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Do union votes matter to Trump?; Nation's infrastructure in serious trouble; TSA continues to face criticism; Hundreds of migrants being rescued from Mediterranean; Obama first sitting President to visit Hiroshima; A-bomb survivor spends decades assuring U.S. POWs are remembered; CNN original series, "The 80s" airs tonight; Billionaire funds Hulk Hogan's legal battle against Gawker. Aired 10:30-11:00a ET

Aired May 26, 2016 - 10:30   ET

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


[10:30:50]

TIM WATERS, NATIONAL POLITICAL DIRECTOR, UNITED STEELWORKERS: ... their plant, their mill's going to be there tomorrow. So we've been out there focusing on that right now.

BROWN: And how big of a deal is this for Donald Trump, Ron?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well look, Donald Trump needs -- has a -- if there is a pathway to the White House for him it runs through the industrial Midwest. And Donald Trump is showing to be a very formidable competitor for white working class voters. And the three big media polls that came out last -- in the last week or so -- he's up over Hillary Clinton between 20 and 40 points among white voters without a college education. Many of whom are the kind of voters that are in industrial means.

On the other hand, Pamela, unions have had pretty good success at holding down Republican incursions among their members. If you look at the exit polls from 2012, President Obama won 58 percent of voters in union households. He hit 60 percent or more in the big Midwestern states -- Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan -- that are at risk. So this is going to be a significant competition and an important one. Because as I said, if there is a path for Donald Trump, it runs through white, working-class voters in those Midwestern rust belt states.

BROWN: And Ron, I want you to take a look at one of those ads released from the AFL-CIO against Trump. Let's look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My father gave me a small loan of $1 million.

Wages too high.

And by the way, I'm really rich. I'll share that (necessarily).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So you see there, it says Trump is bad for working Americans. But he has hammered Hillary Clinton on trade saying ...

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BROWN: ... policies she has supported are costing jobs. Will an ad like this resonate, do you think?

BROWNSTEIN: It's a really interesting dynamic that's here. Usually the appeal for Republican candidates to these industrial union members -- and I think Tim could agree with this -- historically has been mostly around cultural issues like guns. What makes Trump unusual is that he's also has an argument on economic issues, particularly on trade. And to some extent, his views on immigration, that may also have appealed to portions of the membership.

And that makes him a more complicated target than say, a Mitt Romney, who is more easy to caricature as someone who would advance the interests of, kind of, the rich, at their expense. Trump is obviously a very rich person but he is perceived as something of a rebel by many voters not really class-based. And someone who is offering policies that are different, particularly on trade, than the unions have had to contend with from Republican candidates before.

BROWN: And Tim, this campaign launched by USW, the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and others, hopes to reach some five to six million people in battleground states. What are you hearing? Are you hearing anything from members in those states that leads you to believe that Trump is a viable choice for them?

WATERS: Well there's a lot of cynicism out there and frankly, Donald Trump's a wolf in sheep's clothing, here. We know he made his products at every opportunity in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Chittagong, and Honduras, and China. We know the places that he was at and what he paid the workers. Even in America when he had the chance to put American workers to work, he even imported workers when he couldn't import the product.

So I -- there's a lot of cynicism out there. He talked about Carrier in Indianapolis and the plant closure going to Mexico. He didn't even know what they made there. He called it air conditioners when in reality, it's gas furnaces. So we -- there's a lot of cynicism out there amongst our members and their families. We've been talking to him a lot and we're going to talk to him more as time goes on.

BROWNSTEIN: Pamela?

BROWN: And Ron, one study shows -- go ahead -- Ron?

BROWNSTEIN: I was going to say real quick ...

BROWN: Yes.

BROWNSTEIN: ... I think, I think the challenge for unions is not so much their own members. It's really the broader, kind of white working-class voters. You know, unions were only about -- union households are only about 18 percent of the vote, nationally, in 2012. Even in these big Midwestern states, except for Michigan. It's really only about a fifth. And I think part of the key question is not only can they hold their own members, but can they prevent Donald Trump from making bigger inroads among those white working-class voters who (were) key to his nomination, and which are more concentrated in these Midwestern battle grounds than they are elsewhere in the country.

WATERS: I think in the battleground ...

BROWN: All right ...

WATERS: ... in the battleground states, unions may well decide the outcome. And we expect it to be a fight, but we expect it to be the Democratic nominee coming out. Certainly there's no question they're way better than any of the Republicans.

BROWN: All right, Tim Waters, Ron Brownstein, thank you gentlemen. Do appreciate it. And still to come on this Thursday, under foot and out of sight, the hidden dangers of crumbling bridges. Millions of Americans at risk every day, and researchers are scrambling for answers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:38:50]

BROWN: Well no matter who wins the November election, the next U.S. President will face a series of challenges both abroad, and right here at home. Among them, the nation's infrastructure, including some 60,000 bridges that are in desperate need of repair. Some of the structures showing so much deterioration that it could affect the ability to support vehicles. CNN's Rene Marsh examined one of those bridges up close, in the nation's capital, and talked to researchers about their ideas for a solution.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION AND GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 68,000 vehicles cross the Arlington Memorial Bridge between D.C. and Virginia every day. This is what drivers don't see.

MARSH: It's just eroding and the concrete is falling off. We have to wear masks and gloves inside of the bridge because this paint is all lead paint. Now this beam is helping to support the bridge and if you take a look, it is badly corroded. I mean you see how thin that steel is, you see holes in the steel.

MARSH (voice-over): The original support beams from 1932 have never been replaced.

RAY LAHOOD, FORMER TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: We're like a third-world country when it comes to infrastructure.

MARSH (voice-over): Federal government spending on infrastructure has declined 9 percent from 2003 to 2014. Every state has some degree of bad bridges that need to be repaired. From Los Angeles, where trees are growing out of cracks in this bridge to Chicago where netting is in place to protect drivers from falling concrete. LAHOOD: The reason we have 57,000 deficient bridges is because we

have not made the investment as a national government.

MARSH (voice-over): Former Transportation Secretary, Ray LaHood, blames Congress for failing to raise the gas tax in 23 years. Which funds projects like bridges and roads.

MARSH: Have you been against raising the tax because it's just bad politics?

REPRESENTATIVE BILL SHUSTER (R), PENNSYLVANIA: First of all the economy has been -- hasn't been great. Raising the gas tax doesn't solve the long-term funding problem.

MARSH: As Congress tries to figure out this long-term solution, bridges are crumbling. So what do we do right now?

SHUSTER: Well our bill, the FAST Act, which we passed in December, the President signed into law -- we put more dollars into focusing on the critical infrastructure.

MARSH (voice-over): His Republican colleague disagrees.

REPRESENTATIVE JIM RENACCI (R), OHIO: It's funded for five years, but we use 10 years worth of gimmicks to pay for it. These are the kind of things that don't make sense.

MARSH (voice-over): Anthony Fox is the current Head of the Department of Transportation.

MARSH: But isn't everyone guilty? I mean, when Democrats were in control of Congress, this situation was what it is today, as well.

ANTHONY FOXX, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: I think every year we go by, the challenge gets that much greater. And that's why we don't have another moment to waste.

MARSH (voice-over): Researchers at the University of Michigan believe they may have a solution. A bendable concrete that can heal itself from cracks.

VICTOR LI, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: How about if we set our targets towards creating infrastructures that will last 100 years?

MARSH (voice-over): Regular concrete can fail quickly and suddenly. But Professor Victor Li says the bendable concrete can withstand a force hundreds of times more powerful. This sped-up video shows how it responds to pressure. Cracks heal themselves with the help of air and water. The technology lines portions of this bridge in Michigan. The hope is it could help already crumbling bridges like the Memorial Bridge near the nation's capital.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[10:42:10] BROWN: And our thanks to Rene Marsh for that report. And by the way, the Arlington Memorial Bridge will shut down in five years if it doesn't get the $250 million needed for repairs. And still ahead on this Thursday, a Hiroshima survivor makes it his life's mission to honor the American prisoner of wars who died when the atomic bomb fell. His incredible story up next, stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:46:30]

BROWN: Checking our top stories, don't expect those long airport lines to get better right away. TSA Administrator, Peter Neffenger under fire yesterday for security wait times, telling a House Committee it will be a "challenging summer." Neffenger telling CNN last hour how he's tackling the issues.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER NEFFENGER, TSA ADMINISTRATOR: We've put a lot of resources into the top airports of this country -- the top 20 airports in particular -- and we're watching them very carefully. And we're watching it in real time right now. So I watch right now, what's happening, as well as predictive over the next 24 hours. And we now have the ability to rapidly shift resources.

We've put a lot of our -- we've redeployed most of our canines to the -- to the airports where we know that there's going to be a lot of travel volume this weekend. Those canines, as you know, can rapidly move people through a line. We put extra resources in, I've got a lot more overtime hours pushed out. So I think that we've done a tremendous amount to mitigate it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: But despite that, Neffenger still says you should arrive a couple hours before flying at major travel hubs. And in Iraq, government troops are gaining ground and marching toward the ISIS-held town of Fallujah. The U.S. ally faces a ferocious fight there. But it's the civilians trapped within the city who may face the greatest risk. The United Nations says the siege could endanger the lives of some 50,000 civilians there.

New video showing a dramatic rescue of more than 500 migrants from the Mediterranean. Take a look, this is from the Italian Coast Guard. Watch as the boat capsizes right here, forcing hundreds to try to stay above the water. Officials also say they rescued nearly 100 migrants today in a separate incident, off the coast of Libya. That mission is still ongoing.

Well President Obama will visit Hiroshima tomorrow. The first sitting American President to visit the site where the U.S. dropped one of two atomic bombs during World War II. 200,000 people died, including 12 American prisoners of war. Will Ripley introduces us to one Hiroshima survivor who's made it his mission to make sure those men are remembered along with all who died. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHIGEAKI MORI, HIROSHIMA SURVIVOR (translation voice-over via Will Ripley): Survivors of Hiroshima have few physical mementos of life before the fireball.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is the only picture that survived the blast.

RIPLEY (voice-over): Memories, they have many. "When the A-bomb fell, I was on my way to school," says Shigeaki Mori, who was eight. He remembers red flames, black rain, mountains of bodies. Including American POWs in this survivor sketch -- detained just 400 meters -- a quarter-mile -- from ground zero.

This small memorial marks the spot where they died -- the old Chugoku Military Police Headquarters -- leveled by the A-bomb, today an office building. "I thought we should have a memorial for the Americans who died in the A-bomb," he says. "But the U.S. kept Hiroshima's POWs top secret until the 1970s when declassified documents gave Mori a list -- 12 American names, their ages, where and how they died.

MORI: Thank you very much.

RIPLEY (voice-over): Every weekend for more than 20 years, he borrowed U.S. phone books from the library, calling every name that matched until he found the families. "They didn't understand why I was doing this, at the beginning," he says. "They were very skeptical. It took a while to gain their trust." But he pushed on, wanting the families to have closure.

"It continued for 41 years, it took so much patience. I think only he could do that," says Kayoko (ph) Mori. The POWs included the crews of two downed American bombers -- The Lonesome Lady, and The Taloa. Mori gave the families previously unreleased details of their captivity. And he offered to register their names on the official list of victims. The youngest, Airman Third Class, Norman Rowland Bursette (ph) of Lowell, Massachusetts -- just 19.

Decades of searching, and today 12 American POWs officially registered at Hiroshima's Hall of Remembrance.

RIPLEY: Did you ever think you'd live to see an American President visit here?

"It's like a dream," he says. "I'm so happy." He wants President Obama to know he and other survivors simply want to share their stories, share their memories, so the world never forgets. Will Ripley, CNN, Hiroshima, Japan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[10:51:05]

BROWN: Great story by our Will Ripley. And still ahead right here on the Newsroom, Hulk Hogan's multimillion dollar lawsuit against Gawker bankrolled by a Silicon Valley billionaire. Why a nearly decade-old grudge could put the site out of business.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:55:30]

BROWN: Well tonight on the next episode of the CNN original series, "The 80s," it's all about music. MTV was just getting started when David Bowie called out the network over its lack of diversity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID BOWIE: Having watched MTV over the last few months, I'm distraught by the fact that there's so many -- so few black artists featured on it. Why is that?

MARK GOODMAN, MTV VJ: Yes, but less so here than in radio.

BOWIE: And is it not well there? Don't say well it's not me, it's them. Is it ...

GOODMAN: No, not like that.

BOWIE: Is it, is it, is it not possible, should it not be a challenge to try and make the media far more integrated?

ED LOVER: When are we going to see anybody of color on MTV? Because you said music television. When are you going to start covering all genres of music?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: When music and culture collide -- tune into the CNN original series, "The 80s," tonight at 9:00 p.m. One of Silicon Valley's richest men is revealing his latest investment. A plan to take out the website Gawker. Billionaire Peter Thiel revealed that he is the one bankrolling Hulk Hogan's legal battle against the website. One that could end up shutting down the company. Brian Stelter is following this story. This certainly sounds like revenge, what's going on here?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: It sure does. This is amazing to have found out about this. Because we all remember that Hulk Hogan suit from the Spring. Hulk Hogan won $140 million in court against Gawker. And now Gawker is appealing that case. But we've just found out this week that Peter Thiel is the one funding it. So it's perfectly legal for a third party to go ahead and you know fund a lawsuit.

But in this case, you think about the chilling effect this could have. We're talking about a billionaire tech entrepreneur funding a lawsuit -- actually more than one -- against a news organization that he doesn't like. So you might ask, why is he doing this? Well it does seem, to at least one degree, to be personal. Almost 10 years ago, one of Gawkers websites called Valleywag, wrote about Thiel's sexuality, wrote about him being gay. They -- he says essentially, they were outing him. Couple of years later he called this Valleywag blog a terrorist group.

He said it was the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda. So clearly, he has a lot of strong feelings about Gawker, and about how Gawker operates. We just received a new statement, actually, we can put on screen, from Thiel about this, explaining his thinking. He says, "I am proud to have supported Terry Bollea," -- that's Hulk Hogan's real name -- "in his successful fight against a bully's gross violation of privacy. Gawker (the defendant) built its business on humiliating people for sport. They routinely relied on an assumption that victims would be too intimidated or too disgusted to even attempt to redress for clear wrongs."

So Thiel is saying it's not just about him, it's not about his history, it's about his friends as well, who have been bullied by Gawker, and he's trying to take action about it.

BROWN: So he really saw this as an opportunity then, with this whole lawsuit between Hulk Hogan and Gawker. And so he then just reached out to Hulk Hogan and said, "Look, I want to help bankroll your case?"

STELTER: That's right and not just Hulk Hogan. Apparently Thiel is working with other plaintiffs as well. At least one other case, according to the New York Times. We know of at least two other lawsuits that Gawker is a defendant in. So it's unclear exactly how many of those Thiel is supporting. But clearly, behind the scenes in this case, Thiel is trying to take action against Gawker. Until now it was a secret. But as a result of coverage this week, news coverage by forbes and others, he's now talking about it openly.

Some people wonder, in the journalism community, is this a sign of things to come? Will other billionaires and multimillionaires take action against news outlets they don't like by secretly bankrolling lawsuits? Like I said, it's entirely legal, but it doesn't mean it makes a lot of people -- it does make people nervous about the prospect.

BROWN: What about Gawker? What's Gawker saying to all of this?

STETLER: You know they said very little about it so far. I've been reaching out to the founder, Nick Denton, for comment. But his point is essentially to say, we are a news organization and just because Thiel has a lot of money in order to challenge us, it doesn't mean that what we're doing is not worth doing. And there's been some skepticism about this case. Because Gawker published part of a sex tape involving Hulk Hogan, that's what this is all about. It's about invasion of privacy case.

It was about Hulk Hogan having sex with one of his friends' wives. And so it was a sort of weird and uncomfortable story. And yet, Gawker said it had a firm first amendment defense. That even if you don't care about the story, they had a right to publish it. Thiel, we didn't know he was involved, but it turns out he disagrees with Gawker, and he wants the company to be stopped.

BROWN: All right, Brian Stelter, thanks for bringing this backstory to us ... STELTER: Thanks.

BROWN: Very interesting. And thank you for being a part of your morning with us. I'm Pamela Brown in for Carol Costello. AT THIS HOUR with Berman and Bolduan starts right now, have a great day.

[10:59:50]