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Nineteen Dead In Tornado Outbreak In The Southern U.S.; Massive Turnout Nationwide For Women's Marches; Trump Sends Mixed Messages Over Massive Women's March; Trump And Aides Wage War On Media Over Inauguration Crowds. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired January 23, 2017 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[06:31:22] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: At least 19 people killed because of tornadoes in just the past two days. Most of those folks were in Georgia. This is the deadliest tornado outbreak since 2015.
CNN's Polo Sandoval is live in hard hit Adele, Georgia with all of the latest. What's happened there, Polo?
POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Alisyn. Good morning. Police continue ceiling off what is considered by emergency officials as the hardest hit neighborhood in Georgia and if you look at the daytime pictures you can see why. You can see that widespread devastation.
People here in Southern Georgia losing more than just their property. We understand at least seven people now confirmed dead here at the sunshine acres neighborhood and Mobile Home Park that again saw much of the devastation.
As incredible as some of the pictures are, we are also hearing some of these remarkable stories of survival including Earnest Williams, a 24- year-old father, who rode out the storm in the bathtub with his wife and infant daughter.
Not long after he rode out the storm that he went out to survey the damage and joint rescue efforts. Today, he is likely to return to the neighborhood hoping that he could perhaps finally be able to see what if anything is left.
You see many people have not been not allowed to enter the region here and when you speak to emergency officials, they offer a pretty reasonable explanation.
You see with at least five people still missing and very little to no hope of any more rescues then the concern is if people start going through the debris and they could find more than just their damaged belongings and that is the grim reality for many people here in Southern Georgia.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Polo, we know you'll stay on it. Also let us know about the need so we can get out word about how people can help. Thank you and stay safe, my friend.
How long is this threat going to last? Let's bring in CNN meteorologist, Chad Myers. What do you see?
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I see wind going from New York City going to 60 to 70 miles per hour, Chris. I see big snow in upstate New York. Now the severe weather and the tornado threat is over, but 41 tornadoes over the weekend killed more people in that weekend than the entire year last year of 2016.
We only had 16 deaths less than 2016. So this is a deadly weekend with tornadoes on the ground. Large wedge tornadoes on the ground and whether you're in a mobile home or a real home those are going to do a lot of damage there.
The storm has moved up to the northeast. The good news is it's not far enough off the coast to make a nor'easter. It's close. It's going to make snow for New York and New England and also into Atlantic Canada, but this could be a foot maker or more for New York City.
If it was farther offshore, all it's going to be is a wind maker through the buildings of New York City today the winds could gust at 70 miles per hour -- Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: That is some strong wind. It's already started as I was coming in this morning. You can see it whipping up, Chad. Thank you very much for keeping an eye on all of that.
The women's marches drew millions of protestors around the globe but what did they accomplish? We discuss that next.
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[06:37:03]
CAMEROTA: Huge turnout as women marches across the country over the weekend. Hundreds of thousands of people packing the streets of downtown Los Angeles as well as other cities and the march on Washington drew at least 600,000 people according to metro ridership numbers there were more than a million rides.
Our next guest started marching on the nation's capital and ended in her home state of Michigan. That's a long walk. Congresswoman Debbie Dingell joins us now. Wow, I don't know if we wrote that correctly.
REPRESENTATIVE DEBBIE DINGELL (D), MICHIGAN: I might have flown but it was incredible because you know, I've got the spirit and the momentum of Washington. But do you know we had 20,000 people in Ann Arbor on Saturday afternoon? I'm so glad that I went home because I just -- I can't tell you how emotional it was.
CAMEROTA: Congresswoman, let's talk about the message because I was in Washington, D.C. covering part of this and I saw lots of signs. Lots of creative signs. Some of them not appropriate for morning television to repeat, but it seemed to be a different message. Everybody sort of had their own agenda. What was the message of the march?
DINGELL: You know, actually, I would actually say that everybody is so busy trying to analyze this and put everybody into factions. What I said in Ann Arbor is we're here. We're united and our voices are going to be heard. I think what people want and are saying is that they're for fairness and they're for inclusion and they're for quality.
And everybody -- I think people will remark, different women were there for different reasons, but they were all there to make sure that their core American values are going to be protected and I think many people like me were there for positive reasons.
CAMEROTA: Some of Mr. Trump's advisors said if women are dissatisfied that's on the previous watch. We have only been in office for an hour. We haven't been in office when all of these things have been planned. Were these anti-Trump marches?
DINGELL: I think that there were some people that may have been there for anti-Trump, but if you lead with the organizers their mission, they framed it in a positive way and I was there marching for what I stand for and how I'm going to stand as one united community.
I think one of the things that really struck me on Saturday a lot of people were trying to talk about, you know, pit women against each other was the younger generation versus the older. What I saw was women marching for the first time and women who had marched for progress their entire life.
Stay at home moms and working moms. It was a very diverse group, all coming together united to protect people for fairness, equality and inclusion.
CAMEROTA: Here's what Mr. Trump tweeted about it that morning, "Watch protest yesterday, but was under the impression that we just had an election. Why didn't these people vote? Celebs hurt cause badly." What's your response?
[06:40:02]DINGELL: And then he updated or did another Twitter later in the day.
CAMEROTA: I have that. It was one hour later. Let me just read it so that we are in the interest of complete fairness. It was a totally different message. This is an hour and a half later, "Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even I don't always agree, I recognize the rights of people to express their views." So it's hard to know which one he actually felt.
DINGELL: You know, I'm going to say, I went to the inaugural on Friday because I think it's one of the most visible signs of our democracy. The peaceful transfer of government and I think Saturday was also one of the visible signs, freedom of speech.
And what is exciting that you read all of those signs and there were a whole lot of different signs, but women were coming together united and I'm going to focus on how we are united. You can't put a million women all into one same box, but I think you did see people united and wanting to fight for progress in this country not going back.
CAMEROTA: What are you afraid you're going to lose?
DINGELL: I think we've got -- you know, I'm one of the speakers on Saturday said that she had met a woman in her 60s that marched in the 60s. When I interviewed for my job at General Motors, I was asked, why would a woman want to work for General Motors? That's a very true statement.
And now a woman is the chairman of General Motors, a woman CEO. I think we wanted to just make sure that we do keep moving forward. We worked hard to get where we are. I am where I am because of the women that went before me and opened those doors and we have to make sure that we are continuing to support each other and to make those doors wider.
CAMEROTA: Congressman Debbie Dingell, thanks so much for sharing your experience with us. Great to see you.
DINGELL: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: Let's go over to Chris.
CUOMO: Thanks, Alyson. So we got our big match upcoming for the Super Bowl number 51. Do you know who it is? You better. The Falcons and the Patriots. They have written here in the teleprompter, John Berman's Patriots. Please the "Bleacher Report" is next.
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[06:46:09]
CUOMO: Super Bowl LI is set, New England's Patriots, Atlanta's Falcons. Former Falcon, Coy Wire, wearing his nonpartisan sports journalist suit for this morning's "Bleacher Report." I could hear your girlish screams all the way from Manhattan.
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: How about the bet we made earlier in the season. Don't you have to shave off those pretty curls now?
This Super Bowl, Chris, is going to be anything like yesterday's conference championship game. We are in for a barrage of points and a quarterback battle of the ages.
Falcons, Matt Ryan, never been to a Super Bowl that has the league's leading offense and then the Patriot's Tom Brady, he will now have played in more Super Bowls than any player in NFL history.
He is 39 years old and he picked Pittsburg's defense apart. This is a top ten defense making them just look so-so, like a seamstress, 384 yards. Three touchdowns. Two of them go to this guy, Chris Hogan.
Listen to this, he only played one year of college football at Monmoth. He was a Lacrosse player before that. Patriots dominate the AFC championship game, 36-17. Going to a record ninth Super Bowl. Hines Ward caught up with the unlikely hero after the game.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CHRIS HOGAN, PATRIOTS WIDE RECEIVER: Everyone buys in. This locker room. Defense, offense, special teams, and we just want to win and we want to win so bad and you know, we do everything we can throughout the week just to win.
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WIRE: And earlier in the day, the Falcons would rise up and beat down Green Bay. Matt Ryan showing why he's the front runner for the league MVP award. Five touchdowns in total and what a special day for the city of Atlanta. I got to play there.
This was the final game ever to be played in the Georgia dome. It's the only facility in the world to have hosted Olympics, final four and a Super Bowl, and it ends with an NFC championship and a Super Bowl berth. I got to catch up with some of my teammates after the game.
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MATT RYAN, FALCONS QUARTERBACK: Good way to send it out for sure. We need to make our statement two weeks from now. That's where our mind set is.
DEVONTA FREEMAN, FALCONS RUNNING BACK: We are going to the Super Bowl -- whoever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WIRE: Falcons going back to the Super Bowl, Alisyn, for the first time in 18 years. They never won one. Hopefully this time, it will be different.
CAMEROTA: That's exciting, Coy. Thanks so much for all of that.
Well, the war between President Trump and the press over what Mr. Trump's advisors call alternative facts, we discuss the battle of facts versus falsehoods.
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[06:52:41]
CUOMO: All right, a new hashtag has emerged. Alternative facts, a phrase that President Trump's counselor, Kellyanne Conway, used to explain the way the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, was giving false comments on the size of Trump's inauguration. Let's listen to her first.
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CHUCK TODD, NBC ANCHOR: You did not answer the question of why the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood. Why did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the entire White House press office on day one. KELLYANNE CONWAY, WHITE HOUSE COUNSELOR: Don't be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You are saying it is a falsehood. They are giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that, but the point remains --
TODD: Wait a minute. Alternative facts?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Chuck Todd giggle. You got one there. CNN senior media correspondent, host of "RELIABLE SOURCES," Brian Stelter, CNN media analyst, Bill Carter. Gentlemen, always a pleasure.
We know Kellyanne Conway. She's very intelligent and very good at doing her job. She knows that there are facts and everything else, but she was in defense mode of Sean Spicer, and with good reason. Here's what she was trying to defend.
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SEAN SPICER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: No one had numbers because the National Park Service which controls the National Mall does not put any out. This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period, both in person and around the globe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: All right. This is an example of what we call strong and wrong when it comes to the media. His numbers were off. They are now getting attribution from it. Wrong numbers from this one. Tom Barrett came out and said it was me. There trying to make it so that it wasn't that he made it up. That he did it on purpose to be wrong, but that he got bad information. Bill Carter, your take.
BILL CARTER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: Well, they need to do that because otherwise his first presentation comes out as completely false and you don't want the press immediately to say well, I can't trust this guy. You have people comparing him to Baghdad Bob the first day in office. It's just really bad for the press secretary because eventually he's going to say something to the press and say trust me on this. It really is bad for him and for the administration.
CAMEROTA: This is a tough one, Brian, because aren't all press secretaries, they do the bidding of their boss. We have seen this with every press secretary. They spin the narrative that their boss wants them to spin. That's what Sean Spicer was doing. So where does that leave the press?
[06:55:08]BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: I think he was doing something more. Yes, everyone spins and surely Josh Earnest, who just sat down as press secretary would admit that he would omit inconvenient facts, ignore inconvenient facts.
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CAMEROTA: That's what they do. (CROSSTALK)
STELTER: Spicer used the wrong title for a leader of another country. He had false information about the inauguration set up and let's remember his boss also said it was sunny when in fact it was cloudy at the inauguration. There's a pattern from the top from the president and from Sean Spicer not of spinning but of having completely misstated the facts.
And listen he may have had information from the wrong people. That's a legitimate issue, but (inaudible) speaks to a bit of concern about this new administration. It's hard when you get started.
CARTER: Here's the problem.
STELTER: They have some issues.
CARTER: The war on CIA was created by the press and not the comments literally put out by him.
STELTER: But this administration feels it's under siege right now from the media.
CUOMO: And he didn't take questions, which was an insult to the media and the American people because it's about accountability and also look, this just isn't a debate. A picture tells a thousand words in this one and unfortunately, they're all true.
CAMEROTA: Here's the picture.
CUOMO: These are the pictures. They're not playing with different times of day. These are comforting pictures. There is no conspiracy. Just let your eyes tell you the truth.
CAMEROTA: By the way, this was an asterisks to our coverage. This is a fraction. We showed the pictures for a second. This was never going to be our headline. This was never going to be something that we devoted time to --
STELTER: Some of our viewers thought CNN was too generous.
CUOMO: We heard it. She did a great job and one of the things she was influencing early on was factual. People were being called protestors but they weren't. A lot of them were criminals and lighting fires and we said here's this one pocket of activity at one corner, but look at these miles of road behind us where all of these people are out for good reason.
CAMEROTA: One more thing I want to point out, Chris and I were out there and we were berated and yelled at by some of Mr. Trump's supporters who were calling us names and that's our new normal and OK, we can deal with that. But I guess, my point to you, Brian, originally was, what is the press to do about Sean Spicer's version of events and Donald Trump's version of events?
STELTER: I think what we're doing right now, which is to state the facts because even more loudly than he misstated the facts. We talk about delegitimizing the press, something Trump was doing during the campaign and now we're actually seeing what that means. It's a word that gets thrown around.
CUOMO: Don't cheapen it. Hit him when it matters, OK. The alternative facts and here is where you were wrong, but there is a point to be made about how much attention. Crowd size was never our story, but even if he is dead wrong on it how much attention.
Kellyanne makes some good points to Chuck Todd about how come you are not talking about the executive orders that he signed. How come you've never mention that we won more 31 out of 50 states? How come you never mention that we won more women?
These are fair points as well. The media has to remember just because she got him wrong on something does that mean that's all you talk about.
STELTER: When he tweets accurate information we should point that out too. We make a big deal out of the falsehoods he posts on Twitter. When he gets it right we need to point out everything he is saying is wrong.
CARTER: But it's challenging. If you constantly put out facts -- he has challenged a lot of things. He says unemployment rate is 42 percent. He says vaccines caused autism.
CUOMO: You have to check them.
CARTER: You can't just let that go. You must come back and say that isn't true.
CUOMO: Want a little levity? A little "SNL." Let's play a clip and then we'll discuss it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yesterday we all made Donald Trump the 45th president of the United States. Hooray we did it. Today many of you are scared and marching in the streets. You are worried that your country is in the hands of this unpredictable man but don't worry. It's not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: It's so creepy.
CARTER: It's creepy and it's become now the thing. He has to have no shirt.
CAMEROTA: He has to have no shirt. He makes an interesting point though about what we covered. Those marches were historic and the people that came together all over this country and all over the world that has to get attention as well even though it will upset the president. STELTER: You know, those marches under-promised and over-delivered specifically because the crowds were bigger than expected that there was even more press.
CUOMO: Metro said they had one of the biggest fair monitoring events ever in terms of people that went there.
STELTER: It's partly because some people were already in the streets. Others were propelled to go out. There's an interesting moment like that.
CAMEROTA: Bill, Brian, thank you.
CAMEROTA: All right, international viewers, thank you for watching us. "CNN NEWSROOM" is going to begin for you in just moments. For our U.S. viewers, NEW DAY continues. Let's get after it right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's an obsession by the media to delegitimize this president.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: It looked like a million, a million and a half people.
