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AC 360 Later

America's Unhealthy Kids; Government Shutdown

Aired October 10, 2013 - 22:00   ET

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


ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Hey. Welcome to "AC360 Later." Thanks for joining us.

On the table tonight, Christiane Amanpour speaks with Malala Yousafzai, the incredibly brave young girl who nearly died speaking out for girls education in Pakistan when he was targeted by the Taliban. Also, we will hear from one of the architects of Obamacare. We will all be interested to hear his perspective on what is going on with the Web site in particular. And, later, are LeBron James and Peyton Manning making kids fat? We will explain that ahead.

But we begin with breaking news and day 10 of the government shutdown. That's right. We're in double digits now. The news tonight seems to be good, though. Both sides are talking, take a gasp, actually talking. That sadly actually does count as real news in this environment.

Talking about it here at our table tonight, senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, CNN political commentator and Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher, CNN political commentator Republican strategist Ana Navarro. And shortly we will joined by Dana Bash.

Good news tonight?

ANA NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think so.

Yesterday, we began to see some thawing out. Today there's been more thawing out. They're talking. They're saying everything's on the table. They're beginning to do what people should do when they're in the midst of making a deal and a negotiation, which is actually sit down face-to-face, talk to each other, throw around some different proposals and weigh them seriously.

So definitely I think this is better than where we were 10 days ago.

COOPER: Is Obamacare anything off the table?

CORNELL BELCHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: You know what I love about -- I love how she keeps a straight face here. This was what Representative Jack Kingston said from Georgia. You know what reopens shutdowns more than policy are the polls.

You have a string of polls coming out today showing the damage that House Republicans are doing to your party. And I know your good friend Jeb Bush is probably looking at this well sort of problematic because they're absolutely killing your party. Republicans right now...

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: What does Jeb Bush have to do with...

(CROSSTALK)

BELCHER: He wants to run for president at some point. But Republicans have registered the lowest rating ever in Gallup.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Let's look at some of the polls. Let's put some of them on the screen.

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: Oh, really. Must we?

COOPER: Who do you think is more to blame for the shutdown? President Obama, 31 percent, Republicans in Congress 53 percent, both equal 13, not sure say 3 percent.

Next poll here, if you could vote to defeat and replace every member of Congress would you? Yes, 60 percent, no, 35 percent.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Let's talk about the main news of the day, which is that John Boehner came out and said they now have a proposal to extend the debt ceiling for six weeks. That's considered progress.

There was absolutely nothing said by Boehner about reopening the government. I think it's so pathetic that our idea of progress now is avoiding a financial catastrophe, but still not talking about reopening the government.

COOPER: Let's bring in Dana Bash, who's in Washington.

Dana, explain what is now on the table, what is being debated, because as Jeff was just saying, Boehner came out saying just to lift the debt ceiling. President Obama it seems like said, no, we got to work on both of these things, opening the government and the debt ceiling.

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's exactly right.

And I just talked to a Republican source familiar with the meeting that went on tonight. And we are told that they really went round and round for about an hour saying effectively what you just laid out. The president saying, come on, guys, we got to open the government. And Republicans in various ways saying that they want to first deal with the debt ceiling. They got to get that passed. And then they want to sit down maybe over the weekend and start talks. And I'm told, so is our congressional producer Deirdre Walsh, that a key moment that happened in tonight's meeting was actually between Paul Ryan, the president's former opponent, vice presidential candidate, and the president where Paul Ryan effectively said that, look, we, the Republicans, we're not going away. Let's try to figure out how to work this out together.

And it seems as though everybody was so exasperated by again going round and round for an hour that the president said, you know what? OK. If you guys think that you can work out a way to reopen the government, to pass a funding bill that will make everybody happy, have at it. Go ahead and work at it.

That's exactly what's happening right now.

COOPER: Dana, let me just quickly bring in Republican Congressman James Lankford. He joins us live from Capitol Hill as well.

Is Obamacare, the idea of changing it, of altering it in some way, of defunding it, is that off the table now for House Republicans?

REP. JAMES LANKFORD (R), OKLAHOMA: What's interesting is that's still on the table for us. That's still an ongoing part of our conversation but, it hasn't been a part of this particular conversation in two weeks.

That's not been news. The last proposal that we put out as House Republicans was to remove the penalty for the first year for people that made a mistake or didn't want to sign up for Obamacare, just the individuals. The businesses already have had the penalties removed from them by the president.

We asked for individuals to get same treatment as businesses did in the first year and then to apply Obamacare equally to the White House and to members of Congress. And so that's already been there. I know there's been a lot of statements to say we haven't moved. We feel like we have negotiated this.

And I would take issue with a couple of things that Dana had mentioned earlier. She was pretty close on a lot of those things. But actually being a person in the meeting, I can tell you that there were a few discrepancies in some things that she was mentioning there.

COOPER: Like what?

(CROSSTALK)

LANKFORD: Well, simple things, like it was an hour-and-a-half meeting. We did go round and round for about an hour and then had some breakthrough moments on it.

But we have tried to talk for two weeks to say we should meet together and negotiate this. The impression is left that we really want to keep the government closed, but that we will do the debt ceiling on it. We really want to do both. We want to be able to bring it forward, but we also want to be able to talk about this.

For two weeks, we have had a proposal out there saying let's just meet face-to-face and finally today we meet face-to-face. This was not about polls. This is where we were two weeks ago.

COOPER: I want to bring in Dana.

Dana, that go ahead.

BASH: First of all, Congressman, I certainly did not mean to leave impression that you didn't want to reopen the government.

LANKFORD: Oh, no.

BASH: In fact, what I said was that I think you do want to do it, but you wanted to deal with the debt ceiling first. So I think that we're all agreeing on that.

But what I have heard, and maybe you can say if this is accurate, is that the news "Wall Street Journal"/NBC poll that Anderson and folks were talking about just moments ago hit Republicans like a ton of bricks tonight, for lots of reasons, but because of the numbers, because it shows that people are so much more angry. There you see, Republicans in Congress 53 percent, they get the blame.

And there are other numbers that show that it's even worse for Republicans and that that -- a couple of Republican sources said that that hit you guys like a ton of bricks.

LANKFORD: It is.

BASH: It is. And so you all do want to reopen the government. You feel like it's enough already. You have made the point, especially to some of the conservatives in your caucus, that you tried this road, it didn't work. It's time to reopen the government.

And I'm sure you're hearing like we are from your Republican friends in the Senate that they're done with this. They really want to move on.

LANKFORD: True.

COOPER: Congressman?

LANKFORD: The one thing I would change in that, it wasn't just the poll numbers that have come out today. And there's going to be poll numbers. From the very first day, there were poll number issues. No one wanted to get to this point on it.

The issue really was though two weeks ago we put out we wanted to meet face-to-face. It took us two weeks to finally meet face-to-face with the president. We said we'd meet face-to-face with the Senate or with the president, either one. For two weeks, they said no. Today, we start making progress when we actually start meeting face-to-face.

TOOBIN: Congressman, Jeff Toobin here. I know you made an observation. You just said you want to reopen the government. Here's an idea. Why don't you reopen the government?

(LAUGHTER)

LANKFORD: Right.

TOOBIN: Why is that funny? Why don't you just pass a continuing resolution? You could do it tonight and then you could continue negotiating. If you want to reopen the government, reopen the government.

LANKFORD: Well, we would be glad to do that, Jeffrey. You know, you have watched through this. You have watched through a ton of negotiations over the course of the years.

We're trying to work through the process to say we're dealing with multiple things here. We're dealing with the debt when you start approaching this. We are in the same spot that we have been at the entire past three years that we have been in this spot to be able to negotiate it.

We have to find ways to be able to stop doing debt ceiling increases, and that means looking at our long-term environment spending that you have been so sharp on for so long and to say we have got to find a way to start chipping away at all the obligations we have as a nation that we can't keep up with.

(CROSSTALK)

LANKFORD: We're dealing with a lot of things in the Affordable Care Act.

TOOBIN: So, chipping away at entitlements, the Affordable Care Act. The government is going to stay closed, the government of the United States is going to stay closed while you deal with all those issues?

LANKFORD: No, not necessarily.

There are simple ways to be able to get to this. The first goal for us was actually be able to sit down and find negotiations. I think what you're going to find, as we walk through this, we have had a rational position all along. No one would talk to us on it.

As we walk through and try to finally get to negotiations tonight and they're ongoing, people are going to find out we're very reasonable on this. We just want to be able to be in the middle of the conversation to say let's all admit there are real problems with the Affordable Care Act. Some folks will say, yes, there are problems, but we don't want to deal with it.

We're saying, we have to deal with it. People are paying higher fees. People are going to be quite surprised when they finally do get through the Web site on it. There are lots of issues with small business owners. Let me give you one example. In my district, there's a husband and wife that own three franchises. The franchises all have extremely small profit margins, so they own all three of them together to be able to hobble through a living on this. They are right now looking at divorcing as a couple because if they keep -- they're still married and they have all three of those franchises.

They will fall into the 50 or more limit and then suddenly they can't keep up. Their profit margin is not large enough to be able to keep their business. So the solution for them is to legally divorce and so that one person can own two of them, the other person can own one. They can still maintain and still be able to live. That is a crazy thing to do for it and that is all because of the Affordable Care Act.

That kind of stuff is multiplied all around the country as people have to reshuffle their business, try to figure out what to do, change their insurance. We have to admit there are real problems that are happening out there. We can't just continue to ignore them.

NAVARRO: Congressman, one of the tragedies for me as a Republican of what is happening is this calamity that has happened in the last 10 days for our party and where we have gotten is that because we have been playing this out, there's been no attention paid to those issues that you just pointed out, those problems that there are with Obamacare.

So I think we are giving frankly the White House and President Obama a way out. We have been the distraction. We have taken all the air out of the room. And I think the smartest thing right now is to really figure out how to get to a solution.

I am glad to see the movement you guys are making. I hope you are responding and you are -- as the Senate is reaching out with some proposals that to me sound very creative, but just keep the lines open.

(CROSSTALK)

BELCHER: I just want to ask a simple question.

We had this debate about Obamacare and we had elections. And Senator Isakson is saying that elections -- we have had this debate and we lost it. But my question really is this. Is this a way to govern, Congressman? Is this a way for us to govern moving forward? If Democrats don't like something, we shut down the government that a Republican did? Republicans don't like something, they shut down the government to sort of rehash what was already debated?

Is this a way for democracy to behave, really?

LANKFORD: Well, this is a way that democracy has behaved for the last 40 years. Are you implying the eight different types that Tip O'Neill shut down the government or Ronald Reagan or the times that Newt Gingrich did to Bill Clinton or this time -- we act like this has never, ever happened before. This is not something we should ever want to have happen or occur, but it is obviously something that has happened over and over again. Our economy is continuing to thrive and people go forward with it. We want to try to avoid this at any point as we can go forward on it. But it's not like this is brand-new.

BELCHER: Well, I'm glad you think our economy is thriving. I'm sure the president will thank you for that support for his stimulus package.

But truth of the matter is, this is a little different, Congressman, because you have Republicans in your caucus threatening to take us over the fiscal cliff. This sort of extremism quite frankly I think you have to say it is new. When you look at the polling, it's new, because Republicans are hitting an all-time low in Gallup polling.

I think most Americans think this is a little different, Congressman.

COOPER: We have to take a break.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Go ahead.

LANKFORD: Well, I would say that's interesting for you to say on that since we just proposed dealing with the debt ceiling. We're the ones that proposed that before the deadline today. Again, we're not driving to drive us over the cliff. We're trying to resolve some real issues and say there are real problems. Let's deal with them.

COOPER: Congressman Lankford, I appreciate your being on, Dana Bash as well.

A lot more to talk about when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare, namely, the Web site that's almost unusable, healthcare.gov. We will discuss what's going wrong with it and is going right, and talk about what's going on with the architect of both Obamacare and Romneycare. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Hey. Welcome back.

More on our breaking news. Talks continuing between House Republicans and the White House. At stake, of course, raising the debt ceiling and reopening the government. This all started when Republicans tried to defund Obamacare. That didn't happen. However, the Web site healthcare.gov, it is kind of a mess. Since its launch on October 1, the site has been plagued by glitches, slow connection speeds, error messages.

It's been a frustrating experience, to say the least, for many who have tried to sign up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just frozen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Some sort of technical glitch and it just wasn't working.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have been trying to log on all day and have not got through.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It says we can call customer service, but I think we would probably just get a busy signal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They tested it. They told us they have been testing it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have gotten errors and roadblocks and some confusing requests to download software.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You would think that they would know that they have got the critics standing on their shoulder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Outside analysts have said poorly written code, out-of- date applications are a big part of the problem.

Back with Jeff Toobin, Cornell Belcher, and Ana Navarro.

I also want to bring in a bona fide expert on all this, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, architect of both Obamacare and Massachusetts' Romneycare. When asked by The Daily Beast what the difference was between the two, he replied -- and I quote -- "They're the same 'bleeping' bill."

I appreciate you joining us.

How bad is this? Because I don't get why this signature piece of legislation for this administration, an administration which had a much-vaunted online presence during the campaign, why it would have this many glitches more than a week out.

JONATHAN GRUBER, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: This is -- Anderson, this is a very complicated piece -- process, very complicated piece of software.

And the key point is not October 1. The key point is January 1. That's the point where people have to have health insurance. The administration could have said, look, we will put it online at the end of November so people can get health insurance. Instead, they said, look, let's put it on October 1. That gives us basically six to eight weeks to figure out the glitches, to get this set so that when people really need to get their health insurance for January 1, it's good to go.

COOPER: But they didn't put it out saying there's going to be a whole ton of glitches, but we will just put it out there anyway. Is it smart to put out a product which people are so frustrated with they can't use and then to tout how many people are trying to get on the site and not actually even come up with any numbers for how many people have actually been able to create accounts, which I just don't believe the government doesn't have those figures?

They just -- it's bad P.R. for them to release it, because my guess is not a lot of people have been able to actually sign up. Am I wrong?

GRUBER: Look, I'm sure they'd be much happier if it was going better. There's no doubt.

But the point is, you have got to put something like this online to figure out the glitches. You have got to take it through its paces to see where the problems are. In Massachusetts, we passed our law in October of 2006. By the end of 2006, we only had 18,000 people signed up. One year later, it was 160,000 people. It takes awhile to work these things out.

And the key thing for the administration is the pressure's not really on yet. The pressure comes on by the end of November, when people need to get signed up.

TOOBIN: The question I think a lot of people have is, is the problem the Web site or is the problem the underlying law? We all know that Web sites don't work that well. The worry, though, that a lot of people have is that it reflects some problem in the law. What do you think?

GRUBER: I don't see why this says anything about a problem in the law.

Once again, this law's been tried. We have run the -- a rare case in American democracy, we have run the experiment first. We did it in Massachusetts first. The Web site there is delightful. People can go and check it out at mahealthconnector.org. It's been working wonderfully for six years now.

This will work fine. It's just going to take time. We need to just keep calm, recognize that we're buying a product that you can't even get until January, so it doesn't really matter if you buy it now because you can't get it until January, and realize that, yes, there's going to be some glitches.

The last major government insurance program, Medicare Part D, which is a beloved program now, had huge glitches the first few months. People were calling for the program to be repealed. OK? These things just take time to get right. And when you're making a major change like this, it's nothing wrong with the law, just like there's nothing wrong with Medicare Part D. It's just technical barriers to getting it up and running.

NAVARRO: So, give me a timeline now. When is it that I can start calling glitches a debacle? When, in November? Is that what you're telling me?

GRUBER: I believe that if they do not have -- let's define what glitches mean.

I believe that if by the end of November most people cannot get on and get their insurance, that is a big problem. But not everyone has to be able to get on and get insurance. I think you had the Congressman on previously talking about an example of a problem.

Look, there's going to be problems with this law. There's problems with every law. The question is, are you going to highlight the few problems or on average is the system working? I think by the end of November on average the system has to be working.

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: You talked about the Massachusetts Web site working delightfully.

And I know that there are some of these exchanges that are being run by states, where the Web sites are being run by states. Is there a difference that you know of, of how those are working vis-a-vis how the federal government one is working?

GRUBER: Some are working better, some are working worse. Just it's basically there's a huge disparity in how they're working. Some states have said, look, we're just not quite ready to go on yet and haven't started yet. Others like Massachusetts is working very well.

So I think there's a big disparity. I think, once again, we have time to get this worked out. When you asked about sort of what's the key date, I think the key date is kind of, is it working for most people by the end of November? If it is, then that's great. But we can't hold to a standard that it has to work perfectly for everyone.

BELCHER: I think, quite frankly, this is a problem you want to have. We have so many people trying to get health care that we're having -- that they're crashing the site. This is a problem we want to have.

(CROSSTALK)

BELCHER: Let me take it back, because I stay on message. Appreciate what I do here, Ana.

The Salt Lake newspaper headline on one side, it said, fewer Utahans supporting Lee -- on the other side, it showed a headline of Utah family gets health care coverage for $123. And that's what the reality is, is people are signing up for this, and people who can't afford health care, people who have been one health care issue away from bankruptcy are now signing up and getting health care that's affordable.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Do you get the Salt Lake paper delivered to your house?

BELCHER: I read everything, Anderson.

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

NAVARRO: I read that article, too. And, yes, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have taken a huge hit for this. And it was warned to them that this would happen, that this would happen to the party. But they wanted to try it.

(CROSSTALK)

BELCHER: Ana, is Cruz a double agent?

(LAUGHTER)

NAVARRO: I think you are. You're wearing Ronald Reagan cufflinks today.

COOPER: We got to take a break.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Jonathan Gruber, appreciate you being on. Thank you.

Coming up, Christiane Amanpour has just spoken with Malala Yousafzai, the incredibly brave 16-year-old advocate for girls education in Pakistan, nearly died when she was shot in the head by the Taliban. People are saying Malala might win the Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow. Christiane Amanpour joins us on the table next.

A great view on the way to break, the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavik, Iceland.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Hey. Welcome back to the show.

An incredibly brave 16-year-old girl from Pakistan may soon become the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize will be announced tomorrow. We're talking about Malala Yousafzai.

She's a favorite to win. Malala became an activist as a child really speaking out for education after the Taliban banned girls from school. She nearly died for her cause last year when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head.

Our Christiane Amanpour spoke with her just this evening in a riveting conversation. Here's Malala talking about that day last year when she was riding home from school and the gunman got on the bus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALALA YOUSAFZAI, ACTIVIST: He asked, who is Malala? He did not give me time to answer his question.

And my friend told me -- my best friend, Muniba, that at that time, he just squeezed my hand, he just pushed it with force. And you do not say anything. And then in the next few second, he fired two bullets. One bullet hit me in the left-side of my forehead just above here. And it went down through my neck and into my shoulder.

And I think I was hit by only one bullet. And it also affected my eardrum, so now I have problem in listening as well. It also cut down my facial (INAUDIBLE) but, still, if I look at it, it's a miracle. My brain is healed. My spinal cord is safe. Everything is fine. I am alive. And I still can talk. I can smile. So I thank God for that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Incredible.

Christiane Amanpour is here, as well as Jeff Toobin, Ana Navarro.

Also joining us, Robin Quivers, co-host of "The Howard Stern Show" and author of a new book which we will talk about in just a little bit, which I'm very excited about, because it's all about healthy eating, which I have now become sort of obsessed with.

Anyway, what was she like, Christiane?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Amazing.

Really, that is an overused word. And I know people know so much about her because of her story and she's been on various interviews and she's promoting her book and this and that. But there was something completely magical about sitting with her and her father. She's so close to her father. This in itself is so unusual in that part of the world.

Her father spoke about how when a woman -- when a mother has a girl, it's a cause for a lot of grief and tears in Pakistan. When you have boys, everybody celebrates and you have parties and this and that. And yet he developed this incredible love for his daughter. And he's so progressive and such a free thinker. And that's what he taught her.

And he said he doesn't have a regret sort of pushed her and been behind her, because the government wasn't doing -- taking on the Taliban. The police weren't taking on the Taliban. The only person who was talking about the Taliban was Malala and her father.

And, honestly, it was just incredible. Can we just play another little bite? She talks about her cause. She said, they may have pierced my body with a bullet, but they have not taken away this cause and this mission.

COOPER: Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YOUSAFZAI: The thing is, they can kill me. They can only kill Malala. But it does not mean that they can kill my cause as well. My cause of education, my cause of peace and my cause of human rights, my cause of equality will still be surviving. They cannot kill my cause.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TOOBIN: Christiane, how is the cause doing in Pakistan these days, women's education?

AMANPOUR: The thing is, it's better, but it's not good. There are still tens of millions of young Pakistani kids out of school. Many of those, most of those are women.

The Taliban was there terrorizing the Swat Valley. And, listen, they have threatened to kill her again. They have threatened to finish her off.

COOPER: And this is actually an issue you work on, that you're very involved with.

ROBIN QUIVERS, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Absolutely.

I have been involved with the United Nations Girl Up campaign, which is about educating people here about the plight of women around the world and providing that support to girls to get an education. What the U.N. has discovered is that, in countries where women are not freely given an education, they have unstable governments and poor economies. And so it hurts the entire fabric of a nation not to educate its women.

COOPER: It's also interesting in so many countries, and we see this in Congo, as well, when groups go after women, it's a way of destroying the society.

AMANPOUR: Absolutely.

COOPER: When an insurgent group goes into a village, they target the women because that destroys the families. It destroys the village life. It destroys the people who are doing the hard work in many of these societies.

NAVARRO: So the Taliban outlaws schools for these girls. She begins anonymously -- Malala begins anonymously blogging for the BBC in 2009. She was 12 years old then. She's now 16. I wonder, has she had a childhood? Has she -- is she having an adolescence?

AMANPOUR: Do you know what? Not really. Although she is so wise. I say she's also a prodigy. I truly believe it. I've never spoken to a girl of that age or anybody of that age with that much aplomb, that much self-assuredness. And you might very well ask her has she been robbed of her childhood.

She says that "this was what I was meant to do. I was a young girl who knew that, if I didn't have education, I wouldn't have a life, much less a childhood." She told me about her friends who were the same age as her, and she talked to one of her best friends. She wouldn't say her exact name, but she told us on the stage tonight that she had talked to her friend, she had called her, and this friend had one child already and another one on the way.

NAVARRO: That's what I was going to say.

AMANPOUR: And she was 16.

GIVENS: None of these women are -- these girls are having a childhood. They're married off early. They have children in their teens as they are still children. They are just subjugated their entire lives and they are brutally treated.

COOPER: And under the Taliban, I mean, women not getting an education, not even allowed to go outside the home often, unless they were accompanied by a male relative.

AMANPOUR: That's right. That's right.

COOPER: And Malala talks about going into the marketplace.

AMANPOUR: That's right.

COOPER: Let's play that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YOUSAFZAI: Whenever I used to go to the market with her, she used to tell me, "Cover your face. See, that man is looking at you. That man is looking at you."

I said, "Mom, I'm also looking at them."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: OK. So you asked about her childhood. She's got a lot of humor. She's a teenage girl who also, you know, has feelings for boys as she just -- as she just made clear. And I asked her, you know, "What do you do when you're not, you know, being an education activist?"

She said, "Well, you know, I like Justin Bieber. I like Selena Gomez." You know, and she is also a young girl who's part of our world. And even though she has been shot and nearly killed, she is not a victim. She is not a victim. And she absolutely refuses to be silenced.

COOPER: She lives in London or England?

AMANPOUR: She was brought and saved, frankly, by coming from Pakistan to Birmingham. And that is where there's a specialized hospital that treated her. A lot of war wounded from Britain who had been in Afghanistan, et cetera.

And what happened was there was this fantastic English doctor who had gone to Pakistan for another mission at the time that Malala had been shot and was actually -- her life was being saved by Pakistani military surgeons. All well and good. Except that the after care at this hospital is not good. So having saved her life, then her vital signs were going down. The hygiene wasn't good. She could have died. And this doctor was asked to come and have a look at Malala. And she said -- and (UNINTELLIGIBLE) she said, you know, she could either survive brain damaged or, you know -- or not survive. Let's take her to Birmingham. In a split decision they decided to do it, and that saved her.

NAVARRO: In the first clip she talks about it being a miracle. You know, and when you talk about all these little things, all these incidents that just happen by coincidence but contributed to her saving her life and becoming the person she is now, the worldwide activist she is now.

Talk to me about her faith in God.

AMANPOUR: Oh, my goodness. She spoke about it a lot. She's not about to pound you over the head with Allah, as she says. But she believes that she was spared. And they are very religious people. We mustn't forget that. Even though they militate against the militants and the terrorists, as she calls the Taliban. They nonetheless are also very -- very pious, very religious. And she strongly believes that that is why she was spared.

She also believes that the attack and the fact she was spared means that she has something, a mission to complete.

And, you know, we've talked about her as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Officially, nobody knows who is actually a candidate. So it's kind of word of mouth. We don't know who the contenders really are. And she obviously would be the youngest ever. And I asked her about it. Let's play that. She doesn't think she's worthy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YOUSAFZAI: Anyone who has got a Nobel Peace Prize, they deserve it. But when I think of myself, I have a lot to do. So I think that it's really an early age. And I would feel proud when I would work for education, when I would have done something, when I would be feeling confident to tell people yes, I have done that school, I have done that teachers' training, sent that many children to school. And I'll be feeling proud. Then if I get the Nobel Peace Prize I'll be saying. yes, I deserve it somehow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUIVERS: Amazing young woman. Yes.

COOPER: Makes you feel good.

AMANPOUR: Actually she wants to be prime minister. Her hero is Benazir Bhutto, who was the first female prime minister of Pakistan and, as you know, was brutally murdered by the Taliban.

NAVARRO: Well, all I can tell you is I'm getting a packet of Kleenex. I will never...

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: Sunday night, 7 p.m.

COOPER: I was going to say, you can -- You can tune in for Christiane Amanpour interview with Malala, CNN special, "The Bravest Girl in the World," it's called. This Sunday, 7 p.m. Eastern here on CNN.

Up next, are Peyton Manning and LeBron James contributing to childhood obesity by hawking, well, basically junk food on TV? A new study urges professional athletes to start promoting healthy foods. We'll talk to the panel, particularly Robin Quivers, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back.

The sports superstars a lot of kids look up to these days are not just telling them to eat their Wheaties. In a new Yale study published in "The Journal of Pediatrics," researchers looked at endorsement contracts for 100 professional athletes and found that the food and drinks they're hawking are mostly junk.

Professional athletes like LeBron James, Peyton Manning, Serena Williams are doing commercials for everything from McDonald's to Papa John's to Oreos. And those commercials are being seen by more kids than adults.

We're back with Christiane Amanpour, Jeff Toobin, Ana Navarro, and Robin Quivers, co-host of "The Howard Stern Show" and author of the book, "The Vegucation of Robin: How Real Food Saved my Life."

You really believe that switching to a vegan saved your life.

QUIVERS: I don't just believe it; I know it. I know how I felt before I became a vegan. I was having chronic health problems, and I was looking down the road to chronic illness, and a really, really bad middle and older age. Because I couldn't walk. I couldn't exercise. I couldn't lose weight, and I had no vitality. I was drinking gallons of coffee to try to stay on the air in the morning. And my life had been reduced to just sleeping and working.

COOPER: How hard is making that transition? I've thought about it all the time. I love my Big Macs like once or twice a month. It's very hard for me. It's true; I do. I'll eat a chicken every day. How hard is it to actually...

QUIVERS: Is it a Chicken McNugget? Because...

COOPER: No. But I have to...

QUIVERS: It's a real chicken?

COOPER: But I have started -- I've started to drink vegetables because I hate actually eating them.

TOOBIN: That's something I always wondered about. Is there a nutritional difference between eating a raw vegetable or even a cooked vegetable and eating it in a drink form?

QUIVERS: Actually what happens when you eat it in a drink form is you can juice a lot more vegetables than you can eat. So it's called macro nutrition. You're actually extracting the nutrients out of the juice and a lot of -- you know, all of the vegetables that you use in that juice. So you're getting...

TOOBIN: So it's actually better to drink it than to eat it?

QUIVERS: It's not better. But in our day and age, when we've been starving ourselves by eating lots of junk that has no ne nutrition whatsoever, you need to really give your body a big dose of nutrition and enzymes and vitamins in order to start correcting all the things we've gone the wrong.

NAVARRO: Back to Anderson's question, how hard is it? You know, we've seen Bill Clinton. And he loved eating.

COOPER: But Bill Clinton -- he probably has a private chef or something. How hard is it...

QUIVERS: Absolutely. He was at McDonald's all the time. After he ran, which is crazy. You know, you're trying to do something healthy.

COOPER: Can you find food on the street that you can eat?

QUIVERS: Actually, that's why I started cooking. Because it's not necessarily easy in this day and age to find healthy food anywhere you go. I mean, in New York it's a different story. But sometimes out there in the hinterlands when I'm traveling, it's kind of hard to find something decent to eat.

TOOBIN: You know what/ I'm hardly a nutritional model. But I always find that you can usually find a banana somewhere. And it's hard to screw up a banana.

QUIVERS: Absolutely. But if you don't necessarily want fruit...

COOPER: Bananas have a lot of carbohydrates.

QUIVERS: They have a lot of sugar and for some of us, fruit isn't necessarily a good thing. Why aren't there green vegetables...

TOOBIN: Why are you harshing my mellow here? You know? I thought I was being such a good guy, eating a banana.

AMANPOUR: Robin?

QUIVERS: Yes.

AMANPOUR: Didn't this sort of armor save you when you actually got very ill with cancer?

QUIVERS: Absolutely. If I had gotten cancer in the condition I was in before I might not be sitting here talking to you.

NAVARRO: Well, let me ask you a really important question. What alcohol falls within the vegan category?

QUIVERS: Wine comes from grapes. Almost all alcohol is fermented from something that grows in the ground.

NAVARRO: And alcohol-based diet to be vegan.

COOPER: I want to bring in Dr. Drew Pinsky of HLN's "DR. DREW ON CALL." Dr. Drew, what do you think about this? I mean, you see this study? What do you make of it?

DR. DREW PINSKY, HLN ANCHOR: First of all, thanks for bringing -- just the word "alcohol," and automatically you drag me in. Thanks for that. A.

B, doesn't Robin look fantastic?

COOPER: Yes.

PINSKY: So great to see her back at work. And Robin, thank you so much for the lovely e-mail today.

QUIVERS: My pleasure.

PINSKY: I promise I'll respond to you. I was deeply moved by that. But it's hard to argue with what you say. There are cardiologists that will tell you that heart disease is a dietary disease. That it's the western diet that may cause this thing.

But the fact, is you mentioned alcohol. And the reality is, if you want to look at carcinogens, alcohol and tobacco are still the major contributors to really serious health problems. So if you are going to be vegan, you might want to limit that alcohol, too.

QUIVERS: I don't drink that much. That was her question.

COOPER: But also for some people, I mean, I have a family -- positive family history for heart disease. My dad died at 50 of heart disease. I've been told by my doctor that you can change your diet. You can try to radically change it, but at a certain point you have to take medication. You have to take statins.

PINSKY: Yes. At a certain point you do.

COOPER: Diet alone is not going to do it for people with a -- with a real family history.

QUIVERS: I would beg to differ with that. Because nobody is telling you how to eat to avoid those kind of conditions. You're talking about eating the standard American diet and then yes, you will have to take statins and other drugs at a certain point. COOPER: Right.

PINSKY: Let's agree with this one point. You can get that LDL down. Let's say -- let's say, Robin, we really followed your diet exactly to the letter, and your LDL was still 100 to 120. Then you're somebody with a gene that just will not move with diet alone.

QUIVERS: Absolutely. AND I would like to look at that. But I wouldn't automatically say you're always going to have to take medication.

PINSKY: Agreed. Agreed.

COOPER: But it is tough for people to stick to -- for me, I would find it hard, as somebody who doesn't really like vegetables, would find it hard to stick to a vegan diet, I think.

QUIVERS: I never ate vegetables before I became a vegan.

COOPER: Really?

QUIVERS: It was a because of the education I got and the results I got that I got interested. If you felt as bad as I did when I started.

COOPER: Did you teach yourself? Did you get a nutritionist?

QUIVERS: I got a nutritionist, and I also taught myself how to cook at the very beginning, because I couldn't get...

NAVARRO: How many diets had you done beforehand?

QUIVERS: Every one.

NAVARRO: The cabbage soup one?

QUIVERS: Oh, yes.

NAVARRO: Did you do the pineapple one?

QUIVERS: I never did the pineapple one, but I did the one, fruit in the morning and then you eat the rest of the day. I did them all.

AMANPOUR: She, you know, hit the nail on the head in terms of if you can, and I know many families cannot afford to do so. But if you can...

PINSKY: That's the point.

AMANPOUR: Yes, that is the point, Doctor.

PINSKY: Very expensive. It's expensive and requires time and attention and education.

AMANPOUR: It's true. And I was very conscious with my son. Luckily, we were able to have home cooked food every night, and he had vegetables and all the right stuff. And do you know what? He was not ill. My boy was not ill at all.

QUIVERS: Absolutely.

TOOBIN: This gets back to this study of the pro athletes. The food that they are advertising, I guess food belongs in quotation marks, is -- is basically pretty cheap.

COOPER: It's also high energy -- it's energy-dense, nutrient poor. Ninety-three point four percent of the 46 advertised beverages had 100 percent of calories from added sugar.

NAVARRO: But you know -- on my (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I spoke to, first of all let's get LeBron James out of there because I'm from Miami. No hating on LeBron while I'm on this panel. But...

QUIVERS: Don't just single out athletes, either. We have music stars, everybody who's big in pop culture gets these endorsements. And they sell this stuff to kids.

NAVARRO: When I -- on my way over here, knowing we were going to talk about this, I called Isaiah Thomas, the basketball star, who's a very good friend of mine. And he talked about the kind of discipline he had to have during the 13 years that he was playing. He said, "Look for 13 years I ate chicken. I ate fish. Thank God my wife figured out how to make it 300 different ways, but I would splurge."

And his -- his emphasis was everything in moderation. And you know what...

COOPER: If you're exercising around the clock like these athletes are, you're going to be able to burn it off.

QUIVERS: They have a different capacity than we do.

NAVARRO: They need a different level. Can an athlete be a vegan and still play?

QUIVERS: John Sally is a vegan.

COOPER: Dr. Drew, go ahead.

COOPER: But there's a little bit of a political question here, too, also. My physician self, I'm completely upset by the way this stuff is marketed to young people.

But on the other hand, how much of a nanny -- how much nannying do we need to do here? Should we hold the businesses accountable? Do we have to legislate these things? That really concerns me. I mean, I say I applaud Robin: go out and fight this. Anderson, let's go talk about this publicly. But to say they have no right to do this, I have a problem.

QUIVERS: We should be dealing with not letting our nutrition education come from advertisers and marketers. Because that's what's happening now.

PINSKY: Back to the home again. It's back to our home.

AMANPOUR: Yes, Michelle Obama, I think, has done an enormous service. Because her Let's Move, the whole idea of healthy eating, no matter what they say politically, it actually has had a major impact. And I think the figures show -- Dr. Drew, correct me if I'm wrong -- I think the figures show that obesity is going down in this country.

TOOBIN: Robin, I think you're letting the athletes off the hook a little bit too much here. You know, Eli Manning makes plenty of money for the New York Giants, even though they stink this year. And including tonight. He does ads for Dunkin Donuts.

QUIVERS: Sure.

TOOBIN: He doesn't have to do ads for Dunkin Donuts. I'm not saying that...

QUIVERS: Nobody who grows apples is going to pay Eli Manning $10 million to sell apples. The people who need those athletes to sell their junk are the people who are selling something you don't need. That's how it works.

TOOBIN: It doesn't have to work that way.

NAVARRO: You've just gotten way too used to this.

COOPER: Anything about doughnuts, it's just...

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: I think the pumpkin flavors are coming out this month.

COOPER: Dr. Drew, thanks very much for joining us.

Up next, stories that got our attention you might not have heard about. I'll ask everyone "What's Your Story?" Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Hey, welcome back. Time for "What's Your Story" where I ask the panelists for a story that caught their eye today. Robin what's your story?

QUIVERS: Well, Miley Cyrus said the other day that she didn't think that people over 40 had sex. Yes. And the other day on "The Talk" Susanne Somers who is what, 66?

COOPER: Right.

QUIVERS: Said that she and her husband are having sex twice a day.

COOPER: And he's like 77.

QUIVERS: Right. They've been married something like 32 years.

AMANPOUR: Do you believe it?

QUIVERS: No, I didn't believe it. But then I read further. And she said...

NAVARRO: That depends on your definition of sex.

QUIVERS: But she said they're both on hormones.

COOPER: Not only a little bit on hormones. Do you remember when she was on Oprah? She takes like 80 pills a day. I mean, the amount of supplements.

(CROSSTALK)

QUIVERS: You have to take a lot of pills.

COOPER: A lot of pills. Christiane, what's your story?

I know that was probably your story. She probably took it.

AMANPOUR: She did. Then I have to go to Libya on my story. It's kind of sad, actually. The prime minister of Libya was kidnapped, dragged from his place of residence under cover of darkness by a militia who apparently was associated with some element of the government, the interior minister. And then he was let go. And the point of this, of course, is that 2 1/2 years later there's still immense anarchy really and no central control and central security. And it's very difficult in Libya.

COOPER: If a prime minister can be pulled out of his home or her home or wherever by a militia is insane.

AMANPOUR: It's insane.

COOPER: Jeff?

TOOBIN: I have a happy story.

AMANPOUR: Good.

TOOBIN: Alice Munro who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Canadian short story writer who, I'm very pleased to say, is a frequent contributor of "The New Yorker" and just such a wonderful person and a wonderful writer. That's often a controversial prize. Not this year. I think everyone's happy about it.

NAVARRO: Fantastic. Wonderful.

COOPER: Ana, what's your story?

NAVARRO: This has been a good week for women. I think we've gotten some, you know, pioneering actions happened this week that we haven't paid attention to, because we've been so into the shutdown. But the first woman got nominated for the Fed.

QUIVERS: Yes. NAVARRO: I think that's absolutely -- 100-year history. I may disagree with her politically but she's qualified and she's a woman.

TOOBIN: Can you say her name?

NAVARRO: Janet Yellen. Not Jessica Yellin. Janet Yellen.

And I want to tell you the name of this woman: Colonel Dawn Dunlap, who I saw an article about today. She was the first female Air Force fighter pilot in Europe, first F-22 pilot. And God willing, she will -- these are her words -- "I will be the first female fighter pilot general officer in the Air Force." So Chuck Hagel, if you're watching?

AMANPOUR: I think more women in all these areas make a fairer, better, more productive higher GDP.

COOPER: Robin, thank you so much for being with us.

Thanks for our panel. Thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see you tomorrow. "SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN WITH JAKE TAPPER" is next.