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Florida Faces Another Major Storm Two Weeks After Helene; Trump Falsely Claims Harris Let 13,000 Murders into U.S.; Harris Pressed on Immigration in "60 Minutes" Interview; A Year of Anguish for Mothers in Israel and Gaza. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired October 08, 2024 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TYLER PAYNE, TREASURE ISLAND, FLORIDA MAYOR: This is a potential direct hit, could be even more dangerous than what we just went through.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm praying that God will give everybody the wisdom to get out and to remember that it's only stuff and it can be replaced.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Brian Todd filed this report before Milton had weakened slightly with more on the urgent preparations being made as the hurricane approaches.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Pinellas Park, Florida, just across the bay from Tampa, residents use large pails to fill as many sandbags as they can. Hurricane Milton, which has already exploded into a category 5 storm, could hit the Tampa Bay area directly. It would be the first major hurricane to strike within 50 miles of Tampa in more than 100 years.
Some residents in at least six counties told to evacuate. In Hillsborough County, the evacuation order is mandatory in some places. That means authorities cannot force people from their homes. But --
CHIEF JASON DOUGHERTY, HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY FIRE DEPARTMENT: If you remain there, you could die. My men and women could die trying to rescue you.
TODD (voice-over): What makes this especially dangerous in places like Tampa and Fort Myers is that those cities are still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which has killed more than 230 people in six states with the death toll still rising. For those in the mandatory evacuation zones who decide to stay put, Florida officials have a dire warning.
ASHLEY MOODY, FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL: You probably need to write your name and permanent marker on your arm so that people know who you are when they get to you afterwards. And we are still seeing, as we're uncovering folks on the beach who thought they could stay there, and the storm surge got them.
TODD (voice-over): With Milton forecast to make landfall late Wednesday, Governor Ron DeSantis warns the window for evacuation is closing fast.
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): You have time to execute your plan, but you got to do it now. Time is going to start running out very, very soon.
TODD (voice-over): Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane that caused widespread damage, leaving tons of debris that still hasn't been cleared. Debris that residents worry could still harm people if it starts flying around when Milton hits.
KARMEN FORRESTER, FORT MYERS BEACH RESIDENT: The debris on the beach and whatever's going on is a little cause for concern because there is not enough time and not enough manpower to take everything and put it where it needs to be off the island.
TODD (voice-over): The international airports in Tampa and Orlando closing ahead of the storm. Tolls are being suspended on major highways throughout western and central Florida to help those evacuating.
Governor DeSantis says the assets that Florida lent to North Carolina for Hurricane Helene have had to be brought back to Florida.
But North Carolina is still dealing with the horrific aftermath of Helene. More than 100,000 customers are still without power there. And around Asheville, dozens of people are still missing a week and a half after Helene tore through the area.
GOV. ROY COOPER (D-NC): We're still working to reach communities. We still have search and rescue occurring as we speak.
TODD (voice-over): And even as Florida braces for Hurricane Milton, we're getting daunting numbers on the property damage from Hurricane Helene. According to the data analytics firm CoreLogic, Helene caused up to $47.5 billion in losses for property owners. Much of that flood damage to residents who don't have flood insurance.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN ANCHOR: Now, with the U.S. election day exactly four weeks away, Donald Trump is spreading new disinformation about his opponent and undocumented migrants.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers. Many of them murdered far more than one person. And they're now happily living in the United States.
You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it's in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: That's just the latest example of Trump using dehumanizing rhetoric to stoke fears about those living in the U.S. Illegally, the White House was quick to condemn those remarks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: That type of language is hateful, it's disgusting, it's inappropriate and has no place in our country. It is important to bring people together. And tearing people apart, tearing communities apart is dangerous.
And this comes from the same vile statements that we've heard about migrants being poison -- poison the blood. That's disgusting.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Trump has accused rival Kamala Harris of avoiding interviews because she's not good at them.
MACFARLANE: But the Democratic nominee appeared Monday on the in-depth news program, 60 Minutes, and Trump did not. She was questioned about a number of contentious topics, including immigration.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. (D) AND U.S. PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It's a longstanding problem. And solutions are at hand. And from day one, literally, we have been offering solutions.
BILL WHITAKER, CBS CORRESPONDENT: What I was asking was, was it a mistake to kind of allow that flood to happen in the first place?
[04:35:00]
HARRIS: I think the policies that we have been proposing are about fixing a problem, not promoting a problem. OK.
WHITAKER: But the numbers did quadruple.
HARRIS: And the numbers today, because of what we have done, we have cut the flow of illegal immigration by half.
WHITAKER: Should you have done that -- should you have done that --
HARRIS: We have cut the flow of fentanyl by half. But we need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOSTER: Vice President Harris was also pressed about how she would get the funding for her economic plans.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: So the other economists that have reviewed my plan versus my opponent and determined that my economic plan would strengthen America's economy, his would weaken it.
WHITAKER: But --
HARRIS: My plan, Bill, if you don't mind, my plan is about saying that when you invest in small businesses, you invest in the middle class and you strengthen America's economy. Small businesses are part of the backbone of America's economy.
WHITAKER: But pardon me, Madam Vice President. The question was, how are you going to pay for it?
HARRIS: Well, one of the things I'm going to make sure that the richest among us who can afford it pay their fair share in taxes.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MACFARLANE: Well, before the interview, CBS News reminded viewers that it's been a decades-long tradition for major party nominees to sit down with 60 Minutes in October of election years. This year, Donald Trump accepted the invitation but changed his mind last week and cancelled.
FOSTER: His campaign had complained about the interview being fact- checked. Trump has also demanded an apology from the program from their pre-election interview in 2020 that he found unfavorable.
The Democratic vice presidential hopeful is looking to turn some late- night laughs into election day votes. Meanwhile, Tim Walz appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday.
MACFARLANE: The Minnesota governor has come under criticism for some past remarks that weren't entirely truthful and his interview with Kimmel brought out another example.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. TIM WALZ, D-MN, VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We get to turn the page on that and I plan on waking up on November 6th with Madam President. And that's
(CHEERING)
JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE: I just want to be clear, you won't be waking up together.
WALZ: No.
KIMMEL: Unless you guys have gotten closer than we thought.
WALZ: I have a problem about not being specific with my language, so thank you for that. Specifically right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MACFARLANE: During the 60 Minutes interview that aired earlier, Walz said Kamala Harris told him to be a little more careful with his comments.
FOSTER: Meanwhile, we saw the billionaire owner of SpaceX, Tesla and X attend Trump's rally last weekend in Butler, Pennsylvania. The same spot where the former president was shot in July.
MACFARLANE: Now, Elon Musk recently sat down with Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and made it clear he's all in on Trump. They too also got the giggles when joking about the potential consequences for Musk should Trump lose to Harris.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TUCKER CARLSON, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR: If he loses, man, what -- You're a f*****g dude. I'm f*****g.
If he loses, I'm f*****g. It does seem that way. You can't just be like, you can't just be like, go ahead.
ELON MUSK, OWNER OF SPACEX, TELSA AND X: Yes, I'm like, how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be? Will I see my children? I don't know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Two mothers on opposite sides of the Israel-Gaza border expressed their anguish a year since the Hamas attacks and a year since the war in Gaza began, too. Their stories ahead.
[04:40:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MACFARLANE: Welcome back. It's now been one year since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel at the start of the war in Gaza. And with no end in sight to the conflict, there's anguish on both sides of the border on what this means for loved ones and hostages still being held following the October 7th attacks.
CNN's Jeremy Diamond speaks with two mothers with two very different stories about how their lives have been forever changed. But first, a warning. Some of these images may be hard to watch.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SIMONA STEINBRECHER, MOTHER OF DORON STEINBRECHER, HAMAS CAPTIVE: I want her back alive, not in a bag. I want her alive that I can hold her.
FATEN MAREJ (ph), TWO SON KILLED IN GAZA (through translated text): At night, I wish to hug my son Jude. I always hug his pillow all night. This is all I have left of him.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Words alone cannot capture a mother's pain. But the anguish on their faces paints a devastating picture of the countless lives upended by Hamas's October 7th attack and Israel's war in Gaza. One year later, Faten Marej (ph) is still grieving the loss of her two sons, killed in an Israeli airstrike this summer.
Simona Steinbrecher doesn't know her daughter's fate. She is being held hostage by Hamas. Stepping inside the home where she was abducted is like going back in time.
STEINBRECHER: They broke the windows. They come from the window.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Shards of glass still crunch underfoot in a home upturned and uprooted from the peace it once provided. And in the bedroom, a mother recounts her daughter's abduction.
STEINBRECHER: She was very afraid because you can hear from the voice that she said, they take me, they take me. She was really afraid.
DIAMOND: She was on the phone with you when she was being taken.
STEINBRECHER: Yes. And we don't know nothing about her, what happened with her. We don't know if she's alive. We don't know nothing.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Doron Steinbrecher's cry for help captured in one final voice note.
DORN STEINBRECHER, VOICE NOTE (through translated text): They've caught me. They've caught me. They've caught me. They've caught me.
DIAMOND (voice-over): She was one of 251 people taken hostage on October 7th, 2023, after Hamas militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people, most of whom were civilians. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel's history, carried out at a music festival, in people's homes, and against those who fled into bomb shelters.
In Kfar Aza, this small kibbutz on the Gaza border, Hamas kidnapped 19, including Simona's daughter, Doron.
DIAMOND: Did you ever imagine that you would be sitting here a year later?
STEINBRECHER: No.
DIAMOND: And she would still be in Gaza?
STEINBRECHER: No, never. But now we see that it's another day, another week, another month and nothing.
DIAMOND (voice-over): The first sign of life came nearly four months later.
[04:45:00]
Doron, gaunt and pale, appears in a Hamas hostage video.
STEINBRECHER: I was happy that I can say that she's alive. But then I can't. I look at her and I can see the difference.
DIAMOND: What does the government tell you?
STEINBRECHER: They tell us, the family, that they make everything, that they will come back. But they are still there, so something is wrong. Something is not working.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Those frustrations shifted into overdrive in August after Hamas executed six hostages, families like Doron's now fearing the worst.
DIAMOND: You feel like the longer she's there, the less likely it is that she could come back alive.
STEINBRECHER: They don't have time.
DIAMOND (voice-over): For nearly 10 months, Faten managed to keep her family safe, fleeing from one place to another as Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with bombs and missiles, a school, a relative's home, a tent.
MAREJ (through translated text): We tried as mush as possible to create an atmosphere in which there was no terror, no bombing. Wherever there were safe areas, I would take the children there.
DIAMOND (voice-over): But nowhere in Gaza is truly safe. CPR cannot bring her five-year-old son Jude back to life, but Faten cannot believe it. She had only just left the tent they were living in to buy Jude, Indomie, his favorite instant noodles. But as she cradles her youngest, her eldest son's body arrives at the morgue. Mohammed is dead, too, his mother and father in agony.
Amid their unspeakable grief, there is also anger at Israel, at Hamas, and that a world she feels has abandoned them.
This is all that is left of the tent where Mohammed and Jude were staying when a missile struck just a few feet away, where their mother now asks what her children did to deserve this fate.
MAREJ (through translated text): They are more precious to me than the light of my eyes. When I lost them, I lost a piece of my heart.
DIAMOND (voice-over): Jude would have turned six years old last month.
MAREJ (through translated text): We used to celebrate his birthday every year with a cake, and invite the loved ones, because he is the youngest one in the family. But this time Jude was not with us. There was only a box of Indomie that I was handing to children his age.
DIAMOND (voice-over): More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military over the last year. And at least 11,000 are children like Jude and Mohammed, according to Oxfam, making it the deadliest conflict for children in a single year this century. DIAMOND: How much is too much, sir? At what point is it time to end
this war?
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Well, we'll end the war when we achieve our war goals of making sure that Hamas can't repeat such atrocities. I'm not going to change my policies, humanitarian policies, vaccination policies, combat policies, to minimize civilian casualties.
DIAMOND: But is Israel any closer to achieving its war goals?
ARNI AYALON, FORMER HEAD OF ISRAELI SECURITY AGENCY SHIN BET: Even if we shall kill all Hamas activists and all the political leaders and we shall destroy all the military installations, on the day after, two Palestinian children that lost their families will try to get a knife and to kill Israelis, unless you will defeat the ideology. And the only way to defeat the ideology is to present a better ideology.
DIAMOND: And so one year later, is Israel safer than it was?
AYALON: No way. Israel is not safer because if you look on the day of tomorrow, no one can tell you that we shall not face a regional war in which Hezbollah and Iran and the West Bank and Syria and the Houthis will not fight. It will be a regional war with a global impact.
So nobody can tell you today that we are safer than on the 6th of October.
DIAMOND (voice-over): But for two mothers at the heart of this painful conflict --
MAREJ (through translated text): Who knows when it will end, or what else I might lose? Would I lose my sister, my brother, or some relatives, or someone dear to me? God knows. We don't know.
DIAMOND (voice-over): -- a plea for it all to end.
STEINBRECHER: There is no time for someone to finish wars or something like this. They don't have time.
[04:50:00]
DIAMOND (voice-over): Jeremy Diamon, CNN, Kfar Aza, Israel.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOSTER: It is a vibrant time of year in the U.S. state of New Mexico, where colorful hot air balloons are punctuating the sky.
MACFARLANE: The annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is the world's largest hot air balloon festival with more than 500 balloons, according to organizers. This year, 106 of them will be in special shapes, such as Yoda from Star Wars. FOSTER: The grocery store chain Whole Foods is backtracking after some messing with the popular dessert. Customers cried foul when the store made changes to its Berry Chantilly Cake.
MACFARLANE: One woman on TikTok showed the new single slice with compote in the middle and fruit on the side. She said it tasted like a raspberry jam flavored cleaning product.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I need a slice and I don't know what this is, but it's an imposter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is it. I don't know if you can see that. The berries on the outside and they just put like some jam in the middle.
[04:55:00]
Also, it's half the size it used to be, but flat rated at $5. It's now just a little English tea cake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FOSTER: Whole Foods made the changes last month. It says to standardize packaging and prices, but they're saying the cake's different as well, aren't they?
MACFARLANE: What's wrong with the little English tea cake?
FOSTER: Now the store says it's heard the customer complaints and it's going back to the previous version by next week. It might have something to do with the complete massive TikTok campaign as well against them.
MACFARLANE: Yes. Well, meanwhile, a curious koala was seen making its way onto a train platform in Australia. Surprising commuters, the koala was spotted on CCTV casually roaming through the station, climbing the stairs and checking out the elevator.
FOSTER: Maybe he was just looking for the right platform.
MACFARLANE: Forced his Oyster card.
FOSTER: An alert was issued to trains in the area, warning them to slow down for the Ferry Explorer.
MACFARLANE: Oh, good.
FOSTER: A low-speed chase with police ended with the marsupial jumping the fence into the bushland on the other side. Koalas mostly live along Australia's eastern coast. They're endangered in much of the country, so it's a serious business when you see one in a public place.
MACFARLANE: I'm glad the koala survived. And in other furry animal news, a woman in Washington state called the
sheriff's office last week because her home was surrounded by about 100 raccoons. Look at this site.
The woman told sheriff's deputies that she'd been feeding raccoons for more than 30 years, but the numbers showing up for handouts recently exploded. I mean, what can you expect?
FOSTER: She must have changed the food.
MACFARLANE: Deputies told the women to contact animal control to help move the raccoons. They also said this is a reminder to everyone not to feed wild animals.
FOSTER: How do you move raccoons?
MACFARLANE: I'm not entirely sure, but I'll perhaps stop feeding that fox in my back garden, I think.
FOSTER: Thank you for joining us.
MACFARLANE: For us, we'll see you tomorrow.
And CNN "THIS MORNING" is up after this quick break.
FOSTER: We will get the end right one day.
END
