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Prince Death Possibly Linked to Opioid Reaction; Trump Says Sanders Should Run as Independent; Anderson Cooper Interviews Mother, Gloria Vanderbilt. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired April 28, 2016 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:30]

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN HOST: And good morning, I'm Carol Costello, thanks so much for joining me. New, possibly major clues in the death of Prince this morning. A source revealing to CNN that opioid medication was found on the singer when he was discovered unresponsive inside his Paisley Park compound. According to one official, investigators now say they believe it was a reaction to that pain medication that led to Prince's health scare aboard a plane about a week before his death.

That same official says Prince was treated for a potential overdose following that emergency landing. Drug enforcement officials are now joining the investigation. With me now to talk about that is board- certified pain physician, Doctor William Maroney. He's also the Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for Bay County, Michigan. Welcome, sir.

WILLIAM MORRONE, BAY COUNTY, MI DEPUTY CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER: Thank you for having me.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being here. So when we say opio -- opio -- I can never say that word -- opioid ...

MORRONE: Opioid.

COSTELLO: ... yes, opiate. What do we mean by that, what kind of drug?

MORRONE: OK, opioids are from the general family that we usually are called opiates. Because they come from opium. Morphine and Codeine, which we use for 5,000 years, basically are derived from opium. And opioids are just a new century's type of opioids that are chemically modified to lack -- last longer.

We've used morphine for pain for 5,000 years, but it only lasts two or three hours. So if we chemically modify morphine, you get hydrocodone, you get oxycodone, it may last five or six hours. And then a formulation change, you can take it once or twice a day. And the illegal drug, heroin belongs to the same family.

COSTELLO: OK. So authorities now say that Prince suffered an overdose on board that plane. And the plane landed in Illinois, and he was treated for it. So how much -- is there any way that you would know how much medication you would have to take for an overdose? MORRONE: Here's the important part. If it was an accidental overdose

because it was pain management gone terribly wrong, it could have happened because he had a respiratory infection, he had sleep deprivation, and there's a lot of other things go on that reduce your respiratory capacity. You just can't breathe the same with a respiratory overdose. So what's an ordinary amount of pain medicine, now becomes high-risk, and life-threatening. And that's why he needed the possible reversal.

This is the medicine, it's called Naloxone. And Naloxone is a 1cc injection, and it reverses the overdose. Now, you can get it injected, and it goes in a muscle or in a vein. But if you get a nasal applicator and you put it up the nose. Then you -- I don't know if you can see that --

COSTELLO: We can.

MORRONE: Great. And all across America, we've been -- according to the Obama initiative, the three-point plan to reduce opiate overdose accidents -- Naloxone education and distribution for pain patients, not just people with substance abuse disorder, but to pain patients, to reduce possible accidents like this.

COSTELLO: So going back to Prince in the overdose, and that sort of treatment that you just demonstrated for us. I know that doctors wanted him to stay overnight in the hospital. There wasn't a private room, so he did not. How serious was that decision for Prince to leave and go back home?

MORRONE: Here's why that was a very important decision. If you overdose on the medications in the opioid family, and that drug lasts five, six, seven, eight hours, when you get the reversal, when you get the reversal with the Naloxone, this only lasts 45 minutes. So you might need two or three of these, and then right after that, you have to reduce the level of the medication you're taking.

And you have to see a doctor who's smart enough in managing the risk. And that's really where -- when the federal government looks into this, they're going to want to see, did the person who was managing the pain understand the risk, and did they have enough experience in this? Or was this a doctor that didn't understand, in high-risk pain patients, we give this and say, "if you have an accident, you have this at home." This is now a standard of care, not just pain medicine. So --

[10:35:39]

COSTELLO: So a last question. So if Prince took another kind of drug when he was home, or more pain medication, then that could have triggered another overdose, perhaps?

MORRONE: And, it would be something as simple as a muscle relaxer, a sleeping pill. So now you've stacked medications that reduce respiratory drive. And you stack them on top of somebody who may have a pulmonary infection. So this may have been a terrible pain management crisis that went wrong. And that's where they need to look at his prescription record, and you

need to look and see if the doctor understood the risk management. And this is an epidemic sweeping across America. Separate from drug addiction, mismanagement of pain is a very -- it's just heartbreaking right now.

COSTELLO: Doctor William Morrone, thanks so much ...

MORRONE: You, too.

COSTELLO: ... for helping us understand. It was excellent. Still to come in the Newsroom, Donald Trump dishes out advice to Bernie Sanders. Why he says Sanders should run as an Independent. Up next, Ralph Nader will weigh in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:36]

COSTELLO: It's the question on many Democrat's minds, if Bernie Sanders does drop out, will he try to unify the party and rally around Hillary Clinton? Donald Trump has other ideas. He says Bernie Sanders has been treated terribly by the Democrats, both with delegates and otherwise. He should show them and run as an independent.

Former South Carolina governor, Jim Hodges tells Politico, Bernie Sanders has, "a couple of options. He could be a Teddy Kennedy type that loses the nomination and then moves on to cement his position in the Democratic universe. Or he could be Ralph Nader." Some Democrats, of course, blame Nader for taking away votes from Al Gore in 2000, when he ran as a Green Party candidate. Ralph Nader joins me now. Welcome, sir.

RALPH NADER, CONSUMER ADVOCATE: Well come on, you've just repeated another canard on 2000 campaign, Carol. Basically the election was stolen from Gore in Florida, and he lost his home state of Tennessee. And then you had the 5-4 Supreme Court decision blocking the recount in Florida -- the Florida Supreme Court-ordered. So let's not use the Green Party as a scapegoat, that the Democrats always do.

But why should Bernie Sanders drop out? There could be a scandal with Hillary Clinton, those transcripts and closed-door meetings with the big bankers, and other big corporations could be released. The super delegates are not bound. He made a good point, Bernie, when he said he wants to go all the way to the convention, so everyone -- ending up in California -- every voter can have a right to vote for the candidate of their choice.

I think that -- Donald Trump should release his income tax. He keeps saying he's working on it, he's working on it, but he has no intention of disclosing the fraud. That he's not worth what he is, that he doesn't give money to philanthropy, that he has very shady dealings in his business practices. So let's focus on the colossus of ignorance, as somebody called Donald Trump. COSTELLO: Well a lot of Democrats fear that Donald Trump could win if, let's say Bernie Sanders decides to run as an Independent. Should he do that?

NADER: Well he said repeatedly he's going to support the Democratic nominee, whoever the Democratic nominee is. And he's a believable person, he doesn't dissemble. So that takes care of that. Apart from the fact it's getting very late to get on all the ballots. It's almost impossible now, even if he wanted to do it. But --

COSTELLO: If you were in Sanders' position now, what would you do?

NADER: Well I would, I would never have run in the Democratic Party. So that's a question I cannot answer. He ran ...

COSTELLO: Well --

NADER: ... in the Democratic Party and he's doing ...

COSTELLO: Well he --

NADER: ... very, very well. In fact if ...

COSTELLO: True, but even Independents --

NADER: ... if Independent voters could vote in those primaries this last Tuesday, he would've won them all. He won Rhode Island because Independent counties could vote in the Democratic primaries. So he really is heading the polls against Trump, ahead of Hillary, against Trump. And by the way, Trump is not a sure thing. He's got a lot of vulnerabilities that -- and he can't keep his mouth shut, as everybody knows, to the delight of the ratings of CNN, and FOX News.

COSTELLO: You know, I wanted to ask you this because doesn't -- does the Sanders campaign, and also Donald Trump's campaign, prove that a viable third-party will soon be reality?

NADER: I think that's coming, Carol. But not this cycle. It may come in 2020. By then, the Electoral College may be replaced by this growing interstate compact movement where California, New York, Maryland, and other states are pledged that, if they get to 270 electoral votes, they will throw their electoral votes behind any presidential candidate who won the national popular vote. In effect, neutralizing the Electoral College.

And that will open it up to more candidates, more voices, more choices. And also, I think it would bring in the civil society. You notice how elections now, in America, are like, removed from the Democratic arena? I mean, all these citizen groups who know what they're talking about, local, regional, national, energy, healthcare, tax reform. They're never part of the electoral dialogue.

And we have a major gathering in Constitution Hall on May 23, 24, 25, 26 to really develop a resurgence of the civil society. Without the civil society, you don't get a good politics, you don't get a good ...

COSTELLO: Uh-huh.

NADER: ... future for our country. And ...

COSTELLO: How so?

NADER: ... anybody interested in attending, you just go to breakingthroughpower.org. That's t-h-r-o-u-g-h, breakingthroughpower.org. It's never been held at this scale before in American history, Carol.

[10:45:39]

COSTELLO: All right, and is that, in part, thanks to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump?

NADER: Pardon?

COSTELLO: Well is that in part, like the popularity of such an event, is that due in large part because of this election?

NADER: Yes, because you know you can't remove the civil society from the electoral process. That's why the electoral process becomes commercialized, it becomes stupefying. Candidates get away with absolutely false statements, erroneous statements -- and of course, Trump is the king of erroneous statements.

And the press can't catch up with these terrible errors on the part of the candidates. It's just -- I've never seen a thing like it. The dialogue is extremely vacuous, but extremely provocative in a non- substantive sense. So I think the, I think the press has to have a higher estimate of its own significance in elections. And lift the candidates to higher levels of accountability.

COSTELLO: Ralph Nader, thank you so much for your insight, I appreciate it. Still to come in the Newsroom, what is it -- what was it like to be raised by Gloria Vanderbilt? A candid look at her life, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:51:19]

COSTELLO: Born into wealth, fame, and tragedy. HBO documentary, "Nothing Left Unsaid," is delving into the life of Gloria Vanderbilt. Her journey revealed through a series of candid conversations with her son asking the questions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Mom. Hey, Mom.

GLORIA VANDERBILT, ARTIST: Hi, sweetheart.

COOPER: How are you? How are you?

VANDERBILT: Are you exhausted? COOPER: I'm tired. No, I'm all right.

VANDERBILT: How are you doing?

COOPER: Why did you want to -- why did you agree to do this? Have you ...

VANDERBILT: I guess because I'm a ham.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Anderson Cooper, of course that's her son. He's with me. She's so lovely.

COOPER: She is, she's amazing. It's amazing, I mean, she's 92 and she's sort of the most youthful and modern person I know. She's very -- she believes the next great love is right around the corner, she's very optimistic.

COSTELLO: Yes, I can't imagine my mom saying what your mom says.

COOPER: Yes. No, no.

COSTELLO: Actually, I can't imagine asking questions of my mother, that you asked. But ...

COOPER: Well I -- see, I actually hope that this film, and the book that we did, "Rainbow Comes And Goes," that it encourages people to get to know, particularly an aging parent, before it's too late. Because that's really what I wanted to do, that's the whole idea of "Nothing Left Unsaid." I didn't want to leave anything left unsaid. And there was all this stuff I didn't know about my mom's life. And all these, sort of, secrets I started discovering, that became this film.

COSTELLO: I think it's difficult for people to see their parents as people, right?

COOPER: Absolutely, yes.

COSTELLO: You always see your parent as your parent.

COOPER: And then it's too late. And then it's -- they're gone. And so I think it's really important to take the time that we have with them. And that's what I did. I sat, from the time my mom was 91 to 92, we decided to change the conversation, you know? And have a real conversation about her life and all the things I didn't know.

COSTELLO: So what was the most startling thing you learned?

COOPER: Well I mean, she's had this epic, incredible life of incredible love and loss, and triumphs and tragedies. I mean she dated Marlon Brando, and Frank Sinatra, and Howard Hughes -- like hot Howard Hughes, not the crazy, desert inmate ...

COSTELLO: Not the recluse, yes that -- COOPER: Yes. But she just has this incredible drive and determination. I think that's what really came across. There was one point, it was funny, in the film, I'll show you a clip, where I ask her, I'm talking to her about just about me as a kid. And she told me that -- well I'll show you, take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I think my dad helped my mom learn what a parent was supposed to do, and see what a relationship with the children could be like.

VANDERBILT: When you were born, I was sure it was going to be a girl.

COOPER: You really wanted a girl?

VANDERBILT: I was (mensed) to have daughters.

COOPER: I won't take it personally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Yes.

COSTELLO: Thanks a lot, mom.

COOPER: Thanks, mom.

COSTELLO: Well it looks like a lovely documentary.

COOPER: Yes, it's great. It's a really great film, I hope people like it.

COSTELLO: Yes, it's great. I've seen it. So, Anderson thanks for stopping by.

COOPER: Thanks.

COSTELLO: "Nothing Left Unsaid" airs tomorrow night, 9:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:58:50]

COSTELLO: Tonight's episode of CNN's original series, "The 80s," focuses on the end of the Cold War, and the famous words, "Tear down that wall."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, EDITOR "THE REAGAN DIARIES": Many conservatives thought that Reagan had been charmed by Gorbachev. And Reagan actually had more problem dealing with his hard right, than he did the left. So Reagan had to constantly let the right know, "I know what I'm doing." JACK MATLOCK, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.S.R.: Reagan was

being accused already of getting soft on Communism. But he hadn't forgotten the problems we still had. Europe is still divided, there was still a Berlin wall.

RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable. That would advance dramatically, the cause of freedom and peace. Mister Gorbachev, open this gate. Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

JAMES A. BAKER III, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: It was perfect. He was beautiful. I mean he had to insist on keeping it in the speech. And he did it. Don't let anybody tell you it was a stab for anybody else (that didn't).

JULIAN E. ZELIZER, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev decides to do something bold. And he says, let's separate SDI from reducing the nuclear stockpile. Once he does this, it opens up the possibility for a third summit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Relive the 80s, tonight 9:00 p.m. Eastern, only on CNN. Thank you for joining me today, I'm Carol Costello. AT THIS HOUR, with Berman and Bolduan starts now.