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Security Concerns over Pope's Mexico Visit; Officer Describes San Bernardino Shootout with Terrorists; Mother Talks of Son Who Carried Out Mass Shooting; Anti-Beyonce Protest after NFL Performance over Song. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired February 12, 2016 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(CROSSTALK)
[14:30:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom line, isn't it about feeling whether it makes you sad --
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: -- makes you happy?
PETER SHANKMAN, BRANDING & SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT: Here's the thing.
(CROSSTALK)
SHANKMAN: If Trump wants to own Trump, he's not a nice guy. Don't be a nice guy. Don't fade back on that because that makes you weak.
BALDWIN: OK, Peter Shankman, Kellyanne Conway, thank you both. We will have more to discuss in the coming months.
Meantime, let's talk about the pope today, shall we? Moments ago, Pope Francis, here he was, touching down on this historic trip to Cuba, greeted their by Raoul Castro. Rosa Flores, she's always on the plane with the pope. See what happens on board. And why the U.S. has a warning about possible security threats. What's that about?
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[14:35:00] BALDWIN: Pope Francis just touched down in Havana, Cuba. Then he goes to Mexico. He is embarking on this six-day tour.
There are new security concerns from U.S. Intelligence officials about the pontiff's visit. A joint report from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security indicates there will be heightened concern right along the U.S./Mexican border. Officials fear the potential for, quote, "lone offenders and violent extremists" targeting large crowds at events.
Rosa Flores was on the papal plane. She joins me now on the phone.
Rosa, can you tell me, did you have any interactions with him? Tell me more on substance.
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The trip was very long, 13 hours just about. Pope Francis was in the back of the plane.
He spoke to journalists briefly. He actually talked about Mexico. He said, you know, in Mexico, they still believe in our Lady of Guadalupe. That was a really good moment. He delivered some letters that children wrote to the pope. He really just lit up. He actually said, you know, I'm about to publish a book, a children's book, and it's going to have letters from children. He was excited.
And then I couldn't help, I couldn't resist, I got another blessing from Pope Francis.
BALDWIN: Incredible, these moments you're having in just this short bit of time you've been covering the pope for us.
Rosa Flores, thank you so much for calling from Cuba.
This week, we reported the deaths of five police officers. So let me just take a moment to highlight stories of first responders truly going beyond the call of duty. Police in San Bernardino led this all- out pursuit to track down the two terrorists, a story that unfolded live on this show. A police sergeant who pursued the couple had never fired his weapon before.
CNN's Kyung Lah spoke with the officer about that very day.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(SIRENS)
(GUNFIRE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can see officers with guns here.
SGT. ANDY CAPPS, REDLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT: I saw the muzzle flashes and I thought, you know, they're shooting me.
KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Four hours after the terror attack in San Bernardino, Redland Police Sergeant Andy Capps was the lead patrol car in the shootout with the attackers. Sergeant Capps had spent most of his day chasing down false leads until an undercover officer waved in Capps car.
CAPPS: I was able to get behind them. I saw them put on what I believed to be ballistic or bullet proof vests.
(GUNFIRE)
(SIRENS)
CAPPS: They started shooting. The back window of their vehicle just shattered.
LAH: Capps' SUV just feet away from the ISIS sympathizers.
CAPPS: I grabbed the rifle, I just kind of scrambled to the back of the car. LAH: Sergeant Capps crouched at the corner of his SUV as other
officers ran up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got officers running here. Back east now. Chasing now on foot.
LAH: 24 years a cop, Capps had never shot his weapon on the job before. No fear.
(on camera): No fear?
CAPPS: No fear.
LAH (voice-over): Even as Farook got out of his SUV, firing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was a very, very graphic shootout.
CAPPS: During this fight, I heard off to my left, somebody yelled, "Officer down."
LAH: San Bernardino police officer, Nicholas Kawaho (ph), took a bullet to the leg.
CAPPS: I've seen footage from the helicopters of those officers running up to my vehicle with bullets flying by them, running up to give help. Unbelievable.
LAH: The two terrorists who murdered innocent people in San Bernardino died in the five-minute shootout. When it was over, Sergeant Capps realized no cop died that day.
(on camera): Tell me about the text you got on your phone.
CAPPS: This is hard to talk about. That's when I realized how badly that could have ended for me and for my family, for all these other people and their families.
LAH: Was the risk worth it, your personal risk?
CAPPS: Without a doubt.
LAH: Would you do it again?
CAPPS: In a heartbeat. Hopefully, I won't have to.
LAH (voice-over): Kyung Lah, CNN, Redlands, California.
[14:39:47] BALDWIN: Kyung and Sergeant, thank you both.
Next the mother of Columbine shooter, Dylan Klebold, speaking out for the first time since those deadly shootings. You will not only hear from her but my next guest is a mother as well. She is all too familiar with that feeling as her son was also responsible for a mass shooting. Do not miss this discussion.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BALDWIN: 17 years ago, two students opened fire in the cafeteria of Columbine High School killing 13 people. 17 years ago, those students turned the weapons on themselves, ending the massacre in a double murder/suicide. Klebold picked up the phone to discover one of those students was her son. Tonight, this mother will break her silence of the guilt, the grief, the blame and reckoning she has felt since that violent day in our country's history of school shootings.
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SUE KLEBOLD, MOTHER OF COLUMBINE SHOOTER: I just remember sitting there and reading about them, all the kids and the teacher. I've been thinking, constantly thought, how I would feel if it was the other way around, one of their children had shot mine. I would feel exactly the way they did. I know I would. I know I would.
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[14:45:] BALDWIN: Most of us will never comprehend what it is like to have a child commit murder. But unfortunately, Sue Klebold is not alone.
I want to bring in Terri Roberts.
On October 2, 2006, her son committed the unspeakable act. Charlie Roberts walked into the classroom of an Amish school near his home in Pennsylvania, shooting 10 girls. Five of them died before he turned the gun on himself.
So, Terri, I just wanted to thank you so much for being here to share your story.
TERRI ROBERTS, MOTHER OF AMISH SCHOOL SHOOTER: Thank you for having me, Brooke.
BALDWIN: I personally cover -- that was the first mass shooting I ever covered. I was a reporter in D.C. and got the call to drive to Pennsylvania.
On the notion of getting the call, I want to begin with your story. You write in your memoir, "Forgiven," that at the time of the shooting, you were eating lunch with your best friend and then, you know, sirens and helicopters sounded off in the distance. You were walking home from work when this call came. How did you find out what your son did?
ROBERTS: The call came from my husband. He just said I needed to come right away. That was all that was said in the conversation. Just this feeling of foreboding hit me. In the drive to my son's home, I listened to the news reporter and he had said there had been a local shooting at a local Amish school and lives have been taken. And then the incorrect name was given for the perpetrator, so my immediate thought was, oh, my, Charlie parks his milk tanker truck right by the school and what if he was helping with the rescue, what if he was killed. And so when I pulled into my son's driveway that day, the trooper and my husband were standing right before me. And I asked the trooper, is my son alive? No, ma'am. I looked at my husband. With these dark eyes, he said it was Charlie, he killed those girls. There was nothing in my history that could have prepared me for those words that day. As I was just devastated and I remember falling to the ground in my son's yard feeling like everything inside of me would be expelled. It was a total out-of-body experience.
BALDWIN: We just -- we so rarely get to hear from people like you. Please continue. The mother's perspective. Go ahead.
ROBERTS: Within that first day, as devastating as it was and in those first moments, like, my mouth just heaved dry. I just kept asking for glasses water and the state trooper kept bringing me more glasses of water but nothing could quench my thirst. Then as we did end up going home, our home was filled that day with people coming to comfort us and console us and in that first day, two people came into our home that actually brought some light into our lives on such a deep dark day. And -- did you want me to share the story about Henry and how he ministered to my husband that day, the Amish man?
BALDWIN: Please, sure, sure.
ROBERTS: OK. Well, Henry was our Amish neighbor. My husband had retired from the police force. A little over a year prior to this happening. And so in his retirement, he chose to be an Amish taxi driver. That's someone who takes the Amish where they need to go further than a horse and buggy will take them. So my husband had driven for Henry. So late that afternoon, Henry knocked on our door. He walked past the medical trucks, which was hard for him to do, but he knocked on our door and he went over to my husband and all day, my husband had not stopped -- the tears had not stopped flowing from his eyes. And he kept -- he used a dish towel to keep wiping the tears away and had done so, so frequently, he actually wore the skin from his forehead. So he sat at the breakfast bar with his head hung low, as he had all day. Just kept recounting -- when Henry came over to him, Henry started massaging his shoulders and saying, Roberts, we love you. And Henry had relatives in the school house that day. So he kept massaging his shoulders saying, Roberts, we love you, we don't hold anything against you. And those were the words that I could hear as I was standing at a distance.
BALDWIN: That's what's so different -- forgive me, Terri. But that's what's so different about your story, right, and I remember talking to some members the Amish community at the time and that's what's so different, this power of forgiveness. That was so extraordinarily unique.
Here's my other question because it's so rare to get to talk to moms like you, but we covered so many of these school shootings and, you know, we talked to folks who lost loved ones, and they say, Brooke, I never want you to say this killer's name ever, ever again. There's entire movements, no notoriety. I'm curious from a mother's perspective, there are people who never want me to say your son's name again. How does that make you feel?
[14:50:27] ROBERTS: Well, the man who committed this crime wasn't the man that we knew. You know, it wasn't -- he was the son that I nurtured, that I raised. What happened on that day was so foreign to the man that we knew. And he will always be my son. As I just heard those comments from Ms. Klebold that you can understand how other people have those feelings. And it hurts. But you can -- I mean, you can feel the pain and the anguish because of what we've been through. You know that the gut-wrenching pain people receive. So you can understand their feelings. Unless you've gone through it, you can't really describe it or really truly understand it, but the fact that other people wished that my son had never been born, you know, it's -- he was my child and honestly we did not receive a lot of the hate that these other parents had. We were spared that in those first weeks and months.
BALDWIN: Terri Roberts, as we cover these shootings, we should be mindful of all families involved, including the parents of those who commit these unspeakable crimes.
Terri, thank you so much for the time.
ROBERTS: Thank you.
BALDWIN: Coming up next, we have some breaking news here on the machete attack inside a restaurant in Ohio. What we are now learning, who carried out this attack. Investigators are hunting down a motive. Stand by for that.
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[14:56:22] BALDWIN: This raging debate over Beyonce's latest single has taken form. People are drawing lines in the sane after Beyonce's Super Bowl Sunday halftime performance. They either love or hate the perceived message behind her new song "Formation."
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(SINGING)
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BALDWIN: Here's why this is still so newsworthy. It's because more than -- you know, more than a week after she performed there, there is this anti- Beyonce protest planned outside the NFL headquarters. Her fans are calling for a counter protest.
Let me bring in the Jenna Wortham, a technology reporter and columnist for "New York Times," who covered digital culture.
And she said this about Beyonce's new single, quote, "She wants us to know more than ever that she's still grounded. I think she wants us to know that even though she's headlining a mainstream event like the Super Bowl, she has opinions and isn't afraid to share them, nor is she afraid to do it on national and global scale."
Jenna, I love the conversation you had a couple of days ago with your colleagues at the "Times." What do you make of all this, folks saying she's anti-police? JENNA WORTHAM, TECHNOLOGY REPORT & COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: You
know, I think that people are upset about the imagery in this video. It's shocking. It's really kind of alarming. It harkens back to a time ten years ago when there were these images of people who had been harmed in Hurricane Katrina and it's upsetting, but I do think however that the critiques are a little misplaced. I think people are upset at what she's calling out. I think people are unsettled by her message and not necessarily the point of the song.
BALDWIN: I think it is entirely powerful. I want you to tell me what you make of it all, the message.
By the way, let me say this, you got flowers and a nice note from her, so hello, that's not nothing.
WORTHAM: Yes. No, that was a nice gesture.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: What spoke to you so profoundly?
WORTHAM: The video is really -- it's called "Formation," right? Beyonce's made this video about how she feels she was formed, the forces in America and her history as a black woman that shaped who she is today. That means, in 2016, that deals with a lot of state violence and police brutality and social injustice. And that's what the song is about. I think people are really unsettled by someone as big as Beyonce using a platform like the Super Bowl to address it but that's well within her right as a megastar, as an activist and as a performer.
BALDWIN: There was so much in the video but I think the point where you see this little boy in the black hoodie, you know, dancing in front of that line of police officers and the graffiti on the wall, "Stop shooting us." Had she never taken her message this far, putting it out there like this before on social issues?
WORTHAM: I mean, I think Beyonce's always been political. She talks about independence and self-sufficiency. I don't think any of her fans have seen her so politically relevant. That scene with that little boy is heartbreaking. Because this is a music video, but that's always reality, also our life. In the real world, that little boy has often ended up dead. That's the reality that Beyonce's confronting, and that's what she's dealing with, and that's what people are upset about. Whether or not they agree with it is another question. But the critiques about the video are misplaced. We should be placing that anger towards a system that lets people who are unarmed and, often, you know, not doing anything wrong get injured and killed, rather than the singer who is trying to bring out attention to it.
BALDWIN: What's her last line about --
