airplanes, they can take a lot --

MUNTEAN: Well engineered.

LEMON: -- more than you think. MUNTEAN: Yes, no doubt.

COLLINS: No comfort for people who don't like flying.

LEMON: Yes.

COLLINS: But then like, OK, Don.

MUNTEAN: I hope I eased some of the concerns. And I know that a lot of people are afraid of turbulence.

LEMON: I'm not a big fan of flying. And I do not like turbulence, but --

MUNTEAN: Sorry, Don.

LEMON: -- those airplanes.

MUNTEAN: I love flying and I don't mind turbulence. But my little airplane gets jostled around a bit more than a airliner about 99 times more.

LEMON: If you've ever seen what it's like the stress that they go through with the (inaudible) then you'll realize this how.

MUNTEAN: Yes. They bend the wings up to extreme forces. It's incredible.

COLLINS: Pete Muntean, thank you for that update.

LEMON: So first now on CNN, the Biden administration preparing to flip the switch on a major change for the U.S. light bulb market. The Energy Department is poised to phase out compact fluorescent light bulbs and push the market toward more energy efficient LEDs. This is a very big change after former president Trump rolled back the effort to go green.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The bulb that we're being forced to use, number one to me most importantly, the lights no good. I always look orange. And so do you. The light is the worst.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Well, I'm not sure that's the light. But CNN's Rene Marsh joins us now with more. Rene, good morning to you.

RENE MARSH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

LEMON: What are you learning about this? What's happening?

MARSH: Well, I brought some props so that we know -- I can show you better than I can tell you. So this is the old school light bulb here with the with the wire filament inside. And then this is the compact fluorescent and this is the LEDs.

So this spring, the Biden administration finalized a rule to phase this one out. This is the old school.

LEMON: Incandescent.

MARSH: Yes, exactly. Now, what's new today is they are proposing a rule to phase out the compact fluorescent lights. This is more efficient than the old school one but not as efficient as the LEDs.

So why does the federal government care so much about what light bulbs were using? Part of this is driving down the use of energy, wanting to cut back on greenhouse gases that are, you know, released as a -- as a result of producing more energy. They are saying that this proposal could essentially cut back greenhouse gas as much as 20 -- excuse me, as much as 29 million homes as far as electricity used in just one year.

It's also cost savings. They're saying that it could cut back some $20 billion for consumers over the course of a -- of 30 years. So this is all about cutting back the greenhouse gas emissions that comes along with using energy as well as savings for the consumer.

[06:45:02]

LEMON: Well, very interesting. I'm going to miss these, but I will take the cost savings. I'm sure you will too.

COLLINS: Don's going to take that light bulb.

LEMON: Yes. I do. I like incandescent lighting.

MARSH: You have to give up -- you have to give up the old school.

LEMON: Thank you, Rene Marsh.

MARSH: Sure.

LEMON: Good to see you. Thank you so much.

So spread of flu might be slowing just as a holiday travel season gets underway. That's good news. How to stay protected, next.

COLLINS: Plus, American tourists have been stranded in Machu Picchu as deadly protests breakout across Peru. The government's race to get them out, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Yes, you know, it's flu season. And flu season that hit early, the U.S. early and hard is showing the first signs of slowing in at least parts of the country, Kaitlan. But will this trend continue as holiday travel ramps up? That is a question for our senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen.

Good morning to you. So what's the answer? What are the numbers looking like for heading into the holidays?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Don. I wish I could say, oh, the numbers are going down. This is great. We've seen the worst of this flu season. Unfortunately, I can't say that.

Now, the CDC did just recently released numbers that looked at the weeks following Thanksgiving and flu numbers were down week over week. That's good. They were down 10 percent, but that could be a blip. That happens sometimes. You get a blip of one week decrease and then it goes right back up again.

What I can tell you is that talking to doctors and various hospitals, they say they are getting hammered, that's the word that they use, they are getting hammered with the flu. There is still a ton of it out there.

[06:50:07]

Let's take a look at the toll that the flu season has taken. So far this year, it was early and it was intense. There had been at least 150,000 hospitalizations and at least 9,300 deaths. I want to say, get a flu shot. It can still protect you because we will still have quite a bit of flu in front of us, even if it is really truly going down. Don, Kaitlan.

COLLINS: Yes. And, Elizabeth, it's not just flu that we're dealing with. Don just said, you know, you got one flu shot, one COVID booster. We are seeing a lot of these COVID cases. And I was struck by something Dr. Jha, the COVID coordinator at the White House said yesterday saying that there is a substantial increase in COVID-19. What are the numbers looking like now?

COHEN: So there has been a slight tick up in COVID cases, and that's unusual. We've been seeing it going down and down and down. We haven't talked much about COVID recently. I want to show you the CDC's county map. Take a look at this.

And Kaitlan and Don, I think you'll remember, we've looked at this map before. And when we looked at it months and months ago, it was mostly red. Now, there's not much red there. Red means high rates of COVID. So there's not much red, but still, there's enough to be concerned one in 10 people in the U.S. lives in one of these red counties with this high transmission.

COLLINS: Yes, numbers are going up. A lot of people are testing positive.

Elizabeth Cohen, thanks for that update.

Also today, Americans are bracing for a Polar Plunge, not the kind that you want. Frigid temperatures are expected in the first week of winter. We'll tell you where, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:55:15]

COLLINS: This morning, deadly protest in Peru left several American tourists stranded in Machu Picchu for days. The violent protests that erupted after the ousting and detention of the president there. Now many highways are blocked. Regular train services have been suspended.

CNN's Kylie Atwood is at the State Department. Kylie, what's happening with the tourists but also on the ground at large and Peru?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, some good news over the weekend is that Peru rail which runs trains out of Machu Picchu, which, Kaitlan, is essentially the only way to get out of the town because you either have to hike to Machu Picchu or take a train to this ancient world heritage site.

They said that they are running emergency services out of Machu Picchu. Now, those services, according to Peru rail, are just for folks who have medical problems, have children, who are elderly, so we really don't know the extent to which they are getting these tourists out of Machu Picchu.

As you said, hundreds of them that are stuck there due to these protests in Peru right now. Now, the State Department says that they are in touch with Americans who are there. We don't have an estimated figure as to how many of these 300 tourists are American, but the State Department is in touch with them. They have updated them with information about how to get out based on what the Peruvian government is setting up here in terms of evacuation routes.

But they also said in a new alert about demonstrations just yesterday, I want to read this to you, quote, "There are unconfirmed reports of a general strike in the Cusco area on Monday, December 19, which will affect transportation in the city and may impact airport arrivals and departures. It goes on to say avoid areas of demonstration as protests and demonstrations can be unpredictable and quickly turn violent."

Now, Cusco is the city that's closest to Machu Picchu that has an international airport. So the question here, the problem here is that even if folks are getting on these trains out of Machu Picchu, they may still have some issues getting to the airport due to these expected demonstrations. So the embassy is telling folks to really be careful as they make their way and try to get out of the country.

COLLINS: And, Kylie, how many people are we talking about? How many American tourists are there?

ATWOOD: Well, we know that the number of tourists is about 300. We just don't know how many of those are Americans, but we have seen several dozen Americans talk on Twitter, on social media about being stuck there and, of course, wanting to get home for the holidays.

COLLINS: OK. Kylie Atwood, thank you.

LEMON: Temperatures will take a polar plunge this week as winter officially began. Straight now to meteorologist Jennifer gray in the weather center. Good morning. OK. That is cold. I think it's going be --

JENNIFER GRAY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Don.

LEMON: -- someplace is 60 below. What are we talking about here?

GRAY: Yes. We're talking about 55 and 60 below zero, not below freezing. That's going to be the wind chill across portions of the Northern Plains, the upper Midwest. We have wind chill warnings, wind chill advisories left here.

Look at these temperatures. These are the wind chill. Overnight feels like temperatures as much as 48 below zero in Glasgow, Billings, 45, 51 below in Rapid City guys. This arctic air is going to come and settle in for the entire weekend. Could be across the Midwest, the coldest Christmas we have seen in nearly 40 years, Don.

LEMON: OK, Jennifer, I would -- OK, I guess. Thank you.

GRAY: Thanks.

LEMON: Thanks, Jennifer. We Appreciate it.

So we are live in Washington D.C. as you can see here on CNN just -- we're just hours away from the final public meeting from the January 6 Committee. Criminal referrals expected against former President Donald Trump. We're going to break it all down for you, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:00:00]