Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Toxic Water; Paris Campaigns for Trump; Stock Market Drops. Aired 15-15:30p ET
Aired January 20, 2016 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:00:01]
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, top of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.
We do have breaking news on Wall Street right now, the Dow taking another stomach-churning tumble today, in the red, down 349 points here, an hour to go before the closing bell. We have seen it dip actually as deep as 500 points. This is the worst start to a new year ever for the stock market, just an hour, again, as I mentioned, before the closing bell.
Trading today did not make it any better.
I have Paul La Monica here. He's a digital correspondent for CNN Money.
And we were chatting before and you said thus far all year -- I say all year -- what are we, 20 days in. It's all been oil.
PAUL LA MONICA, EDITOR AT LARGE, CNNMONEY.COM: It really has all been oil, Brooke.
Every day, it seems that oil prices continue to plunge. You have got concerns about demand about of their economy weakening, supply as well. OPEC isn't blinking. They're still producing a lot of oil. Iran will have oil coming onto the market with the sanctions lifting. Investors are very nervous if there's both a supply glut at the same time demand is falling. Economics 101, that's bad news for the price of oil and the market.
BALDWIN: How do you stop that?
LA MONICA: I'm not sure there's anything in sight just yet. I think there are hopes maybe that at some point OPEC will blink, American oil companies will blink. We probably have to produce less oil to get oil prices to stabilize.
But, also, China's economy may not be as bad as people fear. They're transitioning to a consumer-led economy. This might just be a painful step towards that, as opposed to a hard landing or a global recession or worse.
BALDWIN: Paul La Monica, thank you very much.
LA MONICA: Thank you.
BALDWIN: Now to this, to politics. He's optimistic, a leader, building big things that touch the sky. Those are just a couple of the words Sarah Palin used in the last hour to describe Donald Trump.
After endorsing him last night, they were on the trail together in Oklahoma, where she not only hailed the Republican front-runner, but slammed so-called establishment Republicans.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH PALIN (R), FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR: Is it conservative to hand Barack Obama a blank check every year to fund Obamacare and Planned Parenthood and to keep those borders open so that illegal immigrants can be for our jobs?
Is it conservative to watch these safety nets turn into hammocks for people, many who just choose not to work? Is it conservative to allow again illegal immigration to produce millions of new future Democrat voters? That's not conservative.
And is it conservative to bequeath our children trillions in new debt, trillions that they will never be able to pay off? And is it conservative to not fight back for our solvency and our sovereignty? They now are concerned about ideological purity? Since when?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger is here with me in New York.
Good to see you.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to see you.
BALDWIN: I have more sound for you, so stand by. Let me throw this at everyone.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: Wolf Blitzer just talked to the Ohio governor and the man who would like to be the president, John Kasich, a little bit ago, and he talked Sarah Palin. Roll it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: What's your reaction to Sarah Palin's endorsement of Donald Trump?
GOV. JOHN KASICH (R-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Good for Sarah. She's back in the news again. God bless her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: We laugh.
BORGER: Yes. Well, this is good for her.
BALDWIN: Is that what that is about?
BORGER: Well, partly. You know, one celebrity endorses another celebrity. Clearly, she likes and admires Donald Trump. She's made no secret of that. But her other choice was probably Ted Cruz, and I think she took a bet with Donald Trump. And he took a bet with her.
BALDWIN: In taking this bet, who is team Trump hoping to sort of bring their way?
BORGER: I think they're trying to get evangelicals in Iowa in particular, as you have seen Donald Trump at Liberty University trying to say, I am an evangelical.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: Oral Roberts.
BORGER: Right. Exactly. And conservatives, because Ted Cruz has been attacking him for not being a true conservative. I might say that Jeb Bush started that line of attack months ago. It didn't get any traction. Now Cruz is trying it again because his conservative bona fides are very strong, very strong.
BALDWIN: When you think of this moment, and that last night with Sarah Palin in her sequins, that was a TV moment.
(CROSSTALK)
BORGER: It was.
BALDWIN: Whatever -- people -- love her, love them, hate them, that was a TV moment. People are talking about it. We're talking about it.
BORGER: I love Trump standing there silently behind her.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: I'm like, who do I watch, Sarah Palin or Donald Trump, and their faces. But he has really succeeded in making these moments.
BORGER: Right.
BALDWIN: When you think about Iowa and the ground game there and the fact that he's done that there and when you think about Cruz and the fact that he was there for an entire stretch of like six, seven days, and what were we talking about all that while? We were talking Trump's attacks on the birther issue.
[15:05:01]
BORGER: Right.
So, Trump takes all the oxygen out of the room. And with Sarah Palin, of course, he's done it again, because what are we talking about today? We're talking about Sarah Palin's endorsement of Donald Trump.
BALDWIN: Yes.
BORGER: He knows how to play this game, even though he says, oh, I'm not a politician. He's pretty good at it.
BALDWIN: He is.
BORGER: And he understands how to get the momentum cooking right now. And he saw that they're neck and neck in Iowa and he had to do something.
BALDWIN: How does Cruz yank it back?
BORGER: Well, it's tough. I mean, I think it's tough. I think he does it with paid ads. I think he continues to attack Trump for not being conservative enough. And let me tell you something else about the Cruz campaign.
BALDWIN: OK.
BORGER: The Cruz campaign in Iowa is very data-driven. It's not relying on the passion which Trump is relying on to a great degree, although Trump does have a ground game.
But Cruz has spent millions of dollars on trying to find these voters and get them out to the caucuses. It's like Obama 4.0. Remember, Obama did that and surprised Hillary Clinton? Well, this is what Ted Cruz is trying to do and what his campaign is trying to do. And it's not door knocking.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: It's about the voters. It's about the voters. The question is, does this passion translate to people?
(CROSSTALK)
BORGER: Well, and that's the big question about Donald Trump. And he keeps talking about it himself, saying, all of you in the media, you think my people are not going to show up at caucuses.
The truth of the matter is, Brooke, we just don't know whether he's going to bring new voters out there in the caucuses or not. I mean, we just don't know at this point.
BALDWIN: Oh, my gosh, it's so fascinating.
BORGER: Cruz is depending on his data, saying, I know who you are, I know you're going to be with me, so I'm going to get you out there.
BALDWIN: Yes. Let me share this quote with you. Jonathan Chait, "New York Magazine" -- quote -- "Cruz would not be the establishment's first or second choice to run atop its ticker, but he is far from the disaster Trump would pose. He is substantively a garden variety right-winger." Goes on, "If Republicans despise Cruz so much that they allow Trump to prevail, they are making a historic mistake in choosing the devil they don't know over the one they do."
BORGER: Well, this is the conversation now that's going on among Republicans. And I was just talking to an establishment Republican today and yesterday after this occurred.
And I said, well, OK, who is better for you, who is worse for you at the top of the ticket? And his answer to me was that Cruz would be worse for Republicans than Donald Trump. A, they don't like him. But, B, they think they would be more likely to lose control of the Senate with Cruz than Trump.
Now, they may be rationalizing things because they don't see any choices they love, although he also did saw to me, if Rubio got the nomination, he'd be the best for Republicans in keeping control of the Senate. But they have some difficult decisions they have got to make right now, and this is the place, honestly.
He said to me, I never thought we were going to be here. Two months ago he said to me, oh, don't worry, Donald Trump, I'm not worried about Donald Trump. And now they're trying to figure out who they can live with.
BALDWIN: What a moment.
BORGER: Yes.
BALDWIN: Tina Fey, are you dusting off your character? That's what I want to know. Gloria Borger, thank you very much.
BORGER: We also want to let you know about a really exciting event that will be seen only on CNN next Monday night. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley, they all be going face to face with the voters in Iowa. Chris Cuomo will moderate a CNN Democratic presidential town hall that is live from Des Moines exactly one week before Iowa chooses. That is next Monday night, 9:00 Eastern only here on CNN.
Coming up next, a terror attack on a college campus, gunmen storming the walls of this university, killing students and a professor. We have new details coming in on just this horrendous, horrendous attack.
Also, even though the coalition is hitting ISIS mostly in Iraq and Syria, American troops have just been given legal authority to strike the terrorists elsewhere.
And President Barack Obama in Michigan today, he is about to speak live, where two major crises have been unfolding, one, teachers in Detroit walking out of these rotting, awful schools, and, two, families in Flint still without clean water. We will take you to Michigan live. You're watching CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:13:35]
BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.
In Pakistan, gunmen burst into a university campus and opened fire. This is Northern Pakistan. This is near the border of Afghanistan. And as of right now, we know that 19 people at this college are dead. The death toll is expected to rise. Also dead, the four attackers, shot by Pakistan security forces after they surrounded the school property. And it appears some thought went into the timing of this massacre happening during a campus ceremony with massive, massive crowds.
Let's go now to our senior CNN national correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh, who is live in Beirut.
What more do you know, Nick, about who is behind the attack? Because I understand we're getting some mixed messaging from two different Taliban spokespeople.
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the official Taliban spokesperson is saying, we didn't do it, that it's not, so to speak, according to Islamic law.
But there is another man called Omar Mansour. Now, he was behind the attack, if you recall, in December 2014 against a school in Peshawar which left over 130 often very young people dead there, students at the school. He said he's behind today's attack, too.
Now, and army investigators are saying as well that they found Afghan SIM cards on the four attackers who chose a time when there was a higher level of attendance at the university. Many people were actually still in bed when they hit early in the morning because there was a ceremony happening that day.
[15:15:05]
The school had in fact been tipped off. The university had been tipped off, it seems, for the potential for an attack, so there was more security there. That does appear to have meant that the attackers were pushed into one corner of the university, lessening the death toll.
Remember, there could be -- there's 3,000 students there at any one time. So, 19 dead, while ghastly, could have been an awful lot worse at this stage. The second Taliban spokesperson, you said, as I said, Omar Mansour, has said he's behind it, and he's saying that it's a response to Pakistani military operations in those tribal areas in the northwest, which were intensified after the Peshawar attack, have a lot of Pakistani public support right now and frankly are being very effective, because they're pushing a lot of Taliban across the border into Afghanistan, where they're giving the Afghan army and government a very hard time at the moment.
So, intense bloodshed today certainly, but actions by security forces that do seem to have made that figure, 19, as comparatively low as it is, Brooke. BALDWIN: Nick Paton Walsh, thank you.
Coming up next, parents and teachers are rallying right now in Detroit over a crisis in public schools there, nearly every single classroom empty after teachers are absolutely fed up over the miserable conditions. I can tell you now that minutes from now, President Obama may weigh in on the issue as he visits Detroit. We will take that for you.
Also, outrage over the lack of diversity in Oscar nominations this year again. Spike Lee is now calling for a quota system in Hollywood. We will talk again about that controversy next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:20:54]
BALDWIN: The debate continues in Hollywood about how to diversify the Academy. Or is that even the objective? Some say boycotting next month's Oscars is not the answer.
Spike Lee even went on to clarify his remarks about skipping this year's ceremony. He told ABC's "Good Morning America" that he never actually said the word boycott. He just said, my wife and I, we are just not going to go. He instead emphasized the need is to diversify inside the studios.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SPIKE LEE, DIRECTOR: This goes -- it goes further than Academy Awards. It has to go back to the gate keepers.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Studios.
LEE: Yes. The people who have the green-light vote.
Have you seen "Hamilton" yet?
STEPHANOPOULOS: I have "Hamilton." Unbelievable.
LEE: You know the song you got to be in the room?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes.
LEE: We are not in the room. The executives, when they have these green-light meetings quarterly where they look at the scripts, they look at who's in it, and they decide what we're making, what we're not making. We need the Rooney rule.
STEPHANOPOULOS: OK.
LEE: NFL. We need a Rooney rule. It's some type of rule...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, quota.
LEE: Yes. If the NFL -- if a head coaching job opens up or a senior executive position, you cannot hire anyone -- to interview minority candidates. And that has increased the number of minority coaches and executives in the NFL. And that should be used...
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you have got to widen the pool out.
LEE: Have to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Let's talk about this.
Filmmaker Kalena Boller, host of the "Reel Snobs" podcast, filmmaker, and Michaela Angela Davis, editorial brand director for BET networks, ladies, let's get to it.
Great to see both of you.
And, Michaela, let me just turn to you. Listen, this has happened. This is not the first year. I'm about to go way back to '88 and Eddie Murphy, if you remember him on the stage.
MICHAELA ANGELA DAVIS, EDITORIAL BRAND MANAGER, BET: Right. Right.
BALDWIN: But is the issue just that nothing is changing or is it just becoming a bigger problem?
DAVIS: I just think people are more aware and more ready to challenge the...
BALDWIN: More vocal?
DAVIS: More vocal. And there's so much more talent. Last year, again, when we look at best director, and you had Ava DuVernay, not a contender, how does that look at the whole industry, right?
What happens to the community when they don't even have a playing field? So, I think we're looking at it and attacking it from different directions, because this problem didn't happen in one Oscar. And the solution is not going to happen. If you have 97 percent, I think, of white voters
BALDWIN: Ninety-three.
(CROSSTALK)
DAVIS: Ninety-three.
BALDWIN: Yes, a lot.
(CROSSTALK)
DAVIS: A majority, right? When four-fifths of the world isn't white, we're going to have to continue to keep the pressure on. And I do think everyone needs to respond in a way that feels right to them. Spike has a response. Jada has a response. George Clooney has a response. The viewers can vote with their remote. So, I think it's really -- we
just have to keep the pressure on.
BALDWIN: You mentioned the voters.
Kalena, let me put this question to you, because, listen, other famous actors, Whoopi Goldberg, for one, she was saying today the problem is not -- it's not the white people -- I want to get this precise -- it's not the white people who are nominating. The problem is that studio heads and execs writing the checks aren't green-lighting black movies.
What do you think?
KALENA BOLLER, "REEL SNOBS": Oh, yes, I absolutely agree with that. I also think that the voting body of the Academy Awards is not diverse.
BALDWIN: That's what we were just saying. Yes.
BOLLER: Right. Yes.
So I believe that in order for us to even begin to have a seat at the table, we need to start considering what we should do. And I'm not just talking just about black people. I'm talking about all people of color, what we should do to get ourselves into the ranks at the Academy Awards, to be able to vote, to be able to consider all kinds of films.
And, yes, we need seats at the table. I agree with Spike and what he said on the earlier clip. Yes, if we're not there, our voices can't be heard.
DAVIS: You know what's frustrating?
BALDWIN: What?
DAVIS: Is when you have films like "Straight Outta Compton" that did so well, when you have performances like Idris Elba, when you know that they belong, there might not be a lot of films, but there is great work out there.
[15:25:00]
You have Ryan Coogler, like, doing amazing things. And so when they're not included, I think that's where the rub really happens.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: Spike Lee -- I had a guest on who would echo I think what Spike Lee said this morning about, listen, it's a statuette. It's a statuette. What about really bigger picture being a gatekeeper? This is another clip from him this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEE: What won best film 1989? STEPHANOPOULOS: I don't know actually.
LEE: "Driving Miss" f'ing "Daisy."
STEPHANOPOULOS: And what film did you have in 1989?
LEE: "Do the Right Thing." That is being taught in colleges, schools all over -- no one is watching "Driving Miss Daisy" now. So it also shows you that the work is what's important, because that the stuff that's going to stand for years.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAVIS: Good stories stand, right?
But, also, on -- Twitter was alive with Stacey Dash today because she on FOX News said that there shouldn't be BET Networks. There shouldn't be the BET Awards. There shouldn't be Black History Month, that we're all Americans.
And that's so problematic, because part of what is needed is not just to celebrate each other, but to also expand the industry and become a pipeline. BET Networks has the most directors. And the most minority and women and minority directors in 2014 was at BET Networks.
So those people get to be part of the community, so it's not just -- this is not just for black folks. This is for white folks too. We have to lift each other up and expand each other's humanity.
BALDWIN: If we're not talking, Kalena, final question to you, and this goes back to Eddie Murphy, because I think it's so important to talk about that and what he said on the stage in 1988.
He said this -- quote -- "I just want you to know I'm going to give this award, but black people will not ride the caboose of society and we will not bring up the rear anymore. And I want you to recognize us."
And I'm wondering if instead of not going to the ceremony, would it not be more powerful to go and to speak out on the red carpet and on the stage?
BOLLER: We need all fronts considered.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLLER: Exactly.
We need to have some people boycotting. We have to have some people there who are going to be recognized who are going to stand on that stage and actually have the opportunity to speak out. And we're going to need people -- and I'm hearkening to what Jada Pinkett Smith said in her video that went viral.
We're going to need people who will say, you know what, I was never invited in the first place, but I know that the films and the projects that I make are works of art and they are definitely needing to be considered. I'm going to create something that recognizes the greatness in what we achieve, regardless of what the academy decides to do. There needs to be a united front on all facets of it.
BALDWIN: OK.
DAVIS: And watch the BET Honors.
BALDWIN: Yes.
DAVIS: BET Honors black, right?
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: There you go. There you go.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: We got to plug it.
Michaela Angela Davis and Kalena Boller, ladies, thank you so much. Such an important conversation.
DAVIS: Thank you.
BALDWIN: Thank you. Thank you.
Coming up next, a state in shambles. Michigan's governor now, he has been in big, big trouble for now apologizing for this toxic water crisis in the city of Flint. My next guest says the $28 million the governor wants to fix the problem is just the beginning.
Meanwhile, nearly every classroom in Detroit forced closed today, as teachers schedule out yet another sick-out protesting deplorable learning conditions. With President Obama about to speak, he is in Detroit, live pictures, parents are now rallying for a solution.
We will take you there live next here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
