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Helene Now a Tropical Storm, But Remains Dangerous; Mayor Eric Adams (D-New York City, NY) Indicted on Federal Corruption Charges; Netanyahu Upends Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire Deal. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired September 27, 2024 - 05:30   ET

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

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KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right. It's 5:32 A.M. here on the East Coast. Tropical storm Helene is now heading into Georgia, dumping heavy rain and dangerous flooding across the southeast.

Helene making landfall late last night is a powerful Category 4 hurricane packing winds up to 140 miles an hour. In Pasco County, Florida, the sheriff's office reporting rescues of 65 people from floodwaters overnight. In Tampa itself, the General Hospital's flood barriers did hold overnight as storm surge flooding reached record levels, even though the storm center never even got within 100 miles of that city.

One Florida man even riding out the storm in a kayak in his own basement. Matthew Heller went live on TikTok showing his basement flood with more than four feet of water after dealing with flooding of just a year ago from another storm.

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MATTHEW HELLER, TAMPA RESIDENT: And then just the wind and the storm surge, it's just -- the homes flooded before we've had, you know, an inch of water here or there, but nothing like this. This is definitely the biggest flood we've ever had. So, it's kind of a bummer.

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HUNT: Kind of a bummer, indeed.

All right, joining us now to talk about the latest on Hurricane Helene, Michael Byrne, former disaster response and recovery executive at FEMA, among -- really, you've had such a long career in disaster management from terrorist attacks to hurricanes. So, I'm very grateful to have you here today.

That Florida man was in his own basement filming. I will never quite understand people who film themselves like this in these disasters. I'm glad he's okay, although obviously there's some property damage there, but this is a major storm. Talk to us about what you think the recovery is going to look like. How long will it take? How much is it going to cost? And what should people be doing right now?

MICHAEL BYRNE, DELOITTE EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT ADVISER: You know, this is a serious storm and the focus right now is all about life safety, you know, to have people follow the direction of their local officials so that they remain safe and that we minimize those damages. We can always fix things. We can't fix people. You know, we have to take care of that. This is going to take a while too. And the storm, even though it's reduced down to a tropical storm, still a huge rain event going up through and then up into Kentucky and Tennessee too.

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HUNT: So, we've talked a lot about the reason why this storm kind of developed the way it did was because the waters in the Gulf of Mexico are warmer than they usually are. And we obviously also -- you talk about people who, you know, don't want to follow the instructions. I mean, I lived in Florida for a little while. I was growing up. There can be this jaded attitude right of the officials always warn us, nothing ever actually happens, we're just going to stay in our homes. But there are these trends of these storms getting so much worse.

What would you say to people who are looking at this and wondering is this kind of the future here? How should people be thinking about these storms differently than maybe they were a decade ago?

BYRNE: You know, there's some cases, there's people who -- you know, we start to look at these things because we have so many of them that they're almost routine, you know, and we can never do that, okay. Because what happens is then you get a storm like this that shatters all your ideas about how bad things could be and how bad things could be for families and for the individuals being impacted by it. But you have to be willing to take -- you know, pay attention to what's going on and to be able to respond to a greater degree than we've ever had to respond before.

HUNT: What do you see as kind of the future for -- I mean, I know you responded to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. I mean, how many more of these storms are we going to start to see and what can we be doing as a society to try to get prepared?

BYRNE: You know, I think paying attention, this is a real opportunity after the storm, you know, right now, life safety, but after the storm to when you're building back. The FEMA programs allow for you to build back better, to build back smarter, to -- there's examples the city of Houston Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, flooded the Houston Medical Center.

Harvey came along in 2017. The medical center had taken steps where they built back better. They built in flood protection, they weren't impacted at all.

HUNT: All right. Michael Byrne, very grateful to have you on the show this morning, thank you very much for your time and expertise. I appreciate it.

All right, let's turn now to this. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on federal corruption charges. Prosecutors alleging he stole from the city he swore to protect.

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DAMIAN WILLIAMS, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR SOUTHERN DISTRCT OF NEW YORK: The mayor had a duty to disclose these gifts on his annual public disclosure forms so that the public could see who was giving him what. But as we allege, year after year after year, he kept the public in the dark. He told the public he received no gifts, even though he was secretly being showered with them.

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HUNT: Mayor Adams is accused of accepting bribes from Turkish officials in exchange for pressuring the fire department to give a permit to the Turkish consulate, even though their building had not passed inspection.

According to the indictment, Adams planned a trip to Turkey in 2021 and allegedly directed his staff to coordinate with Turkish Airlines to give him a massive discount on two business class flights that should have cost more than $15,000. A manager for the airline told an Adam staffer, quote, I'm going to charge $50. Adam staffer replied, no. The manager, that would work, wouldn't it? No, dear. The staffer replied, $50, what, quote, a proper price. The manager asked, how much should I charge, and added a smiling emoji. The Adam staffer said, quote, his every step is being watched right now, $1,000 or so. Let it be somewhat real. We don't want them to say he is flying for free. At the moment, the media's attention is on Eric.

Well, it turns out federal prosecutors were also paying attention. Adams ended up paying $1,100 each for two tickets. They were both immediately upgraded to business class.

Following a search of his residence yesterday, the mayor remained defiant.

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MAYOR ERIC ADAMS (D-NEW YORK CITY, NY): My attorneys would take care of the case so I can take care of the city. My day to day will not change. I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New Yorkers that I was elected to do.

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HUNT: All right. Joining us now, Errol Louis, CNN Political Commentator and Political Anchor for Spectrum News. Errol, it's wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Can you talk a little bit about the charges that Adams is facing? And also you have such a nuanced understanding of the political pressures that can come to bear on a city official like Adams. We've seen some calls in the Democratic Party for his resignation, but others are still holding off. But where is the pressure most serious for him in terms of people asking for him to step down, and in that context, what you think about how he may or may not survive this? ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning, Casey. The pressure on the mayor is growing almost by the hour. There are a couple of dozen local officials, and they were never real fans of Eric Adams, and they've all called for him, or there are more of them every day, are calling for him to step down.

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More seriously, you have the senior Democrats who happen to be New York residents, and that's Senator Chuck Schumer, and that's Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader. That's Senator Gillibrand. That's Governor Kathy Hochul, who basically has the power to remove him, if it comes to that. And they're all withholding judgment. They're all saying, Eric Adams has to very seriously think about whether he can split his time between defending himself against these charges.

And he, of course, has the presumption of innocence, the right to due process, and the right to tell his story, but balancing that against running, you know, a 35,000-member police force and taking care of 1 million kids in the public school system. We have a strong mayor system in New York, and, you know, he's really in almost complete control of those major institutions, plus the fire department, sanitation department, and so on.

So, he's under quite a lot of pressure to prove that he can do this and he's trying to go out of his way to say that he can.

The charges themselves, look, the indictment lists a decade's worth of taking serious upgrades, more than $100,000 worth of benefit in the form of free trips and luxury suites and on and on and on. And none of it was really disclosed. I mean, it really is a problem just from the point of view of things that, you know, a piece of paper that you signed saying, I didn't get any gifts this year, when, in fact, you took a luxury trip to Istanbul or to Sri Lanka, or to China, and all of those places are listed. He was traveling all over the world for almost a decade on somebody else's dime and never disclosed it. That in itself is a problem, Kasie.

HUNT: Errol, the way that he's dealing with this, I think for those of us who have observed how national politics has evolved since especially Donald Trump stepped onto the stage, he has given people a playbook for how to respond when you are under fire in situations like this.

And Donald Trump did a talk about this on Thursday. He, of course, a long time New Yorker, part of why I'm sure he seems to know so much about it and being paying so close attention to it. Let's watch what he had to say about this and we'll talk about it. Take a look.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I noticed the indictment is very old. It goes back a long time. Well, I had the same thing. They went way before the statute of limitations. So, I wish him well, but I said that he will be indicted because he did that. You take a look, that's what they do. These are dirty players. These are bad people. They cheat and they do anything necessary. These are bad people. And we need an honest Justice Department, we need an honest FBI, and we need it fast.

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HUNT: So, he's honestly taking Adams' side in this in many ways. How does that play, and how much do you think Adams is relying on the Trump playbook as he confronts this issue?

LOUIS: Eric Adams is very directly kind of repeating and using that Trump playbook, saying that the Federal Justice Department and the Biden White House are coming after him, and that's the only reason he's under this kind of pressure right now. There's really no evidence for that. It's a very aggressive press corps, as you know, here in New York, and we've looked into it and we've asked about it and we've asked him to provide any shred of proof that any of this would be going on. You know, that in exchange for criticizing the White House on migrant policy, this is the Eric Adams view of the world, this entire investigation was launched against him. I don't know if that's the case.

But I think the view that a lot of analysts have is that both things can be true. Yes, they might have it in for you, but that doesn't mean you didn't do what they're alleging. Maybe you should keep your nose a little extra clean if you want to go around criticizing powerful people.

HUNT: Well, and, of course, they clearly knew that this was potentially an issue. Very briefly, Errol, do you think that this is going to mean a return for Andrew Cuomo to the stage in New York City?

LOUIS: Well, Andrew Cuomo's people are making phone calls and trying to gin up some support if Eric Adams were to resign. And this is the thing you really should keep in mind. Under New York law, we don't have recall provisions or anything like that. But if he were to resign before the end of his term, there would be an election, a special election within 80 days. And that will attract every politician in New York, because it's a two-month sprint and you could become the head of the biggest city in the country. It's irresistible to Andrew Cuomo and a whole lot of other people.

HUNT: Errol Louis for us this morning, Errol, so grateful to have you. Thank you so much for being here. I hope to see you soon.

LOUIS: Thank you.

HUNT: All right. Now let's go to this. Tropical Storm Helene is pummeling the southeast still, and it was overnight made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane last night, one of the largest storms in the Gulf of Mexico in the last century.

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It's resulted already in three deaths.

Officials say the danger far from over and the effects of this historic storm far reaching. Watches and warnings currently in place for 60 million people in 12 states.

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MAYOR BURCE RECTOR, CLEARWATER, FLORIDA: We're about 100 miles away from the center of the storm. And still we had record storm surge, almost a full meter above the prior record. The police report and fire reports share that almost the entire island of Clearwater Beach was underwater. The buildings weren't, but all of the streets and roads were completely submerged.

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HUNT: And in downtown Lake City, Florida, a roof blew off a building. WJXT's Aaron Farrar was at the scene there.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've seen a lot of trees down, but within the last five minutes we saw even something more significant. This is downtown Lake City. What's behind me is a roof from a building, the abandoned building that's standing to my left right here, but then it's all crumbled out onto the street, even damaged this black and blue pickup truck that's parked right outside of what was an old theater. This is a couple of blocks from City Hall as well.

You see, just as we get a little bit closer to all of the damage here, you see all of the folded sheets from the roof that was here and it's covering a good portion of the street, and then off to the left, yYou see some of the effects of that as well, the cinder blocks, the concrete as well.

Lake City police say, thankfully, no one was hurt in all of this, but this street is going to be closed down for a while until all of that is able to be cleared up. But this is a common sight that you would see. Maybe it's not a roof, but you see a lot of trees down and debris out on different parts of the roadway, including US-441, even out on different interstates, like I-10 east and west. There are different trees down.

So, as you're driving, you have to be careful. Be mindful of what you might encounter because of how much debris just like this are out on different parts of the road. And, of course, when it's dark outside, people are driving, they're not aware that they're going to run into some of these problems. So, you need to be aware and be careful and look out for deputies or police officers that are specifically blocking off different streets and be prepared to go around. Do not try to go past different barriers that are set up.

We're live this morning in downtown Lake City.

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HUNT: All right. Our thanks to WJXT's Aaron Farrar.

Let's go to our Meteorologist Allison Chinchar for an update on the storm now. Allison, good morning. ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And good morning. Yes, that is now a tropical storm, but I want to emphasize for some of these communities, this may have made landfall, but the worst is yet to come in terms of rain and especially the wind for some of these areas.

Now, the center of the storm is east of Macon right now. It's according to the last update, about 40 miles or so east of there. So, you're really starting to see a lot of those wind gusts begin to pick up across portions of Northern Georgia, as well as areas of the Carolinas.

Now, one of the other concerns is going to be the flooding. All of these green areas you see here, flood watch, the potential is there for flooding. The red areas indicate where flooding is ongoing at this point in time. This white box, we actually now have two white boxes there in Western North Carolina, flash flood emergencies for these areas. The one of them is just to the west that you can see of Asheville. We have one just south of Asheville, and now we have one east of Asheville, basically surrounding it on three sides.

The concern here is that at least six to ten inches of rain has already fallen in the last few hours. There have been reports by emergency managers that there have been water covering the roads, water rescues taking place, and also some landslides in the area. And the unfortunate part is even more rain is expected for these areas, and not just a little bit, but several more inches of rain.

We've also had several tornado warnings. Right now, we have several active in South Carolina, but we've had some in Georgia and North Carolina as well, as the bulk of that rain continues to spread northward.

With that said, more tornadoes are possible throughout the day today. You still have the tornado watch in effect for portions of Georgia and the Carolinas. That is valid for at least about another hour or so. But it's very likely that some of this will get extended because the threat not only stays for those states but also even expands farther north into portions of Virginia. So, Norfolk all the way down to Charleston, looking at the potential for tornadoes and damaging winds as we go through the day today, the damaging winds, not to mention just the winds themselves from some of the other areas and maybe trees coming down. We already have two and a half million people without power, Kasie. We could see that number continue to tick up as we go through the day today.

HUNT: All right. Allison Chinchar for us this morning, Allison, thank you very much. We'll be checking in with you throughout the morning.

Let's go now to this story though, hopes for a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah fading this morning. Just 48 hours ago, the U.S. and its allies seemed to believe an agreement to pause the fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border was imminent. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu upended those hopes.

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BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: My policy, our policy is clear.

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We continue to hit Hezbollah with all our might. We will not stop until we achieve all our goals. The most important being the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes. This is the policy and no one will mistake it.

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HUNT: The confusion over a possible ceasefire deal. Just the latest moment of frustration for American diplomats in the year since the Hamas terror attacks of last October. In a new article, seminal article, really, in The Atlantic, called The War That Would Not End, it's a chronicle of America's efforts to mediate a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas.

And there's one telling moment in May where the relationship between Israel and the United States is seemed close to breaking as Israel prepared to invade Rafah in Southern Gaza. President Joe Biden had publicly called that move a red line. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel, you're going to have to make your own decisions, but go into this clear eyed, understand the consequences for our relationship.

Netanyahu seemed braced for a possible rupture. If this is it, this is it. If this is where we end, this is where we end. You have to do what you have to do, and we have to do what we have to do.

Joining us now to discuss is the author of that story, Franklin Foer. He's a staff writer for The Atlantic. Frank, good morning to you. Thank you so much for being here.

FRANKLIN FOER, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Thank you. This is really just an incredible history of the -- we're coming up on the one year anniversary of October 7th, and you really provide so much new detail, so much texture about how this year has gone, the relationship between Israel and the United States. Take us through -- I know you had new reporting on several moments throughout this. What you learned and what it tells us about what might happen next?

FOER: I think just looking at the long arc of this war, President Joe Biden has a couple different things in his mind. One is he genuinely loves the state of Israel. He considers himself a good friend. And there's been this tension almost from the very first days of the war. Joe Biden did not want Israel to invade Gaza on the ground and he told Netanyahu that very specifically. He knew Israel wouldn't listen to him, so there was always this tension where he was trying to direct Israel, but never really asking for things directly or leverage or issuing his opinions as demand. They were always kind of Socratically opposed to Israel. And he continues to bleed on behalf of Israel despite the fact that he's never really in line with the policy of the government.

The second thing we're seeing this play out today is that his great abiding fear in both Ukraine and in Israel is the fear of regional escalation that would ensnare the United States. He's somebody who grew up in the atomic age. He remembers kids hiding under their school desks, and so he's constantly confronting these moments where there's tension between Hezbollah and Israel. There was one moment where a flock of birds was mistaken for paragliders by the Israelis four days after October 7th, and it nearly resulted in Israel preemptively attacking Hezbollah at a moment that would have been pretty bad for them to have done it because they were in so much disarray internally.

And so we have moments like that constantly where we're going up to the brink. President Biden is trying to bring the world back from the brink, but there's only so long he's able to do it because the region is, in fact, a tinderbox.

HUNT: Yes. And, I mean, that moment was a really striking one where they were trying to get Israeli officials on the phone to say, no, the intelligence that you think you have, it's not true. There aren't these paragliders that are going in. It's a really remarkable moment.

You also write about Benjamin Netanyahu and the way he was acting in the -- especially the immediate aftermath of October 7th. You describe him as shell shocked almost, not his usual self, that his self- confidence was undermined. Tell us a little bit more about what you know about that and how it impacted Israel's actions.

FOER: Well, when American officials would get on the phone with Netanyahu, they could just hear it in his voice. And they saw it -- it wasn't just Netanyahu. It was all of the Israeli officials they would meet with in the immediate days after October 7th, because they had just presided over the greatest security failure in the history of their state. And so their nerves were jangled. There was a sense of shame. Remember Netanyahu took a couple weeks to really begin meeting with hostage families. He wasn't showing up in public in a very forceful sort of way. In a sense, when President Biden visited Israel after October 7th, he stepped in and he filled this very calming role that you would expect a prime minister to play.

And so this goes on and on, though, because October 7th becomes the frame through which Israel processes everything else. So, when they look at Hezbollah they're just worried about getting caught out in the same sort of way they were caught out on October 7th.

HUNT: Yes. So, what does this mean for the future, especially with the presidential election looming?

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FOER: Well, I mean, I do think that there's going to be no resolution to any of this likely before the presidential election, that there was this great hope constantly that this war would end at the beginning of the war. After October 7th, when Israel invades Gaza, they tell the Americans and they tell themselves that the war was going to be over by Christmas. And then they make all of these discoveries about the tunnels underneath Gaza, and for very understandable military reasons, the war continues on. But the great hope looming over it all constantly was that there was this possibility for a deal where you get the hostages back in return for a ceasefire. And one of the things that was just most aching to me to learn in the course of my reporting was that in the end of August, there was this hope that Netanyahu had come around to a position where he was ready to deal Hamas looked like they were ready to deal, and then the six hostages were killed. And that deal that was so close started to evaporate because Hamas had murdered its six best bargaining chips and then started making a whole series of demands. And now the diplomats can't reach Yahya Sinwar, so it seems like that deal has just evaporated.

HUNT: All right. Franklin Foer, so grateful to have you on the show today and highly recommend, it's just a fascinating read from top to bottom. Thank you very much.

FOER: Thank you.

HUNT: All right. Coming up next here on CNN this morning, extensive damage in Florida.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just hear this loud rumble for about 10, 15 seconds and then you just looked out front and see the roof just coming off.

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HUNT: Roofs ripped off homes, power lines, trees down, Tropical Storm Helene's powerful path.

Plus, Georgia now bearing the brunt of the storm. It's already turned deadly in that state.

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