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Obamacare Architect Sorry for "Stupidity" Remark; Dow Falls Sharply on Global Selloff; LeBron Wears "I Can't Breathe" Shirt

Aired December 09, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: The self-described architect of Obamacare facing off right now with House Republicans on Capitol Hill. You might not know his name -- it's Jonathan Gruber. But you may remember the controversy after the M.I.T. economist thanked the quote, "stupidity of the American voter" for leading to the passage of the President's signature piece of legislation. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN GRUBER, M.I.T. PROFESSOR: What if they levy a 40 percent tax on the insurance companies that sell this (inaudible). It's pretty much the same thing. Why does it matter? And the American people are too stupid not to pay.

Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Well, some Republicans believe those comments could actually help in their ongoing fight to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Our senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns is live in Washington with the latest. Big headline already this morning, right, Joe?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think so, Poppy. The headline is that he basically issued a mea culpa, apologizing over and over again. Look, Jonathan Gruber is in just about the worst position imaginable for a witness before a congressional committee. Republicans are seeking to make hay over his comments. Democrats are just absolutely furious about what he was caught on video saying. So let's listen to a little bit of what he said and then come back and talk about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRUBER: I'd like to begin by apologizing sincerely for the offending comments that I've made. In some cases I made uninformed and glib comments about the political process behind health care reform. I'm not an expert on politics and my quote implied I was which is wrong. In other cases I simply made mean and insulting comments which are uncalled for in any context. I sincerely apologize for conjecturing with the tone of expertise and for doing so in such a disparaging fashion. It's never appropriate to make one's self seem more important or smarter by demeaning others. I knew better -- I know better, I'm embarrassed and I'm sorry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: The inside baseball on this, Poppy, is there is some bad blood between Democrats and Jonathan Gruber right now. So much so that the Department of Health and Human Services didn't even want him appearing on that panel with a top administrator from Medicare. But he is there and he is testifying and Republicans are going to try to make the best of it -- Poppy.

HARLOW: But I wonder, Joe, is this for show or is this real in terms of trying to be utilized by Republicans real momentum to try to change the health care law or repeal it all together?

JOHNS: I think Republicans would say this is real. Because among other things they raise concerns about the way the numbers of people who are actually in the ACA are being tabulated. They say about 400,000 people were pushed into the pot who actually got dental care and not medical care and that that's not right. Marilyn Tavener said this is just a mistake and they won't do it again but Republicans point to this as a bigger problem of a lack of transparency in the program which they say Jonathan Gruber actually was very truthful about when he first made those remarks on video -- Poppy.

HARLOW: The fight over Obamacare continues. Joe Johns, thank you and I will not call you John again. I am very sorry about that in the intro, Joe.

Still to come in the newsroom, the NBA's biggest star shines a big light on Eric Garner. Why LeBron James says he wore the shirt reading "I can't breathe", next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Let's get a quick check on the markets. Dow Industrials are down 193 points. With us now, our Alison Kosik, live at the New York Stock Exchange. What's driving this?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: We continue to see the Dow make that sharp U-Turn from Dow 18,000 which we were closely watching just a day or two ago. This is actually the second day of a selloff for the Dow. It closed 100 points lower yesterday.

Now a big factor for this selloff -- oil; oil prices are also in the middle of an overall selloff, yesterday losing four percent, today making up some price there -- up a little over half a percent at the moment. But you look at oil prices overall, over the past six months they've fallen 40 percent. And I don't know about you, I'm enjoying the lower gas prices so consumers are reaping the benefits of lower oil prices.

The thing is the way the market sees it, it's wreaking havoc for energy companies which rely on high oil prices to make a profit. And Poppy what really seems to be happening here is the market is trying to figure out if the falling energy prices are good or bad. Are they falling because of more supply coming from the U.S. or a lack of demand? Because we are seeing economies in Europe and in China, Asia slowing down -- that's also weighing on the market today -- Poppy.

HARLOW: That's a great point. Alison Kosik, thanks so much for the update.

KOSIK: Sure.

HARLOW: Meantime, this big story. The NBA's biggest star teaming up with other pro-athletes remembering Eric Garner killed in that police chokehold. LeBron James joined other members of the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Brooklyn Nets wearing the "I can't breathe" t-shirt in the pre-game warm ups last night in Brooklyn.

After the game, James explained why he wore the shirt.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEBRON JAMES, CLEVELAND CAVALIERS: You know, it was a message to the family that I'm sorry for their loss, sorry to his wife. And that's what it's about. I think everybody else gets caught up in everything else beside who's really feeling it and that's the family.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no larger message --

JAMES: How larger can it be? How larger can it be to pay respects to the family? It doesn't get any larger than that. Obviously we know our society needs to do better. But like I said before, violence is not the answer and retaliation isn't the solution. As a society we know we have to get better but it's not going to be done in one day. Rome wasn't built in a day and we know that but we all have to do better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: CNN Sports anchor Rachel Nichols joins me now. You know LeBron James well. What do you make of it? Also, Max Foster with me -- royal correspondent who's been covering this because Kate and William were at the game, so I'll get to you in a moment -- Max.

But to you, Rachel, you know LeBron James well. What do you make of this and the larger movement we're seeing among professional athletes?

RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN SPORTS: Yes. There's a real wave of social activism among athletes right now and I'd actually give LeBron James a lot of credit for that. Yes, of course, you had Mohammed Ali, Billie Jean King in the 60s but the there was a real stretch where the most famous athlete in the country was Michael Jordan who famously didn't want to get involved in this kind of stuff. He once said, Hey Republicans and Democrats both wear Air Jordans -- so that was his perspective on things.

But in the past few years, LeBron James has decided he does want to become a leader in these issues. Remember after Trayvon Martin was shot he organized a photograph with his teammates of them all wearing hoodies and as he has done more of these things it has opened up the minds of a lot of his peers. And you see these athletes realize that they are among the most high profile African-Americans in the country and that for a movement where one of the slogans is "black lives matter" they have a responsibility to take some action here.

And Poppy, I have to tell you they're getting support from their coaches as well. Lions coach Jim Caldwell came out the other day and said hey, I grew up in the 60s, I am aware that these kinds of protests are part of the reasons I have my job now as a black head coach in the NFL. He goes, this kind of stuff is important. They see the connection.

HARLOW: In terms of the commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, who's made a big name for himself right as he started this job with the Donald Sterling controversy -- what position is he taking on this?

NICHOLS: You know, he is trying to walk a fine line here because it is actually against the rules for players to wear these kinds of shirts during warmups and the reason is, of course, they can't have players just wearing anything they want, right -- commercial shirts, anything like that.

But he does recognize that this isn't just anything and this is the statement he said. He said I respect Derrick Rose and all of the players" -- Derrick Rose, of course, wore one the other day -- "voicing their personal views on important issues. But my preference would be that players abide by our own court attire rules." And that's, of course, him trying to talk with line. And he realizes that these are athletes speaking their mind in the issue -- not that they're getting just paid to wear a shirt.

HARLOW: Yes, I don't think -- it doesn't sound like he's going to try to ban them.

NICHOLS: He's definitely not and he's not going to punish any of these athletes. The NBA in particular is a league that wants its players to be active, involved citizens and so I think that they are happy that their players are doing something. They just want to make sure this doesn't bleed into them suddenly wearing Nike shirts at a time when they're not supposed to.

HARLOW: Yes, very different thing there.

Max Foster, on a light note, a fun not from last night, we all saw it with the royals.

(CROSSTALK)

NICHOLS: We had our basketball king meet your real could be one day heir to the throne.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ROYAL CORRESPONDENT: The video of the moment when, you know, two famous spectators there last night. They all met. Look at the hands over the shoulder. The future queen. HARLOW: Uh-oh. Is that ok. Is that allowed?

FOSTER: Well, you know, that's the -- I mean, the British press is being a bit snippy about this saying he broke protocols. You're not supposed to touch a royal. Actually Kate doesn't mind although she looks a bit awkward there. I think that's more of a British thing. We're not really used to touchy feely American style.

NICHOLS: Yes, I was going to say. If I put my arm around you, you might get uncomfortable.

FOSTER: Exactly. Also Americans aren't subjects of the royal family so they can do what they want. I don't think he knew or I don't think she really minded but, yes, there's a moment there.

NICHOLS: And he had some nice gifts for them, right?

FOSTER: Yes, Prince George gets a present everywhere they go. At some point Kate is going to think where are the presents for me?

NICHOLS: Well, he gave them both basketball jerseys and then he also gave George a little tiny jersey that said "George" on it.

HARLOW: Future NBAer.

NICHOLS: And I must say, he also gave them cupcakes which is sort of an odd thing but they were from a local Akron bakery so I guess he wanted to bring a little bit of Akron, Ohio to the royal family as well.

FOSTER: Lovely.

NICHOLS: It was interesting to watch and they also got to meet the king and queen of music --

FOSTER: Yes.

NICHOLS: -- in the country, Beyonce.

FOSTER: Well, that was another protocol issue that came up because we knew that they were going to be at the game. We didn't know -- they weren't part of the agenda so we said to the palace, you know, Jay-Z and Beyonce, will they be meeting up? And they were on one side of the court and the other two were at the other side of the court and I thought who's going to go where? They weren't part of the agenda -- the royals weren't going to go to them. So they eventually went over. There was this tension building up during the game.

HARLOW: I keep telling Max I'm envious of his assignment. It's pretty to follow --

FOSTER: That's if you're inside, not outside.

(CROSSTALK)

NICHOLS: We've got to work on that. HARLOW: Indeed -- all right. Rachel, Max -- it's good to be with you guys. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.

We'll be back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: You know those videos online that you just -- you don't really want to watch but you can't stop watching them -- the nail- biting footage of dramatic chases and jaw-dropping near misses. Tonight right here on CNN we're going to take you behind the scenes of some of the most popular viral videos on the web -- uncovering the characters behind the clips.

It's brought to us by our very own ` Phillips. She joins me now. Kyra, this is an amazing story.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They're all amazing stories. I mean Poppy, haven't you ever been in that situation where you see a video or someone sends you a video and you think, oh my gosh, what's the rest of that story? Right.

You want to know what happened to the individual or how the outcome played out. Well, that's exactly what we did for a full hour. This is just one little tidbit of a rescue we just had to find out more about.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was an amazing act of professionalism with which they reacted in an emergency situation probably saved the life of that pilot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We handle anything that supports patrol so if it's a vehicle pursuit, if it's a fleeing suspect, those are our average calls that we respond to.

DAVE DENISON, PILOT: I'm Dave Denison, a pilot here at (inaudible).

BRIAN GENTRY, TACTICAL FLIGHT OFFICER: I'm Brian Gentry, a tactical flight officer, city of Tampa.

DENISON: It started off as mainly just a routine night. We were on patrol and I heard over the Tampa International control tower a pilot that sounded like he was in distress.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to need runway 1-0. I've lost oil pressure.

DENISON: I don't know if I said or he said we need to start heading to that. We were going 160 miles an hour to get to the call.

GENTRY: Basically located the airplane on our clear camera system. There's just a small white light as it gets closer you can partly discern more that it's an aircraft. At first it looked like he was going to make it and his speed degraded. You could tell he was going to come up short. We assume he may make the grass. He just missed the runway. We didn't know he was going to crash into a retention pond.

DENISON: Once we were on scene, I told him I'm putting you on the ground. That's when Brian exits.

GENTRY: On the pilot side he wasn't able to open the door.

DENISON: He had to go to the other side and he ended up forcefully removing the door almost to get him out of there. It was pretty neat seeing my partner drag the pilot out of it and us just getting a report from the hospital that he was alive and that he was being treated.

GENTRY: It was very rare to get something like that on video.

DENISON: It allows people that don't necessarily see inside of our daily operations a little bit about what occurs and about what we do on a nightly basis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: And Poppy, they saved Mark Love's life -- that pilot. Not only did Officer Gentry rip open that door because if you see the video inside the plane, the plane happened to still be there at the airport so we were able to see inside how the dashboard was smashed up against the seat. He ripped it open and when he pulled him out, I saw in the infrared that he had his hand inside Mark Love's mouth. I said what were you doing? He said I was trying to pull all his teeth out because he was afraid he was going to choke.

And it has not been easy for him either. He's had neurological problems. He was at Shepherd's Center. He was in a coma for a month but he is recuperating and he hopes to reunite with these guys in a couple of months. I mean they saved his life.

HARLOW: Wow. They absolutely did because of really quick thinking and just hearing that and just responding the way they did. We'll see it tonight. Kyra, fascinating stuff -- thank you. Good to be with you.

Again don't miss that tonight. "CNN SPECIAL REPORT: VIDEOS GONE VIRAL", 8:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

Breaking news for you -- let me go straight to our Dana Bash on Capitol Hill. Dana, you just talked too someone very important today -- Senate Intelligence Committee chair, Dianne Feinstein. What did she have to say?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: She is obviously at the center of a firestorm and controversy that is going to play out through the day. And that is her committee, the intelligence committee at her leadership is going to release the so-called "torture report" and so I caught up with her as she was leaving her office to go to the Senate floor to give a very important speech. Here's what she said. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Senator hi -- can you just tell us how do you respond to those who worry that releasing this will put American lives at risk?

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA), SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well, I'll respond to that in my remarks. There really is no good time and I think the greatness of this country is that we can examine mistakes and remedy them. And that really is the hallmark of a great and just society.

So anything can happen at any time without a report there's no question about that. And there will be a very good chance that because of the change in the Senate the report would not come out.

BASH: So you're doing this at this time because you're going to lose the chairmanship? Or because Democrats are going to lose control?

FEINSTEIN: I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that's obviously a factor. There are a lot of factors that you weigh. It hasn't been an easy decision to move ahead and I'll make that clear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And to say this has not been an easy situation for the Senator, this has been tough when it comes to the -- just relations between the Senate and that committee and the White House and we're talking about Democrats led by Dianne Feinstein and the Democratic White House about the terms of this -- how, when and why to release this years in the making, Poppy -- literally years in the making.

We're going to hear much more from the senator when she gives a formal speech on the Senate floor in a little while.

HARLOW: In just a few minutes -- really. Dana Bash, leave it to you to get the most important interview at the most important time there on Capitol Hill. Thank you for that for bringing it to us -- very interesting stuff.

All right. We're going to end on this. Prince William and Kate arrived moments ago at the National September 11 Memorial, taking it in for the first time despite all the rain and what's going on here in New York City -- very important moment for them. The royal pair continuing what has been a whirlwind trip here to the United States.

Tonight they'll wrap things up with a big charity event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They already had the chance to rub elbows with some royal U.S. company -- King James, LeBron James and Queen Bee -- we're talking about Beyonce and also the President. Just a few big names.

Here's our Jeanne Moos.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: The distant screams carried a whiff of Beatlemania, but no, this is another British import -- although these fans will cheer anything.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm from CNN.

MOOS: Local news anchors hammed it up and late night comedians were doing jokes before the royal couple even landed. The pros and cons of their visit to New York --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pro -- seeing the naked cowboy in Times Square. Con -- realizing it's actually Prince Harry.

MOOS: The naked cowboy's underwear was not on the royal agenda, but Kate's outer wear was. From the coat she arrived in made by a designer of luxury maternity clothes to this coat by Goat. Yes, there is a British fashion label called Goat that Kate wore to visit a child development center.

Kate proved to be adept at wrapping gifts for the kids. Meanwhile, Prince William was wrapping things up with President Obama. You try making small talk as a head of photographers descends upon the Oval Office.

The royals are just like us. When Prince William flew between New York and Washington he took the U.S. Airways shuttle -- first class. One passenger tweeted a photo of the Prince looking as if he were searching for some place to stash his carry on. On the way back to New York, CNN's Anderson Cooper tweeted "Prince William just got on my D.C. shuttle flight. I'm hoping this means an on-time departure." It did.

The royal couple reunited at a reception celebrating wildlife conservation attended by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is it about William or is it about Kate?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kate.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you remember who's coming to visit you today?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Princess.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And you know they think you're out of "Frozen".

MOOS: In frozen New York you won't catch this princess tossing off her thousand dollar Goat coat.

Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Thank you, Jeanne.

Also this morning President Barack Obama, he may be the President of the United States but for a few minutes last night he was also Stephen Colbert, the outgoing host of "The Colbert Report" -- take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Stephen, you've been taking a lot of shots at my job. I decided I'm going to go ahead and take a shot at yours.

How hard can this be? I'm just going to say whatever you were about to say.

STEPHEN COLBERT, TALK SHOW HOST: Okey-doke.

OBAMA: To health in a hand basket. Nation, as you know, I, Stephen Colbert have never cared for our president. The guy is so arrogant I'll bet he talks about himself in the third person.

We can scare them away by reminding them that last year's Web site rollout was a little bumpy. Remember the original healthcare.gov Web site? I think that's where Disney got the idea for "Frozen". Now, the new Web site works and most young people can get covered for less than a hundred bucks. But how --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: He did a pretty good job there -- some good writers behind that one.

All right. Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm Poppy Harlow in for Carol Costello. Carol is back tomorrow.

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Hello, I'm John Berman. Michaela Pereira is off today.

We'd like to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world.