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CNN This Morning
SpaceX's Starship Rocket Launch Set For 9 AM ET; CNN Crew Travels With Migrants Making Treacherous Journey To U.S.; Report: Rise In Antisemitic Incidents In U.S. And Other Countries In 2022. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired April 17, 2023 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:30:00]
MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN HOST, SMERCONISH: He doesn't say anything about it --
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.
SMERCONISH: -- because I believe Trump recognizes that the issue is a net loser in a general election.
HARLOW: But --
SMERCONISH: General election.
HARLOW: -- remember when he was running he told Lesley Stahl on "60 MINUTES" I will work and appoint pro-life judges.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.
HARLOW: But you're right, DeSantis signed that bill at like 11:00 at night, right?
LEMON: Yes.
HARLOW: No cameras on him. No trying to get that in the headlines.
Michael, thanks very much.
LEMON: Thanks, Michael. I'll be listening to you today and watching you on the weekends.
SMERCONISH: Thanks.
LEMON: All right, see you -- bye-bye.
SMERCONISH: Thank you.
LEMON: So this morning, SpaceX expected to test its most powerful rocket yet. So why is CEO Elon Musk -- Elon Musk telling people not to get too excited?
HARLOW: I love this song.
(COMMERCIAL)
LEMON: Look at that. That's the moon. In just over an hour, a Starship rocket is set to lift off from the SpaceX launchpad in southern Texas. The company says that this is a test launch for a ship that could eventually bring people to Earth's orbit, the moon, and someday, Mars. Can you believe it?
[07:35:04]
But yesterday the CEO, Elon Musk, warned people not to get too excited. He said there is a good chance that SpaceX will delay that launch.
CNN's senior national correspondent Mr. Ed Lavandera live for us in South Padre Island, Texas with the very latest. This is exciting but we're not supposed to get too excited. So, what?
ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's exciting because we don't really know what's going to happen here over the next few hours. But there are thousands of people here on the southern edge of South Padre Island. We are about five miles away from that launch pad.
The window for SpaceX to launch this rocket opens about 7:00 a.m. central time. They have about three hours to get that done. SpaceX is saying that they are looking around 8:00 a.m. central time for a launch here.
But the way Elon Musk is talking about this, this could be a spectacular success or an epic fireworks show.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The SpaceX Starship is the most powerful rocket ever built. It's 400 feet tall. The super-heavy booster is packed with 33 engines, and it will attempt to push the uncrewed Starship spacecraft, which sits on top of the rocket booster, into space.
If the rocket launches properly the spacecraft will separate less than three minutes into the flight and travel east from south Texas and go much of the way around the Earth before splashing into the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
But hours before this scheduled launch, SpaceX founder Elon Musk worked to lower expectations to the point that he seemed to be bracing for catastrophic failure.
ELON MUSK, FOUNDER AND CEO, SPACEX: Success is not what should be expected. That would be insane. This vehicle could make it all the way to orbit or it may blow up on the pad. There's a million ways this rocket could fail.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): SpaceX has waited more than a year for the final government clearance to launch this rocket. The Starship rocket system is the centerpiece of Musk's goal of commercial space travel to the moon and beyond to Mars.
It comes two weeks after NASA unveiled the four astronauts who will fly around the moon next year as part of the space agency's Artemis mission. NASA has awarded SpaceX contracts and options of more than $3 billion to use Starship to ferry future Artemis astronauts to the moon.
NASA Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman spoke with CNN about the importance of this partnership for humans to eventually reach Mars.
REID WISEMAN, COMMANDER, ARTEMIS II: I think we will get there. The amount of private-public partnerships going on -- SpaceX is building our lander for the moon. They're working on Starship right now. We have -- commercial space is just doing amazing things right now. So to think that humans will be walking on Mars in 20 years is completely reasonable.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Testing on this rocket system started several years ago and it's resulted in many breakthroughs --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two, one, ignition, abort.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): -- but also some explosive setbacks.
Thousands of people are expected to crowd the beaches miles from the launchpad to catch a glimpse of this rocket launch.
In the crowd will be Yemi Akinyemi Dele. The Czech Nigerian artist has already been selected as one of the first eight passengers who will eventually fly in the Starship capsule on its first commercial flight around the moon.
LAVANDERA (on camera): Are you looking at it as one day I'm going to be sitting in that rocket and I want to know what it's going to be like?
YEMI AKINYEMI DELE, FUTURE SPACEX MISSION CREW MEMBER: Well, for the first time, I'm going to see how it looks from close up and I will be able to imagine how it would feel. But just imagine how it would feel to sit in it and be leaving the Earth.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LAVANDERA: So, Don, here is a breakdown. A best-case scenario -- the timeline of how this will work is after the rocket launches the booster will separate from the rocket ship on top, and that will land in the Gulf of Mexico. Then the Starship will continue to make almost one complete orbit around the Earth, as we mentioned, landing in the Pacific Ocean. Both of those pieces will land in the water and company officials tell us that there are no plans to recover them, so they will sink to the bottom of the waters, Don.
LEMON: Wow, and who's got the best seat in the house? Ed Lavandera.
HARLOW: Eddie --
LAVANDERA: Not too bad. Not too bad.
HARLOW: Eddie, do you know Yemi is one of my best friends? Did he tell you?
LAVANDERA: I heard -- I heard some -- I heard something about that yesterday.
LEMON: Scuttlebutt.
LAVANDERA: He was unbelievably delightful --
HARLOW: He --
LAVANDERA: -- and an absolutely fascinating guy.
HARLOW: He's an amazing human and I am not -- he has had this goal to go to the moon for years. He told us about five years ago he was going to go to the moon and I said, "Yes, Yemi. If someone is going to -- a civilian -- it's going to be you." So it's amazing to see how far he's come, Ed.
LEMON: Awesome.
LAVANDERA: Well, his story is fascinating.
HARLOW: Yes.
LAVANDERA: He said he grew up with barely any electricity in his house as a young child in Czechoslovakia --
HARLOW: That's right.
LAVANDERA: -- and now he is, you know, several years away from traveling to the moon.
HARLOW: He's also my children -- he stayed with us for a few weeks earlier this year. He's my children's favorite human. You can imagine how much fun he is with kids.
[07:40:00]
LEMON: Yes.
LAVANDERA: Yes, awesome.
HARLOW: He's a great guy. Ed, thanks.
LEMON: Thanks, Ed.
LAVANDERA: Yes, he's great.
LEMON: So I'd love to meet him. And you say you wouldn't go. I would go. I would go.
HARLOW: I would never go. I know you would.
LEMON: Yes.
HARLOW: You're fearless.
LEMON: Would you guys go? Would you go? No?
HARLOW: To the moon? Everyone in the crew is shaking their head no.
LEMON: No.
HARLOW: Good to hear.
LEMON: Wow, look at that.
HARLOW: Oh, look at that.
And this morning we're live in El Paso, Texas where officials are bracing for another surge of migrants. Plus, we're taking a look at their dangerous journey to the border.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (translated): You're waiting for your parents? Where are they?
CHILD (translated): They are behind.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL)
HARLOW: The number of migrants braving the dangerous and deadly trek through a stretch of jungle known as the Darien Gap on their way to the southern border could soar to 400,000 this year. That is according to new reports from two U.N. agencies. Many of these migrants are running from economic and humanitarian disasters trying to make their way to the United States.
[07:45:02]
So a team of CNN journalists made that five-day trek in February alongside them documenting it all, including the horrors of the trail. The full story of their journey aired last night on "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER." Here's a look at a small part of that with our Nick Paton Walsh.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This route is littered with obstacles, choke points, and lines. Hours on their feet without the comfort of knowing you are at least moving forever damp, striding, waiting.
WALSH (on camera): What is crazy is that over the last hour we probably haven't traveled directly about 50 to 100 yards. But this is just one enormous traffic jam of people through the jungle. And the sad fact is the more of them that do it, the more they slow each other down of bottlenecks like this, and the greater risk they put themselves at.
WALSH (voice-over): Time and time again, though, this ordeal summons something beautiful from people that mirrors nature here. A glue binding them to each other to help, cajole, and care sometimes for strangers of survival -- survival together.
It's the best of us and doesn't care what passport you're carrying but it cannot alter the pain.
WALSH (on camera): How are you climbing the rope?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On the rocks. It's hard. My mom fell down so many times.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (translated): -- or let my son come through here. This is horrible, horrible, horrible. You have to live this. You have to live this. You have to live this to realize that crossing through this jungle is the worst thing in the world.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: So, the migrants who do compete -- or complete, excuse me, the treacherous journey to the U.S. border meet more obstacles when they arrive.
I want to get to CNN's Rosa Flores. She is live in El Paso, Texas on the border with more on the trek and what happens once migrants make it through. Rosa, good morning.
We spoke with you. You were in front of the same shelter just one year ago. What are you seeing now?
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Don. The last time we were here was actually in January and there were hundreds of migrants sleeping on the street. Let me show you what we can see now. There's several dozen, actually, sleeping on the street. This is just outside Sacred Heart Church, which is a migrant shelter.
I talked to the priest that runs the shelter late yesterday and this is what he feared, he told me. He said that his shelter was already full and that he feared that some people were going to have to sleep on the street, and that's exactly what we're seeing this morning. And he said that he hasn't seen this since January.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FLORES (on camera): Where are we?
FATHER JAVIER CALVILLO, DIRECTOR, CASA DEL MIGRANTE: (Speaking foreign language).
FLORES (voice-over): Father Javier Calvillo runs the Casa Del Migrante shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico across the border from El Paso, Texas, and says this is one of about 40 shelters in the city --
CALVILLO: (Speaking foreign language).
FLORES (voice-over): -- and that most of the migrants here are from Venezuela.
FLORES (on camera): The top nationality is Venezuelan?
CALVILLO: Yes.
FLORES (voice-over): And the majority, if not all, are part of the skyrocketing number of migrants trekking through the dangerous jungle passage between Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap. Migrant crossings there have jumped from under 600 in 2010 to nearly a quarter-million last year. This year, nearly 90,000 migrants have made the trek so far, all of them on their way to the U.S. southern border.
The Biden administration took notice and alongside Colombia and Panama, it launched a two-month campaign to curb the flow of migration.
ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: We must do more to discourage the dangerous journey.
FLORES (voice-over): At the U.S. southern border the humanitarian crisis that left hundreds of migrants sleeping on the streets of El Paso in December and January has effectively jumped the border to Mexico, immigration advocates say.
Emotions there boiled over last month when a large group of migrants rushed the international bridge to El Paso over frustrations with the cumbersome U.S. asylum process forcing them to wait in Mexico.
[07:50:04]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (translated): Please, we want answers.
FLORES (voice-over): That dissatisfaction stemmed from the Trump-era pandemic public health rule known as Title 42, which allows immigration agents to swiftly expel migrants back to Mexico. The Biden administration's expansion of that rule to Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Cubans, and the recent launch of an app that allows migrants to set up appointments to enter the U.S. legally pending immigration proceedings under an exception to Title 42.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (translated): The app doesn't work.
FLORES (voice-over): More than 23,000 migrants are in northern Mexican cities waiting as Title 42 is set to expire next month, according to officials and community leaders. In Tijuana, about 10,000 are waiting. In Reynosa and Matamoros, about 9,800. And in Ciudad Juarez, up to 3,500. The top 21 countries where they're coming from include places outside the western hemisphere.
As for who is responsible for the migrant crisis, which appears to ping-pong across borders, Father Calvillo says --
CALVILLO: El juego de la politica. FLORES (on camera): El juego -- the game -- the game of politics.
CALVILLO: Yes.
FLORES (voice-over): Both the U.S. and Mexico, for what he calls the game of politics and policies.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FLORES: Now, I'm in the alley in the back of that church and take a look. There's more people who are sleeping out here -- that there is no space for them inside the shelter.
Now, the Department of Homeland Security has said that the Biden administration has launched a comprehensive immigration strategy that is fair and efficient and that it allows for legal pathways to enter into the United States, and that includes the CBP One app, which you saw in that story just now.
Now, U.S. Customs and Border Protection says that the CBP One app is working as intended and that tens of thousands of migrants have already used it to set up appointments to enter into the United States.
But, Poppy and Don, you can see that there are still migrants here outside. And again, we haven't seen this since January. And Poppy, you probably remember this very clearly because we were on the air at the same time.
HARLOW: Yes.
FLORES: There were hundreds of people. Now, yes, there's fewer people but is this the spike before the end of Title 42? We don't know. We'll see.
HARLOW: That's the big question.
FLORES: Back to you guys.
HARLOW: Yes.
LEMON: Thank you, Rosa.
A new report this morning finds that there was another sharp increase in antisemitic incidents last year. We're going to break it -- break it all down for you with the CEO of the National -- and national director of the Antidefamation League, Mr. Jonathan Greenblatt -- there he is -- after the break.
(COMMERCIAL)
[07:56:50]
LEMON: Tonight marks the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Across the world, victims of the Holocaust will be remembered and the survivors will be honored. This morning, new sobering data is revealing a significant increase in
antisemitic incidents worldwide. In the U.S. specifically, the Antidefamation League recorded nearly 3,700 antisemitic incidents in 2022 compared to more than 2,700 in 2021 -- a record year in its own right.
So joining us now, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and the national director of the Antidefamation League. We're so happy to have you on to discuss this. We wish it was good news. Unfortunately, it's not.
What is behind this?
JONATHAN GREENBLATT, CEO AND NATIONAL DIRECTOR, ANTIDEFAMATION LEAGUE: Well, Don, I think you could imagine antisemitism is the canary in the coal mine of democracy. And this new data, which we're releasing today in partnership with Tel Aviv University, shows a frightening and unfortunately, almost predictable increase in antisemitism worldwide.
So we saw across Europe in places like Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Spain -- places like Australia -- all around the world you're seeing this rise of attacks, vandalism, violence perpetrated against Jewish people.
LEMON: There are some places that I want to talk about where it's actually decreasing --
GREENBLATT: Yes.
LEMON: -- but let's -- I wonder what kind of attacks are happening now and who are the victims?
GREENBLATT: Well, it's interesting you ask. I mean, one of the trends is certainly Orthodox Jews --
LEMON: Right.
GREENBLATT: -- Haredi Jews, who are visibly Jewish, wearing a kippah, maybe a black hat, maybe wearing a wig. As we see here in New York, particularly in Brooklyn, the Stamford Hill neighborhood in London, they bear the brunt of physical abrasive antisemitism.
LEMON: You talked about what happened here. It examines these assaults in New York City. The city recorded the most assaults in the U.S.
GREENBLATT: Yes.
LEMON: We've talked about some of those incidents.
Why does this continue do you think, Jonathan? What do you think what really needs to change here?
GREENBLATT: Well, I think there are a few things that are driving this and there is some very interesting data in this report --
LEMON: Yes. GREENBLATT: -- one of which is that antisemitism remains the go-to tactic of authoritarians and extremists from Putin trying to bring antisemitism into the Ukraine war and his claims about de- Nazification, which white supremacists here in America picked up, or it's like the Houthis in Yemen exhibiting some of the most vicious antisemitism. Don, there are no Jews in Yemen but that is the Iranian regime using their proxies there to push out global propaganda.
So it's a go-to tactic of the bad guys. The invisible Jews are being targeted.
And I think why is it happening? You see this polarization in all of these democratic societies. You see extremists feeling emboldened around the world. And then social media continues to exacerbate and intensify the problem.
LEMON: On the other hand, you talked about the countries where it's increasing --
GREENBLATT: Yes.
LEMON: -- countries including Germany, Austria, France --
GREENBLATT: Yes.
LEMON: -- the U.K., Canada, Argentina. They saw a decline in the number of antisemitic incidents --
GREENBLATT: Yes, yes.
LEMON: -- compared to 2021.
GREENBLATT: Yes.
LEMON: Are leaders there doing the right thing? Are they doing something differently than the leaders in places --
GREENBLATT: That's a great question. I think yes. So, like even in France and Germany where it came down slightly it was already at historic levels.
[08:00:00]
