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CNN This Morning

Fetterman Checks into Hospital for Depression; Tesla Recalls Cars; Man Pulled from Rubble 10 Days after Quake; Fox Stars Trashed Election Fraud. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired February 17, 2023 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:30:58]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: We're following the news out of Washington. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman has checked himself into the hospital to get treatment for clinical depression. The attending physician of Congress recommended the freshman Democrat get in-patient care at Walter Reid Medical Center. Fetterman's chief of staff released a statement saying, while John has experienced depression off and on throughout his life, it only became severe in recent weeks. John is getting the care he needs and will soon be back to himself.

Now, last May, Fetterman had a debilitating stroke on the campaign trail. He recovered, and went on to win the election in November. Last week he checked into Walter Reid after feeling lightheaded, but his office said tests ruled out another stroke.

Joining us now is physician and assistant professor of health policy at Will Cornell Medicine, Dr. Dhruv Khullar.

Welcome to the program.

DR. DHRUV KHULLAR, HEALTH POLICY PROFESSOR, WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE: Thanks so much for having me.

CORNISH: So, how significant is the fact that he checked himself in? We said early that there was a recommendation from the physician of Congress. Is there anything to read into that - that action?

KHULLAR: Yes, I mean, most depression, as you know, is treated in the outpatient setting. So, people receive care from their home. They go into an office. They may get talk (ph) therapy or medications. In this case, it was serious enough that he felt that he had to check himself into the hospital. And so we know that there is a certain degree of severity here.

What's important to note is that he felt comfortable doing that. And I think he brings himself into a larger conversation about mental health in the United States right now. And hopefully other people see that example. If they need help, they seek out that help as well.

CORNISH: Yes, I want to talk more about that more broadly, but we should just ask the follow-up question about whether or not depression can be a kind of follow-up experience after a stroke. What can you tell us?

KHULLAR: Yes. So, you know, Mr. Fetterman had a severe stroke back in May. And about one in three patients who have a stroke will have depression at some point over the course of the year after their stroke. So, it's a very common condition. It can be serious in many cases as well.

CORNISH: Is it physiological or emotional due to what happens?

KHULLAR: You know, we're still trying to work out the mechanisms behind it.

CORNISH: Yes.

KHULLAR: There's a certain number of structural change that take place in the brain after people have a stroke. There's biochemical changes.

A stroke can also really shake someone's sense of self. And so you see yourself in a certain way and you're not able to do the things that you used to do. That creates a lot of challenges with coping. And so this is a very common thing that we see after a stroke.

You know, Senator Fetterman has a few things that are risk factors for it. His campaign has said that he's had issues with depression in the past as well. He had a pretty severe stroke. He has ongoing issues with auditory processing. All those things can lead you to have a higher risk depression after a stroke.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it's just remarkable to see. I mean I was in Washington for eight and a half years. So many politicians downplay or don't tell the full truth about their health. So, for them to be so public about this really stands out to me.

But I also want to ask you about Bruce Willis, who we all love so much. And his family came out yesterday, and, you know, we've all - we've been talking about this health for like a year now. And his family came out and said he has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. What do you - what do we know about -- is that different than the dementia we know about? What is - what is that?

KHULLAR: Yes, so when people think about dementia, most people will think about Alzheimer's dementia. Frontotemporal dementia is a much rarer type of dementia, but it's actually the most common type of dementia in people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. And so it strikes much earlier than the kind of the dementia that most people think about. It has to do with the generation in the frontal part of the brain and the temporal part of the brain, which is our - more on the side, kind of by the ears.

The other thing that's important to realize about frontotemporal dementia is the symptoms are often a little bit different than those with Alzheimer's dementia. And so with Alzheimer's dementia people usually think about memory. You losing your memory. In this case, personality changes are really prominent. So people will have different behavior changes. They may have more erratic behavior. They may have loss of impulse control. Some people have difficulty communicating. And so those are the type of symptoms that people often experience with frontotemporal dementia as compared to some of the other types of dementia.

[06:35:00]

CORNISH: Anything known about treatment at this point?

KHULLAR: There is no cure, unfortunately, for frontotemporal dementia. That doesn't mean that there's nothing that we can do. There's speech therapy. There's occupational therapy. Some people use antidepressants or antipsychotic medications to help with symptoms. But unfortunately, it is generally a progressive disease. The kind of average life expectancy after a diagnosis is somewhere between seven and 13 years.

COLLINS: Wow.

KHULLAR: That doesn't mean that people can't live longer than that, but that's generally what we see.

CORNISH: But it can affect their quality of life?

KHULLAR: Absolutely. It does affects the people's quality of life who have the disease, but also their family. It can be very difficult to see your family member undergo these types of personality changes. They may not act like they have been all their life, and that's a difficult thing for people to go through.

COLLINS: Yes. And his family acknowledged that, but they said, you know, they were glad to know what it was finally and have a diagnosis.

KHULLAR: Yes. It is - it can be reassuring to have a diagnosis, even if it's a challenging diagnosis like this one.

COLLINS: Yes.

CORNISH: Dr. Dhruv Khullar, thank you so much for this explanation. Very helpful.

COLLINS: Yes, thank you, Doctor.

KHULLAR: Thanks for having me.

CORNISH: Now, Tesla is recalling its cars with full self-driving software due to safety risks. The chief executive, Elon Musk, says the word "recall" is outdated and, quote, just flat wrong. We'll have more on why, next.

COLLINS: Also, new court documents this morning reveal that prominent Fox News anchors and executives privately mocked former President Trump's claims about election fraud while they were promoting them on air though. We have the damning messages from a lawsuit. That's ahead.

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COLLINS: All right, if you're a Tesla owner and you're waking up this morning, you're going to want to listen to this because hundreds of thousands of you are having your vehicles recalled for being, quote, unsafe around intersections. It's a problem affecting vehicles with so-called self-driving feature that Teslas have. The software has been very controversial for years among a lot of safety advocates. The non- profit, The Don Project, actually paid for this ad during the Super Bowl to warn about it.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tesla full self-driving will run down a child in a school cross walk, swerve into on-coming traffic, hit a baby in a stroller, go straight past stopped school buses, ignore do not enter signs, and even drive on the wrong side of the road. Tesla's full self-driving is endangering the public with deceptive marketing and woefully inept engineering. Ninety percent agree that this should be banned immediately. Why does NHTSA allow Tesla full self-driving?

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COLLINS: That was the ad that millions saw.

Joining us now to talk about it is CNN's chief business correspondent and "EARLY START" anchor Christine Romans.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

COLLINS: Good morning.

Elon Musk says it's not a recall, but it is a recall.

ROMANS: It's a recall. It's the government saying that some 300,000 of these vehicles need an immediate fix to make sure they are safe. This is self-driving safety here.

So, let me tell what you full self-driving is here. This is beta software. A real world testing program that is -- essentially navigates local roads, steering, braking, and accelerations, and requires the driver to be prepared to take over at any moment.

But in this - this safety recall report from NHTSA, it outlines numerous instances where it doesn't seem to have worked. And Tesla itself saying there may be 18 warranty cases - no injuries or accidents, but maybe 18 warranty issues about this self-driving software.

People pay $15,000 for this, you know. And people who are really aficionados of the whole self-driving AI movement in autos, they love this kind of stuff and want to be a part of this - of this beta. But the government's stepping in and saying there needs to be a recall.

So, Elon Musk, he hasn't really addressed this at length, but he did, on Twitter, of course, which he is the CEO of, he mentioned that, you know, it's not really a recall. It's anachronistic to call it a recall because it's not like a Ford real with a steering column problem where you drive into the - into the dealership and it's fixed there. This is something that will be fixed - it's a software update, basically now a mandatory software update.

Tesla had sort of pushed back against NHTSA earlier but then acquiesced and said, yes, we will do this recall, which Elon is not calling a recall.

CORNISH: Still a recall, but, yes.

ROMANS: It's a recall by a different name. But -- so a lot of people are going to get this -

CORNISH: Yes, but so many cars have computer software in them now.

ROMANS: Yes.

CORNISH: I think this is just the future of this process.

ROMANS: But it's just so - there's a lot going on for Elon Musk, right? He just won a case, a shareholder lawsuit, against him in California. His stock was down big time last year but is up this year. It's down on this report here. He's, you know, fighting the people who trying to unionize at a store - a facility in Buffalo. He fired them for, you know, not being good workers apparently. So --

CORNISH: I believe they were engineers, which is kind of important to this story.

ROMANS: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So, there's a lot -

COLLINS: A little bit.

ROMANS: Always a lot going on in Musk land. This is just the latest.

COLLINS: Yes, there is. And also on the Ukraine front as well.

ROMANS: That's right.

COLLINS: Christine Romans, good news for Tesla drivers. Thanks so much.

ROMANS: Yes. Thank you.

COLLINS: All right, also this morning on the international front, we have been tracking these recues all week that we are seeing in and out of Turkey and Syria. They have been nothing short of miraculous. You are seeing people who have survived more than ten days trapped beneath the rubble. Sanjay Gupta is on the ground. He spoke to a team that rescued a boy after 228 hours.

Also, this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At that moment, I kind of was preparing myself to be killed. I said, well, if I'm killed I'm killed. But these are kids. These are 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds.

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CORNISH: Ahead, a CNN exclusive. A Michigan state professor describes his face-to-face encounter with the mass shooter.

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[06:48:43]

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): How is my mother? And everyone?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They are all waiting for you. Everyone is well. They are all waiting for you. I'm coming to you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Did everyone escape OK? Nasli (ph)?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They are all well. Everything is well. They're waiting for you. They're all waiting for you.

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CORNISH: All is well. That's a 33-year-old quake survivor speaking this morning to his family by phone from his hospital bed. He spent 261 hours, more than ten days trapped under the rubble. And it's just the latest story of survival.

Now, this woman was discovered just a few hours earlier. Rescuers hope they will find more survivors like them, but time is running out.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us live from Turkey where rescues are still on going.

And, Sanjay, you, obviously, spoke to a crew who rescued this 13-year- old boy. What more do they have to tell you?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I got to tell you, Audie, these stories are really -- they're pretty incredible. Obviously, so much tragedy out here, but people rising up.

This crew, and I want you to keep in mind as you hear this story, it was 228 hours, almost ten days into this earthquake. And they were -- frankly, they were on sort of the recovery part of an operation, not necessarily rescue part of the operation.

[06:50:02]

So, they're in this particular area, thinking they're going to do a recovery. And when they tell me the story of what happened next, they got really emotional. But I want you to hear it for yourself.

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UGUR SEVGIN, RESCUE WORKER (through translator): The excavator dove in found the kid's room. And from the kid's room, we found his report card. I took his report card with me and gave it to the crew. The report card told us that we were in the right place. It was shown to the brother-in-law who said, you are in the right place.

So, we continued digging in that spot. About half an hour later, after the excavator was lifted, I saw Mustafa (ph) in a slight up and down motion, and I ran towards him. I said, stop! There Mustafa's eyes were open and he was looking at me. I said, he must have died with his eyes open. Then I ran to him and he said, brother! When I heard him say brother, I said, he's alive! Come quickly.

GUPTA: Did you expect that you would find anybody alive at that point ten - almost 10 days later?

SEVGIN (through translator): When we arrived there, we started waiting for him. But our thinking was that he wouldn't be alive but dead. But he was alive. It was happiness. Happiness. Beyond happiness. He was alive and we got him out immediately. It was perfect. The emotions just can't be described.

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GUPTA: The work was so tedious. They had to rescue him and they had to do it quickly. They said they were able to do it within five minutes after realizing that he was alive. Again, you know, the people throw around the world miracle a lot. Ten days without any water, without any sustenance or anything, it's really pretty remarkable.

He had a dramatic injury to his left leg. In fact, as they described it, his left leg was essentially gone. So, when they put him on the stretcher, they put him face down because they didn't want him to go through the psychological trauma of recognizing that he didn't have a leg. Thirteen years old. He was flown to Adona (ph) Hospital, largest trauma hospital in this area, and reports are that he's going well. He's expected to recover.

Another story - another remarkable story to add to the mix. I think this is going to change how we think about how long people can survive. Typically you thought 100 hours maybe without water. Ten days, 228 hours? I mean, we'll see. But these are remarkable stories.

CORNISH: Yes, it's unbelievable at this point to still be doing rescue missions.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much for this reporting.

COLLINS: It's so amazing. And what Sara Sidner said the other day helped explain it to me because we keep talking about 220 hours and whatever. And she said the reason they do that is because each hour that goes on further is the less of a likelihood that they'll find people. And that's why they're saying, you know, that instead of nine days or how they're (INAUDIBLE).

CORNISH: Yes. Yes, it's unusual.

COLLINS: Yes, it's amazing.

All right, Sanjay, thank you for that.

Also this morning, here in the U.S., we're learning more about Fox News stars who privately blasted former President Trump's election fraud claims, claiming they were bogus, but they were saying something different on air. We have new court documents that were just revealed. We'll break them down for you, next.

CORNISH: And Poppy is in Utah having fun ahead of the NBA all-star game. She'll join us live with the preview next hour.

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[06:57:06]

COLLINS: New this morning, some of the biggest stars and top executives at Fox News were privately making fun of former President Trump's claims about election fraud, even as the network was allowing those lies to be promoted on air. That is according to damning messages in a new court filing that was out yesterday. The messages are included in Dominion's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. They show that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, brutally mocked the 2020 election lies that Trump and his allies were pushing at the time. In one exchange, Carlson texted Ingraham saying that Sidney Powell, that attorney who was in and out of the Trump White House, was, quote, lying, and that he had, quote, caught her doing so. Ingraham responded, Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy. He continued, quote, our viewers are good people and they believe it.

Joining us now with his reporting on this lawsuit is CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy.

It's remarkable to see these text messages, but also to have seen what was being said publicly. You know, I was covering the White House at that time. To see how White House officials were watching to see what Fox was saying about the election.

OLIVER DARCY, CNN SENIOR MEDIA REPORTER: I think these messages really just exposed Fox News as a propaganda network. That's what they do at the core. I mean they show in excruciating detail that the highest ranking executives at Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, Suzanne Scott, the CEO, as well as some of the top hosts, like you just mentioned, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, they knew, they privately knew that these election claim frauds -- fraud claims from the Trump team were nonsense. They used very harsh language to describe them. But they allowed these lies to take hold on the network's air.

And they show -- these messages show that the talents over at Fox News and the executives were very worried after the election of the audience rebelling. That they were going to "News Max." You'll remember that Donald Trump was attacking Fox News, saying, turn the channel. Go to this "News Max" channel, which is saturating the airwaves with election denialism. They were worried about this. And not only did they turn a blind eye to the election lies, but they even, in some cases, tried cracking down on those who were fact checking Trump.

There's one case where White House correspondent Jackie Heinrich, she fact checked Trump and Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, behind the scenes, were talking about getting her fired. That's how lacking of basic journalistic ethics were at place in Fox News. And these messages really expose it.

COLLINS: Yes. And we've seen what Fox said about this, Audie. You know, they said there will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about the freedom of the press and freedom of speech. I mean --

CORNISH: Yes. I mean, briefly, can you remind us why Dominion cares about this?

COLLINS: Yes.

CORNISH: Because that's why this lawsuit matters.

DARCY: Well, a lot of the election conspiracy theories were focused on Dominion. Basically, focused on these voting technology companies, suggesting that they may have allowed the election to be rigged.

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And so they are arguing that it was because Fox News advanced these theories, because it was in their business interests, and that's why we're seeing these messages come out today.

CORNISH: Oliver, thanks so much.