Transcripts For CNNW The Lead With Jake Tapper 20190904 : vi

Shooter failed his gun background check, and with washington missing from the gun debate or the senate at least, walmart is stepping in. Could a company with a complicated history with guns actually be blazing a trail . Welcome to the lead. Im jake tapper. We start with breaking news. Hurricane dorians destruction in the bahamas and what that might mean as the storm makes its way up the east coast of the United States. New images in today show the catastrophe in the bahamas, what were family homes and quaint resort towns pulverized, pummelled. The u. S. Coast guard and customs and Border Protection have joined the bahamian rescue mission searching by air and by land for any signs of life. The death toll now stands at seven, but officials expect that number to rise. As dorian moves north florida beaches are getting pelted. Dorian could slam port cities such as charleston, South Carolina, bracing for near record storm surge. Lets start with what dorian has done. Cnn got a look at the utter destruction at a key airport in the bahamas. Reporter we are on the runway at the freeport airport. It has been inaccessible for days. There was a river between the rest of the city and this airport. It was completely under water. It looked like the waves were crashing waves were crashing against this airport. Look how destroyed it is right now. Just about every side eight feet to ten feet up has been leveled, ripped in, torn in. Look at it now. I dont recognize this. Theres not a wall standing. You think about the need this island has right now for a functioning airport to get injured people out, to get supplies in, and this airport right now is completely destroyed. Ive never seen anything like it in my life. This is complete and utter devastation like ive never seen. Jose is going to point the camera over here. Look at this, thats a wheel. This is the underside of a plane. This is whats left of the wing. You think of the force required to throw a plane from the runway into a terminal. If anybody was here, i dont know how they would have survived. Ive seen a lot of damage on this island. This is the absolute, most devastated area ive seen so far. It will be impossible for anybody who was injured or just wants to get off the island to leave from here. Aid will not be able to come in to this airport at all because its just a debris field now. So, if help is going to come, its going to have to come through some other way, boats, another airfield, but this is really the only this is the only airfield for this island and it is in utter ruins. Patrick is at the freeport airport which is in grand bahamas. Lets turn to dorians threat to United States. The threat seems to be more along the carolina coast than to florida. Youre exactly right. It pretty much paralleled the coast of florida. Florida was playing with fire for a couple of days. It could have gotten just a little bit closer and we would have seen much bigger impacts across florida. Luckily it did just parallel the coast. Of course we are looking at South Carolina, North Carolina now. I think thats where the biggest threat lies. This storm still has 105 mile per hour winds, gusts of 125, a category 2, moving at nine miles per hour, much faster than it was in the bahamas. Theres the center of the storm off the coast of jacksonville and as it continues northward well continue to see the rain bands as well as the winds start to pick up in places like savannah and charleston. Thats really where were going to be concerned the most but we are getting rain bands pushing on shore in florida as well. Its going to pull away from there, make its journey to the north and eventually the east. The concern with charleston, its very vulnerable, low lying and any surge of water that comes in which theyll get quite a bit of storm surge, can flood charleston very easily. Well be talking about a category 2 in this area throughout the midday range tomorrow and then by the evening pulling away, but we could be looking at record or near record tides for the charleston area, second to just hugo, and thats huge. If people lived in charleston during hugo, they remember. Cape hatteras, we are looking at a category 2 there by the end of the week, so jake, this is far from over. I know weve been talking about this storm for a long time and some people have fatigue with this storm but it is still very serious and folks need to take it seriously. Thank you so much. She was talking about charleston there. Lets go to cnns brian todd who made his way to charleston, South Carolina. As you heard Jennifer Gray just say, thats the low country, lowlying city at sea level and thats the big problem as dorian approaches. Reporter absolutely right, jake. Were going to show you an illustration of that. This city vulnerable because of how low it is to sea level. This is a road right next to the ashley river but right also next to downtown. Just a short time ago we got a short burst of rain. The outer edges of the storm and a little bit of high tide, and this whole area was washed over with water. This isnt technically flooding. This is just standing water, but look how vulnerable this lowlying area is. Were going to avoid the cars and show you. Over here is the ashley river. Look at where that river comes up where the marsh hit and it comes pretty much to the road here and that is what makes this area to vulnerable. They say that the storm is going were going to be feeling the effects in the next 24 to 36 hours. Theyve had 360,000plus people evacuate from the coastal areas of South Carolina, jake. Almost half of them have evacuated from the charleston area. You talk to local officials who who say that what really speaks to the mindset of people here is that experience with hurricane hugo. 30 years ago this month it came up to the Charleston Harbor as a cat 4, hit north of charleston and it was utter devastation for weeks they said, National Guard troops were on the streets for weeks, Power Outages for weeks. One official told me a short time ago he was here during that period. He left and when he came back he said i didnt talk to one person who didnt regret staying through that storm. So hurricane hugo speaks to the mindset of these people and why they want to leave charleston. Its a little bit unlike the people in florida who many say i can ride this out. In South Carolina, in charleston, theyve had so many experiences with bad hurricanes. Also in recent years. This is going to be basically the third punishing hurricane to hit this place in three years and theyre wondering how much more they can take here. Brian todd in charleston, South Carolina, thanks so much. I want to go back to the bahamas to Patrick Ottman whos live in freeport. Its hard to get a signal right now out from there, so were crossing our fingers here. Tell us more about the destruction you saw today. Reporter well, first we tried to go out to the area where we were, you may remember yesterday, where they were doing the boat rescues in jet skis and boats. Amazingly enough, the water has receded. We saw boats that were thrown up on peoples lawns. There are still rescues going on on the far east end of this island. Its still under water. Its absolutely impossible for us to get there either by boat or car. We saw coast guard helicopters flying overhead and lots of people coming to this area where there are hundreds of homes to survey the damage, to see if their neighbors, family, or just their friends are in those homes, essentially seeing whos still alive, jake. A lot of people, when they came and saw their homes that were completely gutted and every home here was under water, people had tears in their eyes. What can you say. Then we heard that the airport was even worse than previously had been advertised, and we went out to the airport and saw i know you played some of that material. Just total destruction. Whole planes, cessnas and pipers, thrown around like little toys. There was a wing with wheels still connected that had gone into one of the terminals at the airport. The International Terminal we couldnt get into because we were told its too dangerous to go into. Its Still Standing but like the airport its under water. Were starting to get a better picture, if not a complete picture of the destruction here and its worse than we had thought. Great reporting. Stay safe, my friend. Appreciate it. As the storm is barrelling down on the United States, President Trump used an altered map of Hurricane Dorians path while in the oval office today to show that alabama might have been hit, as he had said, and been mocked online for saying it. Cnns White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins joins me right now. People have now actually died from this storm and President Trump is still focused on proving that his tweet was correct . And remember the president is in charge of overseeing the federal response to a storm like this so thats why its incredibly important what a president says in a time like this. This goes back to this hurricane briefing the president was receiving where he pulled out a dated map, a map that he received during a briefing last week that showed the projection of hurricane doria and it had the cone of uncertainty on it, thats the potential where it storm could go but experts arent exactly because of course it turned. Today this black sharpie line had been drawn on top of that projections cone. This after President Trump tweeted that alabama could be hit by the storm, something he insisted later on at the fema headquarters, even though the National Weather service came out in a tweet and said alabama was not going to be impacted in any way by Hurricane Dorian. Still, since those tweets came out, since the president was criticized for saying they could be impacted when they were likely not to be, according to the experts, the president has insisted, yes, alabama was in the projected path of this storm as he did today with this doctored map, which of course there are questions now about who it is that altered it. The president said he doesnt know. We know hes famous for using sharpies to write letters to people. Dhs said they did not provide the president with this map. Noaa which handles a lot of this said they dont know and theyre referring us back to the white house on this. Okay. People are dead from this storm and others might also be killed and hes focused on proving something that he said that was apparently wrong is actually right . I mean, thats bizarre. Thank you so much, Kaitlan Collins. Stick around. Well keep you on the show today. Hurricane dorian leaving behind a path of destruction but the monster storm may not be the best example of the Climate Crisis our planet is facing. Well explain why next. Then, President Trump has reportedly encouraged members of his administration to stay at his properties but now Vice President mike pences visit to one of those properties is causing some problems for his boss. Stay with us. When crabe stronger. Strong, with new nicorette coated ice mint. Layered with flavor. Its the first and only coated nicotine lozenge. For an amazing taste. That outlasts your craving. New nicorette ice mint. We really pride ourselves on making it easy for you tech at safelite autoglass, to get your windshield fixed. 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And it got to the point where things i took for granted got tougher to do. Thought surgery was my only option. Turns out i was wrong. So when a hand specialist told me about nonsurgical treatments, it was a total game changer. Like you, my hands have a lot more to do. Learn more at factsonhand. Com today. Welcome back. In our world lead, utter devastation from Hurricane Dorian stretching for miles across the bahamas as americans brace for the storm to strike the u. S. Dorian is a historically harsh storm, the strongest to ever hit the bahamas, as far as we know, one of the slowest moving hurricane on record, second strongest winds in the Atlantic Basin ever. While scientists cannot definitively say the Climate Crisis is making these hurricanes stronger, there is evidence that warming Ocean Temperatures are contributing to their intensity. Its part of our earth matters series. Joining me, professor veky. Thank you for joining us. I know you cant draw a specific link but what, if any, links can be drawn between our change in climate, Global Warming, and the amount in severity of the storms and weather events that were seeing . So, what were seeing and what we think we should be seeing due to Global Warming is an increased probability of storms becoming severely intense, like dorian has, and doing so in a very rapid way, a process that we call rapid intensification in the field. So, the way to think about it isnt whether Global Warming caused or did not cause dorian. Thats a question that is impossible to answer, but rather, thinking about the odds of dorian and how earths changed by Global Warming. An analogy that i find useful in this is imagine a baseball player that early in their career hit a lot of home runs, later takes some performance enhancing drugs and hits even more home runs. We know that the extra home runs were enhanced by the steroids, but we dont know which particular home runs were the ones that were enhanced. So what we can talk about is that the odds of home runs were changed. That is the odds of extreme hurricanes are changed, but we cannot specifically say this hurricane or that hurricane was made more intense. Interesting. When it comes to Severe Weather we should point out that hurricanes are not the most glaring example of how Climate Change is contributing to extreme weather. There are other, much more stark extreme weather examples. Exactly. Things like extreme rainfall events, heat waves or even the more gradual Sea Level Rise and how it makes coastal communities more vulnerable to certain weather hazards by bringing the ocean closer to people. Tonight cnn is going to host an unprecedented town hall on the Climate Crisis with ten of the democratic president ial candidates. Each one is going to put out their own plans to try to fight this emergency. What specifically do you think our viewers should be looking for in terms of the proposals themselves . Carbon reduction, eliminating fossil fuels all together, reaching out to the markets . What do you think . I know what ill be looking for. Ill be looking for plans that recognize the reality of the Climate Change as us scientists understand it and also to try to find Creative Solutions that recognize the multiple raelealt or the multiple factors, economic, political, and come up with Realistic Solutions to slow the rate of Greenhouse Gas concentrations in the atmosphere emissions and also that include adaptation measures, ways for us to deal with the Climate Change that we are going to have to live with. Professor gabrielle vecchi from princeton, thank you so much, appreciate your insights. Youre welcome. Were minutes away from the unprecedented cnn town hall on the Climate Crisis with ten of the democratic president ial candidates, 5 00 p. M. Eastern. As President Trump gets brie