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Obama's Buckles Down in Fight Against Ebola; Roots: Christine Roman's Journey to Denmark
Aired October 16, 2014 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: President Obama now buckling down in the fight against Ebola. He has nixed two days of fund-raising and campaigning to devote full attention to the situation in Dallas and beyond. The question is, what more can the president do? And with midterm elections approaching, will these efforts be enough to silence critics? Will they even matter in the elections?
Let's ask someone who knows the president well, his former press secretary and CNN senior political commentator Mr. Jay Carney.
Jay, good to see you. I hold this up for you. Do you see it?
JAY CARNEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I do, Chris.
CUOMO: "New York Daily News," "for God's sake, get a grip," It's just missing the "man" part of that borrowed quote. Not a good headline. Is it the truth? Is the administration off balance here, should have been in front, now behind?
CARNEY: Well, I think, Chris, whenever there's a crisis like you have now with Ebola, whenever you have a situation like ISIS in that region of the world, the problem with Ukraine and you have these cascading problems all at once, which are very hard to control individually let alone collectively, you get a White House and an administration that appears to be, you know, all-out and sometimes -- under a lot of strain.
But you don't get to choose the crisis that you have to deal with when you're president. All of these things land on your doorstep. And I, you know, I think that, in the end, this is not a political issue. It's an issue that has to be handled. That's why the president has canceled travel.
CUOMO: Right.
CARNEY: That's why he's focused now that we have cases in the United States on taking more direct action to protect the U.S., to make sure that this crisis is one that is principally overseas and not a U.S. crisis. But there's no question that in this environment, you know, it all washes back on the White House and that puts him in a bad light.
CUOMO: Right, but it's not just happenstance. I mean if you look at this situation, who -- can you say who is running things right now? Every time you have a big problem, you have somebody running it.
CARNEY: Well -- sure.
CUOMO: You know, that you are -
CARNEY: Well, that's - but, Chris, I think -
CUOMO: Your successor yesterday, Earnest -
CARNEY: I think --- with all -
CUOMO: But, you know, just for context, just for context, Jay.
CARNEY: Sure.
CUOMO: You know, Josh Earnest was saying - he was referring to Lisa Monaco when he was saying, you know, the homeland, U.S. Homeland Security adviser to the president, that she's kind of is charge of these coordinating things. Well, if you're going to go the Homeland Security root, why isn't it Jeh Johnson? Why wasn't Frieden really put out there in front? You know, why don't you show that there's somebody in charge?
CARNEY: Well, Chris, let's be -- instead of being simplistic about it, let's look at the real problem. This is a domestic problem, i.e. a homeland problem -
CUOMO: Right.
CARNEY: Because of the cases in the United States and the need to protect the United States from further, you know, contamination.
CUOMO: Sure.
CARNEY: But it's principally an international -- national security problem, which is why you have a big national security element to this. You have the military and you have the foreign policy element. In that situation, ultimately, the president, because it's his administration, is in charge of all aspects. But you wouldn't want Jeh Johnson running the military operation and you wouldn't want the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, running the domestic homeland operation. So I think it speaks to the global nature of the problem that you have to have a broad swathe of officials involved running aspects of it.
On the Homeland Security, the White House official in charge of it is certainly Lisa Monaco. On the national security front, that would be Susan Rice, you know, working with defense and state. Ultimately, all of these things, again, crises that you can't control or, you know, arise not because of actions by the administration, have to be the president's responsibility, which is why I think you see the White House taking the steps that it's taking.
CUOMO: Right. Well, but they're taking them late, arguably, and perception is reality. I've never seen Lisa Monaco on this. I haven't heard from her on this. And what people are scared about, I would suggest, from what we're getting back from our audience, is, not that I'm going to get Ebola tomorrow. It's that, I don't think the government is being straight with me about what they did before, what they know how to do now and what they plan to do tomorrow. That does come down to leadership and it seems like the administration could have made this easier than it has been.
CARNEY: Well, look, I don't think there's any question that the CDC made some mistakes. The -- allowing this nurse to fly was a mistake. The hospital clearly made some mistakes. But I think it's -- while people can get concerned, and they should be, because of the news that they're getting, I think it's a responsible thing to do also to make it clear that right now we're talking about cases involving health care workers who had direct contact with a patient with Ebola.
So, you know, again, the political reality is, this is always going to hurt the incumbent White House in a situation like this, when there's concern and fear. And whether that's fair or not, it's sort of irrelevant -
CUOMO: Right.
CARNEY: Because that's the political reality. I think the substantive actions have to be taken and they may involve, you know, flight restrictions. They may involve moving all patients to specific hospitals in the country that can handle Ebola. And I think those would be wise decisions to make. I'm not an expert, but I think that would demonstrate a level of seriousness in response to this that is merited at this point.
CUOMO: But you are an expert on many things, including where the White House's head would be on this situation.
CARNEY: Sure.
CUOMO: And that's why it's very helpful to have you. After the hearing today, we know one thing for sure, there's going to be a lot of yelling, right, and outrage, some feigned, some legitimate, and then change is going to be promised by the people who are being shouted at. We will have to see what those changes are. Fair money is the White House will be behind those.
Jay Carney, thank you very much for joining us, as always. Appreciate it.
CARNEY: Chris, thank you.
All right, so how did one woman's brave journey across the ocean help bring us Christine Romans? You're going to find out what Christine found out looking into her past, brought her to tears, and I'm afraid it will do the same to me. That story coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CUOMO: All new love here.
CNN special week-long series "Roots: Our Journeys Home." This morning, chief business correspondent Christine Romans digs deep into her past, uncovers the story of an ordinary girl who had the extraordinary courage to leave everything behind in her small Denmark town and start her life over in America. Christine is here.
Share with us, my friend.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Can I tell you, this was a love letter to my grandma's grandma. This whole project to me was a love letter to my grandma's grandma. And my grandma, who's watching right now, you know, I love her so much and to learn so much about her grandmother, I went back to the beginning to find out more. She arrived here in New York harbor right here 128 years ago this week. Watch my journey.
PEREIRA: Wow.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: This is Iowa. This is where I'm from. Corn fields and family and every few years we all get together. All the grandkids and great grandkids and my grandma. This is the picture you gave me and what I love --
SHIRLEY JEAN PETERSON, CHRISTINE ROMAN'S GRANDMOTHER: That's a lot of years ago.
ROMANS: How old do you think you were?
PETERSON: Probably 17.
ROMANS: My grandmother's name is Shirley Jean Peterson. And she remembers her grandma, Anna Jacobina Peterson (ph), very, very well. Someone they called bedstemor. That's the Danish word for grandmother.
I know how much you loved your grandma. And I love my grandma. So tell me what your bedstemor meant to you?
PETERSON: She was a second mother. She was just a great grandma. I just loved her dearly.
ROMANS: We've grown up with a lot of stories about Anna Jacobina Peterson. An ordinary young woman, very simple means, who took a chance and has basically built my family. I would have nothing, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for a chance that a poor girl in Denmark took 150 years ago.
We followed in the footsteps of your grandmother, and I wanted to show you the book we've made.
ROMANS (voice-over): It's here in Iowa with my grandmother where I reveal what I learned about bedstemor. Something I could only find out by going back to her homeland.
ROMANS (on camera): Good-bye, New York. We're going to bedstemor's town. Denmark, here we come.
This is in Copenhagen, April and I.
ROMANS (voice-over): I couldn't visit Anna's country without my younger sister, April. A place central to our family history.
ROMANS (on camera): Delicious.
APRIL, CHRISTINE ROMANS' SISTER: I like that one.
ROMANS: Our people were sustained by this.
APRIL: I like that one.
ROMANS (voice-over): But it's here inside the Danish national archives where I learned the most.
ROMANS (on camera): This is the former royal hall of curiosities in the Danish archives and they have all of the information there. This woman walked us through.
ROMANS (voice-over): Charlotte Jenson (ph) works in archival development.
CHARLOTTE JENSON: The archives can help us also find the past that we didn't know existed. Let's take a look at this.
ROMANS (on camera): Let's take a look.
JENSON: This is actually her baptism in (INAUDIBLE) Parish.
ROMANS (voice-over): Anna, spelled a-n-e in Danish, she was baptized in 1866 -
ROMANS (on camera): Look at the lights inside. Wow.
ROMANS (voice-over): In a beautiful church about an hour outside of Copenhagen. Denmark's rich countryside where she would spend the first 20 years of her life.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The church as a building, 1100s.
ROMANS (on camera): 1100s?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) the early part of it.
ROMANS: Beautiful.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's where she was baptized. Plus, this is from 1650.
ROMANS: 1650?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. When the baptism is finished, then I say the prayer. (speaking in foreign language).
ROMANS: Amen.
Tell me about how when you would pray together, when you would sleep with her and you'd pray together.
PETERSON: Oh, we'd get on our knees by the bed and we'd both say our prayers and bedstemor one night said -- I was about 10 at this time -- she said, "Lord, I'm ready to come home. Call me any time." And I am sitting beside her with my hands folded and I'm saying, "not tonight, not tonight."
ROMANS: She was ready to go to the Lord and you were not ready to have her die in your bed.
This is the kind of house she would have lived in.
PETERSON: Yes. Yes, it is.
ROMANS: They would have -- they would have rented a little room there.
This is a laborer's home. And that's what -
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A tenant and a laborer, yes.
ROMANS: Alright, let's go inside.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
ROMANS: So this would be typical. This would be the kitchen over here, and everyone would eat, and sleep, and dress all in one room.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Yes. Something like a table, an oven, a bed, a cupboard, stuff like that, very basic things, but they didn't have much.
ROMANS: She would have had a bible and a candlestick probably, for sure. It's like going back in time.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, but, you know, if you want to do time travel and really go back to the 1800's, I think we need some accessories.
ROMANS: Alright, let's do it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Put that on first. We don't want you to get cold out. Now you are ready to go back (inaudible) 1880. Then, we have a wonderful dish of cold porridge. Here you go. And I bet you might have had a little warm milk on it, if you had milk or --
ROMANS: Wow, there's not any variety.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Or hot beer.
ROMANS: I could use a hot beer.
(LAUGHTER)
ROMANS: Honestly. They had fresh vegetables in the summer, but they didn't have much.
PETERSON: No, they didn't. ROMANS: This was her school, this was her teacher. This is where Anna
would have gone to school.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that was the school of Anna, and it is almost like it was at that time. The school was made so they could work also.
ROMANS: Wow.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sometimes they had to work half a day and go to school, but she would be, like, taking care of the geese.
PETERSON: When she was 5, she lived with the neighbor people to take care of the geese, to keep the geese out of the garden.
ROMANS: Five years old.
PETERSON: Can you imagine that? And she told me the geese would get her down, and slap her with their wings, and she'd cry for her mother, but it was a tough life then, you know?
ROMANS: We learned a lot about Anna's brothers and sisters. We know from the census list from 1860 to 1890 she had ten brothers and sisters. Three of them died when they were very young.
PETERSON: Oh.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a little tragic story.
ROMANS: 3-month-old.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They died almost on the same day, they died one day after another and were buried ON the same day. They died from the croup.
ROMANS: From the croup? Oh, they both got sick and both babies died?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Both died.
ROMANS (voice-over): : Anna would have been 10 years old.
PETERSON: Bedstemor never told me that.
ROMANS: This is more about Anna's father.
ROMANS (voice-over): By the time Anna was 12, Danish records show her father made a living by breaking stone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Breaking stone is not making a career.
ROMANS (on camera): Right, hard labor.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Very hard labor, and not very well paid, and also not very well looked upon. It was the kind of job that you would get if you couldn't really get anything else. We can also see that Peter Peterson (ph) of Asenthorpe got an extra 10 (ph) (inaudible) So, he actually got welfare.
ROMANS: So, this explains to you why in 1886 his daughter, Anna Jacobina, left the country. You know, she had to go make a living for herself. Here is her immigration paper.
ROMANS (voice-over): Anna arrived at the port of New York on October 14th, 1886, when she was just 20 years old, two weeks before the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.
ROMANS (on camera): She was a single female, she had one bag with her.
PETERSON: Ah, can you imagine coming with one bag to a new world? I can't.
ROMANS (voice-over): My great, great grandmother eventually settled in western Iowa and married Hans Olson, this guy with the handlebar mustache.
ROMANS (on camera): Hi, it's so nice to meet you. I'm Christine
MICHELLE ERCANBRACK, HISTORIAN, ANCESTRY.COM: Nice to meet you, too.
ROMANS (voice-over): Back in New York, Michelle Ercanbrack, an ancestry.com historian, found for me the most moving document of all.
ERCANBRACK: You talk about how there's still today, after all these years, this identity of her buying a ticket.
ROMANS (on camera): Yes, they call it bedstemor's traveling ticket. She saved her money, and she would buy a ticket every few years and send it back to somebody in Denmark.
PETERSON: But they had to come wait at Council Bluffs, and stay at her house, and learn English, and learn a trade, and then they returned the money for the ticket, and another ticket went to Denmark.
ERCANBRACK: It asks, who paid your passage?
ROMANS (voice-over): She recovered a 1930 passenger list for Anna's nephew, Carl Peterson's ticket to America, paid for in full by his aunt, Anna. Proof of her generosity for years to come.
ROMANS (on camera): Wow, that's so -- You always heard about the ticket for all those years, but then to see it.
Do you think bedstemor, do you think Anna would be proud of the family that has grown up behind her?
PETERSON: Oh, she would be very proud. I often wish she could see my kids.
ROMANS (voice-over): Anna lived to be 92 years old.
As a reporter, as a journalist, I interview and write about newsmakers all the time, but in my family the real newsmaker was just an ordinary girl who had the courage to leave everything she knew and start all over again in America.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS (on camera): Each of those stories are so unique, but there are so many young women and men who came in that same time, who left everything, and when I looked at all those documents of all of the people that Anna brought, 14-year-old, 15-year-old, a 17-year-old, who then lived with him. The traveling ticket, which is legendary in my family which we proved. And I have to say, the Danish national archives, all of that is available online. So, I can sit back.
PEREIRA: Wow.
ROMANS: And I'm starting to explore ten generations earlier than Anna in Denmark. It's all there online. It's amazing. It's amazing.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: First of all, I love your grandma.
ROMANS: I know, my grandma's the best.
PEREIRA: She's lovely.
CAMEROTA: She's fantastic. You come from good stuff. Longevity.
ROMANS: She is the original storyteller. She has kept that story of bedstemor, the young girl cowering from the geese wings at 5 years old, having to leave her mother so that she could work at another family to be fed, those are the kinds of stories she always told us. My cousins and I all grew up knowing you have to give back, you have to love your family, but taking a risk sometimes to make your family better.
PEREIRA: How has this changed you? Because I sense this was really impactful for you, Christine. Girl power, you learning about your family. How has it changed you, though?
ROMANS: It's changed me a lot because I have three little boys who I want to raise them to be as strong-willed and as much risk takers as Anna was, and I look back that I can hop back 150 years with my grandmother to her grandmother, I want to make sure we're still telling stories so my kids are telling their grandkids about what it's like in this country.
PEREIRA: Tremendous legacy.
CUOMO: And they probably will never encounter anything in their lives that's as risky as what she did herself.
ROMANS: You're right, you're right. Well, we hope not actually, right? I mean, they made some big sacrifices so that we can live the way we live today.
CUOMO: Especially as a woman to do that, you do not hear that story very much.
(CROSSTALK) CUOMO: Boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. So, you know what? Please, go online to CNN.com/roots and you get to see more of what went into these stories, this time Christine's. Now tomorrow here on NEW DAY, we're going to have John Berman's story.
PEREIRA: Oh, my.
CAMEROTA: Can't wait for that.
PEREIRA: This should be good.
CUOMO: Traces his roots back early into the circus culture of his family.
CAMEROTA: Now you're making it up.
CUOMO: Where he was often substituted for a chimpanzee.
CAMEROTA: It's not true.
CUOMO: And we're going to have our two-hour "ROOTS" special. That's going to be on Tuesday, October 21st at 9:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, hosted by Anderson Cooper and our very own Michaela Pereira.
CAMEROTA: Oh, it's going to be so great to see them all together.
ROMANS: I know, I can't wait.
CUOMO: Coming up next, the Good Stuff.
PEREIRA: Wow, Christine.
ROMANS: That was fun, right?.
CAMEROTA: That was beautiful.
PEREIRA: Unbelievable.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CUOMO: He's my brother. Perfect song, alright, for today's Good Stuff. Today's edition of brother's love. You want to meet Justin and his big brother Mike.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CUOMO (voice-over): Mike's the star running back of his Dallas High School mountaineers, and Justin has always dreamed of joining him on the field, but he was born with special needs and couldn't. Well, thanks to Mike and the entire community, guess what? Justin's dream just came true.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Number 24, I see out there, Justin Olenginski.
PEREIRA (voice-over): That is awesome. CUOMO: Alright, so here's the deal. Dallas and their arch rivals, Wyoming Area High, put aside their rivalry just long enough for Justin to score a touchdown.
PEREIRA: Love it.
CUOMO: After he did, his brother carried him off the field.
MIKE OLENGINSKI, DALLAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PLAYER: Honestly, I never thought I'd be able to take my brother out on the field.
JUSTIN OLENGINSKI, MIKE'S LITTLE BROTHER: I scored a touchdown.
CUOMO: Yes, he did.
PEREIRA: Yes, you did.
CUOMO: Yes, you did. The points didn't count, or did they?
PEREIRA: Yes they did.
CUOMO: Because, let me tell you, for those who saw it and now for all of us, those are the most important points of the game. And it's another reason why sport is often way, way more than about playing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PEREIRA (on camera): You are killing me with - -
(CROSSTALK)
PEREIRA: My goodness.
CUOMO (on camera): It's that great? Talk about being a great brother. It's even more important than a lottery ticket.
PEREIRA: Call your brother after the show.
CUOMO: We'll see. Lot of news. Ana Cabrera is in for Carol Costello. Let's get you to the "NEWSROOM."
ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: We need more of that Good Stuff, guys. Thanks for bringing it to us.
CUOMO: My brother would have tackled me.
CABRERA: Alright. See you guys, have a great day. NEWSROOM starts now.
