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New Day
Billion-Dollar Disasters Pile Up; Jekyll and Hyde Economy; Pictures Show white House Documents Clogging Toilets; Pete Rose Dismisses Rape Claims; Roger Waters Defends China. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired August 08, 2022 - 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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[06:32:26]
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Horrifying new video capturing the moment when a man is swept downstream during a flash flood in Oman.
Watch this.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in foreign language).
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BERMAN: We don't have any word yet on that man's condition.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: In the U.S. -- just horrific to watch there,
In the U.S., as millions of Americans are continuing to swelter under scorching temperatures, President Biden and the first lady head to visit families in eastern Kentucky devastated there by flood damage while billion-dollar climate change disasters wreak havoc across the country.
Let's get to meteorologist Chad Myers to put all of this into context for us.
Chad.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Brianna, we don't have numbers yet on Kentucky. Obviously, they're still adding those numbers up. But the number of lives lost is so significant you can't put dollars on that. Still probably not a billion-dollar disaster yet on the list, but we've already had nine other billion-dollar disasters this year.
The normal -- the 40-year normal somewhere between seven and eight. But the past five years, we've seen 17 or more events of billion- dollar disasters in the U.S. alone. We haven't even started hurricane season.
We know that this is going to cap -- we're going to see coastal flooding, we're going to see heat waves and we're going to see flash flooding. That just happens when you warm the climate. In fact, as you just said, July of 2022 was one of the three hottest on record. A virtual tie with 2016 and 2019. So, we are still pushing these up.
Heat waves in the U.S., in Japan, in Europe, in China. The northern hemisphere was very hot this year. And we know that that's going to happen. When you warm the atmosphere, as we have already, five times more likely to have these heat waves. If we get to that 2 degree Celsius, where we want to avoid, those heat waves will be 14 times more relevant. And so, so many people have been sweltering in in heat. I don't even think you can imagine how many billions of dollars have been spent on electricity alone just trying to stay cool. When you put atmospheric C02 and methane in the atmosphere, temperatures are going to go up. And that's what we have.
Brianna.
KEILAR: Yes, look at that graph.
All right, Chad, thank you.
MYERS: You're welcome.
KEILAR: As the January 6th committee accuses the Trump White House of destroying evidence, Maggie Haberman, this morning, revealing some pictures of documents clogging toilets, notes allegedly flushed by Donald Trump himself.
[06:35:06]
Maggie joins us ahead.
BERMAN: And some are calling it the Jekyll and Hyde economy. So, what's going on? Christine Romans here to make sense of it all.
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BERMAN: A huge week of economic news coming up with key inflation reports. And it comes with many key economic indicators showing positive signs, including Friday's huge jobs report, but other signs showing softness, like the negative growth numbers. So, where the heck are we?
CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans here with the data.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's technically called a head scratcher, that's where we are.
BERMAN: Yes.
ROMANS: Look, as one economist told me, we're obliterating recession paradigms. We've got a slowing economy, as you point out, but that bombshell jobs report and now President Biden's win on climate and tax.
Now, another major week in this Jekyll and Hyde economy here. Major corporate earnings reports, key inflation readings on Wednesday and Thursday and a look at how consumers are feeling on Friday.
The aftershocks, John, from that jobs report on Friday, a real blockbuster there.
[06:40:02]
You simply don't see this in a recession. A jobless rate falling to 3.5 percent. That ties the lowest since 1969. Nearly 3.3 million jobs created this year. A strong job market in a sea of concerning headlines.
Look at the headwinds, surging global inflation, a war in Ukraine, the European energy crisis and you still have a pandemic that is disrupting business and daily life, and a consumer who feels lousy.
But look at this, these sort of numbers are overshadowed by the biting inflation overall, but you've got gas prices that have been coming down. We don't know if this is going to signal some kind of a peak in consumer inflation, but gas prices fell again overnight to $4.06 and they're down, let's see, 54 straight days.
And look at the middle of the country here. Gas Buddy crunched these numbers. Last month gas prices fell 81 cents a gallon in Wisconsin. Look at Ohio, 92 cents. Arizona and Texas, 80 cents there. Twenty-five states, John, have average gas prices back below $4 a gallon.
BERMAN: It cost you $10 less to fill up your tank at least than it did a month ago.
ROMANS: Yes. But I wonder if consumer sentiment will reflect that on Friday. I mean people generally feel lousy about the economy for a lot of reasons. I think mostly because we've come out of two and a half years of the pandemic that has completely disrupted every aspect of American life. Even declining gas prices doesn't give much of a boost to consumer sentiment, or at least hasn't so far.
BERMAN: What do the stock markets think of all this? How do they make sense of it?
ROMANS: You know, here's what's again a head scratcher. So, stocks last week, the third week in a row, up for the S&P 500. We'll see what happens this week. But this is even three weeks up, even as the Fed is aggressively raising interest rates. On Friday there were some concerns that the Fed may have to continue to aggressively raise interest rates to cool down a red-hot job market. You've got a job market that is roaring ahead here even as the first two quarters of the year saw negative GDP growth. These two things just don't go together, which is, again, that recession paradigm. Everybody's out. All the economists have their recession models and they're trying to kind of figure it out.
BERMAN: That's why these inflation numbers we're going to see Wednesday and Thursday are so important.
ROMANS: Wednesday, Thursday, critical.
BERMAN: All right, Christine Romans, thank you so much.
ROMANS: You're welcome.
BERMAN: Actress Anne Heche hospitalized this morning after a car crash. What she said on her podcast released earlier in the day of the crash that is raising concern.
KEILAR: And Maggie Haberman joins us next on the pictures she's revealing this morning of toilets clogged with Trump White House documents.
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[06:46:26]
KEILAR: Toilet joke. Toilet-gate. I totally messed that up. Toilet- gate may sound like a joke.
BERMAN: Toilet joke is something completely different.
KEILAR: Toilet joke is different. This is not a joke. But the allegations, they're really no laughing matter here. In her new book, Maggie Haberman of "The New York Times" confirms a habit of the former president that wasn't just unhealthy for the White House plumbing, it was bad for the presidency as well. And she's got the photos to prove it.
They're kind of gross but also very important, Maggie. So, tell us what we are looking at here.
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Brianna, thanks for having me.
Gross and important I think are the two important words here. What you're looking at is two photos, one from the White House, which is what the one that looks like it has carpet on the bottom. The other is from an overseas trip that a Trump White source - White House source provided me recently after some of the revelations during the January 6th hearing. You know, this person, like a number of staffers I spoke with, while some of the testimony that has been heard has been disputed, generally found the overall picture of Trump to be pretty familiar with what they'd experienced and they wanted to share them.
Now, again, as you say, people are going to make all kinds of jokes about toilets and so forth. It would still be a story if it was a fireplace. And the point is about the destruction of records which are supposed to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act, which is a Watergate-era creation.
BERMAN: So, Maggie, remind us of that part of the story because these pictures confirm something that you broke before in this early release of your book "Confidence Man," out this fall. We're excited to see the whole book based on these pictures and the other reporting coming out.
But you reported that White House insiders were telling us about the destruction of key White House documents. HABERMAN: That's right. And, John, look, we knew that Trump had a
habit of ripping up paper and that people had to tape it back together. My colleague, Anne Carney (ph), when she was at "Politico," reported that story. It was one of, I think, the most important stories that was written during the Trump White House.
This is different because this meant that they couldn't be preserved. And so what was happening was White House resident staff were finding pipes were clogged with paper that they believed he had flushed down. I'd had additional reporting afterwards from people confirming that Trump had indeed done this and that it happened on at least two foreign trips and in the White House throughout his presidency.
Again, it's important because who knows what this paper was. Only he would know and presumably whoever was dealing with it. But the important point is about the records.
KEILAR: Yes, I urge people to zoom in. You can see it's a sharpie. You can see it's his handwriting.
How is his camp responding to this, Maggie?
HABERMAN: These were published by "Axios," by Mike Allen first, and I believe the spokesperson for the former president gave a statement suggesting that, you know, it requires desperation to run something like this. That's fine. I mean this would be a story regardless of who the president was.
BERMAN: And, Maggie, to be clear, when you put out this reporting before they attacked the reporting, but this proves what you wrote to begin with, right?
HABERMAN: Right. They attacked the reporting, attacked me personally. You know, this is -- this was a Trump White House source, you know, identifying pictures that, according to the source, showed that what I reported was accurate.
BERMAN: And to be clear, you can't destroy White House records. This is something that raises all kinds of questions, has come up in the hearings, the January 6th hearings.
Maggie Haberman, thank you for sharing your reporting this morning talking about these pictures. And, of course, the new book, "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and The Breaking of America" is out in October. And these pictures just a taste of what's to come.
[06:50:02]
KEILAR: Liberal cities are facing off with Texas as the state sends more migrants on buses. This time it's to New York City.
BERMAN: Plus, why China is touting an interview with Pink Floyd co- founder Roger Waters and CNN's Michael Smerconish. This interview was absolutely riveting.
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KEILAR: Pete Rose getting a hero's welcome in his first trip to Philadelphia since being banned for life. But his visit quickly turned controversial.
Andy Scholes has this morning's "Bleacher Report."
Hi, Andy.
ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Brianna.
So, Pete Rose, he was there in Philly as parts of the celebration of the Phillies' 1980 World Series championship team. And the team had actually planned to celebrate Rose back in 2017 but they scrapped those plans after a woman alleged that Rose had sex with her when she was just 14, 15 years old.
[06:55:10]
Now, Rose got a standing ovation from the fans during the ceremony, but he was asked about the allegations that he had sex with a minor during his playing days and he told a female reporter, Alex Coffey of "The Philly Enquirer," quote, "it was 55 years ago, babe." Rose was then asked about it again when he was made available to the media.
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PETE ROSE, THREE-TIME WORLD SERIES CHAMPION: I'm going to tell you one more time. I'm here for the Philly fans. I'm here for my teammates, OK? I'm here for the Philly organization. And who cares what happened 50 years ago? You weren't even born. So, you shouldn't be talking about it because you weren't born. And if you don't know a damn thing about it, don't talk about it.
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SCHOLES: Now, Coffey tweeted that Rose later asked if he offended her and said, will you forgive me if I sign 1,000 baseballs for you before saying sorry?
Brianna, Rose was also on the broadcast of the game later, said some not safe for TV words. If you want to -- if you want to see those, you can just Google Pete Rose in Philly.
KEILAR: All right. Andy, thank you so much.
SCHOLES: All right.
BERMAN: So in a new interview, Pink Floyd's co-founder, Roger Waters, sat down with CNN's Michael Smerconish to talk about the political messaging at his current "This is Not a Drill Tour."
This is a clip.
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MICHAEL SMERCONISH, HOST, CNN's "SMERCONISH": The Chinese are too busy encircling Taiwan as we speak, OK?
ROGER WATERS, MUSICIAN: They're not encircling Taiwan. Taiwan is part of China. And that's been absolutely accepted by the whole of the international community since 1948. And if you don't know that, you're not reading enough. Go and read about it.
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BERMAN: Taiwan has never been part of communist China.
Joining us now to discuss this absolutely riveting interview with Roger Waters is CNN political commentator and host of CNN's "SMERCONISH," Michael Smerconish.
And people should go watch all 28 minutes of this discussion because, as I said, it's fascinating, it's riveting.
Michael, I know you're a big Pink Floyd fan, as am I. Roger Waters has these controversial, some would say, wild views, but you engaged him on this. Go ahead.
MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So, it's not a hot mic, right? This is not a one off that all of a sudden an entertainer has to be apologetic over. He's celebratory in his views and there's a warning, John, when you go to the show, which I did Saturday night and there's an announcement that he makes, kind of tongue in cheek, where he says, if you're one of these people who loves Pink Floyd but can't stand Roger's politics, then I suggest right now you f-off to the bar. And there's a big roar from the crowd and then he gets into the show. So, he views going out and performing as an opportunity to play his music but also to pull up a soap box and to spread his political message.
My point is, he welcomes this kind of engagement. So there was no surprise here when we sat down that I would want to talk about things like Taiwan, things like China, Ukraine, Russia, all of which we disagreed over, but I think in a -- we were kind of like two guys in a bar having a cocktail or a beer and disagreeing about politics.
KEILAR: Let's play the part where you spoke about Ukraine with him.
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SMERCONISH: In the current show you've got a montage of war criminals, according to you, and a picture apparently of President Biden on the screen and it says, just getting started. What's that all about?
WATERS: President Joe Biden?
SMERCONISH: Yes.
WATERS: Well, he's fueling the fire in Ukraine for a start. That is a huge crime. Why won't the United States of America encourage Zelenskyy, the president, to negotiate, obviating the need for this horrific, horrendous war that's killing --
SMERCONISH: But you're -- you're blaming --
WATERS: How -- we don't know how many Ukrainians in Russia.
SMERCONISH: But you're blaming the party that got invaded. Come on, you've got it reversed.
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KEILAR: Very interesting. You -- he told you, you haven't been reading enough, or if you think certain things maybe generally he was speaking.
I just wonder what he - what is he reading that he has some of these positions? Obviously, it's very controversial when there is use of force, when there's any nation that is involved in another war and the U.S. is providing a lot of weapons. But what did you make of what he was saying there that the U.S. should be urging Zelenskyy basically to give up land to Russia?
SMERCONISH: Right. Well, I totally disagree with his perception of the situation in Ukraine. Even if you accept that there was saber-rattling on the part of NATO by coming closer to Russian borders, it doesn't excuse the bloodshed that resulted from Putin's invasion of Ukraine. I mean, to me, it's black and white. I assumed that he would say the same thing.
Brianna, what interests me as well about all of this is that this show is an enormous and I would think expensive production.
[07:00:02]
He's in the midst of a tour of the United States right now.
