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New Day

Tornadoes Rip Through Eight States; Barry McDonald is Interviewed about the Mayfield Tornado and Recovery; Pelosi to Stay Through Midterm Elections; School Shooting Suspect in Court Today; Boris Johnson Faces More Heat; Brady Leads Win Over Bills. Aired 6:30- 7a ET

Aired December 13, 2021 - 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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[06:30:20]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm John Berman in Mayfield, Kentucky.

It's about 33 degrees here this morning. And the power is still out in town. So you can appreciate the challenges that the people here face.

I did just hear that water came back on to some parts of the community, which is welcomed as they try to rebuild every day.

This deadly tornado outbreak destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in Bowling Green, Kentucky. You can see from this video the extensive damage. Several people in the area are now without homes, power and other necessities.

CNN's Nick Valencia live in Bowling Green with the very latest.

Nick, what are you seeing there?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, John.

We've been speaking a lot about Mayfield, where you are, and the extent of the damage there. But here in Bowling Green, the damage and devastation is also quite extensive after an EF-3 tornado ripped through this community with 155-mile-per-hour winds. The governor says at least 500 homes were destroyed, along with about 100 businesses. And many of the homes in this subdivision look a lot like what you're seeing behind me here.

It was yesterday when we spoke to the homeowner of this -- what's left behind of this home. Conception Serano (ph) tells me it was by the grace of God he was able to survive with just a few minor scrapes and bruises. He had a bruise on his knee that he showed us where an object, he says he doesn't really know what fell on top of him. His wife also got out safe. He said there wasn't really much time for shelter. By the time he realized what was going on, the tornado coming from that direction, ripping through the community, it was already on top of him. And after that tornado came through here, he described to me just hearing the screams and cries from those buried beneath the rubble.

He was able, he says, to rescue an eight-year-old or nine-year-old boy from the rubble and take him to the neighbor's house here. You can see, if you turn around, you know, this is just how tornados are. They hopscotch through tornado -- through communities, leaving some houses standing, others like those of Conception, just completely destroyed.

This is a very diverse community. Huge international population. People from Bosnia, Mexico, Somalia. And communication has been an issue for police they tell me this morning. It may have played a factor into why more people weren't able to evacuate or did not evacuate when there was a small window to do so.

Later this morning, more first responders will come through here. The National Guard we saw here. We also saw members of FEMA. And they're going to be going through and going house by house, continuing their efforts to clear out this debris, making sure that there's no signs of life.

They are still looking for some of those missing, according to an officer I spoke to this morning.

The -- so far the county, the death toll here stands at 12. But from the officer's perspective that I spoke to this morning, that death toll was almost certainly going to rise as the day continues.

John.

BERMAN: Nick Valencia, quite a sight where you are in Bowling Green.

And, you know, that's the message we're getting from officials all over this state. Dozens and dozens killed, but they still just don't know for sure because there are so many unaccounted for because communication still so difficult. Cell phone towers down. People lost their cell phones, haven't charged them, haven't checked in yet. And there is still search and rescue operations -- there are still search and rescue operations underway in so many different parts of the state.

Joining me now is Barry McDonald. He serves on the city council here in Mayfield and he owns a construction company that's going to be helping with the cleanup starting today.

Barry, thanks so much for being with us. I appreciate you. I'm so sorry for the loss in this town.

What does the town need this morning?

BARRY MCDONALD, MAYFIELD, KY CITY COUNCIL MEMBER: Just continue the work we're doing. As you and I just talked about, the amount of cleanup that's already -- you can already see. Everybody just coming together, working together.

The cleanup is one. Then we start the rebuild process. As we saw power poles starting to go up yesterday and water coming back on last night in certain areas, maybe all over the city. We just have to continue to push forward. This is day three and we're already seeing positive things

BERMAN: That is great.

Listen, there's been so much concern about the candle factory where we know 110 people had been working. We got word last night that as of now it seems that eight people are killed, which is a terrible loss, eight still unaccounted for. But it's possible, as we learn more, it's not as -- as -- not as devastating as feared.

MCDONALD: Right. So, I mean, those people go in and do their afternoon shift. They think they're in a safe environment.

[06:35:02]

And it's just so sad. But great news that the numbers are much less than we originally thought.

I know there are other rescue efforts going on in this building right here yesterday. There was an apartment complex there. And there was in -- in there, there was a team in there looking for a missing person.

BERMAN: Did they find anybody?

MCDONALD: I'm not sure if they did or not.

BERMAN: And, you know, and just so people know, I mean everywhere you go, it look like where we standing right now. Not everywhere you go, but it's so many parts of town there is rubble and devastation.

MCDONALD: Right.

BERMAN: You know the person who owns this auto glass shop right here.

MCDONALD: Right. Yes, I do. As a contractor, My Midstate Glass works for me. I was on the phone with him last night. Total loss of his business there and he's trying to figure out how he's going to get started, get back to work.

BERMAN: And you're going to come here and help him dig out later today.

MCDONALD: I'm going to come help him dig out something, get some of his tools out, yes, sir.

BERMAN: Good for you.

Listen, what's it -- how long have you lived in this town?

MCDONALD: My entire life, 60 plus years.

BERMAN: Sixty plus years here?

MCDONALD: Yes, sir.

BERMAN: What's it like for you to drive through the streets right now? MCDONALD: You start down Broadway and you think it's just going to be

a normal drive in the city and all of a sudden the devastation just, there it is. It just overwhelms you.

BERMAN: Barry, the town's lucky to have you. I know it's going to be work, but it's going to be work you and everyone does together and you're going to get through this.

MCDONALD: Well, I appreciate your support and you being here.

BERMAN: Thank you.

MCDONALD: Thank you. Yes, sir.

BERMAN: Let us know how we can help.

MCDONALD: OK. Thank you.

BERMAN: All right, so, again, here you can -- you can see the work going on across this state. And there is so much work to be done. But it really is remarkable how much has been done already. As Barry was just saying, there are power poles already going up street by street here to get things back up and operational.

Other news around the country, Speaker Pelosi says to Democrats, you need my help. What she said she wasn't going to do years ago that now has her changing her tune.

Plus, in Texas, private citizens can sue to stop abortions. In California, Governor Newsom plans to use similar tactics to go after assault rifles and ghost guns. So, will it work?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: And just like that, Mr. Big, Ryan Reynolds and Peloton. What's behind the controversial new ad.

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[06:41:41]

COLLINS: Nancy Pelosi has had her grip on the Democratic caucus for nearly 20 years. But new CNN reporting shows that she may not be ready to hand over her speaker's gavel just yet. Sources say that Speaker Pelosi plans to file and run for re-election and isn't ruling out the possibility of trying to stay in leadership after 2022 despite an earlier vow that she made.

Let's bring in CNN's senior reporter Isaac Dovere, who has this new reporting.

So, Isaac, Speaker Pelosi had planned to step down to make way essentially for new leadership, but you're not reporting that she's not ruling out staying as a leadership in the Democratic Party.

What is behind this?

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, that's right, Kaitlan. Look, what she's focused on for right now is that she will not leave Congress early as some speculation had that she would. And, by the way, as Paul Ryan, when he was speaker in 2018 did before the 2018 midterms, thinking that Democrats were going to have a good year. Even though they're -- the conventional wisdom right now is that Republicans are headed for a good year, Pelosi is saying in her seat, she's running for re-election, the plan is to decide whether she'll stay in congress after the midterm elections.

COLLINS: And some Democrats have said, you know, they wanted a different leadership to represent this generational shift that we have seen in the Democratic Party. And I know you talked to over two dozen House Democrats for this story. So, what did they say about this?

DOVERE: Well, look, it -- this is -- this existential crisis that they're going through. They're ready for new leadership. They feel like what happened over the last couple of months showed a lot of things that need to change in the way that the House was running and the way that they want their leadership to be responding to them.

But, on the other hand, they're looking at Pelosi and saying, she has such a level of relationships and, control and experience that they are really actually terrified of what the future will be like without her, what it will be like to try to stay unified and cohesive as they feel like they need to, especially with the political threats and the larger questions of what's going to go on with our democracy and political process here.

COLLINS: Yes, and I think, you know, you could say that maybe her grip is not as strong as it has always been. We saw that play out with the infrastructure bill and how those votes went down. But is the Democratic caucus prepared for what a post-Pelosi era would look like?

DOVERE: Not really. At least so far. And one of the things you see here is that Pelosi struggled with the lack of allegiance or loyalty to Joe Biden. Even the president, of course, of their own party for the House Democrats in -- when he was pleading with them to move more quickly on the infrastructure negotiations, they were not ready to do that. There's, of course, a three-seat margin in the House that accentuated all of this and made it so that anybody could flair up with whatever their issues would be.

But that level of lack of allegiance to authority, lack of deference to her as speaker, that was a problem for Nancy Pelosi as a longtime leader. And looking forward to what a new leader would face, it would be all of that and probably more.

COLLINS: Is it even obvious who the new leader would be?

DOVERE: Much of the speculation is centered around Hakeem Jeffries, a congressman from New York. He is someone who has been building himself up in leadership. There's also some talk around Katherine Clark, who is the assistant speaker, from Massachusetts. And then Pramila Jayapal, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, I report in the story, has been making calls, making people think that she's interested in pursuing leadership herself.

[06:45:04]

But as I report in the story, one interesting name here that has taken himself out of the running, there was speculation that Jim Clyburn, the House whip, would be interested in maybe succeeding Pelosi, becoming the first black speaker, even though he is around her age at 81 himself. But he told me that he is not planning to be speaker. He wants to -- as he said, he wants to have time to get to his rocking chair and get to play some more golf.

COLLINS: Isaac Dovere, thank you so much for that reporting.

DOVERE: Thank you.

COLLINS: Today, the Michigan high school shooting suspect will appear in court. What to expect inside the room.

Plus, during the pandemic, social gatherings in London were banned. So, why are there new photos of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosting a Christmas quiz party when everyone else was under strict lockdown?

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[06:50:02]

COLLINS: Today, 15-year-old Michigan school shooting suspect Ethan Crumbley will appear in court for a scheduled hearing. He's facing murder, assault and weapons charges in the rampage that killed four students at Oxford High School and injured seven others. Crumbley will be tried as an adult.

And CNN's Shimon Prokupecz joins us live.

Shimon, what should we be expecting from this hearing today?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. So it's the first time that we're going to get to see -- he has a new lawyer, Paulette Loftin. She will be making her first appearance in this case after a previous attorney had to be recused because of conflict of interest.

It is also the first time we will get to see the alleged shooter since his parents were arrested and charged with helping him get that gun, essentially buying that gun for him, prosecutors have said.

So, today's date we're supposed to get some scheduling issue. There's going to be talk of some evidence and the fact that the next steps in this case will require potentially a preliminary hearing, which is scheduled for next week.

The other thing we could be seeing is some first indications of what kind of defense the alleged shooter hopes to mount here, whether or not he will be separating himself in some ways from his family, his parents.

Interestingly enough, his parents have hired their own lawyer. They are paying for the lawyer. The alleged shooter's lawyer is being appointed by the court. So it seems at least that there is already some separation between the family and the alleged shooter.

COLLINS: I think people are going to be watching that relationship so closely. And now, of course, that there's so much surveillance footage of this, that they have seen so much of what has actually happened.

Shimon, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

BERMAN: So, this morning, a snowballing political scandal in the United Kingdom. "The Mirror" newspaper published a photo from 2020 showing Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosting a Christmas quiz show party despite Covid restrictions at the time.

CNN has not independently verified the details, but it is the latest example of U.K. officials possibly flouting their own Covid rules, although Johnson denies any rules were broken.

CNN's Salma Abdelaziz in London with the latest on this.

Salma.

SALMA ABDALAZIZ, CNN REPORTER: John, more and more details now mounting in that growing body of evidence that shows that parties, plural, took place at the prime minister's residence and offices last year during lockdown.

The latest coming from the tabloid here, "The Mirror." I'm just going to show it to you from over the weekend. It's that still image we have for our viewers of the prime minister playing a quiz. People dressed up beside him. And that headline, taking us for fools again. Because this is no longer, John, just about what parties took place, how many of them, who was in attendance, when did they take place. It's now about how the prime minister has handled this because his strategy all along has been denial, denial, denial. No parties took place, no parties took place, despite the fact that we now have video, stills, multiple accounts to multiple news organizations. Still, the prime minister has denied any wrongdoing.

Now, he has launched an investigation into this. But you can imagine the public outrage. And it's difficult to see what on earth the prime minister could say or do at this point to make this controversy go away, to make it OK that senior Downing Street officials were eating cheese and drinking wine while hundreds of people in this country were dying of Covid-19 alone in hospitals last year.

So the first true tests of this is going to be in parliament tomorrow because the other thing to be concerned about here is that the U.K. is fighting omicron cases. Health officials saying that the number of cases of omicron is doubling every two to three days. It's set to be the dominant strain in this country by the end of the month. It could put pressure on the country's health systems. That's why Prime Minister Boris Johnson is back in parliament tomorrow. He's going to be trying to push through some new coronavirus restrictions, some new measures. And we already know that members of his own party, conservative back

benchers, will rebel against these measures. They're going to vote against their prime minister. And that's when we're going to start to see the cracks in the system because if the prime minister cannot hold the support of his own party, that's when the possibility of a no confidence vote comes into place. That would require a mutiny. That would require his own party turning against him. But that's the possibility now, John.

BERMAN: All right, Salma Abdalaziz, from London, thank you very much for that.

Back here in Kentucky, devastation, heartbreak, but also, I should note, hope everywhere you look. Communities across eight states picking up after a deadly tornado killed dozens. Our live, special coverage continues straight ahead.

COLLINS: Plus, history has been made with Alabama's Bryce Young. What this Crimson Tide quarterback did to win college football's most prestigious award.

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[06:59:16]

COLLINS: Tom Brady led the Buccaneers to an overtime win against the Bills and set another NFL record along the way.

Andy Scholes has this morning's "Bleacher Report."

Andy, it is safe to say, Tom Brady likes playing the Bills.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, he does, 33-3 all-time against Buffalo, Kaitlan.

You know, this is Brady's 22nd season. At this point, he is running out of records to break. He already owned the marks for touchdowns, passing attempts and passing yards. And yesterday he passed Drew Brees' record for completions with this pass to Mike Evans in the second quarter. That takes his total to 7,143 for his career.

His accomplishment, though, nearly overshadowed by a furious Bills comeback. Buffalo erasing a 17 point fourth quarter deficit to force overtime, but Brady would deliver in the extra period.

[07:00:00]

Here, he's going to find Breshad Perriman and Perriman's going to take it 58 yards for the game-winning touchdown. Including the playoffs, that was the 700th