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What Will NFL Do about Deflate-gate?; New Information on AirAsia Flight 8501; Romney Top Aides Hold Meeting Following Meeting with Jeb Bus; Rubio Hires Financial Director for Presidential Campaign; Measles Warning to Stay Away from Disneyland

Aired January 23, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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

JERMAINE WIGGINS, FORMER NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS PLAYER: Yes, that's believable. That's 100 percent believable. Because when you're in the heat of the battle, you're in the game, you're focusing on the defense trying to figure out okay, where do I need to go with this football, where is the soft spot? Brady is thinking of so many different things. He's not thinking about is it 12.5 PSI in this football? Is it 11.5? He's worried about making sure he catches the ball from the snap, trying to get it to the right receiver. Oh, and by the way, there are 300-pound men who are trying to rip his head off every single snap on the defensive line. He's not concerning himself with that. That's 100 percent believable.

Let me tell you something about Tom Brady. He's been in this league for a long time. He's a guy that we know. We respect him here. He's never come out and lied to us before. For him to go out there and say that he had nothing to do with this altering the footballs, he's putting himself on a ledge and basically saying, I didn't have anything to do with this. He's not that dumb of a guy to know if he did have something to do with it, I'll tell the world that I had nothing to do with it knowing the NFL is going to turn over every rock and look in every corner to figure out what's going on. He's not that stupid. He's not that type of guy. When he goes out and says he had nothing to do with altering the footballs, I can tell you I believe him.

And the Troy Aikman statement to compare deflating footballs with going out and physically hurting players, putting bounty on players, put a bounty on a guy, $1,000, to hurt that player. For him to say that's the same thing and they deserve the same type of punishment is foolish.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let me ask you the same question I asked Tim. I beginning to think the NFL is having a hard time coming up with proof. It's taking a long period of time for them to come forward and say anything. What if they don't find the person who says, I took the air out of the football? What if there is no magical videotape of someone deflating a football? Should there be punishment at all? Should there be punishment at all, Jermaine?

WIGGINS: No, there's no punishment. How can you punish somebody, a team, a player, an organization, when you have no proof? You have nothing. The only thing I know right now from the press conference is that Bill Belichick and Tom Brady and everything that's going on, they came out and they gave their statements. Their statements were we had nothing to do with this. Tom Brady said, I didn't alter any football. Bill Belichick said, I have no knowledge of what's going on. How can you punish an organization because -- without having any proof? You can't say they got in trouble for Spygate so we'll have to punish them based on prior history. That's ludicrous to me. You have to have proof. You have to have something. And with NFL not having anything and they come up with no answers, you can't levy down any type of punishment because you have no proof.

BERMAN: We will see. When will we hear from the NFL? Big question.

Tim Green, Jermaine Wiggins, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it, guys. I feel safe around you.

WIGGINS: Thank you.

BERMAN: New information this morning. New clues about what happened in the crash of AirAsia flight 8501. A new time line reveals the plane's movements in the moments before it plunged into the sea.

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BERMAN: CNN just learned that the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Nigeria in a couple of days. The secretary has been meeting all over the world with leaders talking about the issue of terrorism and how to battle terrorism in Nigeria. There are so many problems right now. The terror group, Boko Haram, slaughtering thousands perhaps of people including children. Now we have learned that the United States secretary of state John Kerry will travel to that troubled nation. We'll have much more on that ahead.

New information just into CNN, just what happened to AirAsia flight 8501 in minutes before it disappeared from radar.

Want to bring in Rene Marsh. We're also joined on the phone by CNN aviation analyst, Mary Schiavo.

Rene, a new time line here. Lay it out for us.

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: John, things start to go wrong after the pilots ask for permission to climb to a higher altitude and turn left. Here's what the time line looks like. This is from Indonesian transportation officials. They are not in charge of the investigation. They tell us that three minutes after they asked for that permission, the plane does indeed turn left. Six seconds later it makes a strong and quick climb of 1,400 feet and 40 seconds later the plane is at 37,600 feet. That means that the plane increased altitude a total of 6,000 feet all within a minute. The plane does disappear from primary radar and all of these events that you're looking at on your screen are all unfolding in a matter of about four minutes. However, it is worth noting that the airbus a-320 can fly up to 39,800 feet. That's the point that the plane -- the plane did not hit that ceiling. It can operate at that 37,600 feet that we have been talking about here. However, you have to imagine if you are a passenger onboard when this was happening, they would experience the G-force and feel that pressure feeling them down on their seats as the plane made that sharp assent -- John?

BERMAN: So what's this mean?

Thanks, Rene.

I want to bring in Mary Schiavo right now.

Mary, you just heard Rene's report. You have seen the time line. The plane went more than 5,000 feet in one minute. How fast is that? Is that something that commercial airliners normally do?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST (voice-over): No, it's not what they normally do. This is three times the recommended crime rate particularly at this altitude. If the plane exceeded its altitude, Rene is right. It will continue to fly. What happens is tremendous stresses on the engine and sometimes you can have an engine flame out. So we're still left with the scenario where this exceeds capacity of the aircraft to climb. The airbus itself will not permit this. It would have not allowed these inputs in controls. After the plane stalled and started falling, it looks like the plane was able to make a turn. Whether that's because the rudder was still in the turn position or you had a problem with the plane, or maybe they had it partially under control and never regained control, those are mysteries still left to be stalled.

BERMAN: After the flight went up that 5,000-plus feet in one minute, one minute after that is when it disappeared from radar. What does that time line mean?

SCHIAVO: The time line, at that point, probably something happened to the plane itself as it was in the dive or was in the stall and it could be diving toward the ocean or what it looks like sometimes is that it is falling like a fluttering leaf. Something happened to that aircraft to stop the transmissions from the plane. Could have lost antennas. Could have lost communication capabilities or they could have been just above the ocean ready to hit it. There's no way to tell what happened. The cockpit voice recorder probably won't solve that mystery. The flight data recorder will. They will know when they lost communications and why and if it was at the point of impact or if something had come off the plane.

BERMAN: Rene Marsh, Mary Schiavo, thank you for being with us.

New information about what happened to AirAsia flight 8501. Divers did just enter the fuselage for the first time, so there could be more information still ahead.

All right, so they say a third time is the charm. Will that be the case for Mitt Romney? There is a meeting. His aides are meeting in Boston today. What exactly are they talking about? That's coming up.

Plus, Disneyland, a problem with measles there. People saying stay away. We'll talk about this measles outbreak and implications for health care in this country coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BERMAN: Happening today. An event in Boston with national implications that has nothing to do with football, if that is even possible. Mitt Romney's top aides are holding a meeting strategizing today, no doubt, about what to do next, and this is the day after former governor Romney met with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush running for president, full force right now. Wonder how that meeting went.

Our Gloria Borger has been following all of this.

And, Gloria, I want to talk about Governor Romney first. He floated the notion two weeks ago that he is thinking about running for president. Perhaps close to saying he is running for president. Since he dropped that hint, there's been a lot of blowback. Do you get the sense -- I don't, from talking to people. I don't get the sense that deterred them at all at this point.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: It hasn't deterred them at all. I was just talking to somebody familiar with what's going on in the inner circle there. Romney personally believes, look, he's been criticized before by media, by Republicans who didn't think he could do it, and his feeling is, look around, I still believe I've got the best shot at it. And they're planning, quite frankly, is if he's actually going to get in.

BERMAN: And that meeting yesterday between Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.

BORGER: Yeah.

BERMAN: It had been on the books before Mitt Romney publicly said he's thinking once again about running for president and they went through with it. Any sense of what they talked about?

BORGER: You know, no. It's clear to me that they made a deal with each other that we are not going to talk about this at all. So staffers on both sides are really mum about it. I would have to say these men are both well raised, polite guys. There's a little bit of tension there obviously because the meeting was on the calendar before Mitt Romney indicated that he was thinking very seriously about getting into the race. There are some hot feelings on the Romney side about Bush because he didn't go all out. They don't believe for Romney in 2008, 2012, critical of the campaign. And clearly, now these guys are likely to be running against each other.

BERMAN: Running against each other and pulling in from the same financial resources.

BORGER: Yeah, same donors.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: It's a real problem there.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Same staff by the way. Staff is shifting. I've got old e- mails of people that worked for Romney that are now with Jeb. I have to change my address book.

BERMAN: The other thing that's happened today is that Marco Rubio, Senator from Florida, news today that he's hired a finance director to help him raise money for a potential candidacy and has told staff, according to "ABC News," plan as if I am running. That, in and of itself, is not a change. It goes to show this field is getting enormous.

BORGER: Yeah.

BERMAN: I can't think of a time when we saw so many potential candidates and so many high level candidates too.

BORGER: There's going to be a lot of candidates. There's going to be establishment wing of the candidates. Upstarts. New folks. You know, I think that what Jeb Bush did was get everybody thinking that they need to start organizing earlier because between Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, the money is going places. And unless Marco Rubio has a finance director that gets that in gear for him, they worry that he could have a potential problem. Not that they would be drawing money from the same people but you kind of never know. You got to get in gear. There's going to be competition dialing for those bucks. Chris Christie says he's still on the same time frame in the spring. You know, money is money, and there's not unlimited amounts of it.

BERMAN: Who benefits if there are 12 guys? I think we're still talking about 12 guys.

BORGER: We do. We do. We do.

BERMAN: Is it the guys with names that Bush, Romney, big names with the established base already who benefit if the field is this huge?

BORGER: First of all, it's easier to raise money when you're well known. Bush will have a problem because he's part of the Bush dynasty and he's been around a while and Romney 3.0 and he lost last time. And Chris Christie has had his own issues. I think that the debates are going to be very important because you're going to get to know all of these new candidates as well as the ones that have already been around the track and people shockingly like to decide for themselves who they want to vote for.

BERMAN: That's right. A couple debates will be here on CNN.

BORGER: They will.

BERMAN: Gloria Borger, thanks so much.

BORGER: They will.

BERMAN: Appreciate you being with us.

BORGER: Thank you.

BERMAN: Magic, memories and measles? A problem for Disneyland. You can get all of them. The California park is linked to an outbreak that is prompting health officials to give warnings about staying away.

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BERMAN: New this morning, Disneyland is trying to reassure visitors that it's safe. So far, at least 51 people have been affected since the exposure at the park at the Disney Adventure Park in Anaheim. Cases also popped up in Utah, Washington State and Arizona. Health officials say anyone who has been immunized from measles should not be concerned about the park, but if you're not vaccinated, they say stay away.

So measles was all but eliminated in the United States. Then, all of a sudden, a record-breaking number of cases, more than 600.

Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains the risks and the reasons.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Remember that the threat of Ebola captured the world's attention in part because there is no vaccine or treatment, while outbreak of measles, mumps, and whooping cough have returned, and health experts say it's fueled by people not getting vaccinated. For example, in 17 states, less than 19 percent of children were vaccinated for measles in 2013, and that makes it less effective for everyone.

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, INFECTIONS DISEASE EXPERT, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: We're all immune and then the weak are protected also because we surround them and the bad germs can't find them. We ward them off.

GUPTA: So why the reluctance? Well, some parents believe that vaccines may be linked to autism. But the 1988 study that made claim was discredited. Others are concerned about the use of mercury. But that hasn't been used in child vaccines since 2001. There are also some who feel the CDC recommendations are motivated by the money it makes from vaccine manufacturers. The CDC says that is just incorrect. Some say that's too many shots, more than 20 vaccines by the age of 1, so they choose a delayed schedule.

SCHAFFNER: Some mothers are concerned doing all those vaccinations simultaneously, won't that in some way harm the baby. The American Pediatrics Association, the pediatricians who care for those children, assure you they're safe and effective.

GUPTA: In 2014, according to the CDC, there were 644 cases of measles in 27 states. That's the largest number since the year 2000 when the disease was considered eliminated. There were more than 48,000 cases of whooping cough in 2012, the highest reported since 1955. And last year, there were more cases of mumps, double than the year before.

The outbreak even sidelined 15 cases of hockey players, a rising tide of cases that all could have been prevented.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: All right, our thanks to Sanjay.

That is all for me today. When you next see me here, next week, I'll no longer be alone. I'll be joined by Kate Bolduan. This is a picture of Kate right there. This is another picture. This is another picture. We'll be here together here at 11:00 a.m. next Monday and afterward. I promise you it will be awesome.

"LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield starts right after this.

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