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Asteroid Hurtles Past Earth; Nike's Blade Dilemma; Fifth Grade Murder Plot; Meteor Explodes Over Russia

Aired February 15, 2013 - 14:30   ET

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

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: But I want to get back to this question of the meteor crater, because this is important. You know, the Russian meteor that hit earlier today, or exploded earlier today and then parts of it hit the Earth, that was about 10 tons, 10 feet in size, we think, traveling about 33,000 miles an hour. You see what happened when it exploded. When all the gases inside of it blew up in the atmosphere with all the speed, it created all this damage, 1,000 people injured, 270 buildings damaged.

But this one was by size, physical size, about the same as the one that created the meteor crater in Arizona, a long time ago. The difference being that the one that created that meteor crater seemed to have a lot more iron and nickel in it, probably twice as heavy. That's the estimate.

Here is one interesting fact about this, we didn't have proof until 1960 that this was the result of a meteorite, the way it hit earth. People for a long time thought this was a volcano that caused this.

But then in 1960, a scientist has simply said, no, this really was an impact on earth. Think about it. If you walked around the rim of this, Brooke, it would cover more than three quarters of a mile. That has survived all this time.

Think about the power it takes to create that impact, that was created by something about the size of what hit Russia -- or what exploded over Russia --

BALDWIN: Overnight.

FOREMAN: And it weighed more but still, that's what you get from that. So you can imagine this was a tiny, tiny thing compared to the asteroid we were just talking about, which brings us to the question of, if in fact we were hit by something that just passed, that would be a big event.

BALDWIN: Well, you think about it, you know, it wiped out the dinosaurs apparently. That was something like 6 miles wide and this thing was just the size of a New York City apartment. So there are differences and as we have learned today, space 101, you have the asteroid, the rock in space, the meteor, which breaks off of the asteroid.

And that's what comes through the earth's atmosphere and the meteorite breaks off the meteor and hits earth. Tom Foreman, I thank you very much. Ed Lu, we're going to come back to Ed next hour. But that is your asteroid that whizzed past earth here in the last couple of minutes.

Coming up, I have a special guest. Let's get the Gib shot, special guest here at the table. Dr. Drew in Atlanta. Nice to see you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nice to see you too.

BALDWIN: Dr. Drew is going to join us, talking hot topics panel. A lot to talk about including Nike, couple of 10 and 11-year-olds plotting murder.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Crazy.

BALDWIN: Crazy. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Bottom of the hour, I'm Brooke Baldwin. For the next 30 minutes, we will discuss the hot topics that you will be talking about at the dinner table tonight. Full plate today, starting with the gun- fuelled ad, now backfiring for Nike.

Here it is. Featuring the so-called blade runner himself, Oscar Pistorius, you see it says I am the bullet in the chamber. Nike has now pulled the ad, as you know, the story of the last 48 hours, the famed Olympic runner, now accused of fatally shooting his model girlfriend at his home on Valentine's Day.

The South African sports icon broke down in court today, after being formally charged with her murder. Nike has pulled the bullet ad and the company issued a statement today expressing, quote, "sympathy and condolences to the families concerned following this tragic incident." The company added it won't comment further as police are still investigating.

On the panel today, here with me, at the table, Dr. Drew from HLN, and also Amy Palmer, entertainment reporter and founder of powerwomen.com, Dede McGuire, national radio personality and host of "Dede in the Morning" radio show, Joe Levy, contributing editor at "Rolling Stone" and Peter Shankman, branding and social media consultant.

Since we're talking Nike, Peter Shankman, I have to start with you. At what point does Nike need to say, OK, enough is enough, they're pulling out of ripping Pistorius altogether?

PETER SHANKMAN, BRANDING AND SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT: I bet Nike never would have imagined they would be longing for the days where they had a golfer who slept with other women.

BALDWIN: Too soon.

SHANKMAN: It is an unbelievable story. They have to get to the point right now where they like they don't know the facts, the fact he was charged, they need to step away. They definitely need to step away, maybe not forever. They step away forever and then he's released or new information comes out, they'll look pretty stupid, but they need to take a step back. I think they have done that with the release they issue, but, yes, no future ads for time being for Pistorius for Nike.

DEDE MCGUIRE, HOST, "DEDE IN THE MORNING" SHOW: I think honestly I think that they should step away altogether. I think this is very much damaging for him, for Nike. You're talking about a guy who shot four times. And that's the thing that is so scary to me. The story bothers me a lot because if you know that your boyfriend is sleeping with the gun, and had another gun, I think they said a machine gun --

BALDWIN: These are all allegations though. Let's be clear --

MCGUIRE: But, hold on, what is not an allegation is there is a woman now who has been murdered, who has been shot to death, four shots. So there is no disputing that.

DR. DREW PINSKY, HOST, "DR. DREW ON CALL" ON HLN: And multiple domestic violence complaints about this couple. And the matter of fact the way the South African police sort of approach this, this is happening and here's where it's gone.

The fact is if you really look at this guy's history, he was into extremes. People are into extremes, they can be sometimes bipolar and/or prone to addiction. When they get in those altered states, they can do aggressive and violent things in those states.

BALDWIN: Here is the question at least we are marinating on earlier when it comes to Nike. There are all kinds of athletes they have dropped, like most recently Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, but at the same time, Ben Roethlisberger, he had a -- at what point does Nike draw the line?

SHANKMAN: They say this, when Nike reps an athlete, they can't simply say, OK, everything is going to be fine. There are clauses in every athlete's contract that says if you do something bad, we have the ability to fire you, but this is the risk they have to take. They're not repping a national park that doesn't do anything wrong. These are human beings and they're going to screw up from time to time.

BALDWIN: Joe Levy, Joe Levy.

AMY PALMER, ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER: Nike has been shown to make these decisions based on business. I mean, look at Tiger Woods. He was all over the tabloid media for almost a year and Nike stood by him. It wasn't until Lance Armstrong had serious charges against him that he was dropped by Nike.

MCGUIRE: We are in a society -- this is what's going on with Nike. We are holding these people up and acting as if they are -- people we're looking up to and we need to recognize the fact that they're athletes. That's all. We're rewarding them for their athletic prowess and I think we should actually give --

BALDWIN: Hang on, hang on, hang on, here is the question. We have all these different marred athletes, do we have -- Joe Levy, I haven't heard from you, "Billboard" magazine, forgive me, not "Rolling Stone, Billboard," do we have a hero athlete? Who is it?

JOE LEVY, EDITOR, "BILLBOARD" MAGAZINE: Do we have a hero athlete out there?

BALDWIN: Yes.

LEVY: I'm sure we do. We're not talking about him right now.

BALDWIN: I want to talk about him. That's my question. Is there one? Why aren't we talking about him?

LEVY: Derek Jeter is still my hero, still my hero. But there are hero athletes. The point is every athlete is not a hero. Every celebrity is not a hero. The problem we have here is the problem that brands face when they get into the celebrity business. These people are human beings. There are tremendous pressures on them. Celebrity puts more pressure on them.

BALDWIN: I see Dr. Drew eye rolling a little bit here.

PINSKY: I'm the only published literature on celebrity, I studied several hundred of them and they come to celebrity with liability. Look at their history, substance, extreme or relationships or difficult family systems growing up, that's what creates the liability once they achieve the celebrity status. Not the being of the celebrity.

MCGUIRE: Do we just make Nike say, do you own a gun, do you to cheat on your wife, do we just give them a questionnaire and go from there?

SHANKMAN: They're always going to ask those questions in the liability contract before it is signed. Let's face it, you said it, Nike is a business. These things, these people sell and if they didn't, Nike wouldn't have them as advertised.

BALDWIN: Money, money, money. Guys, we got to move on. I love the discussion. I have more coming up next. This one just absolutely boggles my mind. A murder plot and the suspects are fifth graders. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: OK, before we get to our next hot panel topic. Dr. Drew, what are you doing here?

PINSKY: Well, Brooke, you know, you and I have talked about how much we want to work together and I was up here in Atlanta working with my HLN program and raising America and I heard there was about to be a species ending event.

About the mass extinction of humanity and I saw the asteroids raining down in Russia and I thought I need to be in Brooke's arms when the species comes to an end. Peter, Joe, you feel me on this? Species coming to an end, I'll jump into Brooke's arms, I knew she was here, I had to run in here.

BALDWIN: That is going to be me in your arms. OK, thank you for that, by the way. Much love to you. All right, guys, totally switching tones here, this is a tough one. This is a disturbing story, involving a gun, a knife, a plot to kill a little girl, all involving fifth graders.

This was the scene in Washington. This was last Friday. Look at it -- can't see the faces, juveniles, shackled, two fifth grade boys, 10 and 11 years of age, being led into court, facing a judge after police allege they conspired to commit murder after bringing a gun and a knife to school.

According to the spokesman review in court documents, the incident all started when a classmate saw one of the boys playing with a knife on the bus when he was headed to school last week. The boy then spoke up, told a teacher, who then searched the backpack, found a knife with a three-inch blade and a .45-caliber handgun inside.

Court documents revealed the two boys told school staff they planned to use the weapons to lure another student outside and to kill her because, and I'm quoting them, she was really annoying. Police say the 11-year-old also identified six other classmates who were targeted.

Needless to say, parents of children at the school are unnerved, but thankful that teachers and this student stepped in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got a son here and I was a little freaked out. I didn't know what to do.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is my first year of having her in a public school, I homeschooled her since then and it was scary to me but I think they handled it very well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Scary, do you think? Panel weigh in. I don't even know where to begin with this. How did they learn this behavior?

PINSKY: Home.

BALDWIN: Home.

PINSKY: Adults, unless there is some horrible psychological problem, some diagnosable condition. Otherwise they have seen aggression on behalf of adults. Otherwise, no way.

BALDWIN: Dede, you said CSI.

MCGUIRE: I find this story so disturbing honestly because not only was it this little girl, we were kids, if a little boy, we didn't like him, he would thump us, or he would push us a little bit. But they're plotting to kill and here is the thing scary to me, they had a hit list with six other kids on it. I'm going, come on. This is crazy. PINSKY: The one kid with the gun was going to hold the other kids at bay while the other one did the stabbing. They had a plan, an elaborate plan how this was going to work.

BALDWIN: At this point in time, they're 10 and 11 years of age, do they understand the difference between right and wrong?

SHANKMAN: Yes.

BALDWIN: Go ahead.

SHANKMAN: I don't know if they understand the differences in terms of what they see in the real world. They see stuff on TV. They see the news of what happened in Newtown. They see video games and it is not video games' fault, I'm not blaming video games, but they get desensitized.

Advertisements and TV, movies coming out and movies don't help, I don't know if they see the difference between the real world of someone dead, who is not coming back and an actor who gets shot five times and still stands back up.

PALMER: Here's the question I have, though, where do they get the gun? Where do the kids get the gun?

LEVY: Exactly.

BALDWIN: And the knife -- and the knife. Amy, what do you think?

PALMER: Where did they get the guns? Why do 10 and 11-year-olds have access to pistols and knives? This is the real issue. The parents should be arrested.

PINSKY: I agree. When you treat -- when physicians treat children and adolescents, we see the patient as the patient-child unit. Why can't the legal system look at that a little bit the same way?

BALDWIN: Let me quote here this is what one of the boys in the police interview, I was going to kill her with the knife and the other was supposed to use the gun to keep anyone from trying to stop me or mess up my plan. Here's the charge, charged with conspiracy to commit first degree murder. They're 10 and 11. What is justice in this situation? What is the legal system do?

LEVY: The legal system is at a loss here. They really don't know whether to treat them as children or adults. And, in fact, this has to be settled in Washington court whether to approach them as children or adults. It is not -- it is not at all clear.

What is clear is these kids had a criminal mentality. They have a mob mentality. They wanted to pay another kid to keep him quiet. They had a hit list. This is clearly an adult activity. It is clearly feels us to like adult behavior. I have no idea what justice should be, putting these two kids away for attempted murder.

MCGUIRE: Is it that you put the parents away? That's the question for me is because we all keep talking about the kids and where do they get it from and everybody is talking and we keep saying, where did they get the gun, the knife?

BALDWIN: Police say they got the gun from the family member and really the final question I want to -- the final point I want to bring up, a lot of times, I'm sick of talking about school shootings, but I say props to this youngster who spoke up, who heard about this knife, and told police and stopped it.

PINSKY: I don't think that is unusual behavior for a young person. That's normative behavior and that's what we should expect from young people and I think most people would speak up. They see someone acting dangerous, most see kids as an asset --

MCGUIRE: The school just implemented that. They implemented a program like that, Kudos to the school.

BALDWIN: Kudos to the school and the teachers and the youngster. Conversation continues. Next, you heard about the congressman tweets leading to a public disclosure that has -- a mysterious daughter, not what some people thought initially. We'll talk about politicians and social media next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: It is kind of a familiar story these days. Lawmaker sends tweet to mystery woman, tweet meant to be private, reporters pounce. Lawmaker forced to explain himself. Sound familiar?

This one has a twist no one saw coming. This is Congressman Steve Cohen from Memphis. He's single, 63 years of age. And he was at the president's "State of the Union speech just this past Tuesday evening and he may have been peeking off and on at his phone because he sent out this tweet, about halfway through that speech.

@victoriabrink, Pleased you're watching, ILU, that's I love you. Tweet was meant to be a private message, but it wasn't. And you know what happens. Capitol Hill reporters, they see that, they caught it. They reported the deleted tweet, which he deleted about 15 minutes later.

And everyone was asking, who is this Victoria Brink? Well, it turns out it is Cohen's 24-year-old daughter. He says he didn't even know Victoria Brink existed until fairly recently, just a couple of years back, in fact.

I want to bring my panel back in. Panel, so it is, you know, daughter he didn't know he had as opposed to a young love, which a lot of people jumped to a conclusion of initially. Does this hurt him politically?

SHANKMAN: This is my favorite story?

BALDWIN: Why your favorite?

SHANKMAN: Anyone in Congress, anyone in politics needs to take a class in Twitter before they are allowed to use it.

PINSKY: No space or period before the Twitter handle. Everyone sees that one.

MCGUIRE: Here's the reason why I like this story so much. He's a baby daddy, OK?

SHANKMAN: Yes.

MCGUIRE: Really that's what it boils down to. I laughed at that. I said, you know what, we're going to elect him, the baby daddy president and when he's speaking, we'll have other people not paying attention to him. You're tweeting on the job, buddy.

SHANKMAN: The best part is watching all the media start to go Mr. Burns, like, it's a love triangle. It's his daughter.

BALDWIN: We think of people who have been on Craigslist and Facebook saying and doing things they shouldn't have, they meant to be in private.

PINSKY: Stop talking about yourself like that.

BALDWIN: There are other politicians who do.

LEVY: This -- to answer your question, this does not seem right now like it is going to hurt him politically.

SHANKMAN: Yes.

LEVY: This is something that has been -- this is something that looked prurient, that turned into a genuine human story. If you watch him talking about this, he's upset. And there isn't anybody who looks at this who doesn't actually think, this is an OK guy, emotionally, and look at someone who is having a real human moment.

PALMER: Initially he tried to -- nobody is trusting our elected officials. They automatically assume that it is another, you know, Anthony Weiner story or Christopher -- but it is this heart warming tale of a man who didn't know he had a daughter and he's twittering her and it is a direct message but it goes to the Twitter-verse.

BALDWIN: Who is going to teach our politicians Twitter 101.

PINSKY: Social media is a dangerous place. What is the source of this daughter? Do we know the story?

BALDWIN: Apparently he -- I guess Googled this old flame, sees picture of daughter, looks familiar, says, does the math, bam, daughter.

MCGUIRE: I would be mad -- here is my thing this with guy. I would be mad if I elected him.

BALDWIN: Why? MCGUIRE: You need to be there, paying attention, because I may not. I'm electing you to do this and when the president is speaking, he's on Twitter.

SHANKMAN: That's -- you kind of don't want to tweet while the president is talking. Just an FYI, put the phone down while the president of the United States is talking.

BALDWIN: Let me ask you all --

PINSKY: Hang on, I was twittering.

LEVY: This guy is in his 60s. What is he doing Google stalking an old girlfriend and tweeting --

PINSKY: That's right. That's interesting.

BALDWIN: We're all out to be curious.

LEVY: He's doing it during the "State of the Union,: come on.

BALDWIN: He wasn't the only one. He wasn't the only one tweeting. Some say he's -- they were trying to inform the public this was a private message, not --

SHANKMAN: Playing angry birds.

BALDWIN: Thank you so much, all of you. This has been fascinating, certainly, Dr. Drew, Amy Palmer, Dede McGuire, Peter Shankman, Joe Levy. I'm off to tweet. Publicly, mind you. Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)