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Trump Begins Thank You Tour in Ohio; What's at Stake in Italian Referendum; Plane Crash Victims to be Repatriated to Brazil; U.N. Apologizes for Role in Haiti Cholera Epidemic; Trump/Pakistan P.M. Phone Call Raising Eyebrows; Trump Critics Say He Incites Violence. Aired 2-3a ET
Aired December 02, 2016 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[02:00:08] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. Ahead this hour --
(HEADLINES)
VAUSE: Hello. Great to have you with us. I'm John Vause. We're now in the third hour of NEWSROOM L.A.
Post-election speech or campaign rally, it was a free-wheeling mix of both when Donald Trump made his first big speech Thursday night. He kicked off his Thank You Tour in Ohio. A lot of familiar campaign rally rhetoric. Trump talked about repealing Obamacare, building a wall on the border with Mexico, and protecting America.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are going to bring your country together, all of our country. We're going to find common ground, and we will get the job done properly.
We will do everything in our power to keep the scourge of terrorism out scourge of terrorism out of our country. We're going to keep it out of our country. Just so you understand, people are pouring in from regions if the Middle East. We have no idea who they are, where they come from, what they are thinking, and we're going to stop that dead cold flat.
(CHEERING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Trump bragged about his election win, boasted about the crowds that turned out for his speech, and blasted, you know, the dishonest media.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If you take a look here, the roads are all gridlocked, all gridlocked, all locked down, all secured up, and people pour in. It's an amazing thing. (CHEERING)
TRUMP: How about -- how dishonest -- how about when a major anchor, who hosted a debate, started crying when she realized that we won?
(CHEERING)
TRUMP: This business is tougher than the NFL. It's crazy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Trump confirmed he wants retired Marine General James "Mad Dog" Mattis as defense secretary. But he's not a done deal because Mattis needs a congressional waiver, which some on Capitol Hill already plan to deny.
Phil Mattingly has more on the mutual affection between Trump and Ohio.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(SINGING)
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was the lynchpin in the strategy that propelled to the White House.
TRUMP: This is the place I want to win. This is the place. This is going to do it. Ohio is going to make America great again.
MATTINGLY: And it delivered big league.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: We have a major projection right now. Donald Trump will take Ohio.
MATTINGLY: Now, as he comes back to the scene of one of his most raucous rallies, Ohioans are ready for their president-elect to return the favor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I this we've been on the wrong track for a number of years. I'm thinking of true change.
MATTINGLY: Just one day after securing a deal in Indiana to keep more than 1,000 manufacturing jobs scheduled to move to Mexico --
(SHOUTING)
MATTINGLY: -- here in Hamilton County, expectations are high.
(on camera): Do you think that can be replicated in places like Ohio or Pennsylvania?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Certainly. It's just a matter of what would it take.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He really truly wants to make a difference and save jobs here. Doing that when he isn't even in office yet is a big sign.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): A clear reminder that voters here care most about Trump's ability to turn things around.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you're looking at personal character, I don't think he's a respectable person in that way, but around the country, it's a completely different thing.
MATTINGLY: Top local GOP officials, many caught in the middle of a fight between the state's popular governor and Trump himself, cognizant of a new power center.
GREG HARTMANN, FORMER HAMILTON COUNTY COMMISSIONER: These aren't Republican voter. These are Trump voters. So, for the party, we need to make those voters Republican now. Trump forged an alliance of a lot of the old Reagan Democrats. And he did it masterfully.
MATTINGLY: Kay Wagner supported Hillary Clinton and remains extremely wary of the president-elect.
KAY WAGNER, CLINTON SUPPORTER: His sexism. His crudeness. And his willingness to say irresponsible things, that even a man on the street knows is irresponsible. That turned me off. We don't need that in politics.
MATTINGLY: After Trump won Ohio by a stunning eight points, even Wagner concedes she's willing to give him a chance.
WAGNER: Oh, sure. We have to. That's the game. You know? Winners are winners. No, I think we should support him and hope he can -- not disappoint us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[02:05:20] VAUSE: Phil Mattingly there reporting from Ohio.
And Bernie Sanders is slamming a deal Trump made with Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies. Writing an op-ed, Sanders says, "In essence, United Technology they took Trump hostage and won. And that should send a shockwave of fear through all workers across the country. He has signaled to every corporation in American that they can threaten to offshore jobs in exchange for business-friendly tax benefits and incentives."
A political shock in France with Hollande announcing he will not run for a second term. It's the first time over 50 years a sitting French president has decided not to seek re-election. He leaves behind a divided left that could boost support for the Conservatives and the far-right National Front at the next election. Prime Minister Manuel Valls is expected to seek the nomination for the Socialist Party. Mr. Hollande's administration struggled to revive the economy. He has some of the lowest approval ratings ever.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FRANCOIS HOLLANDE, FRENCH PRESIDENT (through translation): I do this by assuming all of my responsibility and appealing to a collective conscience that engages all those who are progressive but has to prevail in these circumstances, because what is at stake is not one person but the future of the country. I don't want France to be exposed to adventures that are divisive or dangerous for its cohesion and social balance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Mr. Hollande acknowledged he doesn't have the support to defeat the right. And that's a trend across Europe where right- leaning candidates are gaining ground. A second-round presidential vote in Austria and a constitutional referendum Italy on Sunday could solidify populous movements. France, Germany and the Netherlands all go to the polls next year with right-wing candidates pushing established parties to the limits.
To Thailand now, where they have a new king. The crown prince accepted the government's invitation to assume the thrown after his father died in October. He honored the late king in a Buddhist prayer ritual in Bangkok. He said he needed time to mourn before taking the crown.
Bolivia is launching an investigation into charter airline, LaMia, after one of its planes crashed in Colombia. Aviation authorities in Bolivia have also suspended LaMia's flying permits. Colombian officials confirm the plane was out of fuel when it went down on Monday, killing 71 people. Most of the passengers were from the Brazilian football team. The goalie is one of six who survived the crash. Doctors had to have his right leg amputated, but he is sedated and doesn't yet know. 65 of the crash victims will be repatriated to Brazil on Friday.
Shasta Darlington talked with a relative of one of them.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SHASTA DARLINGTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRSEPODNENT (voice-over): This man was rooting for victory when his hometown team got on a plane to Colombia. Now he is in Medellin to pick up his cousin's body, one of 71 people killed on the charter flight carrying the Chapecoense soccer team.
UNIDENTIFIED FAMILHY MEMBER OF CRASH VICTIM: I had to come here to see and to give comfort to my family also because they know someone is here.
DARLINGTON: This man was a member of the Chapecoense board of directors just 29 years old. He was also the godfather to Roberto's son.
UNIDENTIFIED FAMILY MEMBER OF CRASH VICTIM: We went with the whole family because he was all the time saying we must be all together. We have to be together.
DARLINGTON: Chapecoense was Nelson's (ph) passion. He posted this picture days before leaving for the South America Cup final. "Let's go, Chap."
This kind of loss unimaginable.
(on camera): All of the waiting is agony for the families. This is part of the process. It has to be done. Every single one of the 71 bodies has to be prepared for repatriation and burial. And because it is three days after the crash, it will take longer, between an hour and nine hours per body.
(voice-over): Before being sent to funeral homes, the bodies were identified. With no explosion or fire on impact, doctors say it wasn't complicated. They were able to match up their fingerprints to a database.
(BELL TOLLS)
DARLINGTON: The team doctor flew in from Brazil to help.
UNIDENTIIED TEAM DOCTOR (through translation): I never in my life imagined going through this, he said. I have been a doctor for 27 years and never imagined a situation like this. Making it so hard to watch the final images of the scrappy team.
A Bolivian network shot of what may have been the last video of Chapecoense right before the LaMia flight 2933 took off. Only six people survived. The others, their bodies due to be repatriated in military planes Friday afternoon.
Shasta Darlington, CNN, Medellin, Colombia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[02:10:16] VAUSE: Saudi Arabia has been hit by a series of cyberattacks, erasing data and wreaking havoc on computers running six organizations, including Saudi's aviation agency. The attacks were timed so employees would not be around to stop the destruction. It's not clear who's responsible but one of the world's top experts on Iranian hacking say it is possible Teheran is to blame.
A short break. When we come back, Donald Trump heaping praise on Pakistan's prime minister, at least that's what Pakistan says. The case of the international "he said-he said" is next.
And Mike Pence's neighbors have a colorful reaction to the rhetoric of the U.S. vice president-elect, which he once used about gays.
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[02:14:50] VAUSE: Tens of thousands of Muslims are protesting in Jakarta, Indonesia. They claim the city's governor, who's a Christian, insulted Islam during a campaign speech. The governor said the Koran does not bar Muslims from voting for a non-Muslim. Now, Protesters say he should not be allowed to govern a majority Muslim city. A similar rally last month led to violent clashes with police.
After six years and thousands of lost lives, the U.N. secretary- general admits the organization did not do enough to prevent the cholera outbreak after the earthquake in 2010, but stopped short of saying the U.N. caused the epidemic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BAN KI-MOON, U.N. SECRETARY-GENERAL: On behalf of the united nations, I want to say very clearly we apologize to the Haitian people. We simply did not do enough with regard to the cholera outbreak and its spread in Haiti. We are profoundly sorry for our wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The Haitian ambassador to the U.N. welcomed Ban's acknowledgment but Haiti still needs money from U.N. members to improve health care, water and sanitation systems.
A political dustup is swirling over a phone call between U.S. President-elect Trump and Pakistan's prime minister.
Details from Elise Labott.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's a country criticized by the U.S. for failing to crackdown on criticism. President-elect Donald Trump said Pakistan is doing, quote, "amazing work in every way," a message Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Trump delivered in a phone call on Wednesday --
(GUNFIRE)
LABOTT: -- promising to play any role to solve Pakistan's problems.
Sharif's office quoting Trump as saying, "He would love to come to a fantastic country, fantastic place, fantastic place of fantastic people."
Trump's team described the conversation as "productive." It's a far cry from the troubled country he described during the campaign.
TRUMP: Pakistan is a very, very vital problem and really vital country for us because they have a thing called nuclear weapons. They have to get ahold of their situation.
LABOTT: No mention of his pledge to ban immigrants from terrorist havens, like Pakistan.
The change in tone has one long-time diplomate questioning Trump's intent.
CHRISTOPHER HILL, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO SOUTH KOREA & IRAQ: UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think what we are seeing is a certain amount of winging it.
LABOTT: The State Department said it had no part in briefing Trump beforehand. MARK TONER, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKEMAN: We had no discussion with
President-elect Trump prior to that call.
LABOTT: Kazakhstan announced Trump also fawned over its president, who has had an iron grip on the country since 1991. It has been slammed by human rights groups for torture.
The transition said the two leaders spoke about closer ties but President Nazarbayev said Trump told him that under his leadership, Kazakhstan's success was a, quote, "miracle."
HILL: What you don't want to do is give off signals you didn't mean to give and have to reverse course.
LABOTT: Trump didn't shy away from grandiose praise for U.S. adversaries on the campaign trail, saying this to NBC News about Vladimir Putin.
TRUMP: If he says great things about me, I will say great things about him.
LABOTT: After insulting some Mexicans during the campaign, he took heat when he didn't bring up his signature issue in a meeting with Mexico's president.
TRUMP: Who pays for the wall, we didn't discuss.
(CHEERING)
LABOTT: Despite U.S. tensions with Egypt over its crackdown of political opponents, Trump had nothing but praise for President al Sisi, telling FOX Business news after meeting him in New York --
TRUMP (voice-over): He is a fantastic guy, took control of Egypt, and he really took control of it. It was a good chemistry.
LABOTT (on camera): Now, these readouts would suggest Donald Trump is striking up a rapport with world leaders with his out-of-the-box, even casual style, but words matter in diplomacy, especially now that Trump is president-elect.
India, Pakistan's arch enemy, is trying to make sense of the readout but, for now, is taking a tongue-in-cheek approach. The foreign ministry says it does hope that Trump would help Pakistan with its biggest problem, terrorism.
Elise Labott, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: In the days since the election of Donald Trump, one civil rights group in the U.S. tracked hundreds of cases of harassment and intimidation of ethnic and religious minorities. The Southern Poverty Law Firm says many of those behind the harassment invoke Trump's name during the incidents. While the president-elect has publicly called for it to stop, some are not listening. Here's an incident in a Starbucks in Miami.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SHOUTING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're trash.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because I voted for Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So what?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The angry customer in the video later told reporters his server took a long time to make his order because he is white and voted for Trump. He also said he was sorry for being upset. Meantime, CNN is waiting for comment from Starbucks.
Joining me is a Dr. Judy Ho, a clinical and forensic psychologist based in Los Angeles.
Judy, always good to have you with us.
DR. JUDY HO, CLINICAL AND FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST: Thank you, John.
VAUSE: So many examples of these angry outbursts. They seem unrelated to politics and somehow politics gets to the mix of the confrontation.
I want to show you this video of a Chicago woman, Jennifer Boyle, arguing to African-American employees at a craft store. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(CROSSTALK)
[02:20:10] JENNIFER BOYLE: And I voted for Trump so there. And look at who won. And look who won. And look who won.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: That started out as an argument over a shopping bag. The one at Starbucks was because his coffee was late. What's going on here?
HO: Trump's campaign has long time been putting forward a rhetoric of injustice and don't feel isolated, and we are trying to protect you from further harm. Whenever someone is feeling like they get the short end of the stick, they invoke his name. That's how permeating his message has been. VAUSE: There have been so many examples. Just random events
happening to people in stores, even in California. We've had, friends of Asian descent, they have been told by strangers you are going to be deported now President Trump is in office. How do people -- first of all, why do they do that? And how do they feel it is right to do that.
HO: Human beings naturally want to categorize. There's an in- group/out-group situation where, an in group, I feel better than the out group, and that propels the person forward and makes them feel better about themselves. And now that Trump's in office, some people are using that and saying I'm better than you and this makes me feel better to use this negative language, and that's because he has provided models for that during his campaign.
VAUSE: I want to show you an incident that happened on a Delta flight last week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump, baby! That's right. This man knows what's up. We have some Hillary Clinton (EXPLETIVE DELETED) here? Donald Trump is your president. Every (EXPLETIVE DELETED) one of you. If you don't like it, too bad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: This man was not provoked in any way. He just got up and started to shout this out on a plane. We should note that Delta banned him for life.
So how do you explain his outburst?
HO: It seems he is unprovoked but, at the same time, we don't know the context he was coming from. There was probably a place he though there's a long time where he hasn't had a place to say what he wants to say and how he feels, and by invoking Trump's campaign, he is able to say I'm powerful and I can stand behind this, because somebody else is saying it is OK. This model of behavior is what people like him are responding to. Perhaps they felt marginalized in the past and feel there is a place to say something.
VAUSE: Children are caught up in this, too. Some middle school kids in Michigan, days after the election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(CHANTING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: They're chanting, "Build the wall, build the wall." Is that coming from the parents?
HO: Children are like sponges. They learn from their environment. If it is not from parents, it is from teachers or some adults around them. What happens is children hear this and children are so susceptible to social modelling. So, when they see an adult that they trust saying those things, that's when they are echoing the same sentiments.
VAUSE: Is this going to calm down or get worse, or does it depends on what President-elect Trump does once he's in office?
HO: I believe he should be doing something now instead of waiting until he is in office. If he does something forcible and says this is unacceptable behavior, I believe it can curb some of it. Since he hasn't made such a strong statement, really kind of no action is a passive acquiesce of what happens.
VAUSE: It gives them a pass?
HO: Exactly.
VAUSE: Judy, good to speak with you. Thank you so much.
HO: You, too, John. Thanks.
VAUSE: And the U.S. Vice President-elect Pence is having some neighborly issues. Mike Pence is known for his staunch anti-gay stances over his political career. As Indiana governor, he attempted to amend the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriages. He criticized efforts to allow gays to serve openly in the military. In a statement on his website, he even suggested support for conversion therapy. With that in mind, neighbors near the house he is renting in Washington have started a rainbow-flag protest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is it a movement? What do you call it?
JOANNA PRATT, NEIGHBOR OF VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT MIKE PENCE: No. It is a peaceful protest. We are flying a rainbow flag from our house. We talked to our neighborhood and told them what we were doing and we asked if they wanted to join us, and many of them liked the idea and agreed to do it.
We probably passed out 10, 11 flags. I'm not sure if they are all flying yet, but we hope, in the next couple of days, folks will have a chance to put theirs up.
We want to make a statement in a peaceful protest way to Mike Pence to let him know what we think of the political situation. We put up the rainbow flag at our house alongside an American flag to show we are both American citizens who feel very strongly about the country but also feel strongly about the importance of diversity in our country, about tolerance in our countries. We want the message to get to Pence.
When he gets up in the morning and walks out the door, one of the things the first things he'll see is our house with two flags flying in in the front.
We don't often have a chance to participate in government at this level, so we hope that this will be the beginning of the conversation and that we can continue this conversation throughout the next four years.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[02:25:38] VAUSE: Welcome to Washington, Mr. Pence.
Buzz Aldrin once flew safely in space to be the second man to walk on the moon, but a trip to the South Pole may have almost done him in. The former U.S. astronaut was on a tourist trip to Antarctica when he fell ill and was airlifted to New Zealand. The 86-year-old apparent had fluid in his lungs but he is now said to be responding well to antibiotics and is in stable condition. His manager described him as being in good spirits.
One of the stars of the British comedy "Fawlty Towers" has died. Andrew Sachs was 86 years old.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN CLEESE, ACTOR: Remember, remember? Do you remember I had some money yesterday? The money I won on the horse? Tell him. Tell him about the money yesterday.
ANDREW SACHS, ACTOR: I know nothing.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Sachs played the bumbling waiter Manuel who got a good laugh from his "know nothing" phrase. He reportedly suffered from dementia for four years. Sachs appeared on various British shows but "Fawlty Towers" in the 1970s was his biggest break. And the show's star, John Cleese, of "Monty Python" fame called Sach's work inspiring.
Coming up on NEWSROOM L.A., the political future of Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi depends on a constitutional referendum this weekend. Also in the balance, the future of Europe. More on that in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[02:30:08] VAUSE: Thank you for staying with us. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause, with the headlines this hour.
(HEADLINES)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [02:30:08] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you for staying with us. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause, with the headlines this hour.
(HEADLINES)
VAUSE: The rise of the right is on display in Italy. Voters go to the polls on Sunday for a constitutional referendum. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi says he will quit if the reforms don't pass.
CNN's senior international correspondent, Ben Wedeman, explains what the results could mean for the future of Europe.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(CHANTING)
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRSEPONDENT (voice-over): Demonstrations -
(SHOUTING)
WEDEMAN: -- marches, rallies, speeches --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREING LANGUGE)
WEDEMAN: -- and more speeches.
(CHANTING)
WEDEMAN: Parties across Italy's political spectrum have pulled out all of the stops in the leadup to a constitutional referendum, which on the surface, may not seem to merit all of this sound and fury.
MATTEO RENZI, ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE): Italy's energetic 41-year-old Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is trying to convince a skeptical people to modify Italy's constitution to slim down and defang its bloated Senate. The chance for real change, Renzi told the crowd in Rome, is a once in a lifetime opportunity.
RENZI: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
WEDEMAN: "Yes or never," he says. "This needs to be clear. There will not be another chance."
(SHOUTING)
WEDEMAN: Renzi promises a streamlined constitution will be a tonic for Italy's anemic economy, high unemployment, and mindboggling bureaucracy.
But if the latest polls are right and "no" wins, trouble might follow.
After Brexit and Trump, could Italy be the next to shake the established order? (on camera): There's worry a "no" vote could lead to the exit from
the European Union, to a collapse of the country's shaky financial house. But it is important to know that the vote means nothing changes. Yes, it could lead to the collapse of the government of Prime Minister Renzi, but it Italy has seen 65 governments since the end of World War II. Change here is, at best, glacial (ph).
(CHANTING)
WEDEMAN (voice-over): The opposition to the constitutional changes ranges from the far left to the far right. All worried the changes will give too much power to Rome.
Zapao Salvini (ph), head of the Anti-Migrants Labor Party, is driving around in a camper spreading the gospel of "no." He takes inspiration from the U.S. president-elect.
"The lesson of Trump tells us we must have courage," he tells me. "If the 'no' vote wins, we will present Italians with a revolutionary program."
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
WEDMEAN: Soft-spoken former comedian, Victor Gredio (ph), leader of the anti-establishment Euro-skeptic Five Star movement, Italy's second-largest party, has this advice for the many undecided.
"Trust your gut," he says. "Don't trust your brain."
Whatever the result, Italy will muddle through, says the commentator, Massimo Franco.
MASSIMO FRANCO, COMMENTATOR: Italy will not finish at all, after this referendum, whatever the outcome is.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGAUGE)
WEDMENA: Galileo has seen politicians promising the world and delivering nothing.
"Umpteen governments have left us up to our neck in muck," he said.
Ben Wedeman, CNN, Italy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[02:34:52] VAUSE: Up next, a valuable lesson. High school students recreate a drug for a fraction of what a price-gouging pharmaceutical executive actually sells it for. We will hear from their teacher in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAUSE: Do you remember this guy right here? Martin Shkreli, dubbed the most-hated man in America after he jacked up the price of a drug called Daraprim, used in the treatment of HIV and other illnesses. He smugly boosted about raising the price from $13.50 to $750 a pill.
Now a group of high school kids in Sydney, Australia, have just beat Shkreli made their own version for a few dollars a pill. They call it Breaking Good, a play on the U.S. TV series, "Breaking Bad."
Shkreli went on a Twitter rant when he found out, "I'm a grown-ass man. I want to introduce the kids to the concept that average ANDA, which stands for Abbreviated New Drug Application, takes five years and costs $5 million. So, they have $4,999,980 to go. And never ever compare your cooked game to mine, highest yield, best purity, most scale. I have the synthesis game on lock."
Well, for more on the project that's gotten Shkreli so angry, I'm joined by Alice Williamson. She's a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Sydney. She worked with the kids on "Breaking Good."
Alice, thank you for being with us.
Hit me with the technical stuff first. Explain how the students at Sydney Grammar managed to pull this off.
ALICE WILLIAMSON, POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: The students had looked through the patent literature and looked things published at Wikipedia and details that were given for the recipe, if you like, the synthetic procedure to make this medicine. They tried to follow them as best they could, but they had some problems along the way and managed to fix those with the help of their great teachers at Sydney Grammar School, Dr. Malcolm Bins (ph) and Dr. Eric Sheridan (ph).
VAUSE: I love it, they used Wikipedia. Why did they specifically choose this drug to try to replicate on the cheap?
WILLIAMSON: Well, we have been working with Sydney Grammar for the past two years, and when I say "we," I mean the Open Source Malaria Consortium that I work as part of. The Open Source Malaria Consortium was founded by Associate Professor Matthew Todd in back in 2011 at the University of Sydney. And we are looking for a new medicine for malaria, and doing so in a bit of an untraditional approach, in that we share all of our data online and there is no secrecy because we're trying to see if we can maybe find a medicine more quickly and more cheaply by sharing things rather than keeping things secret. Because we are open with all of our data and we have shared platforms, it means we have collaborations with undergraduate students. There's many in the states that are working as part of the Open Source Malaria projects and also with high school students which is even more unusual.
So, the boys at Sydney Grammar had been working making anti-malaria building blocks for a year or so. When we heard about the story in September 2015, I think it stayed with us. We wondered whether it would be a good educational project to see if the boys could try and recreate this medicine in their lab and get them involved in a real research challenge and get them to understand how to build molecules, which is what organic chemists, like me, and many others, try to do. And also, maybe see if we could highlight some of the inequity involved with this drug, and by showing that a group of young boys can make this before and after school.
[02:40:39] VAUSE: Yeah. They did it in their spare time. It is incredibly impressive.
Shkreli posted a video statement on YouTube, and here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARTIN SHKRELI, FORMER PHARMACEUTICAL EXECUTIVE: True scientists are hard at work replacing Daraprim with a more effective solution, which can be taken prophylactically and be far safer than the current options. Medical science has brought tremendous advances in cancer, mental health, autoimmune disorders and many others. Technology has lowered the cost of a myriad of goods and services dramatically.
We should congratulate these students for their interest in chemistry. And I will be excited about what is to come in this STEM-focused 21st century.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: What would you like to say about that statement that is dripping in sarcasm.
WILLIAMSON: I think I will take it for what he said. I think congratulations for the students is really in order. They have achieved something most people wouldn't be able to do, and even as first-year or second-year undergraduates who have the opportunity to do rather than be able to do. And I think that is what the project was about. It's trying to inspire young people to be interested in STEM. We know we need new scientists across all fields. And that's what this project is about. It is engaging young people by enabling them to participate in a real research project.
VAUSE: The cost of medicine and huge markups is not unique to Shkreli, though he is the extreme example. I wonder, if this a breakthrough moment here in some way to try to bring down prices of medication?
WILLIAMSON: The students -- there was never a goal that the students would try to sell this medicine. What they have made is the active ingredient in the medicine. And there are a lot of elements to a drug. When we take a pill, it is made of a lot of components, and that needs to be built, including the central element. If we think about the analogy of a Thanksgiving dinner made of turkey, which is the active ingredient, there's a lot of trimmings involved, too. So, you have to build those ingredients, too.
I think what the students have shown is this material, this active ingredient can be made very cheaply. We knew this before. Pharmaceutical industries could produce this cheaply. But if it is so cheap, why is this drug so expensive? VAUSE: That's a question which so many people have been asking, and
it's taken, what, 17-year-old boys in Sydney to prove it can be done for much less.
Alice, thank you for being with us. And congratulations to the 17- year-old boys.
WILLIAMSON: It's our pleasure.
VAUSE: Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.
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[03:00:09] NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCOR: Donald Trump goes on the road to thank his supporters, giving his first extended speech since the election.
