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Jimmy Carter Begins Cancer Treatment; Are American Voters Angry?; Late Night Hosts Ding "The Donald." Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired August 21, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Very serious situation going on, North and South Korea on the brink of war. North Korea state run media reporting Leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered frontline troops into a wartime state after both sides traded artillery fire over their borders.

The north threatening to destroy loud speakers at a blaring anti-North Korea broadcasts. The South is vowing to, quote, "Strongly retaliate against any attacks from the north."

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Tens of thousands are expected to pack a football stadium in Mobile, Alabama tonight for a Donald Trump rally. If you've seen these new poll numbers from Quinnipiac University, they find Trump leading Jeb Bush among Republicans in his own state of Florida.

Meanwhile, Trump and Bush both now defending their use of the term anchor babies, which many consider a pejorative term.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Here is another story getting attention. A leading voice in the Black Lives Matter Movement is blasting claims that he is white and posing as a black man.

Shawn King wrote in a blog, quote, "I have been told for most of my life that the white man on my birth certificate is not my biological father and that my actual biological father is a light-skinned black man."

He said the lies do not discredit his cause. He told CNN's Don Lemon that he considers himself biracial.

CUOMO: She won't be charged with a felony, but Caitlyn Jenner could get a misdemeanor for a crash back in February. Police say Jenner was driving at an unsafe speed when she rear ended a car sending it into an oncoming traffic. That's where the driver was killed. The L.A. County D.A. will ultimately decide if Jenner gets charged.

PEREIRA: There has been such an outpouring of support for former President Jimmy Carter following the announcement from him at a news conference that his cancer had moved from his liver and spread to his brain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: They think they got it all. It is showing up now in four places in my brain. It is likely to show up other places in my body as the scans detected in the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, was at the press conference. He joins us now. Sanjay, it is great to talk to you. We want to talk about the treatments, et cetera. We have to start with how remarkable this moment was, this former president essentially discussing his own mortality.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it felt very historic for that regard. I was thinking about it, for many of us, you know, you remember Reagan and the letter that he wrote about his Alzheimer's disease.

President Clinton had heart surgery as a former president. It was for an urgent matter. He didn't have a chance to address people like Jimmy Carter did, President Carter did. It was emotional in the room.

I mean, you know, there is a lot of love for him. He was so candid, came out wearing blue jeans, and made a few jokes, and that got right to it. He looked good, 90 years old. He said he wants to build houses in Nepal later this fall. He wants to do that. It's just remarkable.

PEREIRA: It says something. You talked to us before about what a powerful force that is. Let's talk about the reality with his diagnosis. He talked a little bit about how he's going to be treated. Help us understand the treatment that he faces.

GUPTA: He has melanoma that is metastatic. That means it spread throughout his body. It is in his liver and he revealed yesterday that it's also in his brain. So the treatment, when he first got the diagnosis, he thought he only have a couple weeks to live. He's heard about his options in terms of treatment.

[07:35:01] He's going to get radiation to his brain, which he actually received yesterday and he's going to get a new medication, a type of chemotherapy that essentially serves to boost your immune system. That's what the radiation looks like, by the way, you are held in place to get the treatments, held very still.

It boosts your immune system. Our bodies are constantly fighting cancer. Our immune system can beat the cancer. If the cancer takes over, the immune system needs help. That's what this drug is going to do for him.

PEREIRA: It's think it's a little confusing to some. When we hear melanoma, we think skin cancer, lesions or marks on our skin. How could it affect his brain? That's confounding to some.

GUPTA: A lot of people don't realize that melanoma like any cancer can spread throughout the body. That leads to someone's demise. Often, it starts on the skin. In President Carter's case, it may have started on the skin, they just can't find where.

In very rare cases, it can start from somewhere inside the body, inside the mouth, the eye. He may not have been diagnosed at the time. Now they find it is already spread.

PEREIRA: OK, so he is 90 years young. We know how hearty he has been and how quick his mind is. Talk about age, though, when it comes to a prognosis like this. Is it going to be a factor for the president?

GUPTA: Yes. I think chronological age is something people consider. What's more important is what we call physiological age. What is their body really like? You have 90-year-olds with a body more like 60-year-olds and frankly vice versa as well. It's more of that.

Clearly, as we have been talking, this is a guy who is high energy guy. Cognitively, he gave a speech without notes. That weighs in. It's going to be hard on him. He was complaining of side effects from the chemotherapy. It's something he is planning on getting through.

PEREIRA: I didn't give you a heads up on this, but I want to switch gears. Some women may be getting unnecessary treatment for the earliest stage of a type of breast cancer. This is going to be a shock to some. Help us cut through the noise and make sense of that.

GUPTA: It's an important study. There's something known as ductile carcinoma in situ, DCIS. It's thought of as a precancerous thing that women develop with breast cancer. They find it. They biopsied it. They say it's DCIS. It could turn into cancer. That's been the general mantra.

What the study has shown is that if you look at the women with the diagnosis and they have had operations, there's no increase in survival because of those operations. They are saying the treatment doesn't seem to make an effect if you look across the board.

We are talking tens of thousands of women every year that are diagnosed like this. Does the treatment make a difference? This study suggests no. What they are saying is this DCIS isn't so much a precursor to cancer like you think of a colon polyp as a precursor.

This is a risk factor if that woman is young when she gets diagnosed. African-American women have a higher risk. You add these things together to figure out if they should get an operation. A lot of women have been getting the operations that may not need them or may not provide them any additional benefit.

PEREIRA: More research for sure. Thank for at least giving us a little understanding of that. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, always a pleasure to have you with us. Hope to see you soon -- Chris.

CUOMO: So Mich, we are seeing very something interesting in this race. Political outsiders in both parties, Trump, Bernie Sanders making waves in this race. Different antiestablishment players to b sure, but we have seen it before.

What are the story lines and how does it play out? Is what we are seeing right now with Trump and Sanders something that people will forget at some point?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:43:12]

CUOMO: Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders drawing huge crowds shaping up the 2016 race. We have never seen anything like it, is that true? It is up to voters to make it impassioned about things, angry about things, about the need for change in Washington, never seen anything like it. Is that true? How unusual is it?

Let's get some historical perspective. In fact, there is a president for this. So we have CNN presidential historian and history professor of Rice University, Mr. Douglas Brinkley.

Once again, Professor, I lean on you to understand what we are experiencing right now and what it has its place in the past. How does it size up for you in historical context? Is this an anomaly? Are they an outlier?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: No, I don't think it's an anomaly in the big sense of that meaning that there always going to be upstarts and people running campaigns, I'm an outsider, I have nothing to do with Washington.

There are always rumbles of somebody that could be a third party leader like a Ross Perot who could come in and win 19 percent of the vote. But what is unique here is this Donald Trump factor because he's using media in new and creative ways.

He's able to get his message out without spending a lot of money at this point because he has a private plane, a billion dollars and learned how to maneuver around New York media culture. He is unusual. That's why we are all talking about him.

CUOMO: What about the commodity of anger and his role in his current phenomenal success and what we see on the Bernie Sanders side? Is it different?

BRINKLEY: Anger is always there. There's always going to be an angry electorate. We have a civil war in this country after Abraham Lincoln was elected because of an angry electorate.

[07:45:03] Look in the 1960s, you had protest candidates like George Wallace going on and winning much of the south when he ran for president as a third party leader.

But what's different here, right now, it seems to be the summer of anger. The punditry is shocked that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump reached such platitudes. The fact that Sanders can draw 20,000 to 25,000 people.

Tonight, Trump might get 30,000 to 35,000 people. It's astounding and it tells you how dysfunctional Washington is. Congress has an 8 percent approval rating. They are telling you, Congress really has an 8 percent approval rating, meaning nobody likes what's going on in Washington.

So, you are going to get people like Trump and Sanders emerging, at least for a while to the top of the heat.

CUOMO: Do you see Sanders and Trump as analogs?

BRINKLEY: I do not see -- not really. Sanders reminds me a little bit of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 because you had Lyndon Johnson who was the Democratic nominee. Then you had the Ted offensive and McCarthy almost won New Hampshire.

LBJ drops out and Eugene McCarthy, the protest senator got all the left of the Democratic Party. Bobby Kennedy entered and then Kennedy was killed and then Hubert Humphrey by default kind of the establishment candidate, the Joe Biden figure, if you like, came to the forefront.

So I think it's worth thinking about what happened in '68. On the Republican side, you know, Donald Trump's got the party in a wedge because if he does not get the nomination, he very well might run a third party and get 15 percent of the American voters and destroy today's Republican Party. Trump is not going away.

CUOMO: Is Trump Ross Perot of 2016?

BRINKLEY: There's a lot of Perot but Perot was very folksy. That's the opposite of what Trump is. Trump is a walking casino, flashing lights wherever he goes. What is similar is the ability to say, I'm not a puppet. I have my own money. I'm not a beggar. I don't have to go asking. I don't owe anybody anything.

I think Ross Perot did not run a very sophisticated campaign. If you recall, Chris, he entered the race, pulled out, and got back in. Thus far, Trump isn't making lot of mistakes. I thought, personally, he made a lot of mistakes out of the gate with Megyn Kelly and John McCain.

I was proven wrong. A lot of people were proven wrong. He seems to be riding a tidal wave of resentment sentiment right now.

CUOMO: So from the impact of negativity to a true need for perspective on a positive, President Carter, he is fighting a fight that is as dire as was first expected. The way he is presenting himself seems so strong, but it is also as you well know and please tell us a window into what this man is really about.

BRINKLEY: This is quintessential Jimmy Carter you're seeing. He wants to be a teacher, help us. When it comes to anything dealing with medicine, Jimmy Carter is on top of it all. I mean, the Carter Center has truly been weighing in on public health issues, trying to eradicate disease and river blindness. It's a passion for Carter.

I have spent a lot of time at the Carter Center with former President Carter. There are always doctors around, leading physicians. It's like physicians without borders in many ways. The fact that Carter would talk so candidly about cancer. It's not just affecting him, it touches all our lives.

I'm so proud of the way he handled himself at the press conference yesterday. I would expect nothing less of a man of that kind of integrity.

CUOMO: Although it would be very difficult for people to meet the standard he's putting up right now. We wish the best. Professor Brinkley, thank you so much for your perspective on these things.

I tell you, Mich, you know, we just lived through it in my family. It doesn't matter how old or wise you are, it is tough to deal with the questions the president is facing at this stage in his life. He's doing it with uncommon grace.

PEREIRA: With grace, isn't that the thing? It's just remarkable. All right, Chris, thank you for that.

Well, investors, you might want to check your 401(k). It probably took a hit after stocks fell to a new low for the year. Will this trend continue? We'll explore that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:53:49]

CAMEROTA: Time for CNN Money now. Yesterday the Dow fell below 17,000 for the first time since October. Chief business correspondent, Christine Romans is in our money center. What happened?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It is not pretty at all. It's the perfect storm for a stock market meltdown. The Dow down 358 points, the slide yesterday the worst point drop in more than four years, oil at a more than six-year low. Global slowdown fears mounting focused on China.

Plus an interest rate hike is coming. It's just a question of when, roll all that together, Alisyn and it's big trouble for stocks yesterday. Energy prices, energy stocks also plunged. So did media stocks.

Twitter dropping to a record low below its IPO price as user growth stalls. Michaela, when you look at the stock market dive yesterday, it was all the darlings. It was Netflix, Apple, Disney, all these stocks that have done very, very well in the past year and did poorly yesterday.

PEREIRA: We need a pick me up after that.

ROMANS: It's Friday.

PEREIRA: Donald Trump apparently the late night gift that keeps on giving, once again the butt of many jokes in late night. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you seen the new "Time" magazine with future president, Donald Trump, on the cover. This is the cover of "Time." It says, deal with it. For most people that would be the face of an unsedated colonoscopy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The latest cover of "Time" magazine features Donald Trump with the phrase "Deal With It." And I can only assume from the look on Trump's face that the "it" is a kidney stone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He just announced his immigration policy. It's come out that implementing would cost taxpayers $166 billion. Today Trump said so what? You spend the money, you declare bankruptcy then you start a new country. Boom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have Donald Trump versus Bernie Sanders. They are in a feud over who leaves a birthday party with more balloons clinging to their head.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: North and South Korea, now on the brink of war. We take a look at what sparked this current standoff. We have a live report at the top of the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Escalating tensions between North and South Korea.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: They can absolutely stage an attack on almost no notice.