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Police: No Evidence to Support "Rolling Stone" Story; Yemen on Brink of Civil War; Ted Cruz Announces Presidential Run; Decision on Charging Bergdahl Expected Soon. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired March 23, 2015 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That statistic that you just mentioned of the amount of women who don't ever report could actually rise if they know they absolutely have to go through the criminal process every time they talk to someone about a rape.
[14:30:06] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: That's the chilling effect.
GANIM: But this is only one part of three investigations into this "Rolling Stone" piece that are coming out today. And there is an investigation by the state of Virginia that will look into how the university handled this. Because it's not just that Jackie went forward to the school. Then she began talking with her alleged rape publicly. And a lot of people on that campus knew what she was alleging for months and months and months and it wasn't reported to police until it became a national story. So the investigation, the state investigation, is did they handle her story properly and did they also handle a lot of other reports of sexual assault properly.
BALDWIN: Rosa Flores was there.
You threw in a question for the chief yourself. I don't know how long you've even been in Charlottesville to talk to some of the students there on grounds. What was your takeaway today?
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, I have talked to some folks here on campus including some of the student leaders who are on the forefront on the fight who really fight for survivors of rape. And they told me one thing and I think this is very important to just bring home. And they said regardless of the outcome of this investigation, they have seen a change at the university and that's important they say because before this, no one talked about sexual assault. It didn't have the importance, if you will, headlines of people just talking about this. She said, regardless of what happens, there is a conversation, people are talking about it, and there is awareness of what is going on.
BALDWIN: And let me mark this also saying the Journalism School at Columbia University here in New York, they're also reviewing all this and I believe the result of their review will be in next month's edition of "Rolling Stone."
Rosa Flores, thank you.
Sara Ganim, Sunny Hostin, thank you so much. We'll move along here. Next on CNN, 11 medical students, including an
American, are missing right now. And the fear is that they traveled to Syria to join ISIS. Hear why one official says they were brainwashed.
Also, the governor of California says Ted Cruz is, quote, "unfit to run for office." Today, the Texas Senator announced he's running for president. But not everyone in the crowd was in his corner. We'll share that with you. See those T-shirts behind him?
And Bowe Bergdahl, the Army soldier held by terrorists until that prisoner exchange that President Obama ordered, we've been watching and waiting for news here. Why hasn't the military announced whether Bowe Bergdahl will be charged with desertion? Why the delay? That's coming up. You're watching CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:37:16] BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. Yemen may be on the brink of civil war. Keep in mind, Yemen is where al Qaeda trains terrorists. The U.S. and now Britain have now pulled the last of the Special Ops Forces out of the area. Sectarian violence and protests escalated over the weekend. Houthi Shiite rebels seized control of the capital city of Sanaa. U.S. intelligence officials describe the security situation there as deteriorating. The Houthies are also making threats against ISIS and al Qaeda supporters. In a televised speech, the rebel leader warned terror groups about trying to use Yemen as any kind of base.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ABDUL MALIKI AL-HOUTHI, HOUTHI REBEL LEADER (through translation): Any political powers that want to ally al Qaeda or are working to support al Qaeda, politically, through the media or by any other form, will be pursued, too, and people have the right to oppose and encounter them. We will never allow al Qaeda or ISIS to protect themselves with any political or regional cover.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: CNN senior international correspondent, Nic Robertson, is in London watching this all unfold.
Let me begin with the U.S. presence, the evacuations. We know Yemen has served as a counter-terror launching pad for this part of the world, drones, et cetera. What kind of intelligence -- how will the U.S. gather intelligence if the presence is gone?
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There will likely be a few spies within al Qaeda, possibly within ISIS, but there will be a few spies out there, but it's going to be -- their sort of lines of communication will be stretched. So that will make it harder. And it's not like having Special Forces on the ground who can react quickly. There are a number of al Qaeda leaders that you had want to target there. One is the bomb maker, making underpants bombs, very sophisticated bomb maker. He's a target. The head of al Qaeda there is the number two for al Qaeda corps, will also be a target.
So if you do get information, you can't act on it quickly on the ground if it requires Special Forces on the ground to do that sort of thing. That's one minus. But the real danger is a Syria-like scenario where they use the civil war to take chunks of territory, make it safe for them, turn it into bases of training and operation, that much harder to take them down in the end -- Brooke?
BALDWIN: We talked about the potential for this vacuum in Yemen. And now, even though we have this Houthi leader vowing to fight al Qaeda, but also now this new presence of ISIS, are they up to the task? Can they do that?
[14:40:06] ROBERTSON: Well, this Houthi leader, his threat goes beyond ISIS and al Qaeda. He, earlier in his speech, blamed the United States for being behind the ISIS attack that murdered all those innocent Yemenis in the mosques on Friday. So this is a broad-ranging speech. Remember, Houthies captured the president about a month or so ago. He managed to escape. Fled to the south. Now that the Houthies have taken that town and airport, they're less than 100 miles from President Hadi. They bombed his house on Thursday. There is a real potential for them to take more territory and essentially force the government that the international community recognizes to force it to flee -- Brooke?
BALDWIN: Incredibly frightening what is happening there.
Nic Robertson, thank you so much.
Next here at home, big news. Senator Ted Cruz wants you to imagine a world where he is president of the United States. That is just one of the words we heard, "imagine" -- heard that a lot today -- as he announced his plan to thousands of thousands of college students in Lynchburg, Virginia. We'll talk to someone who was inside, next.
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[14:45:43] BALDWIN: A man definitely known for government shutdown, but today Senator Ted Cruz officially opened the Republican race for the presidency. He's the first on either side to announce a run. And he did it before some 10,000 students at Liberty University, which touts itself as the largest Christian university in the world.
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SEN. TED CRUZ, (R), TEXAS: Imagine millions of courageous conservatives all across America rising up together to say in unison we demand our liberty.
(APPLAUSE)
CRUZ: And I believe God isn't done with America yet.
(APPLAUSE)
CRUZ: I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America. And that is why today I'm announcing that I'm running for president of the United States.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: You listen to his message, and the backdrop, it's obvious the Senator was making his case to religious voters but yet he's taking a bit of leap of faith himself. Look at the numbers. Polls show him he is at the bottom of the GOP competition, with support hovering right around 4 percent.
A firebrand, Senator Cruz played a huge roll in prompting a government shutdown two years ago and while he gains some cred with the Tea Party, he also gained lots of critics in his own party.
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SEN. PETER KING, (R), NEW YORK: Ted Cruz is a fraud. He no longer has an influence in the Republican Party.
REP. DAVID NUNES, (R), CALIFORNIA: You don't even have to keep up with this Ted Cruz strategy. It has to move forward.
UNIDENTIFIED NEWS ANCHOR: Has Ted Cruz hurt your party?
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: I think the tactical choice that he embraced hurt our party. Our party has been hurt. Our brand name is at the lowest ever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Let's go to Todd Gillman, the Washington bureau chief for "The Dallas Morning News."
You were there at Liberty University. Todd, you've been covering Senator Cruz ever sense he ran for Senate. Came to Washington in 2012. So let's begin with the column, before he got to this point, speaking at Jerry Falwell's college there in Virginia, 8,000 or so students. Take me inside and tell me to why this backdrop, Todd, and why today.
TODD GILLMAN, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Well, it's a built-in enormous crowd. There are 10,000, maybe 12,000 people. There were no empty seats. There was no balloon drop, no confetti. In that sense, it wasn't their standard campaign rally. But it was a huge crowd. The Cruz camp feels, how is everybody else goal to beat this? You can't get a launch event with this kind of excitement and crowd.
So putting it at an evangelical university sends a signal to evangelicals in Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada and Florida. He won't get a lot of votes in Virginia. Right now, it doesn't matter. But a lot of other people that he does need to appeal to. And as Senator Cruz's rhetoric said, if millions of conservatives rose up in unison, wouldn't that be great. Well, if it they all rose up in unison for him, it would be great, but it's a large field so he has to do what he has to do to get his share of that.
BALDWIN: Let me ask you quickly, confetti or not, he is the first person out of the gate to declare, "I want to be president of the United States." How advantageous -- we saw his poll numbers, at 4 percent, thus far, our CNN/ORC poll. How advantageous it is to be the first?
GILLMAN: It's very advantageous for someone like Senator Cruz. If he was the bottom dweller, the fifth guy into the race, he would get barely a blip, very little attention. Being the first guy out, we're all talking about it. Everyone else will have to look -- they risk looking foolish by saying, oh, I'm now announcing an exploratory committee. Well, there is already a guy who has leapfrogged that phase and jumped right into the fray. So how excited are we in the news media and the political process going to be about exploratory bids? So he has short circuited it in that way. And also, how much would he get attention, would he get tree hospitals from now if he waited until then? So this is a way of him juicing him up and jumping.
[14:50:25] BALDWIN: Again, we played the sound bite. This was the second grab in your piece. His quote, "I believe God isn't done with America yet." Quickly, on issues, he denies the existence of man-made climate change, opposes comprehensive immigration reform, rejects marriage inequality, wants to repeal every single word of Obamacare. Final question, how are establishment Republicans feeling about him today?
GILLMAN: They don't like him. They would love to quash him. At the moment, he's down at the 4 percent, 5 percent range in the polls. They're not terribly worried about him, but they know he has ardent followers of the sort that Jeb Bush really doesn't have, even if Jeb has tens of millions of dollars. So he's a guy to keep an eye on for the establishment.
BALDWIN: All right.
Todd Gillman, thank you very much. Appreciate it. "Dallas Morning News" for us in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Coming up next, here's a name you haven't heard from in a while, Bowe Bergdahl. You know his story, an Army solder held by terrorists until that prison exchange that President Obama ordered. Why hasn't the military announced whether Sergeant Bergdahl will be charged with desertion? Why the delay? That's the coming up.
But first this. Too often here we talk about tragedies. We talk about dying and moving on. But it always hits especially hard when we talk about coffins made for children. And I really wanted to tell you this story today, not because of its overwhelming sadness but because of a father's message that is just too important to miss.
There is a family, an orthodox Jewish family, who just moved from Israel to Brooklyn. This is their second year in America. Friends and neighbors remember how the eight children, from 5 up to 16, spent the last few days rushing to the synagogue, building snowmen in their yard. And then just before another ordinary weekend was set to begin, shortly after midnight, in the quiet still of night, a flame erupted from a hot plate in the family's kitchen. It roared up this open stairwell and then on to the bedrooms where these young children were sleeping. The smoke was overwhelming. A neighbor who called for help says he could hear a child saying, "Mommy, mommy, help me," the voice apparently of one of the little ones. Their mom escaping the flames, the smoke, with just one of her eight children. She, of course, is heard crying out "Save my children, save them." We're told they must have died in minutes, trapped inside the very rooms where they did their dreaming.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She adored her children. The cohesiveness, the unity, the beauty in this family, the way they cared for each other. It was quite an incredible family.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's terrible, what happened. All those little children.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: It wasn't until hours later when the dad had learned his life had changed forever. Police tracked him down at a religious conference, telling him inside a synagogue. And it was this father who, just hours later, showed up to deliver their eulogy in front of grieving crowds that didn't know what for expect from a man who just lost seven children. Women hugging, unable to fight back tears. This father stood before seven small wooden caskets draped with black cloths, and just before their coffins closed forever, the caskets driven away, their dad, completely stirred by emotion, had a message for everyone in the crowd about his children and theirs, as well, who had so much living to do.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[14:54:16] UNIDENTIFIED GRIEVING FATHER: There's only one way to survive this. That's complete and total utter surrender.
They all had faces of angels.
I did my best and my wife did her best. Please, everybody, love your child.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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BALDWIN: Any day now the fate of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl could be decided. He was a soldier who left his post in Afghanistan, was captured and held by the Taliban for years. Last year, the United States worked out his exchange for five detainees from Guantanamo. Reports emerged in January that the Pentagon had decided to charge Bergdahl with desertion but, so far, has denied the reports. Let's go to CNN's Ed Lavandera who joins me from Dallas.
First of all, do we know what disciplinary actions Bowe Bergdahl could face?
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are a couple different options the military has. They're weighing those options as we speak. One could be pursuing criminal charges of desertion if that's what they believe the evidence would prove. And it's what many of his former mates there in the unit that he served in have basically accused him of over the course of the last year. So military criminal charges could be an option. There also is a way where the military could have some sort of administrative action as a way of separating themselves from Bowe Bergdahl. We didn't know which path the U.S. military is going to take. We have been told by U.S. military officials that a decision could come as early as mid March. We're well into that window, so, Brooke, a decision could theoretically come at anytime.
BALDWIN: So mid March. We're a little past mid. Why any kind of delay, do you think, Ed?
LAVANDERA: There has been the fascinating part about all of this. What exactly has taken so long here at this point? It's been almost a year since Bowe Bergdahl was returned back here to the United States. He was interviewed extensively about eight months ago by military officials. So his version of events has been on the record for quite some time.
So exactly what is going on is the million-dollar question at this point. There has been a lot of speculation as to whether or not that means that the U.S. military is not necessarily pursuing criminal charges, perhaps maybe negotiating some sort of separation deal with Bowe Bergdahl and his attorney. That's been speculated. But where things stand officially at this point is really hard to say. And his future in the military is kind of up in the air. He has been, since he's been returned to the United States, working in an administrative job down in San Antonio. Beyond that, we're waiting to hear exactly what the U.S. military is going to do with Bowe Bergdahl.
BALDWIN: Ed Lavandera, thank you.
LAVANDERA: You got it.
[14:59:56] BALDWIN: All right. We roll along. You're watching CNN. Top of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin.
An American and a Canadian are believed to be among 11 young medical students suspected of traveling to Syria to work in ISIS-controlled hospitals. So you're looking now at nine of them, photos of nine of them.
