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'Bomb Cyclone' Taking Direct Aim at 75 Million Along East Coast; 3 Houston Officers Shot after Car Chase; What Economy's Rollercoaster Week Portends for 2022; New Tensions Between Ukraine, U.S. Play into Putin's Hands; Airlines Scramble to Train Pilots Amid Staffing Shortages. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 28, 2022 - 06:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. It is Friday, January 28th. I'm John Berman with Brianna Keilar.

[06:01:01]

And developing this morning, there is a bomb coming, a weather bomb, a snow bomb, a bomb cyclone. More than 75 million people in the Eastern United States are under winter weather alerts from Kentucky to North Carolina, to Maine. Four million people are under blizzard warnings. We're talking the potential for huge snowfall, multiple feet of snow, as in two feet or higher in places like Boston. Winds of 60 miles per hour.

The places that might get off easy, like New York City, could see a foot of snow. So this could be a huge deal. And what makes it even more problematic is that this forecast is uniquely difficult to predict.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: As this storm rapidly strengthens, this will create hurricane-force winds. And that's going to raise concerns for reduced visibility and for power outages.

More than 1,600 U.S. flights have already been canceled in anticipation tomorrow. So let's get now to our CNN meteorologist Chad Myers with the forecast. It's going to be the bomb, Chad, and not in a good way.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. Not in a good way. And I know Berman was playing on going to Boston. I would highly not say to go with that, because 36 inches in Boston, with winds of 60. There could be drifts higher than houses in some spots.

I mean, this is not something to take lightly. A difficult commute this morning in Chicago and along some of the other lakes, as well. But this is what is going to happen.

We knew it yesterday. We knew it really a couple days ago. But here comes the snow. Snow into New York, Boston, all the way down even to about the tidewater of Virginia. Even winter storm warnings for Northeastern, extreme Northeastern North Carolina, all the way through Maine, all the way up toward New Brunswick, and of course, even toward Atlantic Canada, Nova Scotia and the like.

Hours and hours of snow that could come down at two to three inches per hour. It's going to be very difficult to keep up with that. Going to be very difficult to travel.

Travel tomorrow will be highly not recommended. I mean, just don't go out tomorrow at all. About 10 p.m. tonight is when it gets going. Get home by then. The American model in line with the European model we showed yesterday.

And some of these spots in the European model, and even some of the higher-resolution American models saying, yes, there' s a potential for 36 inches of snow on the ground. You never see 36 because it will be two in one spot and seven feet in another.

Winter storm watches, winter storm warnings, and, yes, even blizzard warnings in effect right now. Winds are going to be 60. Snow that heavy, you're going to be a zero-visibility condition tomorrow afternoon.

And this is the wind we're seeing with the storm. It is a significant snowstorm for all of the northeast -- Brianna, John.

KEILAR: You canceled your plans, right, John?

BERMAN: No -- yes.

MYERS: Good.

BERMAN: But all joking aside, Chad, I mean, three feet of snow in Boston?

MYERS: Yes.

BERMAN: Thirty-six inches, three feet, with 60-mile-an-hour winds. This is a -- this is a real problem and very dangerous.

MYERS: No question. Because this is going to be heavy snow at the start, and then light at the end. This is -- all of a sudden, this is just going to blow. Fifteen-to-one, we're thinking. Fifteen inches of snow to 1 inch of water. This's snowball -- this is snowman snow that you want. That's 7-1.

So this is going to be light, fluffy stuff, going to be blowing, and drifting, and visibility will be near zero. And windchills will be about 10 below zero. Don't get caught out in this storm.

KEILAR: What's our advice for folks besides not getting caught out, Chad?

MYERS: Well, be prepared to have no power. Because that's obviously a possibility with winds 60 or 70 miles per hour, no question. Anywhere from New York, all the way up even toward Maine. That's where most of the wind is going to be coming onshore here along the coast.

Some of these coastal areas could see flooding, with water coming into these harbors, especially Boston. There could be water all the way up into the harbor. And from Kennebunkport all the way up even toward New Brunswick, that is going to be area these waves are going to be 10 to 15 feet tall. And they're going to be crashing onshore. So coastal erosion, people losing power. Prepare for it. This is a big storm.

At least it's on a Saturday.

KEILAR: Yes.

MYERS: So maybe just sit inside and don't worry about it. But it is a big event. Because some people, they have to go outside. They have to work outside. This is going to be very difficult.

[06:05:05]

KEILAR: If you don't, stay in. All right. Chad, we'll be tracking this throughout the morning, as well. Thank you.

MYERS: Sure. Of course.

KEILAR: So this morning, another brazen example of crime in America. A surveillance camera capturing an intense police shoot-out in Houston.

Three officers hit after fleeing -- after a fleeing suspect crashed a car and then opened fire. This is just the latest assault on law enforcement across the country.

Just in the past week alone, a deputy constable was shot and killed in Houston during a traffic stop. Two NYPD officers were shot and killed in Harlem. Two St. Louis police officers were shot and wounded. And a Milwaukee police officer was shot multiple times and had his squad car stolen.

Let's get more details about this shooting in Houston now from CNN's Rosa Flores. She is there.

Rosa, what can you tell us?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, good morning.

There were a dangerous chain of events. Let me take you through them. According to the Houston Police Department, at about 2:42 on Thursday, officers responded to a residence and as soon as they arrived, the suspect drove off, leading police on a pursuit.

We have video of this shoot-out. This is from CNN affiliate KTRP. If you look closely, you will see that that suspect crashes his car and then opens the door. As soon as he does that, he starts firing at officers.

Officers return fire. According to law enforcement that were on the scene, they describe that gunfire as a fully automatic weapon. Police are still looking into that.

Now, moments later, that suspect gets out of that car and runs off. According to police, he then carjacks a Mercedes and drives to a neighborhood and barricades himself inside a house.

Now, there were people inside the house. According to police, those individuals ran out. This suspect was in there for hours. At about 7:45 p.m. local time, he surrendered to police. We've got video of this from CNN affiliate KTRK.

If you look closely, you'll see that the suspect raises his hand, turns himself over. Police say that he was transported to the hospital with a wound to the neck. His name has not been released.

As for those three brave police officers, they were brought here to Memorial Herman Hospital at the Texas Medical Center. Police say they each had one gunshot wound. One to the arm, one to the leg, one to the foot.

Here's the good news, Brianna. At the end of the day, these officers are expected to be OK. The officials who spoke to them said that they were in good spirits.

KEILAR: That is good news. Rosa Flores, live for us from Houston, thanks.

BERMAN: So this morning, mass economic confusion. What's not confusing is that growth is booming.

We just learned the economy grew by 5.7 percent last year. That's a huge number, the highest rate since 1984. But inflation remains a major concern, with prices high on all kinds of things.

That's why the Fed announced it will begin to raise interest rates in March. Joining me now, CNN economics commentator and "Washington Post" opinion columnist Catherine Rampell.

Catherine, I described this as sort of the good, the bad, and the chaotic. But let's start with the good here, because it's really good. I mean, growth is historically high.

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS COMMENTATOR: Right. The growth numbers were great. As you pointed out, highest calendar year growth since the Reagan years. The quarterly growth at the end of last year was really, really strong, as well.

So yes, there's much to celebrate there. Job markets also, obviously, doing pretty well. Better than expected on the unemployment rate in any event. There's been a little bit of slowdown in hiring.

But yes, there's quite a bit of good news.

BERMAN: The problem is it is tempered. It's tempered in the way people feel about it but also tempered in the macroeconomic sense, because inflation is also very real.

RAMPELL: Right. And I should point out that these GDP numbers that we're talking about, they are after inflation. They are adjusted for price changes.

So -- so you should take those more or less at face value that you can dig into the guts and nitpick about other things.

But inflation is still quite a big worry. We saw inflation accelerating through most of last year. People are feeling the pinch in their pocketbooks when they fill up their gas tanks, when they go to the grocery store, et cetera. And there's a real concern about how persistent that will be.

The Fed has indicated that it will step in a few times this year, most likely, to raise interest rates, which should put a damper on inflation.

But there's tons of uncertainty about other factors that could affect prices as well as other economic indicators, things like what's the path of Omicron? What happens if China continues its zero-COVID strategy that involves shutting down entire ports and cities, which disrupts, of course, the -- the manufacturing and shipment of goods to the United States, which will, again, cause more inflation because supply chains will remain scrambled.

So there's a lot of uncertainty here. People are worried, understandably, about how that will affect their standards of living.

BERMAN: And you noted about the chaotic. The stock market, the wild swings we've seen the last couple days, they're near historic level swings in terms of the growth, and the growth that's been erased in single days. That's the chaos. That's the volatility. Why are the markets concerned?

[06:10:15]

RAMPELL: I think there it's just that there's a ton of uncertainty right now. Like I said, we don't know what the path of the pandemic will be. We -- and therefore, we don't know how it will continue to affect pricing pressures. We don't exactly know what Fed policy will look like.

And Fed policy will be dependent, of course, on what happens to Omicron, what happens to these other factors affecting the economy.

But you really hope that the Fed gets it right and that it steps in and, you know, squelches inflation, as opposed to sending us into a recession, which is historically the risk about what happens when the Fed steps in and raises interest rates. You don't want that to happen, obviously.

And then there's some question about, well, could the Fed be kind of, you know, overreacting for other reasons, too, including that fiscal policy will be less expansionary this year? The child tax credit, for example, has ended -- or the expanded child tax credit, I should say, those monthly payments, have now ended. And that will mean people will have less money to spend. So maybe we should be less concerned about inflation.

So there are just so many question marks. And you see that being reflected in the market, with big swings up, big swings down. Investors kind of not knowing what to do with all these different puzzle pieces.

BERMAN: Yes, it sounds like there's uncertainty. It's because there is. There just is uncertainty.

RAMPELL: Yes.

BERMAN: You know, in 30 seconds or less, there's nothing drier sounding than Fed policy. But what do people need to know when we say the Fed is going to raise interest rates? What does it mean for me? What does it mean for us?

RAMPELL: What it means is that all of the other rates for borrowing costs will then go up, right? So the amount that you pay for -- a mortgage, a monthly mortgage payment, your car loan, your credit card rate. All of those costs will go up when the Fed raises its benchmark interest rate. That's by design.

The idea is to sort of tamp down demand for things. If you have -- if it's more costly to borrow, you're probably going to spend less money. Companies will -- will expand less, et cetera. So that's the way that inflation is controlled, but it also has very real effects on people's ability to buy stuff.

So in its most direct impact, that is what will happen. The question is whether it will be effective, of course, at you know, having the desired knock-on effects of squelching inflation, given all of these other -- other contributors that are also causing high prices.

BERMAN: So much of this just depends on Omicron and the pandemic. Catherine Rampell, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

RAMPELL: Thank you.

President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelensky speaking on the phone for more than an hour. How did it go? Well, it really depends who you ask.

And Stormy Daniels going head-to-head with her former attorney, Michael Avenatti, in court. Avenatti told the judge he wants to cross- examine Daniels for six hours.

KEILAR: And breaking news this morning. The White House just welcomed a new addition to the first family. Berman won't like it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:17:28]

KEILAR: Now to a growing triangle of tensions between Moscow, Kyiv and Washington. A senior Ukrainian official says a phone call between President Zelensky and Biden, quote, "did not go well."

The two leaders can't seem to agree on if a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent or not.

In the meantime, the Pentagon says the Kremlin has put more forces on the border here in the past couple of days.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond live for us at the White House. But first, let's go to Matthew Chance, who is in Kyiv.

Different stories here, Matthew, between how the U.S. and Ukraine is assessing the threat level.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, look, I mean, publicly, both sides, both governments give the impression they're on the same page.

But behind the scenes, there are clearly disagreements that have emerged over the last couple of weeks and emerged again, I'm told, by a senior Ukrainian official on that telephone call between President Biden and President Zelensky of Ukraine about the immediacy of the threat from Russia and what should be done about it.

President Biden saying that the threat, again, is imminent and virtually certain that an invasion could take place. That's according to a Ukrainian source that spoke to me who had been briefed on this telephone call.

The -- the Ukrainians pushing back on that, saying that they regard the intelligence to be a little bit more ambiguous, and it's possible there won't be a Russian invasion. That's what their defense specialists and intelligence analysts are -- are telling them.

There's been pushback from the National Security Council in Washington about that idea that President Biden said the invasion was virtually certain, saying that what actually the president said is that the -- the attack remains more likely than not. And in fact, I haven't got that quote right here. I've got it right here now.

Let me just see. A distinct possibility. I was just searching for the exact phrase that the White House said. What Biden says is there's a distinct possibility that there could be an invasion. So a difference on that sort of nature of that.

Also what to do on it. President Biden underlining that there are no U.S. troops on the ground. Of course, he said that before. He said they get on the call. There will be no sophisticated weaponry, like anti-air defenses coming to Ukraine. He said that before he said it again on the call. There would be no preemptive sanctions put in place to punish Russia for its aggressive stance. Only sanctions were coming into force if Russia is to take any further Ukrainian territory.

The Ukrainians, of course, want the opposite. They want sanctions beforehand. They want to be armed as much as possible before a Russian invasion. And that's something they've been asking for, along with they want NATO membership or a progress towards membership of the western alliance. There's not going to be any progress for that at the moment either.

[06:20:06]

And so there is definitely some blue water between, you know, what the -- what the Ukrainians want from the United States and what the U.S. Is prepared to deliver -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Matthew. And Jeremy, what are you hearing from the White House?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, a National Security Council official making very clear that this call was a long and a serious conversation. It lasted over an hour and 20 minutes.

But they are forcefully pushing back, as Matthew just said, on this characterization of the call by a senior Ukrainian official to Matthew.

And I want to get to the full quote, the full NSC response from the NSC spokeswoman, Emily Horne. She said in a statement yesterday, shortly after CNN's reporting came out, saying, "Anonymous sources are leaking falsehoods. President Biden said that there is a distinct possibility that the Russians could invade Ukraine in February. He has said this publicly. And we have been warning about this for months. Reports of anything more or different than that are completely false."

And I think ultimately, what is clear here is that, regardless of the specific words that President Biden may or may not have used in this conversation, the thrust of the matter is that there is a disagreement between the Ukrainian government and between the American government over how likely an invasion actually is.

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, just yesterday from the podium said once again that an invasion could happen at any moment. That is not the Ukrainian view.

At the same time, the Ukrainians clearly have different audiences. President Zelensky has different audiences. He doesn't want to foster panic in his country. And that's also why the Ukrainians have pushed back on American -- Americans getting staff and family members of folks at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv out of the country, because they don't want that to encourage a sense of panic.

At the same time, one thing to underscore is that the Biden administration has really made a huge effort to include the Ukrainians throughout this process and also to make sure that there is a real united front against Russia.

And so comments like those that Matthew is reporting from, a senior Ukrainian official certainly don't help that effort.

At the same time, President Biden just yesterday including yet another ally, meeting with the Norwegian prime minister here at the White House. And that followed a call earlier in the week with a slew of NATO allies -- France, the U.K., Italy, Poland, European Union leaders.

So again, the effort here from the White House and I think the one that you're going to continue to see, is continuing to try and preserve that united front, to try and prevent Russia from sowing discord among U.S. allies and to try and make sure that going forward, the U.S. and Ukraine are on the same page -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right. We'll see. Jeremy Diamond at the White House. Matthew Chance for us in Kyiv. Thank you so much.

We're going to discuss all of this with Pentagon press secretary John Kirby. He will be joining us live later in the show.

And coming up, how the airline industry is scrambling to deal with a massive shortfall of pilots.

BERMAN: And Marvel actor Evangeline Lilly. She plays Wasp in "Antman." She shows up at the anti-vaccine rally where RFK Jr. says deranged things about vaccines and Nazis. She was at the rally. How will Disney respond?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:27:37]

BERMAN: Major weather news this morning. A bomb cyclone headed to the northeast. Some forecasts call for three feet of snow in Boston. Three feet. Sixty-mile-per-hour winds. This is serious. A foot of snow in New York City.

We're watching this forecast very closely all morning long. We already have major cancellations for flights this weekend because of the weather.

Now, COVID issues have canceled thousands and thousands of flights since Christmas. All of this has highlighted another issue. There are simply not enough pilots.

CNN's Pete Muntean, live in Goodyear, Arizona.

You're smart. You're out there where it's warmer, Pete. But this really is a big issue.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's a huge issue, John. And this is the new idea from United Airlines, opening up its own pilot academy.

The official ribbon cutting just happened. Sixty students in its inaugural class. And this is the Sears training plane that they will be flying on their way to becoming a United pilot.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All clear!

MUNTEAN (voice-over): In the Arizona desert, United Airlines is growing pilots. Student pilot Adela Gallegos (ph) had no flying experience only last month. Now she has her sights set on her first solo flight on the way to the pilot seat of a United jet.

ADELA GALLEGOS (ph), STUDENT: I like the control. I like the freedom. I like being in the air. MUNTEAN: This is United's new Aviate Academy, the only flight school owned by a major U.S. airline. It is the newest fix for an industry- wide problem.

Airlines that got smaller during the pandemic are now looking to hire again. American Airlines wants to add 2,000 pilots this year. Delta Airlines plans to hire as many as 200 a month.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby says the goal year is to train 500 pilots annually.

SCOTT KIRBY, CEO, UNITED AIRLINES: The pilot shortage is real. We can hire pilots at United Airlines. But the regional airlines and smaller airlines have a real pilot shortage and are having real challenges.

MUNTEAN: Over the holidays, airlines canceled more than 18,000 flights in the U.S. Coronavirus sick calls compounded crew shortages.

Faye Malarkey Black heads the Regional Airline Association.

FAYE MALARKEY BLACK, PRESIDENT AND CEO, REGIONAL AIRLINE ASSOCIATION: I think a mistake we would make is to treat this like it's temporary. This is a problem that's real. It's present. It's already affected air service. And it's going to get worse if we don't intervene now and give people a real path into this career.

MUNTEAN: The latest estimate: that airlines worldwide.