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President Obama Says U.S. Has Made Progress on Race; The Battle Over Sue; New Delhi Bans Uber After Alleged Rape; Cowboy Croons for Hillary

Aired December 08, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Don in for Carol today. Thank you so much for joining me.

Across the country calls for change and also for justice after two high-profile deaths involving police in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City. The names of the victims Michael Brown and Eric Garner, along with the phrases "hands up, don't shoot" and "black lives matter" becoming rallying cries for thousands of protesters.

The incident and the actions that have followed not lost on President Barack Obama and in an interview airing tonight on BET the president says this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's important to recognize as painful as these incidents are we can't equate what's happening now to what was happening 50 years ago. All right. And if you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they'll tell you that things are better. Not good in some cases but better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Joining me now, the man who conducted that interview, Mr. Jeff Johnson, he's the chief of strategy for Illume Communications. Also a social activist and a journalist.

Jeff, welcome. You know, in the past, the president has been criticized for avoiding the topic of race but he told you that the issue is, quote, "deeply rooted in U.S. history and society." Why do you think he is speaking out now?

JEFF JOHNSON, INTERVIEWED OBAMA FOR BET NEWS: Well, I think that the president realizes how serious things are around the country and wants to not only talk about what the administration is doing, whether it's through the Department of Justice or utilizing other means to address the issue but also talk about the fact that the president knows what this issue is really about, understands how pervasive it is, and more importantly understands that it's not going to be changed overnight but we can't ignore it.

LEMON: Yes. So I have to ask you, because he's speaking to -- by speaking to BET, he's speaking to a specific audience. But then, you know, a broader audience now because the interview makes it on to CNN and other news networks. But he's also urged younger African- Americans to be patient. But persistent in fighting for racial justice. And there has been criticism of him that he has not done enough for the black community.

Do you think that his words will still carry weight with people who may be disillusioned or in some ways disappointed, Jeff?

JOHNSON: Well, I think that they will hear him and I think that once you hear the entire interview you get a sense that President Obama number one understands how important the very young people that were wondering how are they going to receive him, he understands how important they are to this process.

And so I think people will give a listening ear. I think most members of the community, especially those in the BET audience, are looking for the president to understand why they're angry, looking for the president to understand why they have distrust, and looking for the president to understand that, frankly, they don't need him to say be persistent but I think that there are many that will appreciate it.

LEMON: Jeff, did he -- did you guys talk about all the protests that are going on across the country and what he made of this new wave of protests and what it means?

JOHNSON: Well, I think we talked about whether these protests are going to be necessary to see the kind of policy shifts that I think many of us, whether we're marching or not, want to see. There's no question that there needs to be shifts in local police accountability. That some of that may come from the federal government, that the vast majority of that is going to come from local policy shifts, and we talked about the role that these young people in particular all over the country are playing in whether or not that will happen.

LEMON: Some of the people who attended this recent White House meeting on Ferguson said that they want him to be more visible. More vocal on these issues. Speaking with him, did you get a sense that the topic of race may become a larger part of his agenda in the last two years or even after his presidency?

JOHNSON: Well, what I asked him is if he felt that presidential obligations sometimes got in the way of how he wanted to respond as a human being, as Barack Obama the man, as Barack Obama the African- American man. And so we talked about that a little bit and talked about how he perceived those that -- those who don't believe he addresses straight on the disparities as it relates to African- Americans being shot by the police versus those that are non-African- American.

LEMON: Yes. Looking forward to your interview. Thank you, Jeff Johnson, appreciate it.

JOHNSON: Thanks, Don. Appreciate it, Don. LEMON: Chief of strategy at Illume Communications. Again, thanks to

Jeff. Still to come here. Tug-of-war over a dinosaur.

There's a new CNN Film tells us about the paleontologist who discovered Sue. We're going to hear the government's side of the story coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Thursday night at 9:00, make sure you tune in, 9:00 Eastern, we're going to premier an all new CNN Film "DINOSAUR 13." The movie focuses on the world's most famous dinosaur discovery, the finding of the largest, most complete T-REX ever.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Crawl up on the cliff face and I see three articulated vertebrae. And from that point on I'm absolutely certain this is going to be the best thing we ever found and it's going to be a complete T-REX.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He called up and said, "Neil, I need you to bring a lot of plaster and 2-x 4s. Well, it took me a day to get everything ready and I came up -- and I got up there with all these materials and he took me over to this big cliff and he said, take a look. And I looked at it, and I looked at him, and I said, "Is that T-REX?" He said, "Yes, and I think it's all here."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: That story does not end there. The dinosaur known as Sue became the object of a tug-of-war.

Vincent Santucci is a paleontologist and a senior geologist with the U.S. National Park Service. He joins us now. He appears in the film and was involved in the federal investigation of the Sue case.

Welcome.

VINCENT SANTUCCI, SENIOR GEOLOGIST, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE: Good morning.

LEMON: What's the government's argument here?

SANTUCCI: Well, it's interesting. I woke up this morning and turned on CNN news as I do every morning and I saw a little promo for "DINOSAUR 13" film and at the end it says, "Unearth the truth." and I think that it's really important to -- for the public and the viewers to know that the entire story about the Sue investigation is not captured within the film "DINOSAUR 13" and so we thank CNN for the opportunity to share a couple of thoughts.

It's a very complicated story. I congratulate Todd Miller and his production staff for taking on this very controversial but this important historical, legal and scientific story. One of the things that I think is worth noting is that 54 minutes into the film Todd Miller, the producer, was able to put in a caption that said that -- that National Park Service began to investigate Black Hills Institute in 1985. And I think it's sort of key because the T-REX wasn't even found until 1990, five years later.

LEMON: Right.

SANTUCCI: And so part of that untold story is related to why the National Park Service began investigating five years before Sue was discovered.

LEMON: There were both civil and criminal cases related to Sue. So what were the differences?

SANTUCCI: Yes. That's a really important distinction that is not clear from the film. There was a civil matter that dealt with the ownership of Sue, the land that was -- that the dinosaur was removed from involved very difficult, tedious legal discussions about ownership.

There was a separate criminal investigation that had very little to do with Sue and I think that the important discussions have to do with the fact that the criminal investigations really weren't focused on the dinosaur. I think just the dinosaur overshadowed a lot of that discussion and have created confusion.

LEMON: Can you explain the laws of fossil findings and how prevalent fossil thefts are?

SANTUCCI: I think it's a very important issue. Fossils are non- renewable resources. They're the most important evidence we have about the evolution and history of life on the planet. And because they're non-renewable, we're not making any more T-REXs. And so in terms of our management of them, we have to pay particular attention to make sure that they are directed appropriately for scientific and educational purposes.

LEMON: Yes. Vincent Santucci --

SANTUCCI: There are over -- over the past 10 years just from National Park Service areas we've documented over 850 cases of fossil theft. And that's out of national parks. And that doesn't include all of those that we're not aware of, that we haven't been able to get evidence for. So it is a very serious issue.

LEMON: Yes. And we look forward to seeing it.

Thank you, Vincent Santucci. We'll have you back. Thank you. We appreciate it.

A reminder, "DINOSAUR 13" airs on CNN. It's Thursday night, 9:00 Eastern. Make sure you watch it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Want to check your top stories right now.

In Los Angeles, a huge fire burned through an apartment complex under construction earlier today. It covers an entire block. The fire also damaged nearby buildings and forced the Highway Patrol to close some freeways. People are being hold to avoid that area.

Our investigators say it is too early to say what started the fire.

The northeast from New York to New England had better brace for a powerful and nasty nor'easter. Heavy downpours will drench metro New York which could get up to four inches of rain. Two to three in Boston. Snow inland. Winds will gust from 40 to 50 miles per hour along the coast and expect flight delays from Philadelphia to Boston tomorrow.

We warned you.

Manila is bracing for flooding now as a one-time typhoon now tropical storm moves in. The storm is being blamed for at least 21 deaths across the Philippines. The Red Cross also says nearly 1,000 homes have been destroyed.

This aerial view from today shows the small town of Dolores which took a direct hit. No one in this town died, though. This is being credited to bitter communication and -- better communication, excuse me, in getting people out of harm's way.

A super typhoon that hit the same general area last year left more than 7,000 people dead or missing.

The popular U.S.-based car service company Uber now banned in New Delhi after a woman accused her driver of raping her.

CNN's Mallika Kapur joins us now from Mumbai with the details.

Those details, Mallika, all starting to pour out now.

MALLIKA KAPUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Let me quickly get you up to speed with what happened and what we know so far.

It was Friday night and this young woman, she's 26 years old. She had gone to a friend's home for dinner after work. It was about 10:30 at night and she booked herself an Uber cab to go home. She'd had a long day and she dozed off in the cab and when she woke up a little while later she found that the taxi driver, the Uber driver, had veered off course and she found that he had parked the car in a deserted stretch at which point he began to sexually assault her.

After that he threatened that he would harm her further and he drove her back to her house and dropped her off at 1:00 a.m. with a warning that if she reported the matter to anybody he would come back and harm her. She did report the matter to the police and within two days the police were able to track this Uber driver down. He is in police custody. He was arrested late on Sunday and the latest, we have heard, is that he is in police custody for another three days.

LEMON: And Uber's response, Mallika?

KAPUR: Well, Uber's response, it did issue a statement saying that the crime was absolutely horrific and its hearts go out to the victim and they'll do whatever they can to work with the police officials to make sure that the perpetrator is brought to justice but, you know, there are lots of questions being asked here in India about whether this crime could have been avoided and whether Uber did enough to vet the driver. A raging debate over here.

And Uber is saying that, you know, we don't hire these drivers directly. We actually outsource them. We go through a local contractor who then hires these drivers. Suggesting that perhaps it was up to the local service to do a better job in vetting them and they've released a statement saying that, "We will work with the government to establish clear background checks currently absent in the commercial transportation licensing programs."

This, of course, has not gone down well with government authorities at the police who say, look, the responsibility really lies with Uber. If you're going to hire a driver, it's up to you to do police verifications, to do background checks and perhaps if they had done that they would have realized that this driver actually has a criminal record.

LEMON: Yes. And that's the reaction in India. But my question is Uber now operates, right, in some 200 countries and this isn't the first time that they have faced controversy.

KAPUR: No, this is not the first time they have faced controversy. They have faced controversy in the United States. In California earlier as well. But what's really key here in India is that, you know, in India women's safety has been on the top of the national agenda for the last two years since we had the Delhi rape case which really shook the nation to its core.

Now Uber was seen as part of the solution here in India. Women here considered it much safer to book an Uber cab through their mobile phones than to hail a cab off the street. You know, Uber was considered much safer. You had the driver's details, you had the driver's number. And now that Uber has become part of the problem again it really is making women here in India wonder, you know, are we safe at all?

We're just one week away from the second anniversary of that Delhi gang rape and the big question here in India is if we can't even trust now a private taxi service, what are we going to do? Is the country any safer at all over the last two years?

LEMON: Mallika Kapur, thank you very much.

I'm back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: What do Hillary Clinton and a hunky cowboy and a lousy melody have in common? Of course Jeanne Moos has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JEANNE MOOS, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Please do not adjust your calendar, though, you might want to adjust your volume since at least one Web site warns this pro-Hillary cowboy anthem will make your ears bleed.

That would be the glass ceiling the first woman in the White House would break. This first campaign song of 2016 features a country hottie cruising past farm equipment, leaning on a barn, wearing a hard hat which he'll need to protect himself from critics who wonder, could this Hillary Clinton tribute be the worst political song ever?

My face while watching the new "Stand with Hillary" country tribute song and this back handed insult from Slate. "The video does not appear to be a joke."

First, we should say Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with this song and her people wouldn't comment on it. It was created by a super PAC called "Stand with Hillary." The writer is known for song written for Barack Obama in 2008 aimed at Hispanic voters.

Now he's gone country as one blog noted with, "the symbolism and music of a Chevy commercial."

Come on, that's no Chevy. Our cowboy drives a Ford.

Who is our cowboy anyway? The chairman of the PAC told CNN he wants to remain anonymous. The PAC prefers the focus to be on the message.

But even his biker wife is giving him the head-to-toe once-over. He may not ride, but his t-shirt rides up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now it's time for us to stand up with Hillary

MOOS: Giving a flash of flesh that may win over the cowgirl vote.

Jeanne Moos, CNN.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hillary!

MOOS: New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Thanks for joining me. I'm Don Lemon.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" starts right after a very quick break.