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New Details Emerge about Louisiana Theater Shooter; Bravery of Teachers During Louisiana Theater Shooting Assessed; Donald Trump Bans "Des Moines Register" From Political Rally; Gun Control Legislation Examined; Taylor Swift's Popularity in China Examined. Aired 2-2:30p ET
Aired July 25, 2015 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:00:00] FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: All right, hello again, everyone, and thanks so much for joining me. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. We now know when one of the Louisiana theater shooting victims will be buried even as we learn new details today about her killer John Russell Houser. A funeral mass for Mayci Breaux, a 21-year-old college student, will be held Monday morning at 11:00 a.m. in Franklin, Louisiana. She will be laid to rest following the funeral.
Meanwhile, the investigation of the funeral now uncovering a path of extreme erratic behavior. This picture surfacing of Houser flying a swastika flag outside his tavern after losing his liquor license. We also now know that he legally bought the 40-caliber semiautomatic pistol used in the attack, which he purchased at a pawnshop in Alabama last year. Joining us live now from Lafayette, Louisiana, now is CNN's Ryan Nobles with more on this investigation. Ryan?
RYAN NOBLES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Fredricka. Good afternoon to you. And we actually have quite a bit of new information to share with you. We got our closest view yet of the crime scene here behind me. Now, the theater itself is still closed to the public, but we're able to get right up in front of the building and actually see the door in which John Russell Houser attempted to escape from. Corporal Paul Mouton from the Lafayette police department told me exactly what Houser found when he came out that door.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CORPORAL PAUL MOUTON, PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER, LAFAYETTE POLICE: He exited out of this door right here, which is the auditorium to "Train Wreck" which we had approximately 30 people that bought tickets to the showing. As he exited, based off of witnesses accounts and information we received from officers, I believe that based off of the response of our officers, he then reloaded and reentered the building and did not flee to his vehicle which was feet away in the parking lot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NOBLES: And the corporal told me that they're going to continue to keep the theater an active crime scene as they continue this investigation just in case a question pops up as they comb through all the evidence that they've collected. And they've collected a lot. I should say hundreds of pieces of evidence from inside the theater that they're going through right now.
They're hoping that they can turn the theater back over to its owners as soon as Monday, but that is still tentative based on the progress of the investigation.
And one other interesting thing, Fredricka, that the corporal told me, and that is that he is just amazed by the presence of mind by that teacher who thought to pull the fire alarm in the midst of all the chaos of the shooting. He said if it weren't for that act of bravery that more lives could have possibly been lost. Fredricka?
WHITFIELD: Yes, it was incredibly brave. All right, Ryan Noble, thank you so much in Lafayette.
Today friends and family are saying goodbye to Sandra Bland. A funeral service is being held in her hometown of Lyle, Illinois. Bland is the 28-year-old woman who died while in police custody after being stopped for a traffic violation in Texas. Police say her death was a homicide -- was a suicide, rather. Her family is still awaiting independent autopsy results.
Right now, Donald Trump speaking to a crowd of supporters in Iowa. He is looking to hold on to his lead in the polls among GOP candidates. But he has barred "The Des Moines Register" newspaper from today's event over its editorial earlier this week which stated Trump should drop out of the race, adding, quote, "If he were merely a self- absorbed B-list celebrity, his unchecked ego could be tolerated as a source of mild amusement. But he now wants to become president, which means that he aspires to be the leader of the free world and the keeper of our nuclear launch codes."
Let's bring in CNN's politics reporter M. J. Lee at the event which has already gotten under way. So M. J., what is he talking about right now?
M. J. LEE, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: There's a very full auditorium here at this high school. And the audience is incredibly excited, as you can hear a lot of clapping and cheering. Trump actually started the event by mentioning the "Des Moines Register." He made a joke that "The Des Moines Register" is standing outside and he got a lot of cheering for that.
He then went on to talk about Hillary Clinton and the e-mail investigation that came out yesterday. And that is something people here were very excited to hear about. He also talked a little bit about his trip to Laredo, Texas, earlier this week where he visited the U.S.-Mexico border. Obviously illegal immigration is a topic that has been very central to Donald Trump's campaign.
WHITFIELD: All right, M. J. Lee, your audio competing with Donald Trump's audio there, very tricky. We'll try and check back with you later so we can hear a little bit more clearly what's happening. Thanks so much.
All right, straight ahead, the Louisiana theater shooter had legally bought a gun despite a history of mental problems. [14:05:01] Will this be the case that moves the Washington discussion
on gun control? Our expert joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: We're learning new details today about John Russell Houser, the gunman in the Louisiana theater shooting. The investigation uncovering a past of extreme erratic behavior and that he legally bought the .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol used in the attack. As victims are being remembered, others are being seen as heroes. CNN's Kyung Lah has the story of two teachers who were shot by Houser but still managed to save the lives of others.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Unfolding inside the movie theater high school teachers Jena Meaux and Ali Martin were celebrating a last girls' night out before the start of school.
CAMMIE MATURIN, FRIEND: Wow. They took their training and put it into action even outside of the classroom.
LAH: Their training as teachers, says friend and co-worker Cammie Maturin, training you don't expect to use while watching a movie.
GOV. BOBBY JINDAL, (R) LOUISIANA: One teacher jumped in front of her friend, potentially saving her life. The second teacher said that bullet was coming for her head if her friend hadn't jumped on top of her. Both teachers were injured. The second teacher was injured in the legal.
LAH: Both shot, bleeding, yet somehow the friends who saved each other then thought of the 100 others in the theater. Officials say Martin headed to a fire alarm.
[14:10:08] COL. MICHAEL EDMONSON, LOUISIANA STATE POLICE: She had the presence of mind to pull the fire alarm to alert individuals what was going on inside that theater.
JINDAL: So who knows how many lives she saved by doing that?
LAH: People inside ran out, then began helping the wounded. First responders tipped off early by that fire alarm flooded the theater. And now an all too familiar image of grief and shock, a moment these teachers had prepared for at their high school. The teachers met seven years ago. Best friends, Gina Meaux, the school's librarian, Ali Martin an English teacher. On Facebook, the students wrote about their bravery and courage, the pride in an act that likely saved many lives. But they seemed unsurprised because, after all, this is what their teachers do.
MATURIN: Keep others alive. How can we help others get to safety? How can we help our kids get to safety in the classroom? That's what these ladies were trained to do and they did it in just the blink of an eye.
LAH: Kyung Lah, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: And straight ahead, while President Barack Obama has been traveling overseas, he actually talked about the frustration that he has felt as it pertains to too many mass shootings. More on that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[14:15:18] SAMUEL BURKE, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: We're in downtown Brooklyn trying out to parking valet app Zirx. First, though, we want to try to get a parking spot on our own. That looks like a spot. Nope, that's a fire hydrant.
SEAN BEHR, ZIRX CO-FOUNDER AND CEO: Zirx is an on demand valet and car services company. So you choose where you want to go. One of our agents will meet you there. We take your car, we it in a secure garage. And when you want it back, we bring it right back.
BURKE: I think we have something. I finally found a parking space. It was a near nightmare. The question now is how long will it take Zirx valet to get to me?
BEHR: While the app itself is very simple, the technology behind it is fairly complex. So we're looking at all kinds of things, like where are there open garage spaces in our network? Where do we have available agents that can park those cars. We're even looking at traffic data in real-time to estimate your arrival and departure.
BURKE: It took Zirx about 10 minutes to pick up the car. We went and had some lunch. Now we're in a different location. Let's see how long it takes them to bring the car back.
So I got the car back. And Zirx may be more convenient than circling the block, but you still have to find a place to stop, wait for them to get the car, and you've got to have the money to spare.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Turkey is now stepping into the fight against ISIS. Today it sent more warplanes inside Syria to strike at ISIS targets. This comes after the killing of a Turkish soldier along the border and an attack by a suicide bomber that took the lives of 30 Turkish civilians. As well, some 600 people across Turkey have been detained, all suspected of supporting terror groups. The U.S. and its coalition allies will now also get access to Turkish air bases thanks to this new agreement. So that means U.S. air strikes into northern Syria in places like Kobani and Raqqa can take place more rapidly than from current bases hundreds of miles away in the Persian Gulf.
Never-before-seen photos taken on September 11 showing the reactions of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and his cabinet as they watched the attacks on 9/11 unfold. The photographs were taken by the vice president's staff photographer and show the senior staffers in a meeting in the president's emergency operation center. The photos were released in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
All right, the shooting at the Louisiana theater this week reignited the debate over gun control in this country, something President Barack Obama has spoken about many times, trying to get Congress to act.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The one area where I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient commonsense gun safety laws.
My immediate thoughts and prayers are with the wounded. So at this time, I ask all Americans to join me and Michelle in keeping all the victims and their families, including Gabby, in our thoughts and prayers.
I'm sure that many of you who are parents here had the same reaction that I did when I heard this news.
As a country, we have been through this too many times, where it's an elementary school in Newton, or a shopping mall in Oregon.
These are men and women who were going to work doing their job.
We're heartbroken that something like this might have happened again.
I've had to make statements like this too many times.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: "USA Today" reports since 2006 there have been more than 200 mass killings in the United States. Yet gun control legislation remains a controversial issue, one which has frustrated many presidents. Joining me right now is Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian and distinguished professor at the Department of History at American University. Good to see you, doctor.
ALLAN LICHTMAN, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Always a pleasure.
WHITFIELD: So at the top of that reel of all those sentiments from the president, you heard the most recent which took place during his trip abroad, and he said this has been the biggest frustration. He has felt very stymied. Has it been a particularly uphill battle for this president?
[14:20:02] LICHTMAN: It's been an uphill battle for most presidents, really have not made progress on gun control whatsoever in more than 20 years, and even before that the progress was very, very limited.
And let me tell you the dirty little secret about the polls. While the polls do show a slight plurality of Americans do not favor tighter gun control regulations, when you look at specific provisions, the numbers shift dramatically to large majorities in favor of things like tightening up the gun show loophole, making it more difficult for the mentally ill, like the shooter in Louisiana, to get guns, and banning assault weapons. Even the state of Nevada, a conservative Republican state, just passed legislation making it more difficult for the mentally ill to get guns. No one is talking about banning guns.
WHITFIELD: And then even when you listen to what the president was saying, saying that it's been his biggest frustration, you didn't get a sense in that interview or in the tone of his voice that this is unfinished business that he plans to try to resolve while he's got a year and a half left of his presidency.
And when you think about this recent wave of mass shootings going as far back as Columbine under the Clinton administration, this frustration that recent presidents feel, why does it seem there is no real response or movement from Congress when most of these recent year presidents have all said something has to give? What's happening?
LICHTMAN: Two reasons. Number one, I can spell it out in three letters. NRA, the National Rifle Association.
WHITFIELD: Are you talking as it pertains to lobbying?
LICHTMAN: Lobbying and money in politics. A small, highly organized, highly financed group can actually cancel out the sentiments of the vast majority of Americans who do favor particular commonsense gun control legislation.
The second thing is our timid politicians. They don't have a backbone. They're not willing to stand up to the NRA or refute its absurd arguments, like people kill people, guns don't kill people. Well, of course people have the motive, but guns are the means. I grew up in a really tough neighborhood in Brooklyn. We had plenty of fights. But we never killed or seriously hurt each other. Why? Because we didn't have guns. If we had guns, I assure you we would have been shooting and killing each other.
WHITFIELD: Do you think, as you kind of reflect, is there an area that any sitting president can go as it pertains to, you know, challenging or trying to inspire tougher or different laws as it pertains to the Second Amendment, you know, right of bearing arms, that will appeal to everyone, those who believe in and advocate for the right to bear arms and those who are, you know, a little reticent about it?
LICHTMAN: Well, I think there is an opening here, and that has to do with access to arms for those who shouldn't have it, the mentally ill, those with a serious criminal record. There are huge loopholes in our laws that allow virtually anyone to get access to guns.
And if you look at the statistics on these mass shootings, most of these horrific killers got guns legally under these laws that have loopholes big enough to drive several mac trucks through. So I think that might be a possible opening. But it's going to be very difficult for Barack Obama to get anything through a Republican controlled Senate and a Republican controlled House.
WHITFIELD: All right, Professor Allan Lichtman of American University. Thank you so much.
LICHTMAN: Thank you.
WHITFIELD: And we'll be right back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: OK, we all know Taylor Swift is everywhere, her music, her tweets, her appearances. But her clothing line may be setting off a political fire storm in, of all places, China. Will Ripley has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILL RIPLEY, CNN CERTAINLY: One of the biggest from Taylor Swift's album "1989" is all about shaking it off, a skill that will come in handy in China, where the superstar's exploding popularity brings potential pitfalls.
Taylor Swift's initial "T. S." could be mistaken as a reference for Tiananmen Square, where I'm standing right now, and her album, "1989," the year she was born, is also the year when hundreds of pro-democracy protesters died in a government crackdown here. This issue is so sensitive in China, we could actually be detained just for reporting in this location.
Taken out of context, the pop star's clothing line could be politically combustible, says University of Denver Professor and China expert Jing Sun.
PROF. JING SUN, UNIVERSITY OF DENVER: You have a group of people that if you're wearing such problematic t-shirts and they gather together, if that is a scenario, the government encounters, I'm sure the government will do something about it.
RIPLEY: So far, state authorized search engines are not censoring T. S. "1989" merchandise.
SUN: If the government tries to take a heavy-handed approach on that, it could backfire. I think Beijing knows this.
RIPLEY: Sun says the bigger obstacle facing Swift is places like this.
This is Beijing's famous silk market. You can see busloads of people come here, a lot of them western tourists. They come by the millions each year for counterfeit versions of the world's biggest brands openly sold for a fraction of the price. There are so many people here. It's incredible. And even though most of what's being sold is fake, this place brings in so much money. The authorities, the market supervisors, they just look the other way.
Taylor Swift's clothing line hasn't even launched yet in China, but knockoffs are already big sellers online. Sun says it's a part of doing business in the world's counterfeiting superpower.
How big of a threat is the counterfeit issue to artists like Taylor Swift?
SUN: In fact, there will be far more fabricated items than authentic ones that will be circulating in the Chinese market.
[14:30:00] RIPLEY: He says Swift still stands to make massive profit, teaming up with Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, China's insatiable appetite for American pop culture is a goldmine for the highest paid woman in music, meaning Swift will likely be shaking it off all the way to the bank.
Will Ripley, CNN, Beijing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: All right, thanks so much for spending your afternoon with me today. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. "Vital Signs with Dr. Sanjay Gupta" starts right now.
