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CDC Report on Suicide and Homicide Rates; Fed Announces Pause; Junk Fees Crackdown; Frances Haugen is Interviewed about Facebook; Closing Arguments in Pittsburgh Synagogue Attack Trial. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired June 15, 2023 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: And to Poppy's point, one in five - nearly one in five childhood deaths in 2021 had to do with firearms.

We have talked so much over the last several years about gun deaths, about gun violence. The American Medical Association, back in 2016, declared this a public health emergency. Any doctor you speak to, any emergency room doctor, will talk to you about why this is such an urgent issue, and yet there is very -- not only very little action, but not as much discussion. I think a lot of people would argue thoughtful discussion.

Errol, do you think these numbers, specifically when we talk about those firearms, could change any of that?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The numbers themselves won't, but politics will. I mean political movement will. And I don't mean what we do at the ballot box, although that, of course, is important.

But, you know, I talked with Chris Murphy, who -- from Connecticut, who, of course, has a lot to say about this because Sandy Hook happened in his district. And he pointed out to me that it's a real mistake for us in the media or anywhere else to get too pessimistic about this. That you have, you know, you have all kinds of grass roots activity that's out there that would have been unthinkable even just a generation ago.

I get emails almost every day, you know, when you think about the kids who organized out of Parkland, and the fact that they've stayed active politically. And they've - they've organized -

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: They changed the laws in Florida.

HILL: It - it - you know, so I -- this is a case where I think, as with many social movements, change happens gradually and then suddenly. So, we're still in the gradual stage. And that includes a lot of fact finding, a lot of fact sharing. That includes taking some of these tools that I'm convinced contribute to a lot of - of the suicides and a lot of the violence. You take your TikToks and your social media. You can turn those tools around and start to propagate other sorts of messages about what's necessary, about who did what, about which politicians either need to be challenged or replaced or informed, or maybe we just wait till they leave.

But, one way or another, I think we've got to sort of put as much energy as possible behind pushing back against this. It's not simply a medical issue, it's not simply an epidemic. It's the kind of epidemic where, just like with Covid, we can individually fight back and everybody can find something useful to do in this broad movement.

HARLOW: Thank you very, very much.

If you or someone you or love are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for help. The number is 988. They are available 24 hours a day.

Head, buying concert tickets hopefully will get a little less frustrating. Still just as expensive, though.

HILL: Yes.

HARLOW: But we'll have detail on President Biden's big announcement today about all those fees and transparency, next.

Plus this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many Russians have you killed in this war?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: A covert group of Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Bakhmut claims their special operation is demoralizing Russian troops. We have to exclusive video ahead.

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[06:37:12]

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JEROME POWELL, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL RESERVE: We have to get inflation down to 2 percent, and we will. And we just don't see that yet. So, hence you see today's policy decision.

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HARLOW: For the first time in 15 months, the Federal Reserve has decided not to hike interest rates. The central bank has been relentlessly raising them to try to fight this high inflation despite the Powell Pause, as our chief business correspondent Christine Romans has dubbed it. Chairman Jerome Powell did signal there will be more hikes to come later in the year.

Stocks mixed - closed mixed yesterday after the Fed decision led to a bit of a volatile trading session. Here with us, our chief business correspondent, Christine Romans.

The top of the -

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: We can call it a rate rest.

HARLOW: Rate rest.

HILL: Rate rest.

HARLOW: No, I like Powell Pause better.

HILL: You know, we have options.

HARLOW: The top of "The Journal" today, but signals more.

ROMANS: Yes.

HARLOW: I think that's what the market was looking at yesterday and trying to figure out.

ROMANS: So, I think we've entered a new phase here. The Fed had been aggressively raising interest rates over and over and now has paused to give it some time to access how well it's been doing.

But the Fed chief was very clear, there probably will be more rate hikes ahead because inflation just hasn't come down to the levels that they want. As you heard in that byte, he said - in that sound byte where he said 2 percent.

I can show you the charts from this week. The positive inflation news from this week. You don't have 2 percent CPI. You're still double that. PPI yesterday fell to 1.1 percent, but some of the core numbers that he's looking at are still a little higher. So, you can see, inflation has moderated, but he's worried that parts of the inflation story are sticky, as economists say, and will be harder to root out. So, a pause after ten rate hikes.

What it means for consumers is, you know, credit card rates probably won't rise from here. Mortgage rates may be stabilized here. And of those rates that are based on - on the Fed Federal Funds Rate, they're not - they're not going to rise for now, but they probably will rise later on this year.

HILL: OK. So it is - so it's an official pause, right?

ROMANS: A pause.

HILL: So as we take, maybe, folks take advantage of that, take a little bit of a breath, we also wanted to look at this story.

So, we're expecting, this morning, the White House will announce that two major ticketing companies are now going to start showing you the fees that you pay up front. What does this actually do for me? Does it get me even more angry because I realize, oh, really, it's $8 for the convenience of sending me a link to my ticket?

ROMANS: So, the idea is, if it's up front, it means before you - you purchase, you know exactly how much it's going to cost. And so this is Live Nation and Ticketmaster will allow consumers to see the fees up front.

This is part of a White House effort to really acknowledge that people feel nickel and dimmed and do what they can to put pressure on companies and industries to do something about it. This is The Junk Fee Protection Act, which you just saw on your screen. That is a proposed legislation from the White House that would really give people much more clarity about what they're paying. For example, you know, excessive online concert fees, you'd be able to - it would prohibit that, quite frankly. Fees for sitting together on flights, which drives all of us parents here crazy. And then early termination fees for TV, phone and internet services.

[06:40:02]

There are huge fees if you cut those contracts early.

And then there are a lot of surprise resort and destination fees that drive people nuts that you might not even know about until you've already, you know, clicked buy. And so just acknowledging that people feel nickeled and dimed and trying to do what they can about it.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, so we definitely do not like to be ripped off, but I guess we at least want to know about it, if we're being ripped off.

This strikes me as smart politics and lawful. I mean people say, well, why not just - why can't they just pass a law getting rid of these fees? That would never fly. That's not constitutional. That's an overstep.

But this stuff is spreading, I think. I mean it started with Ticketmaster, right?

HARLOW: Right.

HONIG: When you ticket on four tickets to the baseball game and then you go into your cart, all of a sudden you're like, why is it -

HARLOW: Right.

HONIG: Forty percent more now and you see all these - but it's - it's - more and more now. Like, I ordered pickup. I didn't - they weren't bringing it to me. I was going to get it from a restaurant near me the other day and there was a convenience fee. I'm coming to you to get it.

But very -- as you said, Christine, we're seeing this spread. I think more and more of these places are saying, if we can pass costs on to consumers, charge $2 on a convenience fee, a delivery fee, that (ph) fee.

So, good for the White House, I think, for at least taking this step towards transparency and for letting us know.

HILL: And it will be interesting to see whether consumers pick up on that if they are frustrated by being more vocal about it.

HONIG: Right.

ROMANS: Yes, maybe -- maybe it changes customer behavior and the - and the companies have to start cutting some of the fees. That would be an ideal world.

HONIG: Or at least tell us.

ROMANS: That would be the ideal world.

HARLOW: Thanks, guys.

HILL: A Facebook whistleblower who leaked thousands of pages of research in 2021 exposing the dark side of social media algorithms is out with a new memoir. Frances Haugen is here with us live to talk about what her life has been like not only since speaking out but also about social media. What does it mean today? Why is it so dangerous?

HARLOW: Plus, Uber driver Berry Henson finally getting his big break. He'll tee off in Los Angeles today, making his first Major appearance at the U.S. Open after ranking 444th in the world. The 43-year-old has been shuttling people around southern California for the past seven years, all while pursuing his passion for golf.

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BERRY HENSON, GOLFER AND UBER DRIVER: I've got 3,000 rides and I'm a 4.99 Uber rated driver, which I love. And I feel, you know, like, I take pride in that.

I like to play games with my - with my - with my passengers when they come in, I usually let them ask me questions to find out what I really do and I can only answer yes or no. And that ends up turning in to be fun because they go down like this weird road of entertainment business. And - and - and being in the movies or whatever it might be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: It seems like Berry Henson has not forgotten his long road to success.

HILL: Such a great story.

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[06:46:55]

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FRANCES HAUGEN, FACEBOOK WHISTLEBLOWER: I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profits and our safety. Facebook consistently resolved these conflicts in favor of its own profits. The result has been more division, more harm, more lies, more threats and more combat. In some cases, this dangerous online talk has led to actual violence that harms and even kills people.

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HILL: That, of course, is Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee turned whistleblower, who triggered some of the most intense scrutiny in the company's history. She testified before Congress in 2021 shortly after thousands of pages of internal documents were released which showed the company new its platform for being used to spread hate, violence and misinformation.

In the nearly two years since having came forward, Meta, Facebook's parent company, has been hit with lawsuits from state, federal and international regulators. Well, now Haugen's sharing more of her story in "The Power of One: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook."

She joins us now.

Now, we did - we should point out, we did reach out to Meta, to Facebook, about the book ahead of the interview. They declined to comment.

It's really nice to have you here with us in the studio.

FRANCES HAUGEN, AUTHOR, "THE POWER OF ONE": My pleasure.

HILL: And it's such an interesting read and I think insight into how you came to this decision, why you felt it was so important. And yet, since that moment, we talked about the lawsuits that have been filed, and we also have the surgeon general warning just - just recently.

HAUGEN: I know. It's amazing.

HILL: You said in a recent interview you were blindsided.

HAUGEN: I was totally blindsided.

HILL: Do you think the tide has turned, right, that public opinion has really shifted since your testimony and what it revealed?

HAUGEN: So, for context for listeners at home, there have been very few general surgeon advisories in the last six years. Like we're talking on the order of 10, 15. They're for things like cigarettes cause cancer, seat belts save lives, breastfeeding is good for kids. You know, things that we say duh to today.

But before those advisories came out, there as ambiguity. Like part - the advisories acted like a period at the end of the sentence. And historically, within two to three years after one of those advisories, we see some kind of big change. So, at least when it comes to kids and mental health, I'm very optimistic that we're going to see something big in the next say two to three years.

HARLOW: The book is such an important read. HAUGEN: Yes.

HARLOW: And you wrote on it, it's the middle of the book, page 107, meaningful change, real change, happens slowly. The things that often - most often block us from real change is the fear that we're not being successful fast enough.

HAUGEN: Yes.

HARLOW: It was Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, who years ago said Facebook is the cigarette. Do you remember that?

HAUGEN: Oh, wow. Yes.

HARLOW: And - and looking at the surgeon general -

HAUGEN: Yes.

HARLOW: It's important, but they don't have enforcement power.

HAUGEN: Yet. Yes, yes, yes.

HARLOW: Well, the -

HAUGEN: They don't, yes.

HARLOW: So the question is, having been on Capitol Hill and testifying before Congress, do you believe that they will enforce some of these changes to protect people?

HAUGEN: So, the nature of basically all societal problems is there are some finite number of kids that we're willing to tolerate being harmed. You know, we put eight-year-olds in car seats - 8-year-olds because it saves like 60 kids a year.

But when it comes to things like guns, we're willing to tolerate many, many more kids being harmed. I think the situation with social media is it has gained so - is so problematic, so egregious, so many kids are being hurt, that we're - we're getting close to a tipping point where we're not willing to tolerate that harm anymore.

[06:50:07]

HARLOW: Do you think it - you know if a child dies in a car who wasn't in a car seat.

HAUGEN: Yes. Totally.

HARLOW: The question is, it's harder to measure, did my child commit suicide because of being bullied on social media, right?

HAUGEN: Yes.

HARLOW: And so it - that - that makes it, what, more difficult?

HAUGEN: A hundred percent. That's part of why things have gone as bad as they have. One of the things I try to explain in this book is why Facebook and social media are significantly more opaque than other things that we take for granted, like say Google, right? I know you're not going to believe this but if -

HARLOW: You started working there.

HAUGEN: I worked at Google too, we should say, I did.

HILL: Yes.

HAUGEN: So imagine -- imagine you and I sat down together for three weeks, and this is going to sound impossible, you could learn off programming that we could ask basic accountability questions about Google. If we ant to do the same thing for Facebook. This is like accountability 101, basic questions, it would require us recruiting 20,000 people and convincing them to install like a software on their phones or computers so we could get the same level of transparency, right. There's a huge difference when we all see the same thing verses when we each individually see a different thing.

HILL: Right. So it's much harder to see.

HAUGEN: Much harder to see, yes.

HILL: IT's harder to break through the wall.

HAUGEN: Only Facebook can do it today.

HILL: Has anything changed in terms of the incentive that Facebook as a company has?

HAUGEN: Oh, yes, great question.

So, a big thing did change last year, which a lot of Americans aren't aware of, which is that Europe passed something called the Digital Services Act.

HARLOW: Yes.

HAUGEN: Now, the Digital Services Act, on a really basic level, says, hey, if you know there's a danger you have to tell us because only you know.

And if we want to ask a question, you have to answer it, which sound so basic, right?

HILL: It does.

HAUGEN: That's a law we get passed in the United States, right?

HILL: Yes.

HARLOW: Well, it follows GDPR too.

HAUGEN: Yes. Yes. It falls on - it builds on the legacy of GDPR, which protects Americans too. HILL: Yes.

HAUGEN: And so I think that is actually going to be really pinitol in the next year because it goes into enforcement this year, which means we're going to be able to start asking questions. And Facebook will know someone's watching.

HARLOW: "The Washington Post," in their book review of your book, it was glowing, but this is what struck me most. What really makes the book worth reading is the broader wisdom in her story and the absence of the self-importance implied by the book's unfortunate title.

HAUGEN: I know. Actually, can I tell you a fun fact. This is - this is breaking news. No one's heard this yet. But the title was written with GDP3 (ph).

HARLOW: Oh, really?

HAUGEN: Like - you know, like, the publisher didn't like the title I suggested originally and like I was being petulant and so I was like, GDP - ChatGPT name my book.

HARLOW: AI wrote - AI -

LOUIS: AI wrote the title of your book.

HONIG: It's a good title.

HARLOW: What title did you want?

HAUGEN: Because titling books are really hard.

HAUGEN: I wanted, every choice matters, because I wanted it to be about agency. Like, every choice matters.

HARLOW: Yes.

HILL: But isn't, even in "The Power of One," there's - there is a point in your book where you write, what will we build together if more people woke up to their own power?

HAUGEN: Yes.

HILL: So the power of one is really the power of many.

HAUGEN: Yes. Yes, yes, that's the point of the last third - like third of the book is, I had this moment with my manager where one day he was like, I'm really disappointed in you. And I was like, you know, I'm an overachiever. Like, I was like devastated. And I was waiting for him to be like, because you were later or whatever. And he said, because you weren't willing to tell me you were struggling, right? Like, we could have solved this problem together if you had told me.

HARLOW: With writing it.

HAUGEN: If we had - if we'd done this. And this was at Facebook. This was a Facebook manager.

And that's what's happening on Facebook, is Facebook is afraid to admit they're struggling. And if they opened up, we could all work, you know, academics, researchers could work together to solve these problems.

HARLOW: Thank you, friend. We'll see if that changes.

HAUGEN: My pleasure.

HARLOW: Congratulations on the book.

HAUGEN: Great to meet you.

HARLOW: Great to meet you.

HAUGEN: Thank you.

HARLOW: Great to have you at the table.

HAUGEN: It's good to be here.

HARLOW: The book, named by AI, as we now know, "The Power of One: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook." It is available now.

HAUGEN: Yes.

HARLOW: Thank you.

Today, closing arguments set to big in the Pittsburgh Synagogue mass shooting trial after 11 days of emotional witness testimony. How one survivor described having to play dead as her 97-year-old mother was killed in this attack.

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[06:58:16]

HARLOW: In just a few hours, closing arguments will get underway in the trial of a man accused of killing 11 people in 2018 at the Tree of Life Synagogue. Both sides rested their cases yesterday in Pittsburgh after weeks of emotional testimony from 60 witnesses. Prosecutors are calling for the death penalty for that man accused of the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the history of the United States.

Danny Freeman has been following this trial from jury selection. He joins us now.

And the defense, interestingly, Danny, didn't call a single witness.

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy.

That's right, the defense did not call a single witness and they really only cross examined a handful of prosecution witnesses. But, remember, this is still just the guilt phase of the trial and the defense team has never contested that 50-year-old Robert Bowers was the one who went in that synagogue almost five years ago and killed 11 Jewish worshippers. The defense really has been focused more on the upcoming death penalty phase if Mr. Bowers is convicted.

But before I want to get to that, I want to get to the latest right here from Pittsburgh.

Yesterday, we heard from prosecution witness number 60, Andrea Wedner. Now, Wedner survived the shooting but her 97-year-old mother, Rose Mallinger, does not. Andrea described being filled with - excuse me, being filled with terror. It was indescribable. We thought we were going to die.

Now, Andrea and her mother held each other underneath a pew but eventually Bowers did shoot them. Andrea said, at that point she knew her mother, Rose, was going to die, but she still stayed with her mother because she did not want to leave her alone in that synagogue.

I should say, Andrea survived by, as you said earlier, staying still and essentially playing dead and eventually was rescued by first responders. But it's just one example of the numerous amount of really emotional, intense testimony that we've heard over the past 11 days.

[07:00:01]

And it's not over yet. As you said, closing arguments expected to start in just a few moments. And after that, the trial goes to a jury.

Poppy.