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At Least 50 Tornadoes Affect Eight States across U.S.; Amazon Warehouse in Illinois Collapses Due to Tornado; House Committee Investigating January 6th Insurrection Recommends Contempt of Congress Charges against Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired December 13, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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


[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: At least 50 tornadoes ripped through eight states over the weekend, smashing communities and leaving dozens killed.

Where I'm standing, behind me was an auto glass business, has been flattened, simply. And if you look behind that, even a little more, the brick building with a flag there hanging, that's the post office, which no longer has a roof. It gives you a sense of the power of these storms as they pass through the downtown in Mayfield. It's also a church parking lot where I am right now, and you can get a sense there, that's one of the church buses, with all of the windows simply blown out. The corrugated metal, the sheet metal, it's really just littering this entire area. You drive in for dozens of miles and you can see it's scattered about in the fields and the farms. That just gives you a sense of the scene here on the ground in Mayfield.

And it's not just Mayfield. We just spoke with Scott Jennings from Dawson Springs where 13 people are dead. There are still 100 people unaccounted for. As many as 1,000 homes and structures in this state just destroyed. So this all started Friday night with these storms touching down first in Arkansas. They hit a nursing home there. One person died there. The swarm of twisters then tore a path across 200 miles in Kentucky. One tornado slammed into a family-run candle factory in Mayfield. The building was leveled.

Now, 110 people scheduled to work that shift, it's unclear how many people were in the building at that exact moment that it hit. Rescuers crawling over the dead after the fact to get to the living. At this point, eight people have been confirmed dead, another eight unaccounted for. The unimaginable loss there that some had feared is terrible, but maybe not as bad as was feared before.

Earlier this morning, I spoke to a man whose pharmacy that has been in the family for generations, now lays in ruins.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

BERMAN: You lost your father not long ago.

SAM BROWN, PHARMACY DESTROYED IN TORNADO: He passed away from cancer in February. And he was a great guy. He provided a life for me that I've benefited from, that pharmacy. And I just had dreams of doing the same for my kids.

BERMAN: Your son, Jonah (ph), right? The beauty area inside was named after him. Your wife named it after him.

BROWN: That's right. My wife -- my wife lost 100 percent of her income. She is a pharmacist at the store and she also had the boutique. And when my son was born, we named it shop Jonah (ph) Brown. And yesterday, when we were picking up, he wanted to have his picture taken on top of the rubble where the boutique was. So, she's just -- she's heartbroken. And it's hard waking up in the morning to your wife laying in bed crying.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: In Illinois, Amazon employees only had an 11-minute warning before a tornado leveled their warehouse. This morning search efforts are still under way for people who are believed to be trapped in the rubble. Housing, power, water and fuel are all going to be a massive need going forward, John.

BERMAN: It's such a need throughout here. I do know that at least one home that didn't have water, they did get water overnight. So the water is starting to come back here in Mayfield. The power is still out. The lights, the traffic lights are all down. Amazingly, what they were able to do in all the intersections where traffic lights were down, they have gone and put up stop signs, four-way stop signs so the traffic doesn't move all that quickly. But they got those up within a day.

So many people here digging through their homes. I met a man, Tommy Anderson and his family who rode out the storm in a basement bathroom as the tornado was tearing his home to shreds he describes what he saw, heard, and felt that night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOMMY ANDERSON, TORNADO SURVIVOR: I watched the storm come. And then, I watched rain, the lightning and stuff. And then I saw when the city transformers or the electrical station, I saw one of those transformers blew up.

BERMAN: You saw the boom, boom.

ANDERSON: Well, you couldn't hear necessarily the noise. But I've been in a lot of storms, ice storms. And when those transforms blow, arc together, they make a blue. It's not red, it's a blue color. And so I saw the blue flashes, and I knew what that was. The lights blink, and then all the power goes off. And about that same time, within a minute, then you could feel the wind changing and the air changing. My son was with me. And I said it's time for us to get in the shelter. So we stepped inside the shelter.

BERMAN: What kind of shelter are you talking about? ANDERSON: Well, it's a basement bathroom is what it is. But you know,

it's against the ground, or whatever. The bathroom downstairs.

BERMAN: How many of you were in there?

ANDERSON: Five of us, and a cat.

BERMAN: And then what?

ANDERSON: Well, as soon as we closed the door, it tried to pull back open, I guess the air pressure, whatever. So we pulled it closed. And then the air pressure, our ears popped. And stuff started shaking and moving, and we could hear the glass breaking and stuff flying around, and just shaking and moving, and the noise and the rumble of the wind and everything. And we don't have any idea what we're going to see when we come out. It lasted probably about two minutes at most.

This was our front porch. You can see the rail and here, part of it, and one of the columns there. Our front living room, this room, we call our piano room. We had piano and instruments and things in there --

BERMAN: Where is the piano now?

ANDERSON: It's just sitting there.

BERMAN: All right.

ANDERSON: We're hopefully, we can get it out without any more damage tomorrow. And our kitchen here, you can see it. And the windows are blown out, and stuff, just crazy. And back bedroom --

BERMAN: This is the bedroom here.

ANDERSON: It was.

BERMAN: Who slept here?

ANDERSON: Well, it was a bedroom our boys slept -- our oldest son slept there when he was at home. He has been gone for a while. So he kind of let his boys take over that.

BERMAN: But this was a bedroom.

ANDERSON: Yes. And on the other side, you see the other wall there, that was another bedroom. That was our daughter's bedroom. And you see the wall of it sticking out here.

BERMAN: Down here is the basement. This is where, ultimately inside there, the bathroom where you stayed was underneath there.

ANDERSON: And there's still walls in there.

BERMAN: Yes. Yes, it is. And then our cars, our vehicles.

BERMAN: You got yourself. You got your family. ANDERSON: That's right. That's exactly right. And everything else is

just stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: A couple things I want to tell you about Tommy and his family here. They had a Christmas tree inside that house, which was blown over and pushed around. But they were able to get the Christmas tree out and they moved it to in-laws. And that's where they plan to celebrate Christmas, with the tree that somehow survived this tornado.

And one last thing about Tommy. I did ask to go inside the house to take a look at the bathroom where they rode out the storm, but Tommy told me, his wife wouldn't allow it, she said, because the house looks like a tornado went through, which was nice to see. It was nice to know that he still had a sense of humor after everything that's happened to him and his family. They are all well, which is such a blessing.

I want to go now to CNN's Polo Sandoval who is in Edwardsville, Illinois, at the scene of that deadly collapse at the Amazon warehouse. Polo, give us a sense of what you're seeing there this morning.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, the damaged portions of that warehouse have actually been demolished over the weekend. So to get a true sense of what happened here, you have to see some of the images that were shot over the weekend, especially from the air. You can actually see how that EF-3 tornado literally cut through the Amazon shipping center. We know that dozens managed to escape alive. But sadly, as authorities confirmed, six did not. Among them, a 29-year- old Navy veteran named Clayton Cope. Clayton served his country honorably for six years and then eventually returned here to southwest Illinois to work alongside his father as a maintenance mechanic, worked for a contractor that he worked for, Amazon. And he was in that warehouse on Friday night.

Last night, the Copes, taking us into their home to share a little bit about who their son was, a selfless and kind man. And his mother, Carla, hanging on to so many memories, including one of the recent ones on Friday, when she actually made a phone call to her son when he was here. And she recalls overhearing how her son was urging his colleagues and co-workers to seek shelter as that storm was moving in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLA COPE, SON DIED IN WAREHOUSE COLLAPSE: In my heart, I know he went to try to warn other people to get where they needed to be. And between his military training and just who he was, he would have done that, no matter whether he was told to or not. So that's the only thing I can hold on to is that I feel like he must have been trying to help someone else.

SANDOVAL: What is it that you want to know about your son?

COPE: I just want them to know that he was a wonderful, caring person, and that his presence will be a huge void in so many lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: Truly an amazing family. It was clear just how much they love their son, John.

[08:10:01]

And they know that there's so many other families just like them that are feeling the pain. Now, in terms of Amazon, spoke to their representatives over the weekend. They say they are in contact with those families that were affected by this and hoping to help that community. In fact, the Copes confirming that they've actually been contacted by their son's employer. John?

BERMAN: Polo Sandoval, as you said, so much loss. There are so many families like that, mourning this morning. Thank you so much for that story. Kaitlan?

COLLINS: So hard to hear that, John. Though we do have new details coming up about Mark Meadows' actions surrounding January 6th, who he wanted on standby to protect the pro-Trump people who conducted the insurrection.

And just like that, Peloton is responding to its controversial "Sex in the City" cameo with a little help from Mr. Big.

And it's the billion-dollar question, who was just chosen as "Time" magazine's Person of the Year?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: The House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol is now laying out its case for a contempt of Congress charge against Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows. The committee wants to question him over an e-mail that he sent the day before the attack, saying the National Guard would be used to, quote, protect pro-Trump people.

[08:15:00]

Meadows is no longer cooperating with the Committee and they are slated to vote today to recommend that contempt of Congress charge against him.

CNN's Whitney Wild is in Washington. Whitney, what did we learn from this new 51-page document that we got overnight?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: We are getting a lot more detail about what the Committee thinks Mark Meadows did and what he knows about the lead up to the January 6th riot and then also, these massive efforts to try to overturn the election.

So let's drill down on that very first thing you mentioned, this National Guard e-mail that Meadows reportedly sent on January 5th, and it says this -- this is what the resolution says, the National Guard would be present to, quote, " ... protect pro-Trump people and that many more would be available on standby."

That is so significant, Kaitlan because there continue to be questions about what the decision making was within the White House as well as at the Department of Defense about whether or not the National Guard would actually be on standby within Washington, what their role would be.

And then, at the end of the day, the timeline between the initial request from Capitol Hill to DoD to send the National Guard to the Capitol.

So this is giving more context to the information that the White House had and what their position was regarding the National Guard the day before the riot. Well, we know the National Guard did not end up going to the Capitol until hours after that fighting began.

There are other revelations in here, too, and involves communications that Meadows received, communications that he sent regarding these efforts to overturn the election. So here is another just small glimpse of that in this 51-page resolution.

It says that " ... Meadows received the text messages and e-mails regarding apparent efforts to encourage Republican legislators in certain states to send alternate slates of electors to Congress, a plan, which one Member of Congress acknowledged was, quote, 'highly controversial,' and to which Meadows responded, 'I love it.'"

So we have more and more detail about the ways in which Meadows was trying to access every avenue possible to try to overturn the election. Further, there are communications that Meadows has had with these rally organizers, and specifically on the day of the riot, as the violence was breaking out, there was a rally organizer who contacted him to say, "This is getting crazy. I desperately need guidance."

So, these are all the questions that the Committee wants to ask. And then ultimately, Kaitlan, in this 51-page resolution, if you look at the footnotes that are so illuminating, because what it shows is that a lot of this information that the Committee wants to question Mark Meadows about is based on information he gave to them.

And now, he is saying that he can't provide a testimony because he is citing executive privilege. He also contends that this is unreasonably burdensome, and that ultimately, this Committee has no real legislative purpose, an apparent flip-flop from the fact that he provided all of this information to begin with, so a lot more detail.

This is the biggest report that we've seen yet on these people that they're trying to bring these contempt of Congress charges against. So, a ton of detail that largely was provided by Mark Meadows himself -- Kaitlan.

COLLINS: Yes, when it comes to that text about the National Guard and protecting the pro-Trump people, it was the pro-Trump people who conducted this attack. Of course, the people who needed protecting were the lawmakers and their staff and the Capitol Police officers who were there, being attacked by these people.

Whitney Wild in Washington, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Chris Wallace, the longtime anchor of "FOX News Sunday" announced yesterday that he is leaving the network to move to CNN's new streaming service, CNN+ where he is going to host a weekday show.

Joining us now to discuss this is CNN's chief media correspondent and anchor of "Reliable Sources," Brian Stelter and CNN senior political analyst, John Avlon.

So Brian, of course, this is news that really shocked a lot of people yesterday, and you reported that FOX did want to keep Chris Wallace, but he is making the choice to leave. So what does this mean for FOX News?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Yes, he is the latest in a long line of journalists to walk out the door.

Wallace stayed for 18 years and FOX changed around him. This is increasingly the Tucker Carlson channel, and journalists like Wallace just could not abide it anymore. He was discouraged, disappointed by that crazy 1/6 documentary Carlson made last month, maybe that was the final straw. I don't know.

Wallace isn't saying and he has always been an old school guy who doesn't talk out of school. You know, he's never criticized FOX. We'll see if when he comes over to CNN in the next year if he wants to talk about his time at FOX.

But I think we can all see from the outside, this network has radicalized and there is no room anymore for people like Chris Wallace.

COLLINS: So, John, here is what he did say when he was announcing this about the editorial oversight and why he is leaving.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL ANCHOR: Eighteen years ago, the bosses here at FOX promised me they would never interfere with a guest I booked or a question I asked and they kept that promise.

I have been free to report to the best of my ability to cover the stories I think are important to hold our country's leaders to account.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: What do you think of that?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, I mean, I think he is reflecting upon the original conditions and as Brian said, the environment changed around him, the news organization change around him and he was always sort of a slight arm's length because of the nature of his show being broadcast even beyond the cable network.

[08:20:11]

AVLON: But the fact is that if you try to do real journalism down the line at a place like FOX News, you are increasingly an endangered species. Not only that, you're being hunted.

It's an equivalent of RINO hunting in the Republican Party. It is -- this is a mirror. This is the exact same dynamics we've seen within the Republican Party where the moderates get purged, and then they decide whether they're going to jump before they're pushed, and that seems to be what happened to Chris Wallace.

STELTER: And he happened to have options, right? So CNN is launching the streaming service next year. Now, there hasn't been a lot shared about it yet. It's a very big deal. I mean, we know that internally from working here, it's a very big deal.

It's been mostly kept under wraps until the first quarter of 2022, but the hiring of Wallace is a big statement by CNN, instant gravitas and credibility for the streaming service and he is going to have a weekday show, so it'll be on more than once a week.

So that is a hint of what is to come from CNN, but it's also significant, someone like Wallace was willing to leave fox in the first place.

COLLINS: Yes, I think beyond what it says about FOX, it does say a lot about what this new streaming service from CNN is going to look like. But Chris Wallace is such a big name. He's such a big figure and I think everyone was shocked by this announcement yesterday.

Brian, I do want to ask you about something else, though, which is this new media company that the former President is starting. It is purportedly worth $2 billion right now, though there is no product yet. It's under investigation by the S.E.C.

So what do make of all of this?

STELTER: The shares in this SPAC are trading, you know. They can go buy a share this morning, it has a market cap of $2 billion. We're seeing these Trump's super fans buy this meme stock in the hopes this will be a real company someday. But there's nothing to show for it. No product, no company, and it was revealed over the weekend by John Langham, you go look at investor presentation at the S.E.C. They've copy and pasted claims from other people's investor presentations. It's basically an act of plagiarism.

It is, you know, look, it's a scam until we know it's not a scam. Right, John?

AVLON: Well, no, but I mean, by the very nature of these SPACS, and this is sort of a GameStop type of dynamic. These things are our shell companies from which fools and their money are parted. That is how it is designed. I've looked through their business presentation. It is absurd on every

level, both the growth projections and what they say they're going to do in terms of competition, which all flows down from the absurd name, Truth Social.

You know, this is going to be dedicated to free speech, but part of the terms of services, you're not allowed to criticize the platform or the Trump's. It's insane.

COLLINS: But yet, it is got this $2 billion worth apparently.

We'll obviously check in with both of you on that, coming up. Thank you so much for joining us.

Up next, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is requesting Federal aid for his state devastated by a deadly string of tornadoes. So why does he have a history of opposing help for other states? Your reality check is next.

And in what could be a big change of plans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may not be ready to say goodbye to Congress just yet.

We have new CNN reporting ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:26:57]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The damage from the tornadoes here in Kentucky is just so obviously devastating. You can see it everywhere you look and the need for Federal aid is dire, and it is putting Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, his past opposition to disaster relief into the spotlight.

John Avlon with a reality check.

AVLON: Hours after a devastating December tornado tore through Kentucky, causing more than 200 miles of destruction, Senator Rand Paul was asking President Joe Biden for aid from the Federal government.

Now this is pretty standard stuff, except for the fact that it came from Rand Paul, because the Kentucky Senator who hails from the first family of American libertarians has a long record of opposing Federal aid for disaster victims, except apparently when it impacts constituents.

Suddenly, all those reflexive attacks on socialist big government spending don't seem to apply. But after Super Storm Sandy, it was a different story. Rand Paul strenuously opposed relief getting in a spat with the New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and accusing eight advocates in the northeast of being greedy.

Two years later, Rand Paul opposed aids for the victims of Hurricane Maria, Irma, and Harvey that hit Puerto Rico and the Gulf Coast saying this on the Senate floor. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): People here we'll say they have great compassion and they want to help the people of Puerto Rico and the people of Texas and the people of Florida, but notice they have great compassion with someone else's money.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: And that's not all. He tried to block the extension of the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, opposed efforts to bolster F.E.M.A.'s Emergency Disaster Relief Fund.

And just a few months ago, he blocked Louisiana's Senator John Kennedy's attempt to pass the $1.1 billion Gulf Coast Hurricane Aid Act by unanimous consent.

But now that Kentuckians are in dire need, Rand Paul singing a different tune. Gone are the demands for delay in request for funds the funds elsewhere. Now, he wants the Fed's filthy lucre as fast as possible.

Joining him in this ideological flip-flop is Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, best known for his gun toting family Christmas card. This is worse than simple hypocrisy or situational ethics. It exposes the core callousness of calling government aid some kind of big spending socialist scheme, because it always seems to be socialism for me, but not for thee.

Case in point, a Rockefeller Institute study found that Kentucky got billions more in Federal aid than it sent from 2015 to 2018, far more than those blue states in the Northeast who needed help after Sandy.

If he was really trying to be a fiscal conservative profile on courage, now would be the time for Rand Paul to insist that Kentuckians rely solely on local charity or reallocations of funds rather than immediately asking President Biden for help.

But of course, that would be an insult to his suffering constituents right now, just like it is when senators from other states ask for help after devastating natural disasters, which are getting worse due to the climate crisis that so many in the G.O.P. still deny.

This isn't complicated, folks. It is commonsense. Government exists in large part to help each other in times of great need, not some left- wing vision.

Listen to the Kentucky born Abraham Lincoln who believed that, " ... a legitimate and objective government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities." That's exactly the situation in Kentucky right now with people reeling from the deadliest tornado in the State's history.

They need help and that's what they will get because it is consistent with our character as a country. [08:30:34]