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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Miami Herald: Pool Contractor Saw Water, Cracks Below Pool Deck; Record-Breaking Temperatures in Pacific Northwest; Biden Travels to Wisconsin to Promote Infrastructure Plan. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired June 29, 2021 - 05:00   ET

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

[05:00:23]

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.

WHITNEY WILD, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Whitney Wild, in for Christine Romans. It's Tuesday, June 29. It is 5:00 a.m. here in New York.

And we are now into day six of rescue efforts in one of the worst mass casualty events in modern American history. A hundred and fifty people still unaccounted for at this hour, 11 now confirmed dead after their condo building suddenly collapsed in Surfside last Thursday.

Last night, a vigil was held on the beach for the families of the victims and a damning new report in "The Miami Herald" detailing just how a pool contractor found standing water and cracks in the concrete underneath the pool deck of that building just two days before it went down.

CNN's Rosa Flores starts us off this morning live in Surfside.

Rosa, who did this contractor tell about what he found and do we know if there was any response from the building?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Laura, it almost seems like every single day we get a new nugget of information that really paints a more grim picture about the condition of this building. And today, we're getting that nugget from "The Miami Herald".

The name of the reporter is Sarah Blaskey. She did an amazing job finding this contractor who according to her report took photos 36 hours before the collapse. And if you take a look at those photos, they are so telling. According to her report, she says that this contractor went on the pool lobby and everything looked fine.

When he went underneath in the garage, under the pool deck, that's where these photos were taken and that's where the concerned was. There was standing water, cracked concrete. And also, if you look closely, you'll see, there's exposed rebar, deteriorating rebar. Here's more from reporter Sarah Blaskey.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) SARAH BLASKEY, REPORTER, MIAMI HERALD: And you saw a bunch of standing water and then entered the pool equipment room where he saw cracks in the concrete, everything that was just described, that rebar, and thought, wow, why haven't they maintain this building better.

And he took a picture of that concrete, to send to his boss because he was there to do a little bit of cosmetic stuff at the pool, but he thought, wow, this is going to be a bigger job.

The contractor told me that he has been in, quote, scary buildings before. Cracks aren't that unusual in Miami but he said that amount of standing water was. And what he saw in that pool equipment room and he sent to his boss, he also said that was, you know, alarming to him.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

FLORES: Now, it's important to note that the other caveat in her report is that those photographs were taken on the south side of the building which did not crumble. The actual portion of the building that collapsed was on the north side. So, that's important to note. But again, all of these are clues that are painting a picture of the condition of this building before the collapse.

Now, experts say that the investigation should focus on the base of this building, the foundation, the integrity, the structural integrity of the building and, of course, we know that multiple investigations are going on at the same time, both not locally, but also we learned yesterday that federal officials are investigating.

Now, I should mention that the attorney for the condo towers spoke to CNN's Chris Cuomo last night, and, Laura, she said that she didn't think that the building was in disrepair. She did say, though that it survived 10 hurricanes and three tropical storms.

And we all know what that does to infrastructure. But again, we're getting -- we're getting a better picture of the condition of this building before the collapse -- Laura.

FLORES: Yeah, yeah. Fair enough that it survived the hurricanes, but you just look at those pictures, and you wonder what the north side of the basement looked look if that's what the south side looked like.

All right. Rosa, thank you so much. We'll see you back.

WILD: America is baking, record-breaking temperatures reported again in the Pacific Northwest with Portland reaching 115 degrees.

Ambulances there are scarce because the demand is so overwhelming.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is dangerous heat. This isn't just hot, this is dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP) WILD: Oppressive heat is scorching the country coast to coast.

[05:05:02]

So let's bring in meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.

Pedram, have we seen the worst of this? I mean, is there any relief in sight in the next couple of days?

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, Whitney, it is going to cool off by about 20 degrees from yesterday, but believe it or not, that is still 20 degrees above where it should be for this time of year across the Pacific Northwest. And you notice, all-time record temperatures from Sunday into Monday, 18 to 20 plus records set across the Pacific Northwest. And in Washington state, in particular, coming in with the hottest temperature ever observed in the state there, tying the previous record of 118 degrees.

An incredible heat wave really for anywhere in the world, but when you factor in this region and the average temperature typically in the 70s, this makes it all the more remarkable.

And Quillayute, Washington, is just about eight miles away from the Pacific Ocean. The average temperature is 65 degrees. They reached 110 degrees, besting the record that was set just 24 hours ago at 108 degrees. So, an incredible heat wave again and no matter how you look at it, and I know how it gets about 20 degrees. It was about 116 in Portland in the past 24 hours, drops off to 97. It should be 77 for this time of year.

And I'm here to tell you the next seven days, nowhere near that across the Pacific Northwest. Now, speaking of the upper 90s, exactly whether we are, you factor in the humidity across the Northwest, and it feels closer to 105 degrees. In fact, in the past 24 hours, temperatures on Monday, whether it be in Bangor or in Boston, temps into the middle and upper 90s again in the shade.

Factor in the humidity, these will climb back up to the 100, a quick glance here at our Fourth of July weekend. And notice, temps back down to below average. Some cloud cover, maybe even more showers.

So we'll follow this carefully as the week progresses.

WILD: Dangerous, scary heat for a lot of people out there. Pedram, thank.

JAVAHERI: Yeah.

JARRETT: Los Angeles health officials on high alert over the Delta variant, now urging everyone in the county to mask up indoors, regardless of their vaccination status. They're calling the voluntary guidance a precautionary measure until they can better understand how the more highly contagious COVID variant is spreading there. Officials say the delta variant is making up nearly half, half of all COVID cases tracked in L.A. County. WILD: Well, here's some good news on the COVID vaccine front. Mixing

and matching vaccine brands turns out to be just fine and in some cases it's actually a good thing. A U.K.-funded study showed that the AstraZeneca shot followed by a Pfizer shot produced a strong immune response, even stronger than just the AstraZeneca shots alone. So that's the two AstraZeneca shots.

However, the response wasn't quite as strong with two -- wasn't quite as strong as two doses of Pfizer. So Pfizer is still reigning supreme in this realm. The study still needs some independent review, but the bottom line here is that mixing doses is an option, which can induce a strong immune response, and that's really important for places where vaccine doses are harder to get or where there's a harder time trying to get consistent dosing.

JARRETT: Yeah, other countries are already doing that.

WILD: Right.

JARRETT: New Jersey will not make masks mandatory in school buildings. One when full-time in-person instruction resumes next school year. The governor says individual school districts can decide to make masking part of their protocol. The state's education commissioner is recommending other safety measures like maximizing classroom space between students.

WILD: All right. Coming up, it is nearly an impossible task trying to please everybody, sometimes pleases nobody.

JARRETT: Can't do that in Washington.

WILD: Exactly, that is always the trick. So, President Biden thinks, though, he can do it. He's trying to pass this infrastructure bill, trying to please moderates and progressives all at once. We'll see what happens.

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[05:12:38]

WILD: President Biden heads to Wisconsin today to promote the bipartisan agreement on infrastructure. It's a deal the president first celebrated, then almost accidentally torpedoed with a casual remark that the White House spent the weekend cleaning up. This still remains on shaky ground.

Let's bring in CNN's Jasmine Wright in Washington with the latest.

So, Jasmine, once again, President Biden taking this pitch on the road. This is while there's still some infighting in Washington. So kind of give us the lay of the land and what's next for Biden.

JASMINE WRIGHT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That's right, Whitney. Biden heads to Wisconsin today to talk about infrastructure, as the White House really looks to push past this weekend of damage control. Remember, President Biden offered that kind of ultimatum, saying he

wouldn't sign that bipartisan framework that they all worked so hard on when it becomes a bill unless he also signed that reconciliation bill at the same time.

More progressive and also more money. Of course, that angered Republicans, put a question mark in moderate Democrats' minds, but it was something that progressives wanted to hear.

So, now, the White House has walked that back. But again, it illustrates two things, Whitney. First, it illustrates that President Biden is still Joe Biden, and he is prone to those off the script gaffes despite those months of discipline that we have seen from him in this White House. And also, it shows that just the thin tightrope that President Biden has to walk if he wants to bring along Republicans, if he wants to bring along moderate Republicans, that in some way imperils his relationship with progressives.

So in these high-stakes negotiations, trying to get past everything in his agenda is the situation that he has to navigate. Now, the White House is looking to get passed all of this narrative, all of this dysfunctional mess, kind of, right? And we saw that with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki yesterday, in the briefing, sticking to this new script.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president looks forward to signing each bill. The president looks pardon to and expects to sign each piece of legislation into law. The president expects to sign each piece of legislation into law. The president is eager to sign both pieces of legislation into law, but he wanted to be clear that he did not intend to issue a veto threat and he remains committed to moving that piece of legislation forward, just as he remains committed to moving the American Families Plan forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WRIGHT: So that was quite the walk-back and trying to really establish that new narrative. And we'll see President Biden later today. But possibly in a silver lining for the White House, progressive darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really pushed back so that she was not deeply concerned about this walk-back, but she put the onus on Senate Democrats to come to the table with that reconciliation bill.

Remember, it's more money and more progressive social issues. She said that the bipartisan framework is a deal between Republicans and Senate Democrats, and so it is basically only fair for Senate Democrats to make a deal with House Democrats and move forward on reconciliation -- Whitney.

WILD: Jasmine Wright live in Washington -- thank you. JARRETT: The House set to vote today on whether to remove statues

honoring Confederate leaders and others who defended slavery from the U.S. Capitol. A similar bill passed the House last year, but was stalled by Senate Republicans. The measure stands a better chance now that Democrats control the Senate.

It also calls for removing the bust of Roger Taney, the chief justice who offered the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision upholding slavery. It would be replaced with one honoring Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

All right. A quick programming note for you. America is open and it's time to celebrate Independence Day. Join Don Lemon, Dana Bash, Victor Blackwell, and Ana Cabrera, for a star-studded evening of music and fireworks. The fun begins on July 4th at 7:00 p.m., only on CNN.

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[05:21:03]

WILD: Former President Barack Obama says protecting voting rights is more critical than ever after the 2020 election. The former president says Donald Trump violated a, quote, core tenet of the American election system by spreading baseless lies about voter fraud. During a virtual fund-raiser for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Mr. Obama said that gerrymandering and other tactics used by state lawmakers are designed to suppress and discourage voting.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT: If we don't stop these kinds of efforts now, what we are going to see is more and more contested elections, contested not in the sense of healthy competition, but contested in terms of who wins, who loses. We are going to see a further delegitimizing of our democracy. As bad as January 6th was, if we had a repeat in future elections in which, let's say that the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature decided, we're not going to certify all of those votes coming out of Philadelphia, because we think that those urban votes are shady, imagine what would have happened? We would have had a worst constitutional crisis than we did.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

JARRETT: Through all the talk about the U.S., about the erosion of the democracy here, it has deteriorated in other parts of the world even further and faster. One prime example, Hungary. Its far-right prime minister has cut into press freedoms, curbed the power of the courts, and now at the end of Pride month, no less, has signed a new anti-LGBTQ bill into law.

There has been some pushback, however. The Dutch prime minister now says Hungary has no place in the E.U., but the president of the Czech Republic is defending Hungary's new law, attacking transgender people and saying it's a gross political mistake to interfere in another E.U. country's internal affairs. CNN's Scott McLean reports on all of this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the banks of the Danube River, the striking Hungarian parliament was built more than a century ago, another era that some say is better suited for a bill that just passed inside of it. The bill which erodes gay rights in a country where there are already precious few passed with almost no objections inside the chamber, but plenty outside.

Last week, protesters filled the streets of Budapest to rally against the bill just signed into law. It outlaws any content available to children which portrays diversion from gender identity assigned at birth, gender alteration, or homosexuality, effectively barring any discussion on the topic inside classrooms or even in advertising, like this 2019 Coke ad, which was controversial in Hungary.

This was all added to a bill meant to better protect children from pedophiles, making it difficult for lawmakers to vote against. Leftist opposition parties boycotted the vote.

ATTILA KELEMEN, SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST (through translator): To mix up homosexuality with sexual crimes is disgusting.

SZEKERES ZSOLT, COORDINATOR HUNGARIAN HELSINKI COMMITTEE (through translator): Each abused child that fears asking for help because of homophobic or transphobic will suffer because of those MPs who voted more this hate-provoking law proposal.

MCLEAN: Prime Minister Viktor Orban says the law simply states clearly that only parents can decide on the sexual education of their children. And the ban does not place limits on the content adults can view.

European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted she was very concerned about the new law, saying she believes in a Europe which embraces diversity, not one which hides it from our children.

MCLEAN: I wonder what you think this bill says about direction that Hungary is headed in.

[05:25:00]

GRAEME REID, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Well, I think it's a continuation of what we've seen in the past. This is straight out of an autocrat's playbook. It's part and parcel of the erosion of the rule of law and the sustained attack on human rights in Hungary.

MCLEAN: Gay people in Hungary already can't marry or adopt children. But it's not just Hungary clamping down on gay rights. Last week, some Polish towns declared themselves LGBT ideology free zones. And a 2013 law in Russia banned so-called gay propaganda.

REID: In Russia, we had groups that billed themselves as anti- pedophile groups who targeted young gay men, would subject them to harassment and torture, to filmed them, and then uploaded that on to social media.

MCLEAN: You think that this law goes even further than the Russian law did?

REID: It does go further in the sense that its wording is broader than the Russian law. I expect that it could have graver implications than the propaganda law in Russia

MCLEAN: One more example of Hungary looking less and less like the rest of Europe.

Scott McLean, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT: Scott, thank you for that important reporting there.

Coming up for you, the warning signs were there. More disturbing new reporting on the condo collapse in Surfside, Florida. What a contractor saw in the condo basement just 36 hours before the tragedy.

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