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Helene Now A Major Cat 3 Hurricane As It Lahes Florida; Chris Tuten, Jefferson County, FL, Commissioner, Discusses Hurricane Helene; Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) Discusses Rep. Higgins' Deleted Post Attacking Haitian Migrants As "Thugs"; Biden Holds Oval Office Meeting with Ukraine's Zelenskyy; Mortgage Rates Drop To Lowest Level In 2 Years. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired September 26, 2024 - 14:30   ET

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

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[14:30:14]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We have breaking news. This just happened. Hurricane Helene now a major category three hurricane. It just pushed into that threshold as it is lashing the Florida coast before it's expected landfall later tonight.

Right now, every county in Florida is under a storm warning, watch or advisory.

We have Meteorologist Derek Van Dam live for us in Apalachicola.

Derek, what are things looking like there?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes. I think it's important to note that this now is a major hurricane. This will be the fifth major hurricane to strike the Florida -- Florida in the past since 2017. So this is a significant development.

The hurricane hunters here finding winds near the surface strong enough to make that call to a category three storm.

Now, we're in Franklin County here in Apalachicola. We're facing a multitude of threats, storm surge warnings. We have a hurricane warning in effect. But we also have a flash flood warning and also a tornado watch very near us.

We've had over seven inches of rain in the past 36 hours. And this isn't even directly associated with Hurricane Helene. It's tropical moisture surging north. But the heaviest rain is still yet to come.

So I think, once we look back at history books with this storm, we're going to see that the catastrophic flood potential with it is going to be a big player.

You can see on this map here, the highlighted area in pink is known as a high risk from the Weather Prediction Center. And it is so rare that they actually issued these about 4 percent of the time. But 40 percent of the fatalities and 80 percent of the damage occurs within these very rare high-risk events.

That stretches from where I'm located, the Florida Panhandle, right through Atlanta metro and into the southern Appalachians. Asheville, they're facing a one-in-1,000-year flood event potential.

Now here in Apalachicola, locally, we've just been having to steady rain since last night. This is not residents' first hurricane, obviously. They've done all the typical preparations, boarding up the businesses, their homes, their windows, putting down the sandbags as well.

They know what these storms could potentially bring and they're focusing so much on that exact track because they know that this is a game of miles. A shift west, a shift east determines who gets the worst impacts.

But one thing's for sure, this is going to be that significant surge into this very low-lying Big Bend area of Florida. It is such a low sea level region. We're only six feet above sea level here. As the storm continues to not only grow in intensity, but balloon in size.

Brianna, this storm has the potential to have one of the largest tropical storm wind fields in modern record keeping across the Gulf of Mexico. And that means that impacts will be felt well away from the center.

And it's fast-forward speed is also crucial to this weather forecast because, as it moves inland, it doesn't have the time to dissipate and weaken.

So it's going to bring tropical storm force and hurricane force winds well inland to central portions of Georgia as well as into South Carolina.

I mean, as a meteorologist, I've never seen the entire state of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina under a tropical alert like what we have right now.

This system is going to not only bring these destructive winds inland, but also, again, that catastrophic flash flood potential.

The National Weather Service is coming out of Greenville, North Carolina, calling -- actually comparing this to the flooding event of 1916, also historic in nature.

The list of adjectives are endless here with this potential of the storm as upwards of over a foot, even 15 inches locally of rainfall could fall out the sky before the storms all said and done -- Brianna?

KEILAR: That is a lot. Very alarming.

Derek, thank you so much for an update. We'll continue to check in with you.

Danny?

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN HOST: Thank you, Brianna.

All right, we're now joined by Chris Tuten over the phone. He is the commissioner of Jefferson County, Florida, just east of Tallahassee, about northeast of where Derek Van Dam just was.

Thank you for joining us, Commissioner.

Just tell us right now, what are conditions like where you are in Jefferson County.

CHRIS TUTEN, COMMISSIONER, JEFFERSON COUNTY, FL (via telephone) Good afternoon and thanks for having me yet.

So we've been getting a lot of rain throughout the day off and on. Right now, it's clear, no rain, just the calm before the storm. It's right now, it's just a waiting game.

FREEMAN: And I'm curious, Commissioner, what's your reaction now that we know that this hurricane has become a cat three, as you're in this waiting game, does this give you more concerned as the hours tick on?

TUTEN: Well, fortunately, I work for one of the best emergency management teams in the entire state. And we have prepared for the worst, expecting the worst. And all we can do is pray for the best.

[14:35:04]

But we're ready for it. And we're ready to pick up the pieces afterwards.

FREEMAN: All right. Jefferson County Commissioner Chris Tuten, thank you so much for that update. We'll check back in with you as we continue through the day. Appreciate your time.

After ordering a surge in assistance for Ukraine, President Biden and President Zelenskyy are meeting right now in the Oval Office and they spoke moments ago.

Let's take a quick listen.

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FREEMAN: Oh.

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FREEMAN: Just for that, we had some audio issues just there. You can hear. We'll have the latest coming up in a moment as you can hear some

reporters asking questions. But well be right back with more.

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[14:40:44]

KEILAR: And the fallout keeps coming. Sixteen days after former President Trump's spread falsehoods that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating pets, Republican Congressman Clay Higgins showed no signs at a hearing today of the potential House censure that he's facing from an online post about Haitians that he later deleted.

The Louisiana rep. said, quote, "LOL, these Haitians are wild, eating pets, voodoo, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick, gangsters.

"But damned if they don't feel all sophisticated now filing charges against our president and V.P. All these thugs better get their mind and their ass out of our country before January 20th."

The chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Steven Horsford, confronted him about it. That led to a heated exchange on the House floor, according to sources who saw the argument.

Higgins also said to CNN, quote, "It's all true. We do have freedom of speech. It's not a big deal to me. It's like something stuck to the bottom of my boot, just scrape it off and move on with my life."

[14:41:52]

Joining me now is Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, who is co-chair of the Haiti Caucus.

Congresswoman, thanks for being with us.

What did you think about his post and the fact that despite Speaker Johnson saying Higgins probably regrets some of what he said, Higgins himself has not said that he regrets it?

REP. SHEILA CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK (D-FL): Well, I think it's very disturbing. And this is a dangerous game being played of divide and conquer and that dangerous game has real consequences.

So when we came on the floor to vote yesterday, one of the reasons I said we have to actually confront him is because I needed him to put a face with all of the violence and the vile things he said about Haitian-Americans, being the only Haitian-American in Congress and the first Democrat ever elected to Congress.

It's important that he sees whose life and whose family he's putting at stake.

So when I approached him, along with Steven Horsford and Fredricka Wilson and Joyce Beatty, you know, I wanted to explain to him that I am a Haitian- American. I do represent the same the state of Florida.

But I also wanted him to know that these statements you're making, they do have dangerous consequences and innocent people are being put in harm's way, such as myself, my children, my family, and my community.

And so when I express that to him, he looked like he had a moment of compassion. And I think it's very easy for people to say hateful rhetoric but when you have to look someone in the eye and repeat it is much tougher.

And so what we have to do right now is make sure that we're not just saying that hate speech has no place in our country but the violence that's attached to it, and the real issues that are going on right now.

KEILAR: And so you felt that this was a positive exchange. Is that fair to character it? And what did he say to you?

CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK: No, it wasn't positive at all. But I thought it was easy for him to say what he had to say when he was saying it with his little Twitter fingers.

But in reality, when you have to look at the person in the eye, it was harder for him to stand by it. And that's the truth about it because these are dehumanizing words. They seem easy when you're saying is that others, this person, that person.

But when you have to look at your colleague and see that you're putting innocent people in harm's way, when you have to actually accept the fact that you're spreading lies.

And at the end of the day, the most crushing and the most part that was so disappointing, was that he was weaponizing his position of power to attack innocent people.

And we're seeing this happen more and more often. And it started with J.D. Vance and the Trump administration, and Trump, who are using the Haitian community as an example, making up lies about Haitians.

And it doesn't just affect the people in Springfield. It affects every Haitian-American living in the United States.

We just heard a story in Springfield where there was a family who had their kids playing in their garage because they felt like outside wasn't safe and there was an armed gunman who came into their family home and held them there at gunpoint.

You know, where are we living? We have a congressional delegation who was supposed to go to Springfield tomorrow and we're getting told that the Proud Boys and all these white supremacist groups and Neo-Nazi organizations are planning on coming and confronting us.

This cannot be the society that we live in. We can't have a society when, in order to do our constitutional obligations as elected officials, we have to live in fear or there's a sense of threaten and intimidation that they feel comfortable, extended to even members of Congress.

[14:45:10]

This cannot be accepted.

KEILAR: And I didn't mean to misrepresent how you were characterizing your exchange. You said that he had a compassionate look, so I was curious to delve more into that.

But I do want to ask you, the CBC Chair Horsford, you said, was part of that exchange that you had with Higgins. He's called on Higgins to be censured. He thinks he should be referred to the Ethics Committee over this.

What do you think about that process?

CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK: Well, I believe that the CBC chair, Steven Horsford, he handled the whole situation masterfully. Because we can't sit by the sidelines and allow hate to reign, especially in our congressional chambers.

There must be a sense of decorum. There must be a sense of action. And we cannot allow hate to take the floor, especially in this environment we're seeing more and more violence.

And so I believe, and I stand by him, throughout the whole conversation because, as we were going forward, he asked me, are we going forward? I said yes. So I appreciate him standing up, not just for us or black people, but for every Haitian-American who's in fear right now.

So definitely, we have to take a closer look at this when it comes to ethical standards. But we have to actually understand, who are we as Americans?

This not -- should not be a CBC issue where the CBC is standing up or Chairman Horsford is standing up. Every single member of Congress should be outraged.

There is no place in these United States to have any kind of weaponization to innocent people. There's no place for misinformation. There is no place for dehumanizing comments. And there is especially no place for any kind of white supremacist comments.

And so we need to take a stand and end this now.

KEILAR: We -- we heard -- we heard from Haitian-Americas how they are experiencing this and how this has put them at risk.

I do want to ask you, since there was an ethics report out yesterday about a series of campaign finance matters the committee is investigating you for, if you respect that process and ultimate outcome.

And if you would for the Higgins matter as well, which, albeit, is a very different one. Do you see that as a good forum for both of these things?

CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK: I believe that whatever is going on right now, we respect the process and we're cooperating and we're trying to see what's going on.

But the two cannot be compared because what we're looking at are derogatory comments towards an innocent group, where we're using federal funds to actually put out these derogatory comments and to also weaponize the power of the seat that the American people trust in to target an innocent group.

Those are substantially different things that we're looking at. It should not be tolerated. So even having the conversation at the same time and bringing them together shouldn't happen.

You know, we're one nation and, in one nation, we have certain principles that we abide by certain principles that we actually believe in. And we have to stand tall for those principles, for every single group.

Today, I had a conversation with one of the ambassadors from Alandra (ph) and she said, you now, she'll be careful in these moments because these moments are actually precursors to when you have violence against communities.

Especially when you're saying dehumanizing language, when you're blowing the blow horn, saying peoples' I.Q.s are lower than the Americans.

These are the actual steps that we see from white supremacists that lead to violence. And we must take a seriously and look at it for what it is and not conflate the two issues.

KEILAR: That is certainly an eye-opening perspective that you bring there.

Congresswoman, thank you so much. We appreciate your time today.

CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK: Thank you.

KEILAR: And I do want to get back to that Oval Office meeting. It was Ukrainian President Zelenskyy meeting, of course, with President Biden today in the Oval.

Biden telling Zelenskyy, quote, "We stand with Ukraine now and in the future."

Let's listen.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, Mr. President, welcome back to the White House, to the Oval Office.

I talked to you yesterday and you shared your plan to win this war and that's exactly what we're going to discuss today. Now, Ukraine (INAUDIBLE) And I see two key pieces. First, right now, we have to strengthen Ukraine's position on the battle. And that's why today I'm proud to announce a new $2.4 billion package of security assistance.

I've also directed the Pentagon to allocate -- to allocate all remaining security assistance funding that has been appropriate to Ukraine, period, by the end of my term, which is January 20th.

And this will strengthen Ukraine's position in future negotiation.

Second, we look ahead to help Ukraine succeed in the long-term. As you know better than anyone, we said at the Washington summit, we support Ukraine in its path to membership of both the E.U. and to NATO, and continue to make reforms to counter corruption and set democracy, which your work on right now.

[14:50:00]

We have to ensure Ukraine has sufficient capabilities, I mean sufficient capabilities and against future Russian aggression.

I'm proud of the steps we've taken on our partnership on these fronts. Earlier this summer, we launched the Ukraine compact, been more than 20 nations committed to Ukraine's long-term security.

And yesterday, with over 30 nations and the E.U., we launched the joint declaration of support to Ukraine's recovery and reconstruction, selling or using Russian assets as well.

And so with both of these actions, we're make it clear we stand with Ukraine now and in the future.

We've got a lot to discuss. So let me close with this. These two elements are critical to how this war ends. Let me be clear, Russia will not prevail in war. Russia will not prevail. Ukraine will prevail.

And we'll continue to stand by you every step of the way. So thank you for being here and (INAUDIBLE)

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: Thanks so much.

Mr. president, thank you for your strong support, for the decision that are helping us protect Ukraine and Ukrainian so hoped.

We do appreciate that Ukraine and America have stood side-by-side from their very first moments of this terrible Russian invasion. Your determination is incredibly important for us to prevail they.

Yesterday, we had -- as you said, we had a G-7 loans and grants for Ukraine's reconstruction with more in contrast with the speeding.

And it was a truly helpful for us. We must restore normal life. And we greatly value your leadership, Mr. President.

We also have 26 bilateral security agreements with partners based on the G-7 security operation. We have a strong security agreement with United States. And we are grateful for it.

And we will fully implement it. And it's very important that we share the same vision for Ukraine's security future in the E.U. and NATO. And Ukraine is going that.

Mr. President, its number performs on this path.

And today, we have a new support package, $7.9 billion. This will be great help. And I raised with President Biden the plan on victory.

Today, we are preparing to discard the details to strengthen the plan, coordinate our positions, views, and approach. Our teams will work together to ensure that implementation of our future steps.

And today, in the morning, I've met with both Senate and the House. And thank you for them. And may very bipartisan support and to all American people together, we have to win we will win.

Thank you.

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KEILAR: All right, President Biden there after $375 million package announced for Ukraine calling for the allocation of additional billions of dollars for Ukraine, as some of our experts have said, in a way to sort of Trump-proof American support of the Ukrainian efforts in its war against Russia.

We'll be right back after a quick break with much more news as we are keeping our eye on Hurricane Helene, which has just become a category three storm in the gulf.

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[14:56:28]

FREEMAN: For the third week in a row, mortgage rates have fallen, hitting their lowest level in two years. A standard 30-year fixed mortgage is now 6.08 percent.

For more on this, we have CNN's Matt Egan.

Matt, things have been trending downward really since the spring, right?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: That's right, Danny. Borrowers are finally catching a break. This 30-year average mortgage below 6.1 percent. But that's not low, of course, right? During Covid, some people we're getting mortgages for under 3 percent.

But this is definitely moving in the right direction. This is the lowest level in two years. And it's a big relief to all of those frustrated first-time homebuyers out there who are dealing with this historically unaffordable housing market.

Now, home prices are still at record highs, but at least borrowing costs are going down.

And this is really the clearest evidence yet of how the Fed's big moves are having a real-world impact, right? Because just a week ago, the Fed had that jumbo-sized interest rate cut, the first since Covid.

And let me show you exactly how this plays out for people who are out there with a mortgage. So say you we're trying to buy a $500,000 home with 20 percent down last fall, when mortgage rates were really high.

Now, your monthly payments are actually $460 less than if you had tried to buy a year ago. Now that may not sound like that much but it really adds up. That's $5,500 less over the course of a year if it's a 30-year loan. So it's $166,000 less.

And another thing that we're seeing is a lot of people who already have mortgages, they are scrambling to take advantage by refinancing. There's been a spike in demand for refinancing.

And, Danny, don't forget the Fed, they've signaled they're not done cutting interest rates yet. So this could continue to help all of those first-time homebuyers out there and people who have a mortgage, but they have a high rate -- Danny?

FREEMAN: Well, I mean, I agree with you. I mean, that for $461, that's real dollars in people's pockets.

Really appreciate it --

EGAN: Yes.

FREEMAN: -- Matt Egan.

All right, right now, Helene is now a major hurricane after reaching category three status just moments ago. We're tracking the storm's path with landfall only hours away.

You're looking at live pictures right now from Miami, those clouds up ahead.

Stay with us.

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