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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Canadian Recruits for ISIS on Video; GOP: Ex-Labor Secretary Illegally Fundraised; CDC Forced to Answer for Security Lapses; Time Warner Turning Down Murdoch Offer; The Prince of Parody Makes a Comeback

Aired July 16, 2014 - 16:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to THE LEAD. In the Buried Lead, his likes included fishing and hockey and eventually waging Jihad. His real name is Andre Pullen. He was a Canadian who travelled to Syria in 2012 to fight on the side of ISIS terrorists. It's believed that Pullen was killed in fighting last year, but a video of him just released lives on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was like any other regular Canadian. I watched hockey and went to the cottage in the summertime and liked to fish. I was a regular person and, you know, mujahidin are regular people, too.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: He puts his camouflage pants on one leg at a time, just like you. The point of releasing the tape now is to serve as a recruiting tool. Pullen uses it to call for others in the west to join the ISIS cause.

When you fundraise for a candidate it's your right. When the secretary of labor does it it's quite possibly illegal. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee who are demanding to know whether the White House illegally used taxpayer money for political purposes released this audiotape today, which they claim reveals Hilda Solis asking a subordinate to contribute money and recruit others for a fundraiser for a pro-Obama group while she was still secretary of labor in 2012.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILDA SOLIS (via telephone): Hi. This is Hilda Solis calling. Just calling you off-the-record here. I wanted to ask you if you could help us get folks organized to come to a fundraiser that we're doing for Organizing for America for Obama campaign. I wanted to ask you if you might help contribute or get other folks to help out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Just calling off the record. So what was Solis -- is what Solis did actually illegal? Well, that was never actually officially determined because the Office of Special Counsel, which was looking into her activities in that call, they effectively dropped the case when Solis suddenly resigned in January 13.

Now her office has not responded to CNN's request for comment. The White House press secretary would only say this is part of an ongoing investigation. Republicans released this tape today after a current top White House adviser, David Seamus, stiff armed their subpoena to testify at their hearing. He was claiming immunity.

Are you convinced that there has to be life somewhere else out there in the universe and that they probably have seven Starbucks out there? Well, you are in good company. NASA scientists say they're very close, possibly within 20 years away from finding earth's twin and maybe signs of life in another world.

The search for planets are just the right size and distance away from a star that can support life thanks to the work of the Kepler space telescope, which back in April spotted the closest thing yet to another earth. Of course, it's 500 light years away which in terms of miles is a number that I can't even pronounce.

Coming up, here's fuel for your post-apocalyptic nightmares courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control. We are talking anthrax exposures, mishandled bird flu samples. What's going on? That's what Congress wants to find out.

The man that looms over a news network makes a bid that owns CNN. How do you think that worked out?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. The National Lead now, germs in ziplock bags, Anthrax in unlocked refrigerators. Now that some labs at the CDC are being accused as operating with the same rules as your employee break rooms, Congress wants answers. They're calling the director of the CDC on the carpet today in Washington, D.C.

And our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta is following all of this for us. Sanjay, these are terrifying lapses at least to a layman like myself. Did he give any answers remotely satisfying?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I don't think so, Jake, and to be fair, I don't think anything that he would have said could be satisfying and this is pretty frightening stuff and the CDC is supposed to be the best in the world. He focused on this idea that there was a lax culture with regard to safety because the scientists have been around for so long and they're just more comfortable with the viruses and become more careless with it. And I'll tell you, Jake, that is not what the folks wanted to hear on the Hill. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REPRESENTATIVE TIM MURPHY (R), PENNSYLVANIA: I have to think what in heaven's name would go through the minds of scientists thinking a zip lock bag is enough to protect someone from anthrax.

DIRECTOR TOM FRIEDEN, CDC DIRECTOR: Once the laboratory has said he has killed anthrax it was handled by the staff in those lower containment laboratories as if it were not infectious. Our subsequent studies suggest that it is likely that it was not, but the core error there was the failure to --

MURPHY: Dr. Frieden, this is like saying I didn't know the gun was loaded, but somebody got shot, but you should always assume it is.

GUPTA (voice-over): The CDC director was grilled by a congressional committee on the mishandling of the deadly pathogen as well as some other recent safety lapses including the improper danger of the strain of bird flu as the smallpox vials on the NIH campus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the more disturbing findings of the CDC's own report.

GUPTA: Question after question asking how could this happen at the CDC? The gold standard of biosafety.

FRIEDEN: If you work with something even if it's a deadly microbe, day after day and year after year you get a level of familiarity that may lead to doing things that you shouldn't do.

GUPTA: No one has been hurt by these lapses, but Dr. Frieden says that is no excuse.

FRIEDEN: The fact that it appears no one was harmed and that there were no releases does not excuse what happened. What happened was completely unacceptable. It should never have happened.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: It was a narrow miss, Jake. There were some potentially really problematic things that occurred, two labs have been shut down. They reassigned personnel and set up an external advisory committee and that will cause a huge culture change in the CDC -- Jake.

TAPPER: It's terrifying. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you. Appreciate it.

GUPTA: You bet. Thank you.

TAPPER: Coming up, he's not the sort of guy who takes no for an answer and that's what Fox News owner and media mogul, Rupert Murdoch got when he offered to buy CNN's parent company, but will he give up that easily?

Plus, if you've had enough of this -- I have the latest for you, the latest from parody, singer, songwriter, Weird Al. It's called "Tacky" and Weird Al is here to talk about it in the Pop Culture Lead coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Now it's time for the Money Lead. Rupert Murdoch's company 21st Century Fox made a big offer to buy CNN's parent company, Time Warner for $80 billion. So what was Time Warner's response?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, no, no.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: That's from "Family Guy," of course, which was produced by 20th Century Fox, one of Murdoch's many American TV and film assets that could have been combined with Time Warner TV and movie brands such Warner Brothers and HBO, CNN would have been sold off separately to prevent a monopoly because of Fox News, but in any case, how would a sale like this potentially change the media business?

Let's bring in CNN senior media correspondent, Brian Stelter, host of "RELIABLE SOURCES."

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Still laughing at that "Family Guy" clip.

TAPPER: So Brian, did anyone see this offer coming and why did Time Warner say no?

STELTER: Rumor started up a few weeks ago that Rupert Murdoch is back in deal making mode. Two years ago, he was trying to recover from a phone hacking scandal and he had to split his company into two different companies and now he's got his swagger back and back in deal making mode and there were rumors that maybe he had his eye on Time Warner.

And he had actually made this proposal, this bid for the company and on July 8th, the Time Warner board met and decided pretty clearly, no, thanks, but no thanks. We are not interested at this time. Anything can happen down the road, but at this moment there are no active negotiations and discussions.

TAPPER: Do we know why they said no?

STELTER: You get this corporate boilerplate if I may call it that talks about how they believe their long-term plan for the company is much better for shareholders of time warner than any bid from fox would be. That's the basic gist of the language that came out this morning and they list a lot of reasons for that.

Time Warner has been trying to grow its main three divisions, HBO, Turner Broadcasting and Warner Brothers. It has a beautiful plan for the future of all three of those divisions and is better off than a standalone company. Media analysts say Murdoch is not going to be content to go away quietly. He's the kind of guy that will come back with another bid and another bid and we'll see something more in the weeks or months to come.

TAPPER: If this deal had gone through, a lot of ifs embedded in that.

STELTER: Sure.

TAPPER: If it had gone through, how would it have shaped media, particularly it of it?

STELTER: What we would see is media being consolidated into even fewer hands. Right now there are four or five big, big media companies that own most of the TV you see and most of the films you'll see and you mentioned family guy is one example. "Modern Family" is a show that people may not realize is produced by Fox's studio. "Homeland" that appears on another show, but is produced by warner brothers.

And you can see synergies in the sports area and Rupert Murdoch is really trying to building a rivalry to ESPN. And he would love to have baseball and basketball, et cetera. One area you would not see synergy is between CNN and Fox News. There's no way CNN would stay a part of time warner if this deal would have happened or if it would have happened with some other buyer.

It's not just Murdoch. There's speculation from media analysts and Wall Street analysts that maybe other companies will now take a look at Time Warner because they believe it's in play.

TAPPER: I salute our new insect overlords.

STELTER: Whoever they are.

TAPPER: You can watch Brian on "RELIABLE SOURCES," this Sunday, and every Sunday at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. Please watch it.

When we come back, he's done it again, people. Weird Al back with a new album, new soon-to-be hit album. He's here to talk about it coming.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Alfred Matthew Yankovic better known to you as Weird Al Yankovic has had his first song debuted on radio hour in 1976 when he was just a teenager. Well, he's grown to become a true cultural icon. He has, in the last few decades, dropped four gold records and earned three Grammy awards and sold 12 million albums. He's no longer just doing funny spoofs of Madonna and Michael Jackson or even Coolio.

Weird Al Yankovic is today, if I may say, being recognized for not just the joy he brings into our lives and not just his longevity, but his artistic growth. His new album mandatory funds features this diddy that approaches perfection. It's a grammatical masterpiece turning Robin Thicke's catchy pop hit "Blurred Lines" into a word smith's rant about the folks who don't speak English good.

Joining me now is the prince of parody, Weird Al Yankovic. Al, good to see you. Thank so much for coming in.

WEIRD AL YANKOVIC: My pleasure, good to see you, Jake.

TAPPER: Congratulations. I have to say, your new video and song "Word Crimes" is so well done. You're not just changing words in a song. You're creating an entirely new work. I know you're humble, but do you think this is a new level of parody for you? Do you think that you've grown significantly as an artist? Because I do.

YANKOVIC: Thank you. I appreciate that. I've taken a song that people had a problem with because it was slightly misogynistic and I made it into a song about grammar so it could ostensibly be part of a school curriculum.

TAPPER: But you really capture where a lot of language nerds including myself really -- things that really irk us, the people who mess up, irony and coincidence. It's masterful. It just posted on Tuesday and it has since at last count racked up north of 2 million views on YouTube. Do you think this might be your best work ever?

YANKOVIC: It might be and it makes me happy because it makes me think I'm not alone, and I'm not the only grammar nerd out there and there are a lot of people that share my pain.

TAPPER: The apostrophe "s" one is great. Your album runs about 12 tracks. When you put together these albums do you know which ones are going to be hits when you finished war crimes did you drop the mike and say that's it? That's going to be the hit on this album?

YANKOVIC: Well, you know, I love all of the songs on the album equally and that's one of the reasons I said there is no lead single because I don't know what people will respond to the most and that's why we're doing the eight videos in eight days and we're putting the strong stuff out there and letting people make their own decisions as to what the hits are.

TAPPER: You don't have a favorite or are they like children?

YANKOVIC: They are. That's part of the whole soviet totalitarian theme.

TAPPER: MTV is no longer the gatekeeper of the artists as you were when you burst out in the '80s like Madonna and Michael Jackson, and obviously MTV helped make you famous, but do you feel where it's just you going right to the audience, do you think you're freer to do more sophisticated songs?

YANKOVIC: I would think so. MTV doesn't stand for music television anymore and for my purposes, the internet is the new MTV, so I'm basically marketing toward the online audience. And it allows me to try things that I wouldn't try before because I was trying to go for the heavier rotation think and I was thinking what would the MTV executives like? What do I like? What do the fans like?

TAPPER: Were there sock songs over the years that you couldn't grab the rights on and you wish you would have grab one?

YANKOVIC: I can't always, and a lot of those songs wind up in the polka medley.

TAPPER: Well, Weird Al Yankovic, Al, it's great to see you. And continued success. This is a really, really fun album.

YANKOVIC: Well, thank you so much.

Good to see you, man.

TAPPER: This just in. President Obama will make a statement concerning Russia and Ukraine in just minutes.

That's it for THE LEAD.

Now, here is Wolf Blitzer live from Jerusalem.