Return to Transcripts main page

CNN This Morning

More Than 155 Storm Reports Sunday, Nine Tornado Reports; EPA Says, Toxic Waste Shipments Out of East Palestine, Ohio Can Resume; CIA Director Says, China Considering Supplying Russia with Lethal Aid. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired February 27, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[07:00:00]

AARON JAYJACK, EXTREME STORM CHASER: That is quite an early wakeup call for people living on the southern plains. The great plains, I guess, are ready start producing tornadoes already.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: An early wakeup call for a lot of people over the country to some very, very bizarre and dangerous weather that we have been dealing with over the last week or so. Good morning, everyone.

Tornadoes in the middle of the winter? We're tracking a powerful storm after it tore through Oklahoma and buried parts of Southern California under feet of snow.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, toxic train disaster in Ohio, tons of contaminated soil, literally tons of it, has to go somewhere, right? So, where are these shipments headed? Coming up, how several states slated to receive that soil are pushing back.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Also this morning, the fallout keeps growing for the creator of Dilbert. More newspapers have dropped the comic strip after the cartoonist went on a racist tirade. We'll tell you more what he said.

LEMON: All of that in just moments. We begin again with the destructive winter storm on the move.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two houses.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: The storm unleashing multiple tornadoes in Oklahoma and Kansas. One of those tornadoes tore through Norman just outside of Oklahoma City, shredded homes and injured at least 12 people. Hurricane-force winds whipped up massive blinding dust storms in Texas. This is a scene in Lubbock. The storm buried parts of Southern California under more than six feet of snow. Let's take a look at these snow totals near Los Angeles and San Diego. More than 90 inches of snow recorded at mountain high, a winter resort about an hour and a half outside of L.A.

Warmer parts of Southern California were battered by heavy rain and flooding. A helicopter crew had to rescue this driver from a jeep caught in the floodwaters. Look at that. And this driver had to climb up on top of his roof when the freeway turned into a river and his convertible became swamped.

Straight now to CNN's Chad Meyers in the CNN Weather Center. Chad, wow, where are these storms headed next?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: You know, the storms that move through Norman, Oklahoma, about eight hours ago have now just rolled through St. Louis. I mean, I challenge you to try to drive there that quickly. The interstates don't go in a straight line into the most part but that will be a very quick moving storm. At times, these storms yesterday were moving at 90 miles per hour. The storm itself and then the winds, obviously, in Memphis, Texas, almost category 3. So, here's the storm now moving to the east. So, the real danger today is Indiana, Evansville, Cincinnati, all the way maybe toward Columbus, Ohio, as well. Behind it, wind advisories.

Winds going 55 miles per hour, if you're driving with that wind, you may not need to use the gas. There is the weather for today, not as severe as yesterday. Something else that is going to go on the colder side of this storm will be snow, snow for New York City, snow for the Catskills for sure and even snow tonight into tomorrow for Boston. It may be a train day for tomorrow for a lot of you across the northeast because the roadways may be very slow. Don?

LEMON: All right. Chad Myers, thank you, sir.

HARLOW: So, the EPA is green lighting contaminated soil and water shipments out of East Palestine, Ohio, this morning, where that train carrying toxic chemicals derailed earlier this month. That waste has to go somewhere, right? So, it is headed to two Ohio cities for disposal.

The agency halted shipments to Michigan and Texas on Friday after officials in those states complained that they had no prior warning of hazardous materials coming into their jurisdictions.

Miguel Marquez has been on the ground covering this disaster and he's here with us now. Thank you and great job, your whole team, there, helping us understand what the people there are living through.

So, they've got to move literal tons of soil. And now it can't go to Texas and Michigan.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a real indication of how everything that is happening in East Palestine is having this outsized effect everywhere. High school teams canceling games in that area, Michigan and Texas, that would normally receive the toxic materials, waste water and/or soil, to dispose of it properly, now it's become -- it's like everyone is glowing in East Palestine. They're not. The town is getting through this. It is going to take time.

It is going to be a long -- a long time in digging wells and figuring out which way the plume of water moves. They have tested almost 600 homes now for the air quality. They have air quality monitors in town. They're picking up none of those sort of issues with air quality. But it's just going to take time. People are frustrated because it gives their town a real black eye, but at the same time, they appreciate the attention the media is giving them because it is bringing a lot of resources to East Palestine. LEMON: Explain this plume. What do you mean?

MARQUEZ: So, not only do the chemical spill but there was water next to the tracks as well and then they poured millions of gallons of fire hoses and fire water on to that as well.

[07:05:02]

So, it created just this massive area and tons of water. You saw the dead fish. You saw the dead frogs. You saw some dead birds. Lots of them did die in the immediate area. That water now seeps into the ground. So, they have to dig wells around that to figure out which way under the ground that plume of toxic material will move, if it moves. And so that's what they're dealing with right now.

HARLOW: We had last week, Friday, the head of the NTSB on, and she had an urgent plea, stop with the politics. This is about answers for the people of East Palestine. A lot of the political talk is about Biden should go, shouldn't go, should have gone, should go. What do the people you talk to there want?

MARQUEZ: They just want it cleaned up. They want to get back to their normal lives. It's a really -- it's a town that was very, very well to do back in the days when they were making tons of pottery there. It's fallen harder times, that whole Mahoning Valley, the whole area has. It is starting to come back. There is lots of new economic work being done in that area. But they feel like any sort of progress they were making is now being reversed and so they want sort of the politics to go away.

This is also an area --

HARLOW: But do they care if the president goes?

MARQUEZ: I don't think they really care. This is --

LEMON: They don't care if he shows up. They just want --

MARQUEZ: Columbiana County, where East Palestine, is voted for Donald Trump by 68 percent in 2016, by 71 percent in 2020. The signs for him, they love Donald Trump. Joe Biden could be out there in a, you know, hard hat and protective gear and a shovel digging up toxic muck, I don't think it would move the needle very much in this area. But they're doing, you know -- Pete Buttigieg met with the mayor privately after that meeting. The mayor who had been very critical of the administration said, you know what, I'm more satisfied than ever. I'm cautiously optimistic that not only will we get through this but East Palestine will be better because of it.

COLLINS: Yes. And President Biden said he doesn't plan to go right now. They're not making plans for him to do so because other officials are going. But it does bring a spotlight to it when the president goes somewhere. The there is no denying that.

MARQUEZ: It's a spotlight. And I think that no one is injured, no one was killed in this thing. I think those are considerations that they make. They say they're not going now. But I think, you know, in two weeks, three weeks, I think things may look different. Who knows?

HARLOW: Thank you, Miguel.

MARQUEZ: You got it.

HARLOW: We appreciate it.

LEMON: Well, meantime, speaking of politics, the house GOP lawmakers vowing to investigate that they're calling the Biden administration's flawed response to the disaster this morning. The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, made the trip to East Palestine last week. President Biden has said he has no plans to go there so far, prompting Republicans to demand accountable.

M.J. Lee is live at the White House this morning with that. M.J., good morning. The White House responding. How are they responding to these investigations?

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Don, on these new threats of investigations and oversight from Republican lawmakers, the White House is saying there is politics at play and there's a good amount of hypocrisy too. They're pointing to the prior administration and also some of these very same House Republicans as having supported in the past deregulation of environmental protections and rail safety measures.

Broadly speaking, the White House, of course, has really been on defense about this East Palestine train derailment that took place more than three weeks ago. The administration has faced a lot of questions about whether it acted with enough speed, whether it has been engaged enough.

And that is why we have seen the White House insist over the last few days, that within two hours of learning about the accident, they had federal agents out on the scene and actually taking in what had happened and also over the week. The White House saying various federal agencies were going literally door-to-door to various residents in East Palestine to do health surveys, to pass out information so they know exactly what they can do if they're concerned about their health and have questions.

But there is no question that the White House is making a full effort right now to try to quell some of the criticism that, again, the federal government has not been fully engaged in trying to deal with this problem.

LEMON: You heard, M.J., our conversation about the Biden administration and the president saying so far no plans to go yet. Anything that might change that?

LEE: Yes. Don, at this moment in time, clearly, the White House doesn't feel like a presidential visit is necessary. We saw the White House sort of talking about how the president still has been consistently engaged, has been reaching out to local leaders and offering federal help. And then as you talked about with Miguel there, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visiting last week, that was a real effort to try to send in somebody who is a big name, though, of course, he got a lot of criticism for not going there fast enough.

But I think to Miguel's point, we'll just have to see what the situation on the ground is like in a couple weeks from now because that might require that the president himself visit and really show that he is personally invested in getting this problem under control.

[07:05:07]

LEMON: M.J. Lee at the White House, thank you, M.J. I appreciate that.

COLLINS: Also this morning, director of the CIA says the U.S. is confident China is considering providing weapons to Russia to use in Ukraine, as officials are going public with that intelligence in hopes of deterring China from doing so.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BURNS, CIA DIRECTOR: We're confident that the Chinese leadership is considering the provision of lethal equipment. We also don't see that a final decision has been made yet.

There's no foreign who's watched more Vladimir Putin's experience in Ukraine, the evolution of the war, than Xi Jinping has.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Director Burns also said it would be risky and unwise for China to do so, as President Biden's national security adviser and lawmakers are warning of how the U.S. would respond if China did take that fateful step that they believe will prolong the war in Ukraine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE SULLIVAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how it proceeds, whether it provides military assistance. But if it goes down that road, it will come at real cost to China. And I think China's leaders are weighing that as they make their decisions.

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): China needs to realize if they want to be the superpower they claim to want to be, they want to supplant the U.S., then they have to respect the rule of law or nobody will respect them and their own laws.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Joining us now is CNN Contributor and New Yorker Staff Writer Evan Osnos, who covers China closely and has written profiles of both President Xi and President Biden. Evan, you're the perfect person to have on in this. And I think one question that people has is if China does decide to take this step, which they have not done so yet, what does it say to you about how the Chinese president is viewing Putin's situation and really just the international order overall?

EVAN OSNOS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. Kaitlan, I think that's the key point. In some ways, this would be a demonstration, it would be a bit of a tell that the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, believes that he cannot, in effect, afford to allow Vladimir Putin to fail in Ukraine. They have forged this tight bond. It's a kind of circumstantial bond based on the fact that they both feel the sense of hostility towards the United States.

But if, in fact, Putin fails, if Russia fails in Ukraine, that begins to draw into doubt the project that China is engaged in, which is to try to make a case that the political system, that the autocratic system is a rival to the western system.

And so the decision to come forward by the United States and talk about this intelligence is a sign that the U.S. takes very seriously the risk that China is on the cusp of making this choice.

COLLINS: Yes. And we talk about so much weapons here, but also a lot of this has to do with communication between these different nations. I sat down with the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, last Thursday, on the eve of the anniversary. This is what he told me, though, about his lack of communication with his counterpart in China.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD AUSTIN, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I think it's really, really important to make sure that we maintain the lines of communication open. I think leaders need to be able to talk to each other to avoid misperceptions and manage crisis. And so this is really important.

And so we hope that the Minister Wei will have a change of heart and schedule that call.

COLLINS: When was the last time you talked to him?

AUSTIN: The last time that I talked to him was a couple months ago.

COLLINS: Wow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: What are the consequences of that lack of communication?

OSNOS: Well, exactly as you said, Kaitlan, that is really astonishing to know that the United States at the highest levels of our military command does not have somebody on the other end of the phone who is picking it up in Beijing. That's worrisome.

In this business, this kind of high-stakes business of great power co- existence and competition, having that hotline is essential to prevent an accident from becoming a calamity. And one thing that the U.S. wants most of all right now is to get the Chinese back on the phone in a regular, reliable way. And if that means going public in saying, look, we're paying close attention, let's make sure this doesn't become the next great fulcrum of our conflict, then that's what they're going to do.

COLLINS: Yes. And so much of this has been the looming of the cold war over this. And I love what you wrote in your piece in the New Yorker yesterday, but you talked about how different it is. You said, toward the end of the cold war, U.S. traded the Soviet Union, it was about $2 billion a year. U.S. trade with China is now nearly $2 billion a day.

So, as we see this and we see with the decisions President Biden is weighing but also how GOP candidates, like Nikki Haley, are weighing in on China, is it a more complicated situation than it's always painted by them?

OSNOS: It is. In some ways, I think when we talk about the cold war as Americans, it's a good news story for us. We won that cold war. This is a very complicated moment. We're integrated with China's economy in a way we've never been with a rival in the world on this scale and we have to be realistic. China is not going away tomorrow.

[07:15:00]

It's not about us or them. Honestly, it's about us and them and figuring out a way that we can contest their moral vision of the future and also put in the kinds of guardrails, the kinds of channels of communication that prevent us from getting into a conflict that we don't want.

COLLINS: Yes. On another note, Evan, you spent a lot of time with President Biden before I ran for president in the last election. You wrote a book about his run. He has not yet declared that he is running this time. But he seems to be saying, and as he told David Muir in his ABC interview last week that he has a few other things that he wants to get out of the way to finish before he seems to make that announcement. What is your sense of, you know, his deliberative process? What is going through his mind in your view right now?

OSNOS: Well, he is -- anybody who's spent time with him knows he doesn't make this kind of a decision in a hurry. In fact, he sometimes can drag it out a little longer than some of his advisers would like. But, look, at the end of the day, the thing that is most important from his perspective in making this choice is does he think he is the best Democrat to be able to run and win?

So, this is a live matter from his perspective. You see him going around the country, going to places to try to demonstrate the Democrats have not forgotten workers to show that they're making the kinds of investment in manufacturing and supply chain that can bring people back into the workforce. He wants to tout a few more of those numbers, job creation and so on. And if he feels that he is, in fact, the one who can win, and there's nobody better, then I think you're likely to see him take the plunge.

COLLINS: Yes. I believe that it will be happening sooner rather than later. Evan Osnos, thank you for your great perspective on two critically important issues.

OSNOS: My pleasure.

HARLOW: A major drug bust in Arizona, authorities seized more than 4.5 million fentanyl pills, about 3,000 pounds of methamphetamine and very large quantities of heroin, cocaine and fentanyl. The DEA says the drugs have an estimated street value of $13 million. Investigators also ceased 50 firearms. Arizona's attorney general warns that fentanyl is blooding the border. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRIS MAYES, ARIZONA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Yes, this is a significant bust but there is a lot of this drug coming across the border. It's killing our kids and destroying and tearing our families apart in Arizona but it is also impacting the rest of the country.

And so we need every law enforcement agency, every attorney general along the border but also across the country to be laser-focused on stopping this fentanyl.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: And just look at the numbers. Look at your screen. For years, drug overdose deaths from prescription opioids have been rising in the U.S. In 1999, there are about 10,000 opioid related deaths. 22 years later now, they climb to more than 80,000 deaths from this year.

COLLINS: Wow.

LEMON: It's good that they made the bust. Terrible it's happening but good that they were able to seize so much of it. Let's hope they get more of it off the streets there.

Comic strip Dilbert dropped from hundreds of newspapers after the creator goes on a racist rant where he advocates for segregation. Editors say it was an easy call but hear who is defending the creator, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

LEMON: All right. So, here we go, newspapers across the country are dropping the Dilbert comic strip after its creator, Scott Adams, went on a stunning, racist tirade this weekend, calling black Americans a hate group and advising white people to stay away from them. CNN's Polo Sandoval has this story this morning for us. Polo, good morning to you. What is up with this?

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, guys, good morning to you. So, basically, he is doubling down on the comments that he made earlier this week, saying that they were completely taken out of context the newspapers, though, that ran his strip for decades are now severing ties with him, saying that his comments were part of a racist tirade.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT ADAMS, CREATOR, DILBERT: You know, nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people.

That's a hate group.

SANDOVAL (voice over): That was the comment that may have ended Scott Adams' newspaper career. The Dilbert creator referencing a poll from the conservative firm, Rasmussen Reports, that indicated 53 percent of black Americans agree with the statement, it's okay to be white, leaving the other 47 percent to say they disagree or are not sure. The Anti-Defamation League has noted that that phrase has a long history in the white supremacist movement.

ADAMS: The best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people.

SANDOVAL: He continued to double down throughout the show. The Washington post, Los Angeles Times and USA Today among the hundreds of newspapers that denounced Adams and quickly pulled Dilbert, USA Today newspaper CEO Mike Reed.

MIKE REED, CEO, GANNETT/USA TODAY NETWORKD: It was, frankly, an easy decision. We found the remarks hateful, hurtful and just crossed the line.

SANDOVAL: But not everyone agrees. Twitter CEO Elon Musk coming to Adams' defense tweeting, the media is racist. Adams has since tweeted that he was only advising people to avoid hate and suggest that that cancelation of his cartoon signals that free speech in America is under assault.

REED: We believe in free speech. We believe in creating a place for differing points of view. But there is a line that gets crossed where things become racism. And that's not an area we choose to traffic in it or participate in.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL (on camera): We did reached out to the company that is responsible for distributing that comic strip, still waiting to hear back, guys. But I have to tell you, after watching hours and hours of his latest streams, it's really hard to gauge exactly how worried he is. I'll tell you why. He loves attention. And it's not me saying. He actually said it over the weekend on one of his streams. And he also recognized that he was completely aware that this was basically going to open up the floodgates when he made these bombshell remarks. So, he is getting a bit of what he wanted, but the question, will it be more than what he bargained for, especially since he says that he expects to lose a majority of his income in the coming days, right?

[07:25:04]

LEMON: There are many people when people are taken out of context or they need explaining or whatever, but his comments were -- that's not with these comments.

SANDOVAL: He called --

LEMON: He keeps saying, that's not what I meant to say, but it is exactly what he said.

SANDOVAL: He calls it useful provocation. He wanted to start a conversation, guys. But there are many ways to start conversation about race in America that doesn't include calling black Americans what he called them. So, I think this will be certainly one to watch. And as you continue to hear major newspapers not just here in the U.S. but around world dropping the strip, what will he do next?

COLLINS: Yes. And it's important to note that the poll that started all of this that he was talking about, they are not talking about their data. There is few who have cast doubt on how accurate it is and what it looks like and if people are trying vote in it to change the outcome of it. So, I think that is also an important context of what he is even talking about in the first place.

LEMON: Does he say he is being canceled? Is that what he thinks?

SANDOVAL: That's what he says. I wonder if he is perhaps seeing himself as sort of this free speech martyr. Again, we'll have to see as more of these newspapers drop his work after decades, over 30 years.

LEMON: Free speech comes with consequences. Thank you, Polo.

COLLINS: All right. Also this morning, the theory that COVID-19, the pandemic started with a lab leak in China, has now had a new development after the Energy Department updated its assessment suggesting that it was the likely cause. The intelligence community is deeply divided over it. We'll tell you more, next.

HARLOW: And a wooden boat carrying more than 140 migrants destroyed by the rocky waters off the southern coast of Italy, women and children this morning among the dead. We have the tragic details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:00]