NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas - Sunday, October 20, 2024

Episode Date: October 20, 2024

7 dead, 6 critically injured after gangway collapses in Georgia; At least 2 dead, hundreds rescued after severe flash flooding in New Mexico; Trump calls Harris a ‘s--- vice president’ in unusual rally before appearance at McDonald's; and more on tonight’s broadcast.

Tonight, breaking new details on a dock collapse at a ferry in Georgia, killing at least seven people, and the deadly flooding in New Mexico, hundreds rescued. New video of people in the water moments after that dock collapse, a beloved chaplain killed while rescuing others, the heroic story of how one baby was saved, and new details on the safety warnings before the accident. In New Mexico, trucks swept away by floodwaters. Look at that. Nearly 300 people rescued.

Even the county sheriff stranded on top of his car. I am completely surrounded by water. Former President Trump with a turn to the profane at a rally. We can't stand you. You're a vice president. Vice President Harris's response late today. The star power out for her this weekend. And what's behind Mr. Trump's trip to work the fry station at a McDonald's? Plus, Elon Musk giving away a million dollars a day to voters. But is it legal? Top secret U.S. intelligence documents on Israel's plan to hit

back at Iran apparently leaked more on what's in them. Our Andrea Mitchell one-on-one with the American imprisoned in Russia for more than five years, the moment he said nearly broke him. And grab your cider and your flannel. We're taking you to Vermont and one musician's mission to bring the state together. This is NBC Nightly News with Hallie Jackson. Good evening. We begin tonight with an annual tradition off the coast of Georgia, a celebration of survival that turned deadly this weekend. And tonight we're learning more about the victims and survivors. I want to show you what the scene looks like today. The gangway, the ramp passengers use to board a ferry, you see it here, collapsed into the water. When it happened, dozens of people

had been standing on it. This is what it looked like on Saturday in the moments after the desperate attempts to save people. Here, you see them throwing life preservers into the water. Among the victims, a chaplain who died while trying to save others. It happened here on Sapelo Island off the coast of southern Georgia. Our Jesse Kirsch made his way there today. And a warning, some of what you're about to see is disturbing. These are the desperate moments as a deadly tragedy unfolded on Georgia's Sapelo Island, south of Savannah, where hundreds had gathered for a cultural celebration. Bystanders rushing to help after officials say a ramp leading to a ferry collapsed Saturday,

plunging roughly 20 people into the water. This floating dock is supposed to have a gangway that extends over to the mainland, but look what's left of the gangway. It is now mostly submerged underwater. to have a gangway that extends over to the mainland. But look what's left of the gangway. It is now mostly submerged underwater. Officials believe that it suffered a catastrophic failure on Saturday, leading to at least seven deaths. Among those lost, a state chaplain, Dr. Charles Houston, his daughter, heartbroken. My dad was the light of our family. He was a rock. Marsha Armstrong says she heard the gangway buckle and fell in the water. Then a stranger saved her life.

God sent me an angel. She said, I got you. Don't worry. Just float. And she swam back in and she swam me up to the shore. Officials now investigating. It's my understanding that the structure collapsed in the middle. One end of the gangway on the landward side is still attached. I can't tell you exactly at this point in time what happened. J.R. Grosvenor says he helped rescue a baby who went underwater. She stopped breathing, so I put her in the boat and brought her over here to the ambulance to the mainland side, but she made it. She's safe. Officials say Saturday's event brought hundreds more people to the island than would be expected on a typical day. Is it possible that that extra stress being

put on the infrastructure with so many more people could have contributed to the collapse? At this time, I wouldn't rule out anything as being a possibility. Jesse is joining us now from Georgia, and Jesse, officials today suggested that Gangway was relatively new, only installed a few years ago. Exactly, Howie. The state believes the gangway was completed in late 2021. Meanwhile, a community member tells me roughly four months ago, he told a state employee he had safety concerns about that very same gangway.

Howie. Jesse Kirsch, thank you. Out West, at least two people were killed, and nearly 300 others had to be rescued after record rain triggered bad flash flooding in New Mexico. And now, more storms are on the way. Here's George Solis. Tonight, southeastern New Mexico reeling

after historic and deadly flooding hit Saturday. Torrential rains slamming Roswell with incredible force, an all-time record of nearly six inches in just a few hours. Dang, Roswell. I'm going to get on the roof, I think. Nearly knee-deep murky waters at this banquet hall, turning a celebration into an evacuation. Emergency calls revealing the unfolding chaos.

Just got a call about a couple of kids stuck on a roof. evacuation. Emergency calls revealing the unfolding chaos. The New Mexico National Guard, alongside other agencies, rescuing nearly 300 people and even a dog stranded in floodwaters. I am completely surrounded by water. Watch this dramatic moment as Chavez County Sheriff Mike Harrington got on his car roof to survive the sudden floods as he warned others to get off the road. That is the side of my truck. And there are multiple vehicles came into this not expecting that much water. And before I know it, I was flipped off into this. Tonight, while water levels have started to recede in some parts, some areas remain dangerous. Officials warning residents to stay off the roads.

Flood watches continue through the night with more rain in the forecast. I guess I'm not going that way. Adding insult to injury in this deadly and already historic deluge. George Solis, NBC News. With just 16 days until the election, Vice President Harris is now responding to the profane comments former President Trump made about her with new questions tonight about the legality of Trump supporter Elon Musk giving out a million dollars a day as part of a turnout push in Pennsylvania. Dasha Burns is in that battleground with the former president. Here's that song. Tonight, former President Trump taking

questions from Pennsylvania voters at a town hall. We're going to bring them over directly. After taking over the fry cooker at a McDonald's in the suburbs outside Philadelphia, looking to push his unsupported claims, the vice president Harris lied about working at the fast food chain when she was in college. She talked about the heat. It was so tough. She never worked at McDonald's. His attacks against Harris increasingly dark and profane, saying this at another Pennsylvania campaign event on Saturday night. We can't stand you. You're a vice president. The worst. You're the worst, Vice President. Kamala, you're fired. Harris responding to those comments tonight on MSNBC. What you see in my opponent, a former president of the United States,

really is, it demeans the office. Trump also making headlines for kicking off that rally in the town of Latrobe with a 12-minute monologue about hometown hero golfer Arnold Palmer, which took a bizarre turn when Trump described the late Palmer's anatomy. When he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, oh, my God, that's unbelievable. With 16 days to go, tech mogul Elon Musk making a surprise pledge while stumping for Trump in the Keystone State, launching a million dollar giveaway for voters who signed his petition in favor of free speech and the right to bear arms. We are going to be awarding a million dollars to randomly to people who have signed the petition every day from now until the election. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro chiming in this morning on Meet the Press. You are a former attorney general. Is this legal?

I think there are real questions with how he is spending money in this race, how the dark money is flowing, not just into Pennsylvania, but apparently now into the pockets of Pennsylvanians. Dasha is joining us now. And Dasha, Mr. Trump is next heading to a battleground where he's playing defense. Yeah, Hallie, he'll head to North Carolina tomorrow, a state that Democrats haven't won since 2008, but now is very much in play. He'll have three campaign stops, starting in Asheville, where he'll tour the damage and devastation caused by Hurricane Helene.

Dasha Burns, thank you. Vice President Harris was joined this weekend by some of the biggest pop stars out there in a push to try to turn out the early vote. And in the week ahead, she'll be joined by some of the biggest stars in the Democratic Party. Ali Rafa is traveling with the vice president tonight. Ali, good evening. Ali, good evening. Vice President Harris spent her 60th birthday visiting Atlanta churches, encouraging congregants to vote as she leans on stars like Stevie Wonder, Lizzo and Usher to energize more voters in key swing states. Former President Obama, among those lending a helping hand, deploying to Michigan and

Wisconsin this week before campaigning with Harris for the first time on Thursday here in Georgia. The V.P. preparing to barnstorm blue wall states with Republican Liz Cheney on Monday to target another key group, anti-Trump Republicans. Hallie. Allie Raffa, thank you. And I'll be sitting down to talk with Vice President Harris on Tuesday in an exclusive interview you'll see right here on Nightly News. More to come on that. To the Middle East now, where Israel's launching a barrage of strikes on Lebanon late tonight as

U.S. officials try to track down how top-secret intelligence about Israel's plan to hit back at Iran apparently leaked. Matt Bradley is in Beirut for us tonight. So, Matt, what are you seeing on the ground there? Yeah, Hallie, well, it's another loud and violent night here in Beirut. We've been watching these explosions lighting up the skyline behind me for hours. Now, the Israelis are once again pounding Hezbollah targets throughout the country. But tonight, they have a specific target in the crosshairs, the Al-Qa'ar Al-Hassan Foundation. Now, Israel's military accuses Iran of trying to finance Hezbollah's operations through these foundations. And Matt, what else do we know about this apparent secret document leak?

Yeah, well, three U.S. officials told NBC News they're trying to figure out how these documents got out in the first place. Now, these are reports about Israeli plans to retaliate against that Iranian missile salvo earlier this month. And they describe Israeli air exercises rehearsing for a strike on Iran and how Israel is moving its missiles around the country. Now, these documents, they don't really go into details about how or when the Israelis might attack Iran, but they do say that there's no indication that the Israelis are going to be using nuclear weapons. Hallie. Matt Bradley, thank you. A major crisis in Cuba just got more serious tonight with a hurricane making landfall during a nationwide blackout. Cuba taking a direct hit from Hurricane Oscar tonight, a category one storm, even as millions of Cubans are still in the dark. Three days after the whole island's power grid went down.

Some Cubans have resorted to cooking by fire outside today to prevent food from rotting since there's no electricity. Still ahead tonight, our one-on-one with an American who was held in Russia for more than five years and the devastating news he got behind bars. Plus, Steve Kornacki takes us inside a top polling call center to try to find out, will the polls be more accurate this time on Election Day? We're back with that one-on-one interview with the former U.S. Marine, detained in Russia for more than five years and released nearly three months ago in one of the biggest prisoner swaps since the Cold War era. Tonight, he's sharing his story with our Andrea Mitchell. It was a homecoming more than five years in the making. Former Marine Paul Whelan, the longest held of three Americans wrongfully detained in Russia,

finally back on U.S. soil. I sat down with him for the first time since his release in August. How are you doing? Five years, seven months, five days as a hostage in Russia in extremely poor conditions. It takes a toll. Those harsh conditions, bad food, no medical care, sleep deprivation. Do you have flashbacks? You know, I do, especially when I see pictures of me in court. Do you have trouble sleeping? I do. The entire time I was being held hostage, the Russians interrupted my sleep. They always kept a light on, you know, in my cell

24 hours a day. 24 hours in my cell 24 hours a day. 24 hours a day? 24 hours a day. If I see a bright light or anything like that, it reminds me of having a flashlight shined in my face. Whelan was in Moscow for a friend's wedding in 2018 when Russian agents stormed his hotel room. He was charged with espionage. Did they try to make you give a confession? They did several times. I was

in Laforte of a prison. It's known for the shooting gallery, where they would take prisoners to shoot them. As a Marine, Whelan had served two tours in Iraq. He was well-trained, resilient. But to Vladimir Putin, he was a valuable pawn for prisoner trades. While Whelan waited, the U.S. swapped a Russian drug dealer for former Marine Trevor Reed, and then a notorious Russian arms dealer, Victor Boot, for basketball star Brittany Griner. Both had served far less time than Whelan. The only time that I really felt that I was abandoned was the second time that I was left behind. It was devastating to hear the news. Did you ever think of suicide? No. No, I was fighting too much.

I knew I was a hostage. I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of me committing suicide. Were there moments of total depression and distress? Yeah, I think the worst was when my dog died. That meant that when I got home, it wasn't going to be the same home that I left. Now he's free. And when he arrived, a gesture from the president. He took this flag, this lapel pin off his lapel and put it onto my shirt. It cemented my feeling that, you know, America had not lost hope in me and that,

you know, the U.S. government had done what they said they would bring me home. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington. We're back in a moment with Steve Kornacki's inside look at how polling works and the push for more accuracy before Election Day. Plus, this piano man's mission to bring his state together one concert at a time. We are just over two weeks away from Election Day, with polls showing Vice President Harris and former President Trump in a dead heat. But after a series of elections where the polls were off, sometimes way off, some folks are wondering, will they get it right this time? Our Steve Kornacki went to one of the top polling centers in the country to find out for himself. Hello, my name is. Hello, my name is Dawn. Hello, my name is Annette.

And I'm calling from the Quinnipiac University. This is perhaps the second hardest part of modern day polling. Sorry that we missed you. Sorry that we missed you. Sorry we missed you. We'll try to reach you another time. Getting voters to pick up the phone and answer. I've had days where I just dialed and dialed and dialed and got no surveys. And that feeds into the hardest part of polling. We're conducting an independent public opinion survey. Getting it right. We really want to represent everyone's views in our poll.

After a surprise Donald Trump win in 2016. The polling missed the 2016 election outcome. And a surprisingly close Joe Biden win in 2020. A lot of folks are waking up and saying, why were these seeming to be so off? They do manually dial. Quinnipiac University's poll director Doug Schwartz and others like him have tweaked their methods to better predict who will win in November. How do you think about that in terms of what happened there and what you're doing now? Some pollsters are thinking it's because they missed the Trump voter.

And then for us, we don't feel like we missed reaching the Trump voter. We got the Trump voter. They were in our poll, but they didn't tell us how they would vote. This time around, we're better prepared. So they're rephrasing their questions. If the election for president were being held today. Doing everything they can to reach those who are hard to reach. Our motto is we try hard to reach the hard to reach people. So we keep dialing. Their new methodology, showing results.

We tested that in 2022. We had one of our most accurate elections ever. Experts point to a variety of reasons for past errors. Trump voters who may avoid surveys and pollsters trying to predict who will actually turn out to vote. Polling pre-election is always really hard because as a pollster, I need to try to make my data look like what I think the electorate's going to look like. Will the electorate be more Republican or Democratic? How many first-time voters? It's like a 50-50 coin toss to me as to whether or not the polling are going to be right. Here's why that's important. These are the poll averages right now in all the battleground states.

If those polls are off the same way they were in 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump is in great shape. But these poll errors don't always happen in the same direction. If they're off by the same amount, but this time underestimating Democrats, this is what those states would look like. How much attention have you been paying to the election? So everybody is asking, are the polls going to actually get it right this year? What do you say to that? I think so, at least in terms of the high quality polls. I think people need to sort of remember it's an estimate. It's a range. Don't expect perfection.

Polling perfection. Is it very likely? Is hard to reach. She dropped me. Darn it. As some voters. Steve Kornacki, NBC News, Hamden, Connecticut. When we come back, there's good news tonight about the beauty of nature and music and this piano man's mission to celebrate both in his home state.

There's good news tonight about a piano man with a mission to bring his state together with the beauty of nature and the sound of music. This fall, in a place known for maple syrup, sweet sounds, too. Music in the Green Mountain State from David Feuerzeig's piano. He's an award-winning music professor at the University of Vermont who's performed around the world. His stage now, every single one of Vermont's more than 250 towns. It's a project he started two years ago called Play Every Town. David, sometimes even getting a little extra help to

get his piano where he's got to go. I also like to localize the programs a bit more than that. These free concerts are a mission, he says, to focus on the environment. So the idea of this project is to call attention to the climate crisis. And we'd always meant to see all the towns in Vermont. And now we're playing a concert in all of them. All while celebrating community through the joy of music. So far, he's performed in nearly 70 towns across the state,

with sites set on every single one over the next few years. Near his hometown of Huntington, a warm welcome. A duet with his wife, Annalise. And donations to help the state rebound from recent floods. And he's got groupies, yeah groupies, following his journey. Who wouldn't miss it for the world. We've been to 49 towns and the scenery is always beautiful. The trees, it's just a joy.

A one-man symphony hitting nature's notes. Music unites people. Music puts people on the same page. Music is a powerful tool in putting strength into social movements and giving people the courage to work together to change things. And by the way, David performed show number 68 in Springfield just today. That's nightly news for the Sunday, but we've got Sunday night football right after this with the Jets versus the Steelers. Lester will be back tomorrow. I'm Hallie Jackson. For all of us here at NBC, thanks for watching and have a great week.