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New Day
Soon: Trump To Decertify Iran Nuclear Deal; Team Of Traveling Doctors Helps Puerto Ricans Cut Off From Care; Beyond The Call Of Duty; Police In N.Y. And London Investigate Weinstein Allegations. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired October 13, 2017 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:30:00] REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH), CHAIRMAN EMERITUS, FREEDOM CAUCUS: I'm OK with changing all that and giving them better insurance, better health care, and that's what we're focused on doing.
But in real simple terms, let's keep our word. Let's do what we said. That's what the president is focused on, that's what I'm focused on, that's what the Freedom Caucus is focused on.
Unfortunately, you're right. We had six Republican senators who voted against the exact same -- the same sentence, the same commas, same punctuation. Same thing they voted for 20 years ago.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: And you said that a president doesn't write law, it executes them. Now you're saying well, but sometimes it's OK. That's what you're saying.
JORDAN: No, no. I'm not saying that at all. I said he should -- he should do it consistent with the constitution and that's what I think he is doing. That's what the court said relative to the CSR payments.
CUOMO: That litigation's not over so you -- look, I hear you out. Thank you for making your case here.
JORDAN: You bet.
CUOMO: You will be judged on the impact of these changes --
JORDAN: You're right, you're right.
CUOMO: -- and that's what elections are about.
Jim Jordan, thank you for being on the NEW DAY, as always.
JORDAN: You bet. Thank you, Chris.
CUOMO: Alisyn --
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Chris. That's just one big story that we're covering today.
In just hours, President Trump will decertify the Iran nuclear deal and announce a new strategy on Iran. What does it mean for America's relationship with allies and for America's relationship with Iran? Joining us now is CNN's national security analyst and former director of the CIA and NSA, Gen. Michael Hayden. General, thanks so much for joining us.
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE CIA AND NSA: Good morning.
CAMEROTA: So, help us understand this. What changes today? When the president comes out this morning and decertifies the Iran nuclear deal, what changes?
HAYDEN: Well, Alisyn, perhaps there's a little bit less here than meets the eye, although that doesn't mean it's unimportant.
What it means is the president will decertify the deal, not because Iran is in material breach of the nuclear arrangements of the deal --
CAMEROTA: In fact, they're not. I mean, just to stop you for a second --
HAYDEN: That's right.
CAMEROTA: In fact, they're not in breach.
HAYDEN: No, they're not -- no. And, in fact, I was a little nervous as a career intelligence officer that the president -- the White House would pressure the intelligence community to come up with that conclusion. He did not, and the Iranians are not.
He will simply decertify it because it is no longer in the strategic interest of the United States, an aspect of law that was given to him by Sen. Corker when the Congress looked at this in the first place. So they're going to -- he's going to say it's not consistent with U.S. national interest.
But he's not going to do other things he could have done. He had it within his authority last month on his own to reimpose sanctions on the Iranians. He did not do that.
He's going to toss this to Congress, but the handshake with even the most hawkish members of the Congress is that we will not impose new sanctions, at least for the short-term. So what we've got is a broad signaling that we're unhappy with the deal and frankly, Alisyn, more unhappy with all the other things --
CAMEROTA: Right.
HAYDEN: -- the Iranians are doing and that's where we want to focus.
CAMEROTA: And, in fact, I think that is where the president will focus in his speech today.
Axios has some reporting. I'll read you a couple of headlines.
Sources familiar with the speech say the president is likely to largely focus on Iran's broader, non-nuclear activities and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which he thinks has been, you know, infiltrated by terrorists.
One source says this is going to be a harsh speech. It's going to be about Iran attacking us.
So, where does that leave us? What does that -- what message does that send to our allies and people who want to stay in the deal?
HAYDEN: So, first of all, Director Pompeo, last night in Texas, gave a speech, I think, that builds the case for why we are unhappy with Iranian behavior. And I've look at the speech and, frankly, agree with every aspect of it in terms of what it is the Iranians are doing. So it's good for us to torque up the pressure on the Iranians here.
Now, if the president actually goes out and certifies the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization in its entirety, we will probably see a sharp Iranian response to that step.
And here's the complexity now, I think, Alisyn. We're going to go do these things based upon certain assumptions as to how the Europeans, which I think will be fairly predictable, and how the Iranians, who may not be predictable, will react.
And so that's why I think you heard folks like Secretary of State Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Mattis, in essence, saying they're comfortable with the stability provided by the deal. No real need to decertify but we can get after the Iranians and all these other activities, too.
CAMEROTA: So, you're -- just to be clear, you're comfortable with what the president's going to do and giving this speech and decertifying the deal today?
HAYDEN: I would not make the step of decertifying. I think it's an unnecessary step for what it is we want to do. I think the president's trying to split the baby here. If he gets away with it, it's OK, but he could set in motion events we cannot control and it may put the Iranian nuclear deal at risk.
And as we both agree, Alisyn, they're not in material breach of that deal. It has put a bit of a stopper in the Iranian nuclear program.
CAMEROTA: So then, what do -- what's the ally's response today?
[07:35:01] HAYDEN: So I think the Europeans kind of sit and watch. They'll be broadly supportive of our complaints about the other Iranian activity. They will not line up with regard to decertifying the nuclear deal. They'll want to keep us on side.
They will not want the Congress to reimpose sanctions for those nuclear things, and so they'll be a bit more willing to cooperate with us to put pressure on the Iranians for the non-nuclear things. Again, the president's trying to go through a fairly narrow passage here to get what it is he wants.
And, frankly, can I add just one additional thought, Alisyn?
CAMEROTA: Yes.
HAYDEN: I think he can do this without decertifying. I think decertifying is in the list of the Paris agreement, Obamacare -- a whole bunch of other things that the president has done simply to show that he's not Barack Obama.
CAMEROTA: All right, we'll see what happens today.
General Michael Hayden, thanks so much for walking us through it.
HAYDEN: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: Chris --
CUOMO: All right.
It's somewhat of an odd extension of a political spat, it seem. The president is saying that FEMA and the military won't stay in Puerto Rico forever. And yet, doctors are feverishly working to save lives.
Up next, we have a reality check on hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico three weeks after Maria. Are we seeing what the president calls a success?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:40:08] CUOMO: San Juan's mayor calls President Trump the "hater in chief" after his tweets yesterday vowing that FEMA and the military won't be in Puerto Rico forever which is, of course, true. But why would he be saying that now in the midst of crisis?
CNN's Ed Lavandera is on the ground in San Juan taking a look at whether or not there is success or crisis. Ed, thank you for being there. What is the reality?
ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, the reality is this is an incredibly, painfully long road to recovery.
We went to the southeast corner of the Puerto Rican island to visit a town where the eye of the storm of Hurricane Maria came ashore a little more than three weeks ago and it is a slow recovery process there.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Dr. Humberto Guzman is racing against time. He's driven by the urgency to save the lives of Puerto Ricans sweltering in the aftermath.
Do you think people are just hanging on by a string here or --
DR. HUMBERTO GUZMAN, PEDIATRIC ORTHOPEDIC SURGEON, VOLUNTEER DOCTOR IN PUERTO RICO: I know so. That's why we're looking for the elderly, the more frail.
LAVANDERA (on camera): We're in the town Yabucoa, which is a city that sits right on the water's edge on the southeast corner of Puerto Rico. The eye of Hurricane Maria roared right through here.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Dr. Guzman and this team of volunteer doctors are offering medical care to the hardest hit areas of the island. The doctors have walked through 32 different town in the last three weeks checking in on storm victims like Irma Torres and her husband.
GUZMAN: People are living on the edge right now and --
LAVANDERA (on camera): You get emotional about it.
GUZMAN: I -- yes, they're opening their houses to us and we're able to see the conditions that they're living and it's impacting for us.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The hurricane ripped part of the roof off their home. They've received little, if any, relief and they're not strong enough to stand in lines for supplies.
Doctor Guzman worries that across Puerto Rico there could be hundreds of storm victims not strong enough to survive.
LAVANDERA (on camera): Do you think the death toll as it stands now is an accurate number?
GUZMAN: I don't think so. I don't think so. We've been throughout the island in the last 20 days and we've seen the independent patients struggle.
LAVANDERA (voice over): Mark Sawyer leads a group called Wings of Hope and helps the medical volunteers with logistics and supplies. He says there are dozens of communities that haven't been reached by relief workers. And with more than 110 people still listed as missing, he also fears the death toll will rise significantly.
MARK SAWYER, WINGS OF HOPE: Every day is a survival mode for most people. If you go out in the more remote areas, I mean, some of these people have nothing. It's crisis for them.
LAVANDERA: And, Dr. Guzman fears for those storm victims who've been cut off from access to medical care.
LAVANDERA (on camera): And do you worry that the people that might die in the next few days or the coming weeks, that those were preventable deaths? That if help had gotten here sooner that they would have been able to be saved?
GUZMAN: Certainly, certainly. We've seen the struggles in the communities, we've seen the struggled in the hospitals. In my opinion, the death toll that they reported, it's really low.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LAVANDERA: You know, Chris and Alisyn, I was struck by the conversation we had with one resident of that town that we were in. It was a man who had found a generator. Also had found a source of kind of constant, good drinking water that was clean to drink, as well. He said, you know, I'm fine. I can hold out. If FEMA were to show up at my front door I'd tell them to go on to my neighbor's house.
But then we asked him about President Trump's tweets yesterday and he went off. He said disgusted and just couldn't believe that those words were being uttered by the president.
CAMEROTA: Yes. Ed, understood. I mean, obviously, you know, I think that it is important to point out that FEMA is still in Louisiana helping after Katrina. That's 12 years ago.
CUOMO: Yes.
CAMEROTA: So the idea that OK, time to wrap it up very soon. We're just putting you on notice we're not going to be able to stay there forever does smack people as outrage.
CUOMO: It's hard to argue that the president's comments weren't insensitive and motivated by his own political spat. But the reality is complex there. Nobody's saying that FEMA isn't working really hard and that the men and women who are first responders there aren't doing everything that they can.
It's about how much resources, the integration with the Puerto Rican government. There are a lot of variables and whatever it is, it ain't getting done.
CAMEROTA: Then meanwhile, the other -- another big story that we're following -- the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
Police are now investigating allegations against Weinstein. Will there be any charges? And many also want to know who knew this was happening?
Actress Rose McGowan has been all over Twitter calling out people by name. We'll talk about all that, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:49:10] CUOMO: A lot of tough situations, a lot of hardship going on in the world, and a lot of questionable leadership. But, there's also virtue and there are people stepping up to make all our lives better.
Two off-duty firefighters, for example, quickly going from concertgoers to first responders, rushing to save lives -- yes, during the Las Vegas massacre.
CNN's Stephanie Elam has more on how this pair of men showed humanity at its best and went beyond the call of duty.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TRAVIS HALDEMAN, ENGINEER, EMT, CLARK COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT: He stopped playing and ran off stage and it just -- that's really when it hit us. STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Off-duty Clark County fire engineer Travis Haldeman is enjoying the end of a three-day country music festival on the Vegas strip with this wife Haley when he thinks he hears fireworks.
JESSE GOMEZ, FIREFIGHTER, CLARK COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT: It was a non- stop popping sound -- gunfire.
[07:50:04] ELAM: Jesse Gomez, another off-duty firefighter, is also there with his wife Debbie. Both firefighters usher their wives to safety.
DEBBIE GOMEZ, LAS VEGAS SHOOTING SURVIVOR: I was in hysterics -- absolute hysterics. Just screaming like why did he go back, why did he go back?
ELAM: In an instant, Jesse and Travis transitioned from concertgoers to first responders.
GOMEZ: There was a lady on the ground and she was bleeding all over from the head and face, and we just picked her up and we carried to the other side -- me and a couple of strangers.
ELAM: As bullets continue to fly, the concert venue is chaotic.
GOMEZ: People on the ground, people hurt, people running around, people deceased, and other people lying with them.
ELAM: Travis uses his belt to make a tourniquet for a man shot in the leg, then carries him to the medical tent.
HALDEMAN: Three shots skipped out five or 10 feet in front of my feet across the pavement.
ELAM: With the makeshift team, Jesse continues pulling people to safety.
GOMEZ: I might have carried -- like physically carried six to 10.
ELAM: Of the several people Travis rescues the most concerning is a women shot in the lower back.
HALDEMAN: Her -- the feeling in her legs were really touch and go at times.
ELAM (on camera): Was he by herself?
HALDEMAN: At this time, yes.
ELAM (voice-over): That young woman is Rylie Golgart. Haldeman rides with her to the hospital. He gets updates on her progress, like when she stands for the first time.
HALDEMAN: I cry about every time I see this but it's not because I'm sad. It's because I'm so, so proud of her for being that strong.
ELAM (on camera): Some people were the heroes and some people needed a hero, and that's OK.
ELAM (voice-over): Two men acting with such humanity in the face of utter depravity as 58 lives were lost and hundreds were injured in the one October massacre.
Stephanie Elam, CNN, Las Vegas, Nevada.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAMEROTA: What an incredible story.
All right, now to another top story.
Police in New York and London are investigating sexual assault allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. Will Weinstein face charges? And what about the people who knew what was going on?
Let's bring in our panel. We have CNN political analyst Kirsten Powers, CNN legal analyst Areva Martin, and CNN political commentator Margaret Hoover. Great to have all of you here for this conversation.
So, Margaret, let's just start -- I want to start with the actress Rose McGowan, OK? She has been the most vociferous person coming out with this clarion call saying pay attention to what happened.
She now says, via Twitter, that Harvey Weinstein raped her in 1997 at the Sundance Film Festival. She is calling out -- I mean, she is naming names of people who knew.
I'll just read you one of her tweets. She says here, "Jeff Bezos -- head of Amazon -- I told he head of your studio that Harvey Weinstein raped me. Over and over I said it. He said it hadn't been proven. I said I was the proof."
I mean, she is the person leading the charge of just grabbing people by the shoulders and saying we need to talk about this.
MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: Yes. I mean, you really feel for anybody who is going through this, especially in such a public way. And, you know, as far as we know with all the reporting, she seems to be the only woman who has had a settlement -- a settlement that we know of that's been reported. And --
CAMEROTA: There were other settlements.
HOOVER: Right, there were --
CAMEROTA: Hers has been detailed --
HOOVER: The only one we know --
CAMEROTA: A hundred thousand dollars in 1997 for whatever happened at the Sundance Film Festival.
HOOVER: So -- which really begs -- you know, it gives -- to anybody who would doubt the credibility of this woman, right, who is so clearly going through a horrible thing also in public, it is calling.
And she is having an effect in the sense that there are petitions now online to take Harvey Weinstein off of the Academy Awards judging circuit. There are more and more men everyday come out and add their name to the chorus of voices who are standing up against it.
And I think the real question next is who knew what, when and who was complicit and who was sort of an innocent bystander, or maybe just didn't care to learn more?
CAMEROTA: I don't know, Kirsten. I mean, sometimes it sounds like all of Hollywood was complicit or all of Hollywood was silent. That this was an open secret.
People knew that Harvey Weinstein engaged in some sort of behavior, obviously. I don't know that people knew about the rape accusations though Rose McGowan is saying that they did.
But people turned a blind eye to whatever Harvey Weinstein was doing. I mean, that seems pretty obvious.
KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, COLUMNIST, USA TODAY: Well, yes. I mean, the question is what did they know?
I mean, you have people like George Clooney coming out and saying yes, we knew he was kind of a quote-unquote "dog" -- you know, meaning that he, I guess, maybe cheated on his wife and went after women, but didn't know that he was sexually assaulting people or raping people, obviously.
And then you have people like Jane Fonda who, you know, came out yesterday and said that he actually did know that he was doing this. That -- you know, that she found out about it about a year ago and really regrets not saying something.
[07:55:04] So, you know, there is the question of why people don't say anything. And, you know, she said in that case it was because it didn't happen to her. She didn't feel it was her story to tell.
I think that people are afraid to take on really powerful people. I mean, that's -- you know, that's often what it comes down to. It's that they don't -- you know, what in that case like we say that people should have done something.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
POWERS: I mean, what power do these people actually have over Harvey Weinstein? The people that have the power are, you know, his board and the people who knew that he had settlements, which was his board.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
POWERS: And, you know, who should have been dealing with it.
I don't know that you can blame it on somebody who hears about it and isn't involved in it. CAMEROTA: Sure.
POWERS: I don't know what that person is actually supposed to do about it.
CAMEROTA: Areva, you're the lawyer -- a lawyer here. It's also -- legally, it's hard for some of these women to speak out.
I assume that Rose McGowan had an NDA. She got a settlement. They usually go hand-in-hand. She's breaking it now.
And I'm curious. Does a crime trump a NDA? If she, as she says, was raped, is the NDA null and void? Can she speak about this?
AREVA MARTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST, ATTORNEY AND LEGAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Well, absolutely. The prosecutors in New York, London, and any city where a crime has been committed, they can open an investigation and they can pursue charges.
I think what's so galling to me is Rose's tweet about what Jeff Bezos said to her, if true, is so common.
So when a woman makes a complaint the common response is well, how do you prove that? We don't have any evidence of that. And that typically shuts that conversation down and doesn't allow that complaint to move forward.
And women are standing up now saying, as she says in that tweet, my comment, my statement, my allegations should be enough and sadly, it's not. And women are labeled as complainers, as whiners. They're dismissed when they make these kinds of allegations.
And I think we need to key in on the board of directors, on the employees of this organization because they don't get to turn a blind eye. They don't get to say this doesn't involve me.
Federal law makes it very clear that an organization has a duty -- an affirmative obligation to create a safe workplace free of sexual harassment, free of sexual hostility. And if this company didn't investigate these complaints then it's engaging in unlawful conduct.
These settlement agreements, who knew about them? Were there investigations as these settlement agreements were being into? Those are all questions that need to be answered.
CAMEROTA: So in terms of shutting down, Twitter also shut down Rose McGowan's account for some time yesterday. She went on Instagram and said "Twitter suspended me. There are powerful forces at work. Be my voice." You know, hashtag ROSEARMY.
They say that they shut her down because she published a phone number of somebody and that's against their laws, not because she was being so vociferous against Harvey Weinstein, which is what it felt like.
HOOVER: Well, the problem is that they haven't been transparent about what the rules are. And if they had said we're shutting this down temporarily because you did this, you know, please get back and whatever the Twitter community is.
The problem is Twitter also comes to this little pitfall with a history that hasn't been actually fabulous. I mean, they have allowed their platform to be used by bullies. Frankly, by ISIS recruiters to recruit and adherence. And they have not been quick to monitor the space in those instances so it does seem very inconsistent.
CAMEROTA: And so now, today, there is a hashtag #womenboycotttwitter and various high-profile women are now boycotting Twitter today.
Very, very quickly here, something. I want to end on a good note.
There are a million lessons here for powerful men. What are the lessons for the rest of us here?
POWERS: I mean, I think the lesson is to try to not be complicit. And I think all of us, to a certain extent, can be complicity whether it's a male or female.
I mean, I've had to sort of reflect on even in the media world, you know, there are some men that I'm aware of that don't necessarily behave that well and I'm going to have conversations with them, actually because I think that especially if you are somebody that has a little bit of influence, I think that you need to use it. You can't just sit by knowing that people are doing things that they shouldn't be doing.
And, you know, I think there are a lot of men who have a lot of power that need to also not sit by and just be like oh, you know, that's just boys will be boys. And they really understand that a lot of this behavior is incredibly -- you know, even if doesn't rise to the level of a Harvey Weinstein, is very humiliating for women.
CAMEROTA: Yes. We're out of time, sadly.
I do want to very quickly clarify just in case we were unclear that she was talking about the head of Amazon Studios. She was calling out Jeff Bezos, but the person she said she told about the rape was the head of Amazon Studios.
OK, ladies, thank you very much for the great conversation.
We're following a lot of news this morning so let's get right to it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I just keep hearing repeal, replace, repeal, replace.
