Return to Transcripts main page
CNN This Morning
"Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" Shatter Box Office Expectations; Alabama Refuses to Create Second Majority-Black District; Evacuations in Greece; Messi Scores Winning Goal in Debut. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired July 24, 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]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the best day ever.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is the best day ever.
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Barbie painted the world pink. And this weekend, fans came out in droves.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Barbie in the real world. That's impossible.
YURKEVICH: Not only is it possible, the film shattered expectations and is on track to make at least $155 million at the U.S. box office in its opening weekend.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm coming with you.
YURKEVICH: The new movie sends Barbie and Ken to the real world.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Cold shower. Falling off my roof. And my heels are on the ground.
YURKEVICH: To deal with an existential crisis.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the real world. What's going on? Why are these men looking at me?
YURKEVICH: The movie is the biggest domestic start for a solo female director, Greta Gerwig, surpassing "Wonder Woman."
SHERI LAMBERT, MARKETING PROFESSOR, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY: Mattel and Warner Bros., they have to just be tickled pink.
YURKEVICH: Barbie is made by Mattel, and the film is distributed by Warner Bros. Discovery, the same parent company as CNN.
LAMBERT: Everything about this movie and the toy is fun, right? And I think people are looking to escape.
YURKEVICH: "Barbie" bested this weekend's other blockbuster, "Oppemheimer," about the father of the atomic bomb.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know if we can be trusted with such a weapon.
YURKEVICH: Which made at least $80 million over the weekend. The two blockbusters premiering at the same time spawned fan mash-ups dubbed "Barbenheimer."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The world will remember this day.
YURKEVICH: The two real films contributed to the fourth highest grossing movie weekend ever in North America, something theater owners hope is a sign that the pandemic-fueled slowdown is finally over.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's being celebrated as some sort of novelty, but this is the way it was prior to the pandemic. Like, movies used to come out on the same weekend and compete with one another.
YURKEVICH: But for "Barbie" fans, it's just fun.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've been waiting for two years.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I feel like Barbie.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Barbie has inspired you to be like anything you want. You can be an astronaut, a doctor, a chef --
YURKEVICH: Or even a blockbuster movie star.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get that Barbie.
YURKEVICH: Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
YURKEVICH: And normally today we might hear from some of the film's stars, but we will not be hearing from them because of --
ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: The strike.
YURKEVICH: The strike. They're on strike. They won't be posting on social media. They won't be able to talk about the success of the films. And they won't be able to promote the films. Even the writers. The writers were so integral in these two movies. Can't hear from them either because the writers are also on strike right now.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Let the work speak for itself I guess right now.
YURKEVICH: Yes, exactly.
HILL: Quite an opening weekend.
YURKEVICH: Yes
HILL: But it makes you think. YURKEVICH: Yes.
HILL: Maybe you didn't expect that from the "Barbie" movie, but it will make you think.
HARLOW: I cannot wait.
HILL: I'm still thinking about it.
YURKEVICH: Well, Poppy and I will share our reviews after we see it.
HARLOW: Yes.
HILL: Yes. My mother-in-law very much -- and I very much enjoyed it. We did not wear pink, though.
HARLOW: Thank you, Vanessa.
HILL: Thanks.
HARLOW: I'm definitely wearing pink with my daughter.
OK. Ahead, this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's my car with a bear inside of it. So fun. This bear's absolutely destroying the inside of my car right now. Oh my gosh.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: OK, that happened. A bear got stuck in a woman's car. This was in South Lake Tahoe. Look at that. That actually happened. This bear was able to open the door, get inside, apparently close the door too, but couldn't get out. The police opened the door with a rope. The bear ran free. The car was left, as you can imagine, unrecognizable. The bear chewed and ripped through the interior and, unfortunately, that's not all.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's just cleaning out the poop in my car. The bear pooped.
Job well done.
My car smells atrocious, but -- it is so bad.
Oh my gosh.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILL: I can't imagine the call to your insurance company after that.
HARLOW: I mean they have the video of it and so they should get covered.
HILL: Yes. I swear it really was a bear.
HARLOW: Call us if your insurance company denies this.
HILL: Exactly.
Plus, Alabama's governor has just approved a new congressional map. Why a former attorney general says it would make a segregationist proud.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:38:14]
HARLOW: Welcome back.
In a move that may be defying the Supreme Courts, the state of Alabama is refusing to add a proposed second majority black district to its newly drawn congressional map. Republican governor of the state, Kay Ivey, insisted -- instead just approved a map with just one majority black district. Former Attorney General Eric Holder responded to this vote, saying, quote, this map, and the Republican politicians who supported it, would make George Wallace proud. The map now must be approved by a federal court next month.
With us now, CNN political commentator Errol Louis, and CNN senior analyst Elie Honig.
Elie, we'll get to the law of this in a moment, because the numbers matter here, but, Errol, the fact that this went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court says, look, you've got to do this to represent the 28 percent black population in your state. The state comes back, redraws it, only makes one majority black, makes the second district 40 percent black when they could have just complied with the law.
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.
HARLOW: Speak to the why, and will this stand up?
LOUIS: Well, the why is that opposition to black empowerment is kind of the core of conservative politics in Alabama and has been for, you know, a century now. So this is going to sort of go to a trial and they have the right to do this.
HARLOW: Yes.
LOUIS: They can go to trial and they can sort of play the whole thing out and lose all over again because when the Supreme Court issues its orders, the determinations basically say, this goes back to a lower court for outcomes that are not inconsistent with what we found. And so they can - they have every right to go and sort of play the whole thing out, lose all over again, and then have some further court action to try and sort of rectify what it was they wanted in the first place. It's also important that -- to note that you don't have to have a 70 percent black district in order to elect a black representative. All over the country, within the Black Caucus, there are really interesting cases where there are people who are representing, you know, majority white or Latino districts.
[06:40:04]
This is not necessarily going to play out as a yes/no question about whether or not there will be a second black representative out of Alabama.
It is fascinating, though, when you - when you see the Republican leadership there say that this was a compromise and there was not a single Democrat who supported it in terms of these maps.
As we look at all of this, to Poppy's question about the legal - the legal points here, given what we saw, the fact that they're continuing on, may end up in court again, where does all this end?
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: It's going to end back in the courts. I think that's for sure. So just a little background here. So, the state of Alabama has seven congressional districts. About a 28 percent black population. If you do the math, it works out two out of seven is almost exactly 28 percent.
But Alabama's original map only had one majority black district. That was challenged all the way up to the Supreme Court, which in a bit of a surprise ruling struck down that map, including Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh joining with the three liberal justices. They said, no, that violates the Voting Rights Act.
HARLOW: Right.
HONIG: A bit of a surprise opinion. They sent it back down and said, you've got to go back to the drawing board. Give us another one. And the courts said, you should try as hard as possible to create two majority black districts. They came back with one and then another that's 40 percent. So, they gave the Alabama legislature a tiny bit of wiggle room. They didn't say, no matter what, you have to give us two majority black districts. They said as close as possible. The question is, is that 40 percent as close as possible? They were given an inch. It seems like they've taken a foot or so.
HARLOW: Right. Notable that the governor, Kay Ivey, said the legislature in our state, and our people, know our people in our districts better than federal courts. Ultimately, you have to comply with what a federal court says.
HONIG: Yes.
HARLOW: But I want to get to another issue if we could.
Dana did a really interesting interview with former vice president, now presidential candidate, Mike Pence yesterday on "STATE OF THE UNION," obviously asked him about Trump and the potential of facing criminal charges in terms of election interference on January 6th.
Listen to what Pence says.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE PENCE (R), FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The president's words were reckless that day. I had no right to overturn the election. But while his words were reckless, I -- based on what I know, I'm not yet convinced that they were criminal.
Criminal charges have everything to do with intent, what - what the president's state of mind was. And I - I don't honestly know what his intention was that day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: What does his answer become if there is an indictment from Jack Smith on that?
LOUIS: You know, it's extraordinary. I mean, look, I wonder if he would say the same thing about, what were the intention of the people that were chasing you as you and your family ran for your lives and they were chanting "hang Mike Pence"?
HARLOW: He interesting, as you know, said to Dana, he said, it's really important to make a distinction between those people that said "hang Mike Pence." He said that doesn't represent the whole movement.
LOUIS: Yes, well, I mean, look, that attempt to walk that tight rope has walked him into, what, fifth place, sixth place in most of the polls. It doesn't seem to have enabled him to raise any moment, build any momentum, or have any realistic chance at winning the Republican nomination.
So, you know, Mike Pence is - is in a very awkward place. He was part of an administration and is loyal to a former president who almost literally was telling people to go and harm him physically. And so if he thinks he can somehow convince this movement to get behind him, even as he sort of licks the shoes of the person who has scorned him, cursed him, and threatened him, you know, good luck with that. I don't -- it doesn't seem to be working. The polls don't suggest that it seems to be a viable strategy.
HILL: In terms of his point about intent, right, because intent is a - is a big part of a criminal charge, right? He does say -- he told Dana, and I'm quoting here, the president's words were reckless that day. We don't know that if - if there is an indictment, right, there's still a lot of ifs here, there has been no indictment, we don't know what we'll be talking about in terms of charges, but if we're talking only about that day, based on what we know publicly, that day is not the sole focus.
HONIG: I think that's exactly right. I think Mike Pence is talking past what we know the indictment is likely to be, if there is an indictment, because based on what we learned last week about what's in the target letter, it looks to me like Jack Smith is going to be primarily focusing, not on actual January 6, 2021, but the weeks leading up to it when there was this sort of coordinated effort to commit a fraud, conspiracy, to steal the election.
And so I actually think the way it looks like -- again, all qualifiers here -- but the way it looks like Jack Smith is going to structure this indictment is going to have the actual events, the actual speech on January 6th be maybe a final chapter, maybe a post-script, but not the heart of this indictment.
HILL: Yes.
HARLOW: Thank you both very much. Appreciate it, Errol, Elie.
Tourists racing to the airport in Greece after these wildfires on a Greek island caused huge evacuations. We'll take you live to Greece.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was chaos. Absolutely. The surges towards, you know, the two or three buses that arrived. And everyone screaming and shouting and crying because people couldn't even get on their flights yesterday and we're desperate to get home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:48:03]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, I'm just absolutely -- I've never been so scared in my entire life. I mean especially when we got, you know, went -- went down to the beach.
And she told someone we were all - you know, we were all going to be doomed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILL: Scenes of chaos and fear this morning as wildfires continue to rage in southern Greece. Thousands of tourists and residents have been forced to flee. Some describing those harrowing journeys. You just heard a little bit there. Others talking about running from flames. The flames at their backs.
A new satellite image shows the smoke drifting away from the island. A number of tourists are now sleeping at airports as they wait to get a flight home. Officials say firefighters continue to battle dozens of fires across the country. All of this, of course, playing out amid a scorching heat wave.
CNN's Sam Kiley is live for us in Greece this morning. It is truly the perfect storm. And these numbers are staggering, Sam. SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They are alarming,
Erica, aren't they? And yet again we're faced with yet another season here in southern Europe where records are likely to be broken. This one being what's anticipated to be, according to the meteorologists of the Greek government, the longest heat wave they have had ever, or for very many years, with some temperatures hitting 45 to 48 degrees Centigrade. I'm afraid I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. But extremely, egg-frying hot.
Now, the results of that inevitably are tinder box forest throughout Greece where for every year that passes, more and more are catching fire.
That is what unfolded in Rhodes.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KILEY (voice over): It's a regular visitor wildfire. And no one knows where or when it will strike. This is tourism in the 21st century.
The latest maelstrom in southern Europe, Rhodes. An island of ancient ruins facing a modern apocalypse.
[06:50:00]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't usually swear, but what the (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
KILEY: Intense heat waves have turned forests into desiccated tinder, yearning for a spark to roar into flame. And anything that fails to flee the inferno has little chance of survival.
Greek authorities have evacuated tens of thousands from popular resorts at peak season. And the government says it's the largest such operation in the country's history.
KEVIN SALOS, BRITISH TOURIST: All our money, cash box, clothing. We had to lend a woman some of my wife's clothes because she had nothing to wear. It's terrible.
KILEY: British tour operators are flying empty planes here to bring desperate tourists home.
KILEY (on camera): Powerful winds have made life just about unbearable for people on these islands living through this heat wave. But those (INAUDIBLE) winds are fanning the flames of these infernos.
KILEY (voice over): And the problem is spreading. The latest overnight, this island of Cafu (ph) where thousands have now been evacuated and police are bolsters their ranks in anticipation of more to come.
The Greek government has been battling wildfires across the country for a week during what's expected to be the longest heat wave this country has ever seen. As temperature records are shattered across Europe and the world, every day our planet has become slightly more unlivable.
POPE FRANCIS (through translator): We are experiencing here and in many countries extreme climatic events. Please, I renew my appeal to the leaders of the nations to do something more concrete to limit polluting emissions. It is an urgent challenge and cannot be put off. It concerns everyone. Let us protect our common home.
KILEY: As heat waves and fires are escalating yearly in southern Europe, the threat is now even perhaps to the pontiff's own home.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KILEY: Now, if that seems like an exaggeration, I mentioned 48 degrees anticipated in southern Europe. Poppy and Erica, that's 118 degrees Fahrenheit I'm told.
And all of this happening amid British tourists that are being evacuated. The United Kingdom's prime minister, though, suggesting that the United Kingdom may start to back away from its targets in terms of reducing dangerous emissions.
Erica. Poppy.
HARLOW: Wow, in the midst of all this.
HILL: In the midst of all of it, yes.
Sam, really appreciate it. Thank you.
HARLOW: Ahead, we're going to take you back live to Jerusalem where Israelis are out protesting a controversial judicial reform bill. Where things stand as this goes before lawmakers today.
Plus, this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someone in Hollywood wrote this script. It started with "Bend it Like Beckham." It's ended with bend it like Leo.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILL: I mean, one heck of a debut. It's being called a dream debut. This massive moment for Lionel Messi's first Inter Miami match. Fans still talking about it. We're going to talk about it too. Stick around.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:57:35]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Messi!
Could it have been any other way? Magnificent!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Total storybook ending. Inter Miami fans going mad for Messi. Lionel Messi scoring the winning goal in his debut.
Carolyn Manno with us now, wearing appropriately pink, like their jerseys that I love.
HILL: Yes.
CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Everyone's wearing Barbie pink.
HARLOW: Is that it?
MANNO: I'm wearing Inter Miami pink.
HARLOW: There you are. There you are.
HILL: Yes.
HARLOW: Just how people wanted it to go.
MANNO: It was incredible. You know, and I remember speaking with David Beckham about this back in February of 2020, asking him about what Messi's arrival could potentially mean. And now we're seeing it. And what better way to deliver in this highly anticipated debut where ticket sales have tripled since last year, and tickets were going for tens of thousands of dollars -
HARLOW: Wow.
MANNO: Then to have this moment at the end of the game to win it. This free kick that just sent everybody into a complete frenzy. And it really kind of underscored what this is going to mean for Major League Soccer.
And I thought it was so interesting that you have this pantheon of all-time greats that exist in sports, that transcend their field of play. And it's such a finite, elite group. And he's at the very top of that list. And you had others who are within that pantheon watching. Serena. You had LeBron. And they were all kind of geeking out, you know.
HILL: There's Beckham.
HARLOW: Right.
HILL: David Beckham.
MANNO: And David Beckham, who was very emotional afterwards because he really knows how hard this path has been to get him here, and now he's here through 2025.
HILL: It is - it is really something.
Also, a lot of focus on the ladies.
MANNO: Yes.
HILL: Which is super exciting. The World Cup. So this Wednesday, USA back on the field. Pretty decisive win against Vietnam.
MANNO: Yes, as expected, right?
HILL: Yes.
MANNO: It wasn't about whether or not they were going to win that game against Vietnam, but really about what the goal differential was going to be. And it was a solid effort. They left some goals out there. But I think those goals will come. Now they face the Netherlands. That's a much tougher test. They're ranked ninth in FIFA. So, it gets tougher from here.
But I want to play for you guy what Naomi Girma had to say about this next match. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NAOMI GIRMA, MADE WORLD CUP DEBUT FOR U.S. VS. VIETNAM: I think it's to be expected and I think going to this World Cup, you know, the game has just grown and a lot of federations have grown as well. So, I think it's to be expected. And I think it's great to see so many countries coming in and making a great impression on the world stage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MANNO: Girma, 23 years old, one of the breakout stars of this tournament to be sure. The daughter of Ethiopian immigrants. And what's so interesting is that's a problem partly of their own making. I mean the reason why these federations have grown is because the U.S. women have set the bar.
[07:00:02]
So, it will be really fun from here.
HARLOW: Sorry, you say that again? The U.S. women have set the bar?
MANNO: Over and over and over and over and over and over. Yes.
HILL: Yes.
HARLOW: Love it. Love it.
Caroline, thank you.
MANNO: Sure.
