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Navy SEAL Candidate Dies, Another Hospitalized During "Hell Week"; Billie Eilish Pauses Concert To Help Fan In Need Of Inhaler; Earth's Orbit Is A Junkyard, White House Looks To Clean It Up. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired February 07, 2022 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: And if they don't figure that out they're going to be right back in the same situation they've been in for the last four to eight years.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Kasie Hunt, David Gregory, have a great rest of the morning. Thanks for being with us.

HUNT: Thanks for having us.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Thanks.

BERMAN: So, one Navy SEAL is dead and another hospitalized after what's called Hell Week training. How did the Navy let this happen?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, a Tennessee pastor burns "Twilight" and "Harry Potter." Hear why.

And Spotify's CEO condemning Joe Rogan over the host's use of racial slurs in many episodes, but why he won't "silence Rogan," as he says.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: We do have some sad news to report this morning. The Navy has released the name of the SEAL candidate who died last week after enduring the infamous training phase known as Hell Week. This was part of a qualification.

[07:35:05]

Twenty-four-year-old Kyle Mullen fell ill after an underwater demolitions exercise and he then died at a San Diego hospital on Friday. His cause of death is still under investigation.

And there is another SEAL candidate who was also hospitalized after Hell Week -- pardon me. His condition is listed as stable.

And joining us now to discuss this is Paul Anderson. He is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL chief petty officer. He's also a former basic underwater demolition SEAL training instructor -- this course, known as BUD/S that SEALs have to go through to become a SEAL. Paul, thank you so much for being with us. And look, we're so sorry

for the SEAL community. It's been a really tough run here in the last few months.

And I just wonder as we're looking at this and we're learning information about it, what does this tell you that you have Mullen who died and another candidate who is in the hospital?

PAUL ANDERSON, RETIRED U.S. NAVY SEAL CHIEF PETTY OFFICER, FORMER INSTRUCTOR, BASIC UNDERWATER DEMOLITION SEAL TRAINING (via Webex by Cisco): Well, it was actually pretty surprising that somebody passed away in BUD/S training. It's not a common thing because when I was an instructor, you really learn about how many safety features that we put into every evolution.

And during Hell Week, each student is evaluated by a physician at least once a day. And then also, at the end of Hell Week, on Friday when they secure from it, they're also, again, examined by a physician.

So I'm just really surprised that it would get this far or to where the passing, which is horrible. I can't even fathom what his family is going through. So it's just -- it's heartbreaking.

But we are the toughest military training in the world and a lot of people, just because of that, want to try. Yes, it's just a really unfortunate event and I can't even imagine what -- well, I have a guess of what happened but I'm obviously not in a position, so I don't know.

KEILAR: Sure.

ANDERSON: I don't know any more information than you guys do, so --

KEILAR: One of the clues is that they were not actively training -- this candidate who passed away and the one who's in the hospital. This seemed to have been symptoms that came later.

Have you seen anything like that happen before?

ANDERSON: Well, this is just simply a guess -- my best guess -- a theory, I suppose, that during Hell Week you're in and out of the ocean, the pool, San Diego Bay. You're constantly wet. And you get four hours of sleep on average throughout the entire week. And my guess -- and I have seen it happen before -- is when students come down with pneumonia.

Now, he may not have been -- neither of these students may have -- may not have been clear -- or honest with the physician, saying I'm having trouble breathing or I don't feel well simply because if they get sick or have an injury they can get rolled back to the beginning of the course again. And just completing Hell Week -- that's a huge step and thinking about having to do that again, I can't even -- I don't even want to think about it.

And so, they may not have been completely honest with the physician about how they were feeling because of that fear of being rolled back or held back from the class that they are currently in.

KEILAR: I --

ANDERSON: So, I even did the same thing when I was in BUD/s.

KEILAR: I've heard -- to your point, Paul, I've heard many SEALs -- I've heard people in, you know, other special forces and they say they would have rather died than -- in the case of the SEALs, ring the bell, right. To quit, which is what they have to do to quit. The instructors know that. They're -- they have folks in this training with the whole point is these are people who will take it to the line.

So what does the Navy need to look at and understand here, knowing they have candidates who will literally drop dead before they quit? What do they need to learn here?

ANDERSON: Oh, gosh. Well, being an instructor, that's a tough question because there were times that I thought that all the safety protocols that we put into these evolutions was hindering their training. So -- but, you know, you get past that and you look at it and you're like yes, I don't want anything like this to happen because once we lose somebody in training that's somebody off the battlefield. So it's a horrible situation.

[07:40:00]

It's just that there's so many safety protocols. Maybe do some -- I don't know, more extensive exams before and after Hell Week to ensure that they don't contract pneumonia.

But again, it's just a hunch that they may have -- these two individuals may have aspirated some water and somehow contracted some -- this -- you know, a disease. And then when they got back to their barracks room that night after they had completed Hell Week, and they're probably thinking oh, it's Hell Week. I'll sleep it off and I'll wake up in the morning and -- or on Monday, I'll be fine.

And it sounds, thankfully, that it was caught so that both didn't pass away.

KEILAR: Yes.

ANDERSON: But I can't really imagine anything that they could put into -- another safety step into that whole equation. You know, yes, it is hard and it -- we ought to -- the hardest military training in the world. And it -- when you're in BUD/S and the instructors are telling you think you're cold now or you think you're tired now, wait until you get to SEAL teams because it's worse -- and it is.

So, it's hard -- it's --

KEILAR: I know. Look, I --

ANDERSON: It's a hard --

KEILAR: I can tell, Paul, you're struggling to kind of come up with the answers. And part of it is -- look, there is some limited information here so we're going to try to keep --

ANDERSON: Right.

KEILAR: -- trying to figure more out about this.

Paul Anderson, I really appreciate you being with us. Thank you.

ANDERSON: Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

KEILAR: Stacey Abrams coming under fire for posting, as you see in this photo here, without a mask in a room full of children who were wearing their masks. How she is responding now to her critics.

BERMAN: And in space, what goes up doesn't always come down. CNN with a fascinating look at what's being done to clean up the huge junkyard in the sky.

Plus, what Billie Eilish saw in the crowd at one of her shows that made her stop the music.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:46:52]

BERMAN: Morning Pop -- entertainment reporter Chloe Melas joins us now with that -- Chloe.

CHLOE MELAS, CNN ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER: Good morning, John.

Well, Kylie Jenner has welcomed her second child with rapper Travis Scott. The makeup mogul and reality star posted a picture to Instagram showing what appears to be her 4-year-old daughter Stormi holding her newborn child's hand, captioned with the date 2/2/22 and a blue heart emoji, leaving many fans wondering if she had a baby boy.

While her first pregnancy was kept entirely under wraps, Jenner announced her second pregnancy in September. If this is a clue, Travis Scott also commented with a blue heart emoji.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILLIE EILISH, SINGER-SONGWRITER: Singing "Bad Guy."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MELAS: Pop star, pop singer Billie Eilish is going viral for stopping mid-concert to help out a fan Saturday night on the Atlanta stop of her "Happier Than Ever" world tour. Videos taken from the crowd show Eilish asking a fan if she needed an inhaler, prompting her security team to help.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EILISH: Do you need an inhaler? Do we have an inhaler?

(END VIDEO CLIP) MELAS: The good news is that the fan appeared to be fine after the scare, and stayed in the audience.

Now, this. About 16 million people tuned in to watch Friday's Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, held amid coronavirus concerns and political tension. That's an all-time low for the program, according to data released by NBC Sports. It's a roughly 43 percent drop in viewers from the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Games.

John, back to you.

BERMAN: True -- 16 million people in this environment with people cutting the cord and dispersing. Not awful, but so much less. I do have to say the time difference not in NBC's favor here. A lot of the sports and the stuff you want to watch happening in the middle of the night.

The other thing is it's hard to find the sports you want to watch. It really is. I spent an hour yesterday trying to find luge that was advertised on Peacock as happening right then, but it wasn't. I kept on going and it showed the stands. I didn't see any sleds going down a hill. All I wanted to see was sleds and I couldn't find it.

KEILAR: You wanted to see actual luging.

BERMAN: Yes, yes, exactly. When you want to see luge, there needs to be luge.

KEILAR: Bring it on.

BERMAN: All right, Chloe. Thank you very much.

KEILAR: The final frontier -- it turns out to be a junkyard. Earth's orbit littered with debris that has accumulated since the start of the space race. And now, the Biden administration is taking steps to clean it up.

CNN's Kristin Fisher is joining us now. I mean, this is a case of just don't have messed it up in the first place because you have trash in space and now you have all kinds of problems.

KRISTIN FISHER, CNN SPACE AND DEFENSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's exactly what has happened here. And not only, Brianna, is this really an environmental concern but it's also quickly becoming a national security concern as well because if any of this space junk collides, it has the potential to jeopardize not only our GPS and spy satellites but also astronauts onboard the International Space Station as well.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FISHER (voice-over): In space, what goes up does not always come down. After decades of launches since the dawn of the space age, Earth's orbit has become a junkyard of dead satellites and abandoned rocket bodies. And any time two objects traveling at about five miles a second collide, the impact could look like a scene straight out of the movie "Gravity." [07:50:10

In real life, no people in space have ever been hit, but the International Space Station has. In 2016, a small piece of debris cracked a window on the orbiting outpost. And in December, its crew prepared for an emergency evacuation after a Russian anti-satellite missile test created a massive debris cloud.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We will need to activate Dragon Safe Haven.

FISHER (voice-over): Today, U.S. Space Command is tracking more than 40,000 objects in space and only about 5,000 of them are active satellites. The vast majority of space junk still in orbit is from the two major players in the first space race -- Russia and the United States.

DOUG LOVERRO, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT DEFENSE SECRETARY: If these spacecraft were left there by the U.S. government -- and, in general, they were -- then that becomes their responsibility to clean it up in the same way that the military would not leave a broken-down tank on the battlefield, nor would it go ahead and leave a ship -- a derelict ship at sea.

FISHER (voice-over): But so far, the effort to clean up space has been led by Japan and the European Space Agency, and private companies. Some companies, like ClearSpace, are trying to grab debris with robotic tentacles. Others are trying to catch it with a massive fishing net. And in August, a company called Astroscale successfully tested capturing a small satellite with a magnetic arm.

RON LOPEZ, PRESIDENT AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, ASTROSCALE: We use a robotic arm that extends and attaches to that metallic plate. That allows us then to basically perform a tow truck or a tug service, bringing that satellite down to a safe distance and then we can release it to naturally and safely burn up in the atmosphere.

FISHER (voice-over): Astroscale caught the attention of the Prince of Wales, who visited its U.K.-based mission control this week. The company now has debris removal contracts with the U.K., the European Union, and Japan.

LOPEZ: The U.S., unfortunately, we haven't seen and we haven't gotten as much traction from the U.S. government.

FISHER (voice-over): But the Biden administration is starting to change that. In January, the White House held meetings with experts about how to clean up space. And the Space Force is launching a program called Orbital Prime that will give companies the seed funding to do it.

GEN. DAVID THOMPSON, U.S. SPACE FORCE: Our vision in this partnership is to aggressively explore those capabilities with you today in the hope that we and others can purchase them as a service in the future.

(END VIDEOTAPE) FISHER (on camera): So you can see the U.S. government is starting to take those first baby steps to really start cleaning up space. But, Brianna, this is a problem that is growing rapidly now that you have so many private space companies out there sending their own rockets and their own satellites up into Earth's orbit.

KEILAR: Yes. There's just so much stuff. Kristin, thank you so much for that report.

FISHER: Thanks.

KEILAR: A critical pair of meetings to avert war. Why the U.S. is sending out a dire warning about Russia and Ukraine.

BERMAN: Plus, breaking news. In a dramatic shift, New Jersey's Democratic governor announces the state will soon end its mask mandate for schools. We have those details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:57:14]

BERMAN: The Republican National Committee has censured the two Republican lawmakers on the House select committee investigating the January sixth insurrection, calling the Capitol attack legitimate political discourse.

John Avlon with a reality check.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The Republican reality distortion field is strong but the cult is beginning to show cracks. And you could tell not just because establishment Republicans are starting to speak out, but because of the furious attempt to deny reality on right-wing talk T.V. and in official RNC documents.

See, Mike Pence finally came out and told the truth in front of the Federalist Society.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election, but President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Good for him. It's about time.

And make no mistake, this is big news but you wouldn't have known it if you watch Fox. Because as CNN's Oliver Darcy pointed out, transcripts showed that they totally ignored Pence's statement on primetime Friday, all day Saturday. You'd have to wait some 36 hours to see the clip.

But for the better part of two days, they just tried to pretend that it never happened presumably because it short-circuits their narrative. But it also raises serious questions like who are they afraid of offending exactly -- Trump, their base, their boss? It's kind of like Pravda remaining silent on the fall of the Berlin Wall, hoping that nobody would notice.

But there are lots of issues good people can disagree on but a violent attempt to overturn an election is not one of them, which is why attempts to enforce the big lie are an unforgivable civic sin.

And for 147 members of the Sedition Caucus to the Stockholm Syndrome- suffering RNC leadership, they all have their excuses -- usually, some form of fear and greed. But we can't let them change reality.

And that's why I want to take a closer look at the official RNC censure resolution condemning conservatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and saying they should stop getting any support from the party.

Now, focus on the first line. Here's the quote. "The primary mission of the Republican Party is to elect Republicans who support the Constitution." Support the Constitution -- because that's precisely what Kinzinger and Cheney are trying to do. So by that logic, the RNC should be endorsing them, not expelling them.

But logic left the station a long time ago and it's been replaced by groupthink. See, the letter accuses Cheney and Kinzinger of trying to sabotage the GOP conference for trying to get the facts, which the RNC fears could jeopardize victory in November.

So, investigating January sixth is recast as efforts to destroy Donald Trump.

[08:00:00]