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NY Prison Escape Seen from Prison Point of View; ISIS Claims Destruction of Ancient Syria Temple; One Woman Tells Anna Duggar "Don't Stand By Your Man"; Trump Criticizes Megyn Kelly in Tweets. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired August 25, 2015 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: This is a temple, 2,000 years old, at the hand of the terror group ISIS. What is being done to stop attacks and explosions like this one?

Plus, we will take you inside the tunnel, the maze in this prison two convicts used to escape from the maximum security prison in New York State. How did they know where to go? Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just past the bottom of the hour. This is CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We're getting this inside look inside these dark tunnels where convicted killers David Sweat and Richard Matt escaped. Authorities spent three weeks trying to capture them.

Randi Kaye is here.

You got this video from investigators are strapping on GOPros and watching this whole thing. I'm wondering, how did they know where to go?

[14:35:15] RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's amazing. We saw a little taste of it when New York Governor Cuomo went down there right after this first happened.

(CROSSTALK)

KAYE: We did not get a taste. We did not get a look like this. It was so intricate. It was littered with trash and water down there. It took them just 20 minutes to get from the hole in the cell wall to the manhole that they emerged from.

Here is how they did it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need a flashlight so we can get decent camera footage.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Two state investigators armed with supplies and two GOPro cameras showing us how inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt shimmied and snaked their way to freedom.

The video, given to us by an official source, is about 20 minutes long, as long as it takes for these investigators to wind their way through the belly of Clinton Correctional Facility, just like the escapees did back in June.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At the end of E block.

KAYE: We're not showing the investigators' faces, but their point of view is eye opening.

They begin at the very spot where Sweat and Matt cut holes in their cells, then follow the same six-story high catwalk before jumping down to take on an elaborate maze of pipes and the prison's tunnel system.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Approaching the first significantly tight squeeze, the end of B block leading into the C block area.

KAYE: About halfway through the tape --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Almost nine, almost 10 minutes in.

KAYE: -- our first glimpse of the hole that takes them from one prison building to the next. Investigators squeeze themselves through it to reach the other side.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A bunch of lanes.

KAYE: They push forward, retracing the prisoners' steps, and just like them, dealing with unbearable heat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Getting warm.

KAYE: At 14 minutes, they're underneath the asphalt yard between buildings.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've entered into the block area and entered into the pipe-chased tunnels adjacent to B block and C block.

KAYE: It's a maze that even these investigators have trouble mastering. There's piping hot steam. At times, it's hard to breathe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're basically southbound from that tunnel.

KAYE: About 17 minutes in, they reach the now legendary steam pipe used by the escapees. This is where it gets tricky. Sweat had told investigators he spent nearly a month cutting holes in this steam pipe, all part of his secret nightly trips spent mapping out their elaborate escape.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to get in this pipe. It's going to lead to the exit. And attempting to extricate myself from the steam pipe, which is not easy.

KAYE: And then, the homestretch, passing one chained-up manhole cover and making their way to the next one, the very same manhole Richard Matt and David Sweat emerged from, kicking off a three-week manhunt.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: You're watching this and we would be horrendous prison escapees, because, being claustrophobic, two minutes in, I would have said, done, turn around, going back to my cell.

KAYE: I don't want to go.

BALDWIN: Again, a maze of tunnels, how did they know which ones to choose?

KAYE: That's the question. We don't know. We wish we did know. We don't think there was any type of diagram given to them. That's certainly never come out. Joyce Mitchell provided them not with power tools, but with hacksaw blades with cloth over them to cut through that steam pipe and cut through the cell walls. But the only thing I can think of is they had a sense of direction. They worked in a tailor shop. Maybe they were able to figure it out through a sense of direction. How the buildings all connected, how the -- where the yard was and how to work their way out to the street.

BALDWIN: And I promise I'll let you go, even though I have a thousand questions for you. The opening in the steam pipe, did I read that one of these guys had to lose like 50 pounds to be able to fit and shimmy?

KAYE: Yeah. Richard Matt. We've seen the pictures of him. He was not a small guy.

(CROSSTALK)

KAYE: I don't know if he stopped eating the prison food or David Sweat put him on a strict diet, we don't know. He lost a fair amount of weight. You saw them shimmying through the steam pipe.

(CROSSTALK)

KAYE: He had a hard time. And David Sweat was a much smaller guy so he probably didn't have a hard time doing it.

BALDWIN: Randi Kaye, the best video of the day.

KAYE: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Thank you so much.

KAYE: Sure.

[14:40:02] BALDWIN: Let me turn to breaking news we're just getting in on CNN. A man who jumped the White House fence back in March has been shot and killed after an attack in a Pennsylvania courthouse. Chester County officials say Curtis Smith stabbed a deputy with a knife at a local courthouse and another deputy pulled his gun and shot Smith. Smith was taken to the hospital where he was later pronounced dead. As far as the injured deputy, he's in stable condition. We're just getting that news in. As soon as we get more information, we'll pass it along to you.

Next, we have new pictures of the destruction of the 2,000-year-old temple at the hands of the terror group ISIS. How could something like this happen? What could be done to stop the destruction of antiquities dating back years and years and years?

Also ahead, this has been shared hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook. Encouraging mothers and fathers to raise their daughters to, quote, "think they breathe fire." The author of the post will join me. Why she says Josh Duggar's Ashley Madison scandal should be a lesson for young girls.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:45:46] BALDWIN: There are truly few places in this world that can claim to be the birthplaces of human civilization. The Syria city of Palmyra is one of them. And that's why this makes the actions by ISIS so appalling. ISIS militants have snapped photos. After they filled an ancient temple with explosives and then posted photos of the exPLOsion online. UNESCO is calling it a war crime. This, less than a week after observers say ISIS militants beheaded the 82-year-old manager of antiquities and museums in Palmyra.

CNN's senior international correspondent, Ben Wedeman, reports this is one of the most recent atrocities Syrians have been dealing with.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The pictures show is fighters rigging the temple of Baal Shamin with explosives, the blast, then the aftermath. 2,000 years of history turned into rubble and dust.

(EXPLOSION)

WEDEMAN: It wasn't ISIS's first act of vandalism in the past. In Iraq, they've gone on a path of destruction not seen since the destruction of Baghdad. It probably won't be the last.

Since driving Syrian regime forces out of the ancient city of Palmyra in May, they have smashed statues, used the Roman-era amphitheater as a backdrop to a mass execution of soldiers, and last week beheaded the 82-year-old former Palmyra director of antiquities.

Many of the most important artifacts were moved to relative safety before ISIS took over in Palmyra.

ISIS's war against the past is part of its policy of shock and awe, destroying ancient temples and statues, Christian churches and Shia shrines, in the name of their warped vision of Islam, executing prisoners and hostages in grisly snuff films to show that they will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of a worldwide caliphate.

But for ordinary Syrians, shock and awe is old. More than 250,000 have been killed since the uprising against Bashar al Assad began four and a half years ago. Millions have fled the country, many now desperately trying to reach Europe, while millions more have been displaced.

(on camera): The four horsemen of the apocalypse are in Syria. The people there don't have the luxury to mourn the loss of an old building.

Ben Wedeman, CNN, Rome.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Ben, thank you.

Next, major developments with Donald Trump's war of words with FOX News. Did the so-called truce just unravel? CNN's has the latest volley from Donald Trump himself. We'll take you inside this bizarre political feud flaring up this afternoon.

And Josh Duggar admitting a porn addiction and a subscription to the cheating website, Ashley Madison. His wife, Anna, standing by her man. My next guest on Facebook says women should not be standing by their men after they cheat and she is raising her daughter to, quote, "think she breathes fire." That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:53:08] BALDWIN: Josh Duggar was one of the first outted in the Ashley Madison hack. This is the second fall from grace. "19 Kids and Counting" was canceled following reports that he molested some of his sisters. And now an admission that he's been unfaithful to his wife has brought on an onslaught of anger, none more than his wife's brother, writing this on Facebook, quote, "I told her I would go get her and her children to stay with me. She said she's staying where she's at, but I won't stop trying to get that pig out of our family."

Well, one mother, originally from Georgia, agrees. She says enough about Josh Duggar. More people should be talking about his wife, Anna Duggar. Jessica Kirkland wrote this post, shared hundreds and thousands of times on Facebook, writing, "Anna Duggar was taught that her sole purpose in life, the most meaningful thing she could do was to be a chaste and proper, a devout wife and a mother. Anna Duggar did that. Anna Duggar followed the rules that were imposed on here from the get-go. This is what she got in reward, a husband that she found out, in a span of six months, not only molested his own sisters but was unfaithful to her in the most humiliating way possible."

Jessica ended the post saying she would raise her daughters to "think they breathe fire." And in a matter of days, that "breathe fire" post was shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook, liked more than 400,000 times.

One artist created this tattoo in honor of the post, thanking Kirkland for panning it in the first place.

Another fan sharing the name with Kirkland's words over the mother of Dragon's character from HBO's "Game of Thrones."

Jessica Kirkland is joining me. Jessica, great to have you. Nice to meet you.

JESSICA KIRKLAND, MOTHER OF TWO: Hi. Thank you. Nice to be with you as well.

BALDWIN: I feel this would be best coming from you instead of me. Would you mind reading the part of the post that got so much traction?

[14:55:04] KIRKLAND: Sure. "Please, instill your daughters with the resolve to make a man cower, if he must, to say, I don't deserve this and my children don't deserve this. I wish someone had ever just once told Anna that she was capable of this, that she knew she is. As for my girls, I will raise them to think that they breathe fire."

BALDWIN: What does that mean, the end of that?

KIRKLAND: To breathe fire?

BALDWIN: Yeah.

What did you mean by that?

KIRKLAND: To me, it meant, they know their worth, they know who they are and they demand a certain level of treatment. Whatever that is, it's up to them, but they will accept no less than what they deem worthy of who they are and what they say they are worth. And to exact that from others is the idea behind breathing fire.

BALDWIN: And what is it, Jessica, about this entire story? It's one thing to have these thoughts and another to take the time to craft this entire piece and to share it for really the world to see?

KIRKLAND: It didn't take any time at all, is what is funny. I banged it out in two minutes on my couch, closed my laptop and went to bad. It wasn't so much a calculated effort to go viral, certainly. It's just something that I had been thinking about and needed to get out and so I'm just going to say it. And it came out in a fury and that's it.

BALDWIN: Part of what came out of this fury, you made a number of points. One being that Anna Duggar can't divorce because she would be o ostracized, a possible divorce versus focused on Josh getting help. What was your point behind that?

KIRKLAND: My point is simply, you know, it's not so much about the cheating. It's so much beyond that. It's about having the power to say whether you choose to forgive or whether you choose to go. And it's about saying that this is what I want for myself and my children in my life. And I just -- I feel for her. I feel like she's in an environment where maybe she feels like she can't do that, where she is continuing to possibly try to live up to the ideal that she's been living up to her whole life. And I feel heartbroken for the idea that a woman may think that she doesn't have the option to do anything else.

BALDWIN: If I may just ask, was anything about her story, was -- why did it resonate so personally for you? Can you relate to this? Do you have dear friends who could?

KIRKLAND: No. It's simply only that I have young daughters and I can only say that when you become a parent, it inspires you to be a better person. You have to be -- you have to be the example that you want them to be. You have to show them how you want them to be. And it was simply the idea that I could never have my daughters in that position to where they felt powerless, to where they felt that they had to be a certain way no matter what. It was simply just saying this cannot happen to girls. It cannot be.

BALDWIN: You go, Jessica Kirkland. You go. I know that all of these people have commented and I think you told one of our producers that not only the fact that all of these mothers were reacting to your post but fathers as well. What have they shared with you?

KIRKLAND: That -- they are not women so they are approaching this in a whole new way now, that they, too, want their daughters to breathe fire. They want them to be powerful, strong women who have a voice and will make their own decisions confidently and will have confidence in what they want.

BALDWIN: You have two daughters. They are 6 and 2?

KIRKLAND: Yes. My oldest is 6 today and my youngest is 2 this fall.

BALDWIN: Happy birthday to your 6-year-old.

KIRKLAND: Thank you.

BALDWIN: How will you intend to teach your daughters to breathe fire?

KIRKLAND: By telling them that they are good enough. Whatever they want to be, it's not me -- I'm not here to mold who they become. I'm here to say the person that you are is good enough. You fill a niche in this world and I support you being that person. Whatever that person is, whatever that person wants to be or do, I'm here to stand behind you. That is good enough.

BALDWIN: Thank you so much.

KIRKLAND: Thank you.

BALDWIN: I feel like I should thank my mother for instilling power in me as well.

Thanks, mom.

And thanks to you as well, Jessica.

KIRKLAND: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right. We continue on. Hour two. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Let's talk politics and Donald Trump's shaky truce with FOX News, specifically, the FOX anchor and debate moderator, Megyn Kelly. We thought that truce was a truce. Now it's officially history. Trump has unloaded a wave of media attacks in the last 24 hours on Megyn Kelly after she returned from vacation. Even before her show was over last night, Trump took to Twitter and said this, quote, "I like the 'Kelly File' much better without Megyn Kelly. Perhaps she can take another 11-day unscheduled vacation."

So Brian Stelter, CNN senior media correspondent, host of "Reliable Sources," has been all over this story.