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Congress Piles on NFL; Police Break Up Party with Palins; James Foley's Mother Speaks Out.

Aired September 12, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

ROBYN CURNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And even during some of the most intense testimony, graphic visual images of her daughter's dead body, a lot of, you know, very biological details about the state of her body -- her mother constantly sat still, looked ahead stony-faced. She was a very brave woman and I -- you know, it will be interesting to see if she does come out and make a statement. But so far, no.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I mean are South Africans surprised by the verdict?

CURNOW: You know, I think it's -- I don't think people are surprised in the sense that it's shocking or that there is a sense that there's been injustice. There's been a lot of debate, like everywhere in the world, you know, a lot of armchair legal experts, a lot of dinner party conversations, a lot of chat on television.

I think a lot of people took a real personal interest in this. They felt personally betrayed by Oscar Pistorius. He was seen as such a South African hero. But I think there was also this extraordinary sense of understanding the justice system here and because it has been on television and because the judge has very, very slowly and methodically explained her thought process. People might disagree with the judgment, they might have wanted harsher. On the other hand they understand and they respect the decision of the judge. So there's not a sense that this has been a travesty or anything, no.

COSTELLO: All right. Robert Curnow reporting live from South Africa. Thanks so much.

Be sure to watch the "CNN Spotlight" on the Oscar Pistorius trial 10:00 p.m. Eastern.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: If NFL commissioner Roger Goodell thinks scrutiny from fans, players and the general public was tough, now he has to deal with Congress. Lawmakers demanding answers on the Ray Rice scandal and the league's approach to off-field problems. I know, Congress taking action?

Might be a little hard to believe since this is the very same Congress that could soon earn the dubious distinction as the least-productive ever after failing to make deals on key issues like immigration, annual spending bills and tax reform. It's also the same congress that 65 percent of Americans say is the worst in their lifetime. Still, Washington has the NFL in its sights. In the past few days, some on Capitol Hill are calling for hearings while 16 female senators sent a letter to Roger Goodell urging him to institute a zero- tolerance policy on domestic violence. That action did not go unnoticed by Seth Meyers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SETH MEYERS, TALK SHOW HOST: Congress sent a letter to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell Wednesday demanding the highest level of transparency concerning the league's handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence incident. That's right, Congress sent him a letter. They would have sent a video but they wanted Goodell to see it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Ana Navarro is CNN political commentator and Republican strategist, Ross Douthat is a CNN political commentator and op-ed columnist for the "New York Times". Welcome to both of you.

ROSS DOUTHAT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: Good morning.

So Ana, you're a Republican strategist. At what point do lawmakers sit back and say "You know what -- we've got to get involved in this issue"?

NAVARRO: I think they get involved if and only if the NFL does not do its job and the owners do not do its job investigating themselves and really instituting some measures to address the issue. I am very much in favor of the 16 female senators having sent that letter because, frankly, they represent constituents. They represent fans. They represent women in each of their individual states and I think they're speaking on behalf of those women and they are demanding some scrutiny.

You know, this brings me back to when we had those hearings in Congress over Major League Baseball and doping. And I think that the one benefit from those hearings was the public scrutiny, the public attention. But I think also a lot of people just roll their eyes at the thought of Congress getting involved in anything right now with everything going on and wonder what can they do that will be helpful.

COSTELLO: It's funny you should say that, Ana -- it's funny you should say that because I've been asking my Facebook friends and my Twitter followers if they think Congress should get involved and, Ross, I would say 98 percent of them said no.

DOUTHAT: Well, that's the thing.

(CROSSTALK)

DOUTHAT: No matter how bad things are in the NFL right now, the NFL is still a lot more popular than Congress and that's not likely to change. But, look, I think Ana's last two points are both absolutely right. I think in the abstract the idea of congressional oversight during major scandals in professional sports isn't a terrible thing. Professional sports are a big part of American culture, a big part of the American economy. I think you can make a case indeed that what Congress did with baseball and steroids played a role in cleaning up the game and at the very least it gave us those indelible images of Rafael Palmero denying he used steroids three months before he was caught using steroids.

The issue is right now at this moment in American political history is this really something Congress needs to be taking up when it can't even muster the energy to vote on the President's foreign policy and the expansion of a war in the Middle East? And I think a way you're getting a preview right now of sort of what -- you know, what the collapse of American public institutions could look like.

You'll just have the President running foreign policy, maybe running immigration policy unilaterally and Congress will handle sports and pop culture and we'll sort of go on from there. And it's probably not how the constitutional system is supposed to work.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. And, Ana, Congress is really good at holding hearings about their pet problems in the country, right? But they're not so good at voting on actual things that affect people's lives.

NAVARRO: Well, thank God, Carol. I mean, the last thing you need is Congress being the ones that regulate or do legislation about the NFL. Frankly, I think the onus here should be on the fans and the people who pay tickets and watch games. This is a for-profit organization. They make a lot of money and the bottom line is very important so if fans out there want to see changes they are the ones that have to push for it.

COSTELLO: And they're speaking with a loud voice right at the moment.

NAVARRO: They are.

COSTELLO: And I'm happy about that. Ana Navarro, Ross Douthat -- thanks so much.

DOUTHAT: Thanks Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM: Welcome back to the headlines Sarah Palin and how her family's Saturday night ends with a visit from police. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Sarah Palin -- we haven't heard much from her lately but she's making her way back into the headlines, or at least her family is after reports of a fight breaking out at a party the Palins were attending. In fact, one witness tells ABC News it was an all-out brawl. So cue the "Saturday Night Live" skits.

Mark Preston, CNN politics executive editor -- so what happened? MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Reality TV, right? I

mean we talk about things being real. Well, apparently there was some real fighting going on up in Anchorage this past Saturday. Carol, let's just tell you facts that we know at this point. There was a party. Multiple people were involved in a fight. The Anchorage Police Department tells us that alcohol was involved. They tell us that members of the Palin family were in attendance. They don't actually say that they were involved in the fight. There have been some reports out of Alaska, however, that some of the Palin family members were involved. We have reached out to the Palin spokespeople to try to find out what they say as well as trying to find out independently if they were involved in the fight.

But it just goes to show you, Carol, that you just can't get away from the news. Sarah Palin -- somebody who embraces the news, you know, not only does she do a lot on the campaign trail for conservatives but she does have a show on the Sportsmans Channel that is going to be renewed for next year. She has her own digital channel and now she's in the news for a melee that has taken place up in Anchorage.

COSTELLO: So she wasn't at the party, right?

PRESTON: It's unclear. There were reports that, in fact, she was at the party, Carol, but the Anchorage Police Department are very vague in the statement that they provided to CNN. They have said, in fact, there were Palin family members in attendance. But for a statement from the police department to say that there was a fight, no charges have been filed but they're investigating -- the local prosecutor is investigating. And they said alcohol was involved so you can imagine it was probably pretty ugly.

COSTELLO: Yes. Mark Preston, thanks so much. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The mother of American journalist James Foley says she's embarrassed and appalled by how the U.S. government dealt with her son's kidnapping by ISIS. You remember James Foley was killed by ISIS fighters three weeks ago. His mother Diane Foley says the government was not there for her family. She had to brief the FBI on her son's case and her family was threatened with prosecution if they paid any ransom money. Diane Foley sat down with Anderson Cooper.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DIANE FOLEY, MOTHER OF JAMES FOLEY: I really feel that our country let Jim down and --

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: In what way?

FOLEY: Well, Anderson, we met wonderful people within our government, good people who care, who wanted to help. But the reality of the bureaucracy and really was such that we were not helped. We really weren't.

COOPER: You didn't feel like they were there for you? That they were really -- that the U.S. government tried to help.

FOLEY: Not at all. Not at all. And yet we don't blame -- I don't want to blame people because that's not going to help.

COOPER: So you didn't -- did you feel that your family, that Jim was a priority for the government?

FOLEY: No, we really didn't.

COOPER: And you saw that in what? In the resources that they had you interact with, the people they had you interact with? How do you get that sense?

FOLEY: Anderson, as an American I was embarrassed and appalled. I think our efforts to get Jim freed were an annoyance, you know. And --

COSTELLO: An annoyance to the government?

FOLEY: Yes. Jim would have been saddened. Jim believed until the end that his country would come to their aid. We were, you know, asked to not go to the media, to just trust that it would be taken care of. We were told we could not raise ransom -- that it was illegal, we might be prosecuted.

COOPER: You were told you would actually be prosecuted if you raised ransom?

FOLEY: Yes, that was a real possibility -- told that many times. We were told that our government would not exchange prisoners, would not do a military action. So we were just told to trust that he would be freed somehow, miraculously. And he wasn't, was he? You know.

So we Americans failed him. It's nobody's fault. It's just the fault of a lack of discussion around it and understanding of the problem.

COOPER: Were you surprised when you were told that you could be prosecuted if you tried to raise money for your son?

FOLEY: I was horrified. I was horrified. Because we had had legal counsel that had assured us that no family of a captive American had been prosecuted for trying to get their child freed.

COOPER: There was a rescue effort apparently made.

FOLEY: Yes. Late. Very late. Yes.

COOPER: You feel it should have been sooner?

FOLEY: We feel that the location -- their location was known for more than a year.

COOPER: It was.

FOLEY: Yes. They had been moved a couple of times, that's true, when there was a movement of ISIS from Aleppo to Raqqa -- there were several moves in that transition. But there was also two times when they were at a location that we were aware of for months.

COOPER: Did you have that intelligence yourself? Did you know that what was happening to him where he was?

FOLEY: Anderson, to be honest, that part was rather frightening. We tended to know everything before the FBI or anyone else.

COOPER: How so?

FOLEY: Because we did everything we could. I went to Europe several times to interview the European freed hostages just so I could find out how Jim was, what's going on, where are they, what are the chances of this or that? It was a frightening thing. And the FBI was -- everyone was kind and supportive but the FBI used us for information.

COOPER: Really? They came to you for information?

FOLEY: Absolutely. Absolutely.

COOPER: About his location?

FOLEY: Oh, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The National Security Council released a statement saying it's also a matter of long-standing policy that the United States does not grant concessions to hostage takers. Doing so would only put more Americans at risk of being taken captive. That's what we convey publicly and what we convey privately.

For more about James Foley's legacy foundation visit JamesFoleyfund.org.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The Apple Watch drew plenty of praise and plenty of Internet jokes. Here's Jeanne Moos.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Do you know what time it is? It's time to bash the Apple watch.

Sure, we're all salivating to have one, never has a watch looked so sensual. But that has not stopped people from piling on. BuzzFeed snickered that everyone made the exact same joke, strapping apples on wrists, others turned apples into faces, even carved a watch out of an apple.

And those who were not strapping on apples were taping on iPhones. Ricky Gervais tweeted that he just saved himself 350 quid.

Comedy Central joked that the Apple watch finally allows users to ruin two devices when they reach into the toilet to retrieve their iPhone.

Although the Apple watch won't enable you to communicate with your dog -- some of what it can do was perfect for parody.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can share your heartbeat for some reason.

MOOS: Ellen DeGeneres tweeted, "So excited for the Apple watch, for centuries we've checked the time by looking at our phones, having it on your wrists -- genius".

JIMMY KIMMEL, TALK SHOW HOST: I'm glad Apple came out with a watch. I'm so tired of having to look all the way down to my hand. Now I can just look at my wrist and everything is right there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can even set the date just like a regular watch. It's got maps on it -- kind of like the phone you already have.

MOOS: It was parodied in various languages.

Even celebrities joined in the mockery with Mia Farrow tweeting, "But I already have a watch."

One comedy Web site imagine someone asking, "Hey, bro, you got the time?" "Yes, it's hang on, just a sec. No, not the spinning pinwheel."

(on camera): Maybe it will be a dud, or maybe some day we'll be making fun of all the people who made fun of the Apple watch.

(voice-over): Fashion designer Chris Benz tweeted, "iWatch is the new segway. Ouch." Some even mocked the way the folks at Apple celebrated the introduction.

Revolutionary technology -- only time will tell. But we will tell it on an Apple watch.

STEPHEN COLBERT, TALK SHOW HOST: What does it do?

MOOS: Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Oh, Happy Friday to you.

Thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" starts now.