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Ukrainian Fighters Shares Pain and Personal Costs of War; Trump Says he will Turn himself in Thursday at Fulton County Jail; NY Governor Announces $20M Investment to help speed up Asylum Seekers' Ability to Obtain Work Status. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired August 22, 2023 - 6:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The aftermath is not always easier. These are the firemen of the most bombed city on earth, Orikhiv.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fourth floor brunt out!

WALSH (voice-over): In the throes of the counter offensive, and this is a normal day for them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me pass. Hi! Say "Hi" to your subscribers. Girls will see you. And you'll get married.

WALSH (voice-over): Here's the story of one we've gotten to know, Dima.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sometimes it feels we were born in this war. In two hours there were 200 incoming. We were in the basement saying goodbye to life. The fire moved through the balconies -- a bomb just landed!

WALSH (voice-over): The pain here doesn't just come from the flames away from the frontlines. Ukraine is suffering in ways we don't see. Dima has lost nearly all his family since the war began. His wife left Europe as a refugee just days after the war started with his son and he doesn't know if they will ever come back. The emptiness of their family home is a crippling constant weight on him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going insane. Silence, the silence is killing me. When I'm working I feel better than here. I got so used to being there. I can't sleep at night when I'm here at home. Sometimes I might sleep one hour in the day. At work I feel more at home and I can sleep, despite the shelling.

WALSH (voice-over): The gaps between the horror harder than the horror itself and sleep when it comes is sometimes worse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These days I can barely sleep. When I fall asleep I dream about my family. I'm coming back from my shift and my family is here waiting for me. My wife is back, we are together again. I'm so happy to see them after such a long time. I didn't see my family for nearly a year. It's a painful subject.

WALSH (voice-over): Orikhiv has been ground to dust in the last two months. But Dima's grief here came immediately with last year's invasion. His father died in its first days just before his wife left from a heart attack. He says because of shelling. In that chaos, Dima had to bury his father himself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His heart just stopped from fear. When it explodes, everything shakes inside you. So he died in my mother's arms.

WALSH (voice-over): Now, he only has his mother left. She won't leave the house where his father died and where Dima was born, and where the flames may strike again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have my own war with my mother. One day I will just tie her up and bring her here, because I only have her. As soon as I see an air-raid alert "Orikhiv -- gliding bomb!" As soon as I see Orikhiv, I call her, "Mum hide! Mum hide!" She says she's hiding but I don't know my mama is a tough one.

WALSH (voice-over): Nearly every Ukrainian home has holes in it from people who won't come back and emotions forged in a war with no end in sight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want all the Russians to live in a place like this after all they did to my town. Make them live in these conditions to the end of their lives. I don't want them to exist at all as a nation. I agree there are normal people everywhere on each side. But I will hate them until the end of my life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH (on camera): I think a lot of time, we look at this war through the prism of frontline victories, arm supplies but running through all of that is a current of utter tragedy in so many homes. Orikhiv itself we were there in May it was partially standing and as a matter of two months.

So many died and it is just literally littered with craters now many holes to that as you see in family homes, Victor.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Nick, thank you so much for bringing us that story to tell us just the personal costs what this means on an individual level this war. Nick Paton Walsh thanks

[06:35:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN HOST: Extraordinary! Republican lawmakers in Georgia now, eyeing ways to try to punish the DA there Fani Willis for prosecuting Trump, what we're learning about their plans, next.

BLACKWELL: In San Francisco, a car with no one in the driver's seat collides with the fire truck that was responding to an emergency. What city officials plan to do to reel in driverless cars?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Doesn't know what to do. We're about to go drive into this trench right here getting off the bus. There's no one driving the car.

HARLOW: Welcome back, Donald Trump said to turn himself in to Fulton County Jail Thursday, he wrote in a post online I'll be going to Atlanta, Georgia on Thursday to be arrested by a radical left District Attorney Fani Willis. Trump and his 18 co-defendants have until Friday to turn themselves in on charges relating to efforts to overturn the election.

With us now, Political Reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Patricia Murphy, he keeps doing that he keeps going after Fani Willis, Jack Smith, Judge Chutkan that he may not be able to do that much more now after what the judge handed down yesterday in terms of constraints.

But just talk to us about how Atlanta Fulton County is preparing for Thursday? Are we going to see Trump? Do we know will he speak what can you tell us?

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PATRICIA MURPHY, POLITICAL REPORTER OF ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: So, media, national media, even international media are keeping at this point a 24 hour watch on the Fulton County Jail, these defendants can turn themselves at any time 24/7. But we certainly expect Donald Trump not to come in the middle of the night.

We expect him to come in and try and even maximize his media exposure. There are also of course 18 other defendants who will be trickling in over the next several days about for Donald Trump he will be booked, the sheriff tells us just like everybody else in Fulton County at the Fulton County Jail.

That includes typically a mug shot, a pat down and fingerprints. So that's what the sheriff has told us to expect. He also said things can change quickly because this is a fluid situation. But we expect Donald Trump to be in that jail, just like everybody else.

BLACKWELL: Patricia, led by I guess attacks like the one that Poppy just read from the Former President. There are Republican lawmakers in Georgia who are trying to find ways to punish Fani Willis for the prosecution of Donald Trump. One of the ways is through this prosecutorial oversight committee in the state legislature. Explain what that is, how the options they have if they decide to pursue it?

MURPHY: See, that commission has not yet been seated yet. It was created with a law that passed the legislature earlier this year. That was passed by Republicans at the time they said it was for District Attorneys who they felt like we're not prosecuting the right crimes, violent crimes, people who were pleading out to cases that should have been prosecuted.

Fani Willis's name was very carefully left out of that debate. But even at the time the democratic DA's then the state said this is clearly an effort to come in and start to investigate Fani Willis and start to pressure her and show her investigation, if this commission goes forward. It was passed by the legislature those members will be seated by the heads of the Republican legislature. So they'll be picked by the heads of the legislature. There'll be Republicans, but now until October. However, already state lawmakers are saying they want that commission to investigate Fani Willis.

She has currently got an indictment against a sitting State Senator. She also has been investigating the Lieutenant Governor who's the President of the State Senate. So there are lots of tentacles and all of the politics going into this.

HARLOW: One of the interesting things is that law was approved by Governor Brian Kemp who has been repeatedly repeating that the election was not stolen and that Biden legitimately won the State of Georgia could this hamstring harm because the reason they passed it to go after more violent criminals, etcetera.

That is something Fani Willis has been explicitly focused on, which is interesting. Do you really think that this could one succeeded could hamstring her in the Trump Pro?

MURPHY: I think it's a long shot. Honestly, Fani Willis came in as an ADA and that prosecutor's office doing nothing but murder prosecutions.

HARLOW: Right.

MURPHY: She's known in Atlanta as a very aggressive prosecutor. So any commission that would be seated to take a complaint from a State Senator, it's not clear exactly what they should be investigating, because she's brought these charges. She's brought these indictments, they'll be moving through the process.

They've been overseen by multiple judges of various political backgrounds. So to me it seems like a long shot. It's an effort to take something back to their constituents and say, look we're trying to do something about Fani Willis. But I don't think there's much they can do about this particular prosecution right now.

BLACKWELL: So you've got on this question of the election, you've got on one side, the Governor, the Governor Kemp, who is not so much condemning the charges, but defending the election.

HARLOW: Yes.

BLACKWELL: Saying everything was safe here, it was not stolen. On the other side, you have Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweets out indictments against President Trump, or a conspiracy by the communist Democrats and on and on and on. Who's speaking for the majority of Georgia Republicans? Who is winning that fight in the state?

MURPHY: Well, first of all, welcome to the Georgia Republican Party. This is the buffet of opinions that you're going to see. But you've got to think that Brian Kemp is speaking for the majority of Georgia Republicans. He just won statewide by a 50 point margin over his own Republican primary rival who was himself a Former Popular Senator. So Brian Kemp is the most popular Republican here in the state. He just came off a huge statewide victory. Marjorie Taylor Greene is an extremely conservative district and she's seen as just representing really the base of the base at this point. So we certainly think that Kemp is speaking for most Republicans, but not all Republicans.

And that's why Donald Trump still has a majority support even among Republicans here in the state.

HARLOW: Yes, Patricia Murphy, thank you for the insight that only a great boots on the ground local reporter like you can bring, we appreciate it.

BLACKWELL: Thank you. A new study out this morning paints a troubling picture for patients suffering from long COVID symptoms.

[06:45:00]

HARLOW: We're also following breaking news at Los Angeles this morning where more than 30 patients in critical condition at a Los Angeles hospital have been evacuated after a power outage, more on that ahead.

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BLACKWELL: A new study in the journal Nature Medicine paints a sobering picture of the effects of long COVID on patients who contracted COVID-19 early in the pandemic. We're talking before vaccines. CNN Medical Correspondent Meg Tirrell is here. So what did the study find?

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MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this was a huge study looking at a VA database and what they did was they looked at about 130,000 people who had COVID in that first year the pandemic before the vaccines were available. They compare that with about 6 million people who didn't have COVID.

And what they found is that a lot of these effects they looked at 80 different symptoms of long COVID could last for up to two years neurologic symptoms, cardiovascular symptoms, really almost all organs of the body affected by long COVID. And they found a lot of these effects were more pronounced in people who had been hospitalized for their disease.

But they were even persistent up to two years for some people who had mild disease and were not hospitalized. The study also looked at sort of the burden of the disease from a societal level something called disability adjusted life years or healthy years lost to long COVID.

And they found that metric was 80 healthy years last for long COVID per 1000 people, which is a higher figure than for cancer or for heart disease.

HARLOW: Wow!

TIRRELL: It is really kind of staggering when you think about it.

HARLOW: Yes.

TIRRELL: So from a societal level, and even from a workforce level. It's really something to think about.

HARLOW: And what about, I think this is a separate study, correct me if I'm wrong on the impact on blood pressure?

TIRRELL: Yes, both of these came out yesterday. But it is a separate study, which actually looked at the risk of developing high blood pressure six months after COVID infection, and compared it with your risk after a flu infection. And they found that COVID has a much higher risk of developing high blood pressure six months later.

For people who are hospitalized with COVID, the risk was more than double than that of flu. But even for people who weren't the risk was 1.5 times higher. Overall, 21 percent of people hospitalized with COVID developed high blood pressure at six months.

And 11 percent of people who had mild disease, which is much more common, develop high blood pressure. So doctors are saying this is really something that's important to think about from a screening perspective, knowing people had COVID, think about taking their blood pressure.

BLACKWELL: Do they know why and who's most likely to be affected here?

TIRRELL: They did find that older people, males, people who had some underlying health conditions, like COPD, chronic kidney disease were more at risk. They don't know why they have some ideas. But the idea that we saw with one COVID, how many different systems of the body can be affected?

Some of those effects just regulate blood pressure. And this is something to be aware of so many people obviously got infected with this virus.

BLACKWELL: -- Meg Tirrell, thank you so much.

HARLOW: We appreciate it. So "This Morning", there's a power outage forcing it 30 patients in critical condition to be transferred out of a hospital in Los Angeles. This is happening right now the blackout occurred in the building housing, the special T-care center.

It was not known if it was caused by a tropical storm Hilary obviously they've had a lot of bad weather there. Officials say more than 200 patients were impacted. Those not in critical will be moved to another building on campus. There are firefighters giving a briefing right now on all of this will update you as we have more.

BLACKWELL: "This Morning", New York officials are investigating a company that they hired to help deal with the surge of migrants, why migrants say that company deceived them, plus?

HARLOW: It was a very hard landing in California sparks flying. We'll tell you more about the moment ahead.

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[06:55:00]

HARLOW: Governor New York announcing 20 million more dollars are going to go to the state's migrant crisis. Governor Kathy Hochul says the money is set up to help speed up the process that allows migrants legally to work in the city of New York and New York State more broadly.

In a statement yesterday she wrote that getting asylum seekers on track to work authorization will help them become self-sufficient and come out of the shadows. Now officials, estimate about 100,000 migrants have flocked to New York City since just the spring of last year.

Athena Jones is here with more so interesting, you know living here and seeing what has been happening and also hearing from business owner's big names who have been saying we have to make work visas more quickly for them. We have to make it possible to integrate these migrants into our society and help everyone.

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Sure and this is something that you've heard from certainly Mayor Adams and from the Governor this this push for work authorization but we know that the New York Attorney General's Office is investigating this company DocGo it's a health care provider.

It's a for profit health care provider that has to multimillion dollar contracts with the City of New York. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars here to help transport and feed and otherwise serve some of these about 100,000 asylum seekers now.

The CEO of that company DocGo CEO Anthony Capone says that they received a letter from the New York Attorney General Letitia James, asking for materials pertaining to some of the services they've been providing the city. Now the Attorney General's Office, so far will not the only confirm there is an investigation.

They're not providing more details. But the New York Times says the allegations are going to look into, the investigation we're looking at multiple allegations, including that staff at DocGo run sites were enrolling migrants in health care plans, they were not eligible for that DocGo staff threatened migrants have.

They offered incorrect information about job opportunities and that they may have even possibly jeopardize their ability to get asylum. So now the CEO says they're going to be totally co-operative. They're going to be transparent. They're going to answer these requests from the AGs office expeditiously but they say certainly in response to this idea of enrolling migrants and health care plans.

They're not eligible for this is what Capone said. He said, what we do is bring on multiple different plans from around the state. And those health plans have people that enroll individuals, and they make the determination on eligibility relative to the background of the individual. DocGo does not make any of that determination.

HARLOW: Can you explain why some of these things that they're alleged to have done would impact the ability for a migrant to successfully get an asylum grant?

JONES: Well, certainly they're not supposed to be working and that is one strike against you. If you're found to be working in unauthorized that could hurt their application. But the other question is that were these migrants told to be transported to various places maybe far from the city, were they told that there may be a job for them there. That is what ages office is going to be looking into.

HARLOW: OK, thank you -- .

BLACKWELL: CNN "This Morning" continues now.

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