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Pennsylvania Republican Senate Primary Still Too Close to Call; President Biden Visits South Korea; North Korea May Conduct Missile Test During President Biden Visit to Asia; Senate Passes Military and Humanitarian Aid Package for Ukraine; U.S. Marine Veteran Trevor Reed Describes His Years Long Imprisonment in Russia; Ukrainian Man's Family Including 3-month-old Killed by Russian Strike; Tops Worker Had Encounter with Shooting Suspect. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired May 20, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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


[08:00:00]

JOCELYN BENSON, (D) MICHIGAN SECRETARY OF STATE: There's no place for rhetoric like this in our democracy, and we should be talking about issues that affect our state, the American people, as opposed to continuing to spread conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election and about the security of our processes.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Michigan Secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, we do appreciate you being with us this morning. Thank you so much.

BENSON: Happy to be here. Thanks.

BERMAN: NEW DAY continues right now.

I'm John Berman. Brianna is away. Erica Hill here on this NEW DAY.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Happy Friday, my friend.

President Biden touches down in Seoul amid the rising possibility that North Korea could test a nuclear missile during his trip. The Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania gets even tighter overnight as President Trump amps up the pressure.

HILL: In the racist attack at the Buffalo grocery store, a worker says she encountered the suspect multiple times. She'll join us live.

And CNN goes one on one with the U.S. Marine veteran Trevor Reed on his brutal imprisonment in Russia and what it is like to finally be home.

BERMAN: Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I am reliably told it is Friday.

HILL: Indeed, it is.

BERMAN: It's Friday, May 20th. And just a short time ago, President Biden kicked off his first visit to Asia since taking office. He joined the new South Korean President Yoon Seok-youl at a Samsung semiconductor plant, an immediate display of unity. The main goal of this trip is to reassure America's Asian allies of U.S. commitment to counter and contain China. The president will also visit Japan on this trip.

HILL: And there's growing concern over what North Korea will do next as the U.S. braces for the possibility that Kim Jong-un will conduct a missile test in coordination with Biden's trip. The White House says it is prepared for all contingencies.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, of course, not far from their minds as well. Vladimir Putin continuing that unprovoked war. And after a weeklong delay, some movement in Washington. The Senate finally passing a $40 billion military economic and humanitarian package for Ukraine. We'll have more on that in just a moment.

BERMAN: Let's go live to Seoul, where we find chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins traveling with the president. Such an important trip for the president, Kaitlan, one that has been a long time coming.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It is a huge trip for the president. And typically, you would see a president take a trip like this earlier on in their presidency, but obviously President Biden was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions that came along with it. And so that is why he is just now making his first trip to Asia, stopping here in South Korea first.

And earlier today he was touring a Samsung facility, one that produces those very critical semiconductor chips that have been in such short supply during the pandemic. And the president was talking about how crucial they are and also about supply chain disruptions and the need to lessen and reduce dependence on autocrats, even invoking President Putin's invasion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Putin's brutal and unprovoked war in Ukraine has further spotlighted the need to secure our critical supply chains so that our economy, our economic, and our national security are not dependent on countries that don't share our values.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Saying countries that don't share our values. Obviously, this comes as this is an entire trip that is focused on countering China. That is really going to be the goal, the underlying goal at ever stop that you see President Biden take while he's here.

But we should note that North Korea's kind of casting a bit of a shadow on this trip, because officials have told us that they are bracing for the potential that North Korea could launch a missile, test a missile while President Biden is on the ground here in the region. And there are signs the U.S. intelligence believes they may be preparing to fuel one. Of course, that is a step that happens right before one of those launches typically happens. So they are watching closely for that. And they say there will be a decisive response by President Biden and the new president of South Korea should that test take place. That is something they have been preparing for. But it does raise questions of how President Biden would respond on the ground in the moment if that is something that happens while he's here.

HILL: Yes, that is absolutely a question.

Also, I just want to follow up with you, Kaitlan, on Ukraine. We know that historic aid package passed. The president said he'll sign it and he is not waiting to sign it until he gets back to Washington. How are they making that happen?

COLLINS: Yes, that's right. So the Senate passed it several hours after he had already left Washington to come here. He has to sign the physical document, so they're actually flying the bill here to Asia, to South Korea, for the president to sign it while he's here on the ground. Obviously, it's a staggering amount of money, $40 billion, several billion more than what President Biden had actually called on Congress to pass for Ukraine. A majority of that is going to go to weaponry.

[08:05:03]

And it's just notable because right now it seems obvious that that package has passed. It is an overwhelming bipartisan vote. But just a few months ago, that is something that a lot of officials said would have been unthinkable really, passing a package of that size. And it really does give you an indication of just how invested the U.S. is in this and in continuing to arm Ukraine to help them defend themselves against Russia.

HILL: Kaitlan Collins, appreciate it, thank you.

BERMAN: New information this morning on the Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary. More votes counted overnight. And you can see the margin getting ever smaller. Mehmet Oz leading hedge fund manager Dave McCormick now by 1,088 votes. Yesterday morning, that margin was about 1,200. The day before, it was about 2,400. CNN estimates at this point there are around 10,000 votes remaining to be counted, most of which are believed to be absentee ballots.

Joining us now is CNN's chief Washington correspondent, anchor of THE LEAD and STATE OF THE UNION, and native son of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Jake Tapper. Jake, you look at that number there and look at how it has changed over the last few days, what do you make of what's going on?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, one of the things that you hear from campaign officials and Republicans in Pennsylvania is that, not surprisingly a lot of supporters of Dr. Oz voted in person on the day of the election, and others that supported Dave McCormick, who was not endorsed by Donald Trump, as opposed to Dr. Oz, were more willing to use absentee ballots. This is a lesser version, a smaller version of what we saw play out in the 2020 election when Trump supporters were more likely to vote the day of the election, and Biden supporters were more likely to use absentee ballots.

So the McCormick campaign is confident, and I don't know what's going to happen, obviously, but they're confident in that 10,000 votes that have yet to be counted, valid, legitimate ballots, disproportionately they will be for McCormick, not Oz. The question is, will it be enough to get him over this 1,088 vote hump? And I do not know. Either way it is likely there will be an automatic recount because the Pennsylvania law is that if it is less -- if the margin of victory is less than one half of one percent, which it is in this case and will likely be, there will be an automatic recount.

COLLINS: So as we wait for that, Jake, we do want to turn how to your exclusive interview. You just spoke with Trevor Reed, who, of course, was released, he had been being held in Russia, his first interview since being released from detention. What did he tell you?

TAPPER: Well, we sat down for a long time with Trevor and then also with Trevor and his family. I can't wait for you all to meet Trevor, because he's an incredible -- I called him a young man on Twitter earlier, he's 30, but to me that's young. He's an incredible young man with incredible resilience. And there is so much of his story that we're just now learning for the first time because he's out, and safe, and finally able to talk about it.

One of the details that I found the most shocking was about all the different places that the Russians put him. He was in a Russian jail, he was in a Russian work camp. But perhaps the most terrifying time that he had in Russian custody was when, as a sort of punishment, they sent him to a psychiatric prison. And I want you to listen to his description of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: What was the worst conditions that you had, that you experienced during that time?

TREVOR REED: The psychiatric treatment facility, I was in there with seven other prisoners in the south. They all had severe, serious psychological health issues. Most of them, so over 50 percent of them in that cell were in there for murder, or multiple murders, sexual assault and murder, just really disturbed individuals.

And inside of that cell, that was not a good place. There is blood all over the walls there where prisoners had killed themselves or killed other prisoners or attempted to do that. The toilet is just a hole in the floor, and there is crap everywhere, all over the floor, on the walls. There's people in there also that walk around, they look like zombies.

TAPPER: Were you afraid for your life?

REED: I did not sleep there for a couple of days. So I was too worried about who was in the cell with me to actually sleep.

TAPPER: You thought they might kill you?

REED: Yes, I thought that was a possibility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: It just sounds like a horror movie, literally like a horror movie. And he had lots of stories like that.

One thing that's interest, and I don't know if you could tell in the clip, he was in this Russian -- in Russian custody for about three years.

[08:10:04]

He learned Russian, he ended up thinking in Russian, dreaming in Russian, and you can hear a little bit there of an accent. He has a little bit of a Russian accent from his time, although it's anticipated, experts say, that that will fade with time.

BERMAN: Three years, three years of his life. That's all he was hearing. It is so amazing to hear his voice, Jake, after all this time. We've all talked to his parents and his sisters so much, but to actually get to hear from him, it's riveting, and his accounts are just chilling. I know he also talked to you, and given what we just heard about how bleak things were, he talked to you about the idea of hope.

TAPPER: Well, I asked him how he got through it. This is a young man who was a Boy Scout, this is a former Marine, a Marine veteran. How did he survive? From when you hear his description of what he went through, it does seem like something that would break most of us. And he had a really interesting and kind of upsetting, in some ways, description of what his strategy was. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Any prison is brutal. Russian prisons are notoriously awful and tough. Did you have a strategy for surviving?

REED: I did. I tried to kind of compartmentalize and focus not on being in prison, kind of, distract myself, think about future plans, what university I was going to go to, what plans I was going to have with my family, all of those things, and just try to distract myself from reality, which was not something that you want to think about.

TAPPER: Did you have confidence you were going to get out?

REED: No, I didn't. And a lot of people are not going to like what I'm going to say about this, but I kind of viewed there having hope as being a weakness. I did not want to have that hope of, like, me, being released somehow and then have that taken from me.

TAPPER: You denied yourself hope?

REED: Yes. I wouldn't let myself hope.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Wow.

TAPPER: There were some other moments that were really interesting. He -- it wasn't all, I should note, harrowing and serious, because he was there with his family. And there is a lot of love there. And he's kind of a wiseass, Trevor, and so he had amusing things to say at times. Taylor, his sister, who I know your viewers know as well, was there to deflate her older brother's balloon. So it really was full of chilling stories, it was full of love, and laughter. There were obviously tears. Taylor has a very upsetting story about when she wakes up and Russia has invaded Ukraine and she thought that was it, she was never going to see her brother again. But, anyway, I'm so honored I got to do this interview. And I can't wait for the American people to meet Trevor and see him interacting with his wonderful family this Sunday night.

HILL: Really, really looking forward to it. I just can't even -- compartmentalizing and thinking about the future at the same time saying he couldn't allow himself really that luxury of having any hope in case it was snatched away from him, it's -- I was tuning in before, Jake, but let me tell you now, you've definitely got me.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: It sounds fantastic. Congratulations, Jake. And obviously, we're thinking about Trevor and his family. We're so glad that they are together finally. You can watch Jake's full interview with Trevor Reed Sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern right here on CNN. Our thanks once again to Jake.

So we are approaching this critical high stakes primary in Georgia where Donald Trump's candidate and Mike Pence's candidate will go head-to-head. They're not the same person here.

Plus, they call it the nerd defense. That's how I play basketball. Lawyers telling their defendants to wear glasses in court. Does it work? We have the data.

HILL: And we're joined next by an employee from that top supermarket in Buffalo. She was there, calling 911, crouched in the back, as this hate-filled massacre played out in her store, targeting her community as she talks about her family in the store and the surrounding community. She's going to tell us more about her interactions with the suspect in the weeks leading up to this attack. She'll join us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:18:23]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: A Ukrainian husband and father left home to get groceries. While he was gone his family including his 3-month-old daughter killed by a Russian missile strike.

CNN's Sara Sidner live for us with this truly heartbreaking story -- Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: It was hard to listen to, but as you might imagine, it was awful for him to go through. And he is still trying to process all this. And we should mention that across this country, the Russians have really done so much indiscriminate shelling. There have been indiscriminate strikes.

We're in a village, a place of about 12,000 people, it is a quiet place where people just scrape out a living, and yet their homes, regular people's homes, bombed to complete destruction here. And that's happening all over the place. In this instance, it was an apartment complex in Odessa. And lives have been changed there forever.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER (voice-over): The moment a Russian missile slammed into an apartment building on Easter weekend in Odessa. Yuriy Glodan's family was inside, waiting for him to return from the grocery store. On the way home, that's when I heard an explosion. I felt immediately something bad had happened. I tried to call my wife. She did not answer. When he got there, chaos. Police and EMS had arrived. He and a bystander ran in to try and find his family.

We began to clear away the rubble, and this is how alongside EMS staff we were able to find the bodies of my family.

[08:20:03]

All murdered. First they found his mother-in-law, Ludmilla's body, then his wife's body, but his 3-month-old daughter was missing. They were being told to leave for fear of a building collapse. I was constantly shouting, he says, there is still a child up there. Did you find the child or not? Eventually they found her, her little body lifeless. He returned to find her blood-soaked baby stroller the next day.

It is hard to live with this, my family was my whole life. I lived for their sake. When my baby came along, I understood the meaning of life, he says.

Nineteen-year-old Oleksi (PH) can't believe he is still alive. He was in the same apartment complex. The explosion sent slabs of scorching hot concrete and shrapnel into his body. I realized that a rocket had hit my place and I started to burn, he says. I thought another minute, and I would definitely turn into ash. I felt everything. 20 percent of his body was burned. His hands, arms and back. Jagged pieces of shrapnel had to be removed from his legs as well. He cannot do simple things for himself at the moment. But he is

thankful for simply being alive. It is a miracle for everyone, for me as well, he says. Before the blast, he was preparing to take to the seas and work on a commercial supply ship. Now, he's just practicing walking again.

His neighbor once surrounded by family now walks alone. We used to walk in the park when my wife was pregnant. Every place he now goes in Odessa, a reminder of what a Russian missile took from him. His wife, child, and mother-in-law now dead and buried. With each deadly strike, a new and terrible story is born in Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: And Yuriy had planned, by the way, to take his family out of Odessa to safety. He merely didn't get the chance -- John.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: I mean, which just adds further heartbreak. I can only imagine for him how difficult it is as you point out to walk through that park, especially as we see that shot of strollers and then to live with that, right, that feeling that he knew he wanted to get them out. And how many families like this now?

It's great reporting, Sara. Really Appreciate it.

SIDNER: Too many.

BERMAN: So much loss.

A worker at the grocery store in Buffalo says she encountered the suspect several times before the racist attack. She joins us live on what he asked her.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:26:47]

HILL: A story of survival and an important message in the wake of the racist shooting in Buffalo. When the Tops grocery produce manager heard gunfire, she was in the back. She hid with co-workers, she called 911, and later realized the alleged gunman was the same man who had approached her. She had a disturbing conversation him before Easter when he was apparently scoping out the store.

Joining us now to tell us more and to share her experience, Tops Friendly Markets' produce manager Rose Wysocki.

Rose, it's good to have you with us this morning. I imagine this has been a really tough week for you. And you're reliving a lot of things, including that first encounter with the suspect. Can you talk to us about what he said to you? I know you said it left you annoyed.

ROSE WYSOCKI, PRODUCE MANAGER, TOPS FRIEND MARKETS: Very annoyed. I was very disturbed by what he said to me. It just -- unbelievable. Just unbelievable.

HILL: What was it that he said?

WYSOCKI: He had come into the store and he was looking for an item. I gave the item to him, and he told me I looked like I didn't belong there. Like, you know, I said, what do you mean by that? Well, you look like you belong out in the suburbs store. And I just kind of chuckled and said, well, I was at a suburbs store, was offered this promotion and this is where the promotion was, and I took it. And I love working there.

I do. I love my Tops family. I love the neighborhood. I love the customers. It's just an incredible place to be. It's an incredible place to work. You just -- there is so much happiness and love there that you can't help but enjoy being at work.

So as he turned to walk away, he had mumbled something, but down under his breath I could hear him say, just another lover. And I just thought, you know, that's just rude. You're just rude. And I avoided him every time he came in the store again, I avoided him, I seen him coming, I'd go to the back room, just walk away, walk out of the department because I just didn't want to deal with somebody like that. He's just --

HILL: Didn't want to deal with someone like that who you mentioned came in a number of times. You were actually in the back the day that this shooting happened. Other people running back there for safety, you called 911. I know it felt like an eternity until anyone arrived. What were those moments like for you and for everyone else who was hiding there in the back?

WYSOCKI: I had one young lady just staring into my eyes. Jerome, my hero, just looked at me and said, Miss Rose, nobody is getting in here. Nobody is getting -- nobody is going to get you. It's OK, you're safe. It's OK. I had another young lady behind me, I'm on the phone with 911, and I'm thinking to myself, my god, the last thing my son said to me was, I love you, mom, be safe. And I just thought, that -- I don't want that to be the last words he says to me.

And all I kept thinking was to protect the people that I was in that room with, that's all I wanted to do. Was protect them and wondering where the rest of my team was. I had no idea where they were. And I'm just thinking, where's Tom, where's Sydney, my god, where is Sydney, he was on his break, he was in the front of the door, where is he? So I was frightened.