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Olympic Opening Ceremony Just Hours Away; Testing Security at the Olympic Games; ISIS Strategy; Trump vs. Clinton; Some Russian Athletes Cleared to Compete; Suspect's Mental Health a Significant Factor; Some Memorable Defining Campaign Moments; Compare Your Hands to Donald Trump's; Harvard-Oxford Study Suggests Earth Life "Premature". Aired Midnight-1a ET
Aired August 05, 2016 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:00:10] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. Ahead this hour --
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The curtain is about to go up on the 31st summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro but will the greatest sporting event on earth be overshadowed by all the controversies and chaos?
VAUSE: Presidential rant -- Barack Obama insists the U.S. does not pay ransom for hostages, saying a multi-million dollar payment to Iran was to settle a legal dispute.
SIDNER: Plus a question for the ages. Are we alone? The answer coming up later this hour.
VAUSE: Hello and welcome to our viewers in the United States, actually all around the world I have to say. I'm John Vause.
SIDNER: And I'm Sara Sidner. NEWSROOM L.A. starts right now.
And the clock is counting down. We are less than 19 hours away from the opening ceremony of the 2016 summer Olympics. And all eyes are on Rio de Janeiro as thousands of athletes who have sweated and trained for years eagerly await their chance at gold.
VAUSE: Yes but there is mixed news for Russia. Olympic officials have cleared 271 Russian athletes to compete, 118 others were deemed ineligible after allegations of Russian state-sponsored doping.
CNN World Sports' Christina MacFarlane joins us now live from Rio. I guess many of these Russian athletes, at least now they know a sigh of relief.
CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN WORLD SPORTS: Absolutely -- John. But it has been a truly explosive day here in Rio on the eve of the opening ceremony. That final decision you read out from the IOC that almost a third of Russia's athletes have been banned means that Russia now have fewer competitors than 11 other countries.
But let's not forget that Russia was facing a blanket ban just some 12 days ago. So many Russians are happy that 271 of their athletes can now compete. But as our Don Ridell reports not everyone is pleased with the IOC's decision. Take a listen
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DON RIDELL, CNN WORLD SPORTS: The opening ceremony hasn't even happened but already, a major Olympic victory for one of the biggest teams in Rio. Russia hasn't won any medals yet but 271 of their athletes will be able to compete in the games.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good day. Now we have good news for Russian sport supporters.
RIDELL: Russia's athletes have endured a tense wait in the build-up to the games. Having accused them of running a state-sponsored doping program the World Anti-Doping Agency recommended a blanket ban of the Russian team. The tournament organizer, the IOC opted instead for a policy of individual justice. And under the intense glare of the world's media, the Olympic president, Thomas Bach expressed his confidence that the other athletes have nothing to fear from the other Russians.
THOMAS BACH, INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE: I can look into the eyes of these athletes because I have a very clean conscience. I know that not only I but also the executive board members all have weighed all these arguments very carefully. We also know that we have the support of many, many athletes.
RIDELL: But still the IOC has been accused of going soft and suspicions of the IOC as favorable to Russia, one of the biggest players in world sports, were further fuelled by this question from one of Russia's state broadcasters.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It looked like you personally were helping us. Is it true?
RIDELL: Mr. Bach denied it.
BACH: This is not a decision of helping somebody here or helping somebody there. This is a decision of justice which we could take only on the facts, which are available now and these, we have done.
RIDELL: Afterwards there was a tense exchange between the reporter and a German documentary maker who has produced several films exposing Russian doping. The films which kick started the official investigation and the whole scandal in the first place. He is not convinced that the IOC is being fair.
HAJO SEPPELL, JOURNALIST: It's really hard to understand what else should come to say we have to exclude a system from the most important event of sports in the whole world. So if this is not enough I don't know what is enough. And now we talk about individual justice and about fair play? I think it looks like all -- athletes are equal but the Russians are more equal.
RIDELL: So the games begin with a major controversy. The Russian flag hangs proudly from their apartments in the Olympic village and once medals are hanging around their athletes' necks that controversy will likely continue.
Don Ridell -- CNN, Rio
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[00:05:05] MACFARLANE: Well, as we countdown to the opening ceremony we are also anticipating more protests around Rio. And already this week, we have seen and we've witnessed demonstrations like this one. Protesters clashed with police during this event. Victims were complaining that Brazil was spending billions of dollars on the games while it struggles to pay teachers and other public workers.
So protesters aside, Brazil is hoping for a safe and secure Olympic experience. Officials have held numerous basic drills across the city leading up to the games to make sure emergency teams will be ready.
And our Rosa Flores has more now on how they have been preparing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Military firefighters are called to duty for the final rehearsal of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. It's the last opportunity to test protocols before the main event and the fire brigade colonel in charge of safety invites CNN to put them to the test.
"The first goal", he says, "arriving to Maracana Stadium from the fire station in five minutes".
COL. WANLUIS DE AMORIUM, STATE MILITARY FIRE BRIGADE: It's a good way to check if everything is ok.
FLORES: A few minutes in, military soldiers are along the route just as planned.
The dozens of firefighters roll into Maracana Stadium just in time. But --
DE AMORIUM: Some stuff that I would like to see better at the opening ceremony.
FLORES: Like what?
DE AMORIUM: I think we need to have our motorcycles inside the caravan.
FLORES: He says motorcycles are key in the case of a roadblock because they can weave through traffic to provide first aid but this is an interagency effort involving military, police and the city of Rio.
You are waiting for the city to close the roads.
DE AMORIUM: Yes, in two minutes. FLORES: The clock ticks away and the road is not blocked as planned.
The firefighters communicated with the city of Rio which is in the protocol and asked them can we step in and do the job for you? And that's exactly what happened. With the road blocked the colonel makes his way around the stadium and points out one more thing.
DE AMORIUM: The right position is on the left, not on the right.
FLORES: Emergency vehicles, he says, need to be parked on the left lane. As he completes the walk through the ambulances and soldiers supporting the efforts are in the right place.
DE AMORIUM: So far so good, but as I told you, there is a possibility to get this better.
FLORES: A satisfactory safety drill on the outside. As for the rehearsal on the inside, that is a guarded secret.
Rosa Flores -- CNN, Rio de Janeiro.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MACFARLANE: Of course, you can keep up with all the news out of Rio, good and bad, at CNN.com/Olympics and our special Web site has the latest on the athletes, the venues and the competition, again that's all at CNN.com/Olympics.
And guys, you know, the opening ceremony now is just seven hours away. And as a timely reminder of that, the Olympic flame just passed by our position here about an hour ago. Let's hope that it has a good final journey down to the Maracana with no protests.
VAUSE: Yes, let's hope they weren't throwing rocks at it this time. Ok.
Christina MacFarlane -- we'll catch up with you a little later this hour. Appreciate it. Thank you.
The U.S. President says $400 million sent to Iran was not a ransom payment. Barack Obama says the cash transfer was part of a legal settlement for a decades-old arms deal which never went through and the President says the details were made public months ago.
The payment though happened on the same day Tehran released four American prisoners and the nuclear deal was formally implemented.
SIDNER: After meeting with his National Security Council on Thursday, Mr. Obama also spoke about the fight against ISIS and also about, you guessed it, Donald Trump.
Michelle Kosinski has the details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Obama defended his ISIS strategy.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ISIL has not had a major successful offensive operation in either Syria or Iraq in a full year. Even ISIL's leaders know they're going to keep losing and their message to followers they are increasingly acknowledging that they may lose Mosul and Raqqa. And ISIL is right. They will lose them.
And we'll keep hitting them and pushing them back and driving them out until they do. In other words ISIL turns out not to be invincible. They're, in fact, inevitably going to be defeated.
KOSINSKI: He pushed back against critics who called the $400 million cash payment to Iran a ransom payment.
[00:09:51] OBAMA: We have a policy that we don't pay ransom and the notion that we would somehow start now in this high-profile way and announce it to the world, even as we're looking into the faces of other hostage -- families whose -- whose loved ones are being held hostage and say to them that we don't pay ransom defies logic.
The reason that we had to give them cash is precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions and we do not have a banking relationship with Iran that we couldn't send them a check. And we could not wire the money. And it is not at all clear to me why it is that cash as opposed to a check or a wire transfer has made this into a news story.
KOSINSKI: The President weighing in once again on the 2016 presidential race and calling out Donald Trump.
OBAMA: I've made this point already multiple times. Just listen to what Mr. Trump has to say and make your own judgment with respect to how confident you feel about his ability to manage things like our nuclear triad.
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: -- suggests that you are not confident.
OBAMA: I obviously have a very strong opinion about the two candidates who are running here. One is very positive and one is not so much. This is serious business. And the person who is in the Oval Office and who our Secretary of Defense and our Joint Chiefs of Staff and our outstanding men and women in uniform report to, they are counting on somebody who has the temperament and good judgment to be able to make decisions to keep America safe and that should be very much on the minds of voters when they go into the voting booth in November.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KOSINSKI: The President also took on Donald Trump's recent statements that he is worried the upcoming election could be rigged. At times the President seems to mock this assertion, using words like "ridiculous" and "conspiracy theories".
And in that scene that you just heard, the President in response to Barbara Starr's question over whether the President has worries that -- that Donald Trump is not fit to handle America's nuclear weapons if he were president.
President Obama kept referring back to what he had said two days ago when he said that Donald Trump was unfit to be president and was woefully unprepared for the job. So even though he didn't technically answer Barbara's question, he made his intent very clear.
Michel Kosinski -- CNN, the White House.
SIDNER: We are now joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Hiltzik who is here to talk politics with us. He's a columnist for the "Los Angeles Times" and the author of several books, one of which was a "New York Times" bestseller. Thank you so much for being here.
MICHAEL HILTZIK, JOURNALIST: It's my pleasure.
SIDNER: We have just listened to some of the controversy over this Iran payment having been the day before they released hostages. Not only is Obama making news though, Donald Trump is also making news on the very same issue and it has to do with some video he says he has seen that he refuses to retract even though his own campaign as said, actually we don't think that is accurate. Let's go ahead and roll what he said today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: And you know it is interesting because a tape was made, right. You saw that with the airplane coming in, a nice plane and the airplane coming in and the money coming off, I guess, right? That was given to us, has to be, by the Iranians. And you know why the tape was given to us because they want to embarrass our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: All right, so you hear that from him. Why would even if your campaign is saying to you, listen, this isn't accurate. Don't go with it and you do it anyway. Why do that?
HILTZIK: I think what we're seeing is Trump's technique basically is to deal with the card that's right in front of him and in this case it's the audience that he is addressing in the room. He is counting on them then being low information voters. They are not going out doing the research. They're not listening to the background information that is being provided by actual news organizations.
So they are vulnerable to sort of listening to this when you know, Trump continues to hit them with sound bites and these little received nuggets, they buy it. And they're all in the room together and I think that's what's happening.
Trump's technique, basically, is to not back down, to keep attacking and attacking and hope that something sticks. And the fact that you and I and most informed voters understand that he's peddling nonsense doesn't really matter to him or the people who are at his rallies.
[00:15:09] SIDNER: We're going to move on to some more video. We want to talk about the Democratic side. One of the big issues in this campaign season is trust. Whether someone has been telling the truth and Hillary Clinton over and over again has insisted that she did not have confidential e-mails in her private server.
Let us go ahead and roll after she was asked a question about whether or not, again, she would admit that it was true that she did indeed have these e-mails in her private server. Here's what she said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Director Comey said that my answers were truthful --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: Ok. Very short there -- she was again, my answers were truthful. And the "Washington Post" and many other fact checkers have looked at that said actually that is not what Comey said.
HILTZIK: Well, what Comey said was that he didn't see any evidence and the FBI turned up no evidence that she had not been truthful. So she is turning it around a little bit. I think giving her four Pinocchios for this is a little bit extreme and it may reflect a desire to look balanced on the part of these fact checkers.
VAUSE: The comparison, though, between when Clinton misspeaks or lies or tells a falsehood and when Donald Trump does something similar, Clinton, I guess -- Clinton tells a lie to get out of a controversy where as Trump just seems to tell a lie to make himself sound better or to make something up or if he doesn't know what he's talking about.
HILTZIK: Or to create a controversy.
VAUSE: What we're getting at here is all lies are not created equal.
HILTZIK: Right. Look, you know, what Comey said if you look at the evidence that the FBI produced that Comey used the fact of the matter is we are talking about something in the neighborhood of three e-mails that I think Comey said a reasonable person might not have noticed that there was a confidential or a classified bug on these e-mails. It was not in the header which people would read first.
It just does not seem -- it just sounds to me to be -- I don't want to sound like, you know, a great defender of Hillary Clinton but it sounds like another nothing burger. There is no evidence that she did any sort of wholesale, you know, trading of e-mails with classified information. The best they can say is that there were some e-mails that were maybe equivocal that nobody is quite sure were classified or not and a number of e-mails that were classified later by agencies that looked at them but were not really classified at the point that they passed through her hands.
SIDNER: Well, the FBI didn't charge her. They did come out very strongly, Comey saying that something was not right here and made that very clear.
Let us move on to something else that has been said. First I'm going to show you what Donald Trump has said this week that got people chuckling -- I'm not sure if it's a political problem but it did get people chuckling when he started talking about a baby who was crying during his speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Don't worry about that baby. I love babies. I love babies. I hear that baby crying. I like --
Actually I was only kidding. You can get the baby out of here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: So most media, and we're guilty as well, we cut the middle part out so you could see what had happened in a shorter period of time. We missed something and here's what we all missed and didn't report much on.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: When China devalues its currency they take our guts out and they do it so often. They do it so often. They're constantly devaluing their currency and they always wait until like it's a bad time like we have a problem with Iraq, we have a problem with Afghanistan. Every time we have a like big problem, they always devalue.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The problem here is that China actually is not trying to devalue its currency. In fact, it's got an economic crisis. It is trying to stop its currency from being devalued.
HILTZIK: That's exactly right. I mean I listened closely to what he was saying between those two sorts of rhapsodies with the baby and then I looked into the background. And you're right.
The fact of the matter is that his whole reverie about China, he paints China as this nefarious bunch of schemers who are out to hurt the United States. And that really is simply, as I said it's fantasy. It's sound bites, it's a lack of understanding.
I mean Trump when he talks about how well he knows China he talks about the fact there's a Chinese bank that is a tenant in one of his buildings. And that is on the order Sarah Palin saying Alaska is close to Russia.
But he doesn't show any understanding of the Chinese economy, certainly not of the trade issues that exists -- that not only exists between the United States and China but that tie the United States and China together. And his argument that we should slap 45 percent tariffs on China because they are bad actors, economists and trade experts from the right all the way to the left look at that and they are horrified at the thought of the trade war, the global trade war that would create.
[00:20:05] And it's just another example of how Trump is making it up as he goes along. He doesn't have any understanding of these issues. He doesn't show any interest in learning about the issues to prepare himself to be president. That is I think very worrisome not only to Independents but to Democrats and to Republicans alike.
VAUSE: Michael, come back next hour because we have more to talk about.
HILTZIK: I will.
SIDNER: Thank you -- Michael.
VAUSE: Thank you.
Let's take a break.
When we come back, a fatal stabbing puts London on edge -- why police are investigating the suspect's mental state. And could there be a link to terror?
SIDNER: Plus a U.S. community is mourning the loss of the woman who died in that attack.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Amara Walker and this is your "Aiming for Gold" update.
Good news for Russia. The Russian Olympic chief says at least 271 Russian athletes have been given the green light to compete in Rio. The country has been ensnared in a large-scale doping scandal since last year. Among those not cleared to compete though -- 67 of 68 track and field athletes.
Members of the first ever Olympic refugee team received a warm welcomed in the athletes' village. Hundreds of athletes from other countries joined in a special ceremony that included dance, music and, of course, photos. The ten-member refugee team will compete under the Olympic flag.
And the Olympic torch is making its way around Rio. One of Brazil's surfing legends even took the torch out on the waves. It was a symbolic move for the athletes as the IOC just announced that surfing would be added to the list of Olympic sports starting in 2020.
And the Rio 2016 organizing committee says it has reached its target for ticket sales -- 6.1 million tickets have been made available to the public and so far 80 percent of them have been sold. Don't have yours yet. Well, there are still 1.2 million tickets up for grabs.
That is your "Aiming for Gold" update. I'm Amara Walker.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) VAUSE: London police say the victim from Wednesday's stabbing attack was from the United States. She was traveling with her husband who was a university professor.
SIDNER: She was identified as 64-year-old Darlene Horton. The pair was set to head back to their home in Florida on Thursday. Police have a suspect in custody and they do not believe that his actions were motivated by terrorism.
VAUSE: Officials say the stabbing spree which left five others wounded appears to have been triggered by mental health issues.
[00:25:04] Here's Phil Black.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The scene of a violent, frenzied attack. Police say one man ran along this path stabbing and cutting people randomly. An American woman in her 60s died here. A witness told us she collapsed after she was stabbed in the back. Five other people were injured.
The earliest police statements acknowledged the possibility this was a terrorist attack. But another theory began building momentum.
MARK ROWLEY, METROPOLITAN POLICE ASST. COMMISSIONER: Early indications suggest that mental health is a significant factor in this case and that is one major line of inquiry. But, of course, at this date, we should keep an open mind regarding motive and consequently, terrorism as a motivation remains but one line of inquiry for us to explore.
BLACK: This part of London around Russell Square has known terror before. July 7, 2005 suicide bombers struck a nearby bus and underground train as well as other targets across the city. The police response to this latest violence shocks locals.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the recent attacks in the rest of Europe have got everyone on high alert and I think that there is a lot more anxiety running through London right now.
BLACK: Police arrived six minutes after the first emergency calls. They used a taser to bring down the man with the knife. Working through the night, homicide and anti-terror police confirmed he is a Norwegian national of Somali descent, a troubled man with mental health issues but not an extremist.
ROWLEY: So far we have found no evidence of radicalization that would suggest the man in our custody is in any way motivated by terrorism.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLACK: The police say they had to acknowledge the possibility this was terrorism because of the nature of the attack and the security climate in Europe. Of course, it proved to be an unrelated tragic event that has only brought more fear to a city that was already on edge. The authorities here hope at least that the quick, effective response by police will go some way towards easing those ongoing public concerns.
Phil Black -- CNN, London.
VAUSE: When we come back, is Donald Trump's feud with a grieving family sinking his campaign? The latest poll numbers might just tell the story.
SIDNER: Plus Donald Trump's hands are back in the headlines, believe it or not. How some people are getting the chance to see how they measure up to the Donald.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:30:51] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.
SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Sara Sidner. The headlines for you at this hour.
Thousands of Olympic athletes from around the world are eagerly awaiting the opening ceremonies of the Rio Games. Less than 19 hours away. Olympic officials have cleared now 271 Russian athletes to compete. 118 others were deemed ineligible after allegations of Russian state-sponsored doping.
VAUSE: The U.S. president says the cash price worth $400 million to Iran was not ransom for the release of four American prisoners. Barack Obama says the payment settled a decade's old arms deal that was never completed. Obama says the transfer was made public months ago.
Looking back on past U.S. presidential campaigns, it becomes clear there are key moments which seem to define the candidates and not in a good way.
Four years ago, there was Republican Mitt Romney and his comment about the 47 percent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MITT ROMNEY (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: That played directly into the stereotype that Romney was an out-of-touch rich guy.
Four years before that, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin struggled to answer a question about which newspapers she read.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What I mean, specifically, I'm curious.
SARAH PALIN (R), FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR: All of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years. I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news. Alaska isn't a foreign country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: In 2004, Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean never recovered from what was later dubbed the "I Have a Scream" speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HOWARD DEAN (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're going to South Carolina, and Oklahoma, and Arizona, and North Dakota, and New Mexico. We're going to California, and Texas, and New York. And we're going to South Dakota, and Oregon, and Washington, and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House! Yeah!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: In the second Clinton/Bush/Perot presidential debate in 1992, President George H.W. Bush checked his watch giving the impression, he was bored and out of touch.
And Democrat Michael Dukakis in a tank, wearing a helmet that made him an outright goofy cost him dearly in 1988, because it added to the narrative he was weak on national security.
Donald Trump's fight with the family of a dead American war hero might now just be a similar moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: His wife, if you look at his wife; she was standing there; she had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me. But plenty of people have written that.
She was extremely quiet and it looked like she had nothing to say. A lot of people have said that.
I made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. Built great structures. I've done -- I've had tremendous success.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: In recent days, Trump's poll numbers have tumbled.
First came a "Fox News" survey showing 69 percent saying his response to the Khans was out of bounds. 19 percent, approved.
SIDNER: Two new national polls now show Hillary Clinton opening up a wide lead over Trump. (INAUDIBLE) survey shows Clinton at 48 percent to Trump's 33 percent.
And the latest "NBC News/Wall Street Journal" poll shows the Democrat with a nine-point lead over her Republican rival.
Then there is Sarah Palin's mysterious absence from the Trump campaign.
For months she was gushing about Donald Trump, and this was one of her last public appearances that was back in May.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[00:35:00] PALIN: So Trump came roaring in through this primary. And he blew the lid off the corrupted and corroded machine. He was like a golden wrecking ball! He wrecked what needed to be wrecked in order to shine light on the shenanigans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: But recently the thriller from Mozilla (ph) has been M.I.A. But we have heard from her son-in-law, a former marine and a Medal of Honor recipient who tweeted this out just a few days ago.
"If Donald Trump wants to be the commander-in-chief, he needs to act like one. And that can't start until he apologizes to the Khans."
Well, raise your hand if you think Donald Trump will win the race for the White House.
Take a look at your own hands and compare them to Trump's.
SIDNER: Yes, the size of Trump's hand became fodder for jokes after one of his Republican challengers brought it up in the primaries. You probably thought that trivial slight would go away, Jeanne Moos proves otherwise.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Remember when Donald Trump would ask...
TRUMP: Look at those hands, are they small hands?
They're not small. Are they?
MOOS: Yes, and here's the proof.
A bronze cast of the Donald's right hand that's been hiding in plain sight inside Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in New York City.
But before we get to the stats, a quick recap.
You'll recall Trump had a nickname for Rubio.
TRUMP: I call him Little Marco, Little Marco.
MOOS: And then Rubio counter attacked.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R-FL) FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Have you seen his hands? They're like this. And you know what they say about men with small hands. You can't trust them.
MOOS: The mockery led the Donald to bring out the big gun.
TRUMP: He referred to my hands. If they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee you.
MOOS: Well, at least now, we can guarantee the size of the Donald's hands. The Hollywood reporter found the bronze one just steps away from Andy Warhol at Madame Tussauds. It was cast while making a wax version of young Trump, which has been removed because it's outdated. But the hand remains begging for comparison.
This guy's was bigger.
(on-camera): How old are you?
UNIDENTIFIED BOY: I'm 13.
MOOS (voice-over): "The Hollywood" reporter measured the Donald's hand at 7-1/4 inches. The average American male is usually cited as 7.44 inches, making Trump's smaller despite his 6'3" size.
"The Hollywood" reporter even made a PDF copy of the candidate's hand for people to print out, entitled, "Do you measure up to Trump?"
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm a large to medium.
MOOS: Most men were bigger. As for the women.
(on-camera): Your hand is the same size with Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But my brain is bigger.
MOOS: Now that the size is definitive, can we all stop pointing fingers at the Donald's hands.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is that because your little fingers can't reach all the letters on the keypad?
MOOS: Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SIDNER: All right. Humans have long wondered about their place in the universe. Is there other intelligent life out there?
VAUSE: Not if it's down here. We'll look at what a new study says about that, coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAUSE: It is the question we have been asking for millennia. Are we alone?
Greek philosophers started the discussion and now scientists might just have the answer. And yes, we probably are alone. Scientists at Harvard and Oxford have made the case that we humans might just be the earliest intelligent life around.
SIDNER: They argue based on the age of the universe and conditions after the Big Bang. Life as we know it may have formed fairly recently. The lead author of the study says, "If you ask when is life most likely to emerge, you might naively say now."
We are joined now by Seth Shostak who's joining us via Skype from Mountain View, California. He is a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, which specializes in the search for extraterrestrial life.
I wish I had known about this job when I was young. I would love to go searching out there to see if we are alone or not.
I want to ask you about this new revelation, so to speak.
How hard is it to try to prove whether there is indeed intelligent life out there?
SETH SHOSTAK, SENIOR ASTRONOMER, SETI INSTITUTE: Well, put it this way, we haven't done it yet. So I guess you could say it's not an easy thing to prove. But on the other hand, the universe as they like to say in the movies is vast. And there is a lot of real estate to check out. The fact we haven't found anything so far doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean we're alone. It also doesn't mean we're the first kids on the block.
VAUSE: Seth, looking at the study, it seems the most important thing they came up with is the unique nature of our sun.
SHOSTAK: Well, the unique -- something like one in ten stars is a cousin of the sun. You know, the same size, same brightness. I don't know if that makes you terribly unique. It's like, I don't know, having blue eyes in Illinois.
I mean, most people thought you don't have blue eyes, but you're not all that special if you do. But the thing is that indeed three quarters of all stars are smaller than the sun.
The stars are like animals. There are a lot more small ones and there are big ones, right? Well, there are a lot more small stars and are relatively big ones like the sun.
So these little red dwarf stars, as they are called, constitute three quarters of all stars. Three quarters of all stars and smaller than the sun. Now you might say, so what? (INAUDIBLE) of the galaxy.
The fact that there are so many of them, and that they are so small means that they may in fact be the number one habitat for extraterrestrial life.
SIDNER: Seth, we were looking at some of the areas where there have been sightings, and not too far from you in Palo Alto, California, there have been a sighting of what someone thought was a UFO.
I do want to ask you, are you skeptical of this conclusion and the methods that they are using to try to prove or disprove the existence of intelligent alien life.
SHOSTAK: Well, they're not trying to prove the existence or disprove the existence of intelligent life. In order to do that, you have to look for it, right?
Like it's like sitting around, I don't know in 1700, in early California, wondering if there are any islands out there in the Pacific. Well, you can sit around and have a lot of beer and have a lot of discussion, but unless you actually sent some ships down to the ocean, you'll never going to know.
So we don't know if there's life out there or not. Sightings are a different issue. One-third of the American public think that the aliens are not only out there, which is by the way an opinion that I share with them, but they think that the aliens are also here, buzzing the countryside in their flying saucers or occasionally calling people out of their bedrooms.
I don't think that the evidence for that is very good at all.
VAUSE: OK. Seth, we appreciate you being with us. We appreciate the insight.
Obviously, if we are the only ones here, if we are the only alien life in the universe, then who built all the pyramids. That's what I want to know.
Seth, thanks for joining us.
SHOSTAK: Thank you, guys.
SIDNER: And thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles, I'm Sara Sidner.
VAUSE: I'm John Vause. "World Sports" is up next.
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