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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Who Is Ben Carson?; Biggest Republican Threat For Democrats?; Clinton Versus Bush Round Two; Ray Rice: I Wish For A Second Chance

Aired December 02, 2014 - 16:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. Now to the Politics Lead. Who do you think will get the Republican presidential nomination? A few big names may come to mind, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, but how about Ben Carson?

Today, the pediatric neurosurgeon/former Fox News commentator is on everyone's radar. After two new CNN/ORC polls placed the conservative darling second as Republican's 2016 nominee choice.

The first chose Carson -- the first poll shows Carson running behind only Mitt Romney. The man who still contends he is not running for president. While Carson was only at 10 percent to Romney's 20, he still came in ahead of all those other big names, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee.

So let's take Romney out of the mix. Ben Carson comes in second again this time to Jeb Bush trailing the former Florida governor by only 3 percentage points. So who is Ben Carson and where did he come from?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dr. Ben Carson first registered on the political radar in 2013.

DR. BEN CARSON, CONSIDERING RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT: We can solve the problems --

KEILAR: At the usually apolitical National Prayer Breakfast, he seemed to go after President Obama's policies.

CARSON: I'm sorry. You know, our deficit is a big problem.

KEILAR: Fast forward a bit and the criticisms became far more cutting.

CARSON: Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.

KEILAR: Carson is known for his blistering rhetoric as well as an up- from-poverty personal story. He grew up in inner city Detroit and Boston. His mother, one of 24 kids, referenced by President Bush when he awarded Carson the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: She was married at the age of 13 and ultimately was left to raise her two sons alone.

KEILAR: In his younger years, Carson was a terrible student and even tried to stab another boy, but eventually he fell in love with science, got into Yale and went to medical school and became one of the leading pediatric neurosurgeons in the world.

CARSON: Hopefully that would provide enough drainage for the twins.

KEILAR: He performed the first successful operation to separate conjoined twins joined at the head inspiring a TV movie.

CARSON: If one twin dies, we need to separate them as soon as possible.

KEILAR: Now retired from medicine, Carson has increased his name identification among voters on the right with six best-selling books, a gig on Fox News, speeches to conservative groups and interviews with conservative outlets.

CARSON: I know you're not supposed to say Nazi Germany, but I don't care about political correctness.

I think what is happening with veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care provider.

KEILAR: A super PAC trying to draft Carson into the 2016 race has raised more than $10 million and judging by what Carson has told CNN, that may be all the push he needs.

TAPPER: Do you have any intention of at least exploring seriously the possibility of running for office?

CARSON: It's not my intention to do that. But what I've said is if a year and a half goes by and people are still clamoring for me to do that and there's no other very good candidates, I would certainly have to seriously consider it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: And consider this since then Carson has formed his own PAC called "USA First," it's dedicated to promoting conservative policies and candidates, but it could also easily turn into a warm-up act for a campaign. And he also left Fox News last month, which is standard practice for a contributor to severities when they are rolling a run.

But on the flip side, you have a lot of Republican Party insiders who say, how is it for someone who is really untested, sort of unvetted doesn't have any electoral experience would be able to really weather that glaring political spotlight.

TAPPER: Absolutely. Brianna Keilar, stick around and let's continue the conversation on the Republican field and all things 2016 with the contributing editor of the "National Review," Jim Geraghty, and Democratic strategist and senior fellow at "Media Matters," Karen Finney. So Jim, let's put it there. Are there any Republican officials in Washington or in states who take the Ben Carson nomination possibility seriously?

JIM GERAGHTY, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "NATIONAL REVIEW": I think if you put him on the debates he begins with a lot of Republicans already liking him, already respecting him. You have to admire what he's done with his life's work.

But generally if you're an amateur and you've never run for any other office before in your life and you want to run for president, at the very least, you have to reject the invasion of Normandy.

It's pretty rare. We're going to see whether the skills of a surgeon translate well to the skills of being a successful presidential candidate.

TAPPER: Right. These polls so far don't necessarily mean anything. Karen, as a former Democratic official, candidly --

KAREN FINNEY, SENIOR FELLOW, "MEDIA MATTERS": Yes.

TAPPER: -- just between us, who would you least like to see as a Republican nominee? Who poses the greatest threat?

FINNEY: I would say probably Mitt Romney, although -- and possibly Rand Paul depending -- you know, one thing that Rand Paul that I think is intriguing is that he has continued to try and improve as it clearly in anticipation of a run.

Meaning when (inaudible) he tried to clean those things up. That's someone who is very serious about trying to run. People who don't do that obviously it suggests that they are not quite disciplined.

I will say about Ben Carson and one thing that is so intriguing about him is to some degree, the fact that he doesn't have a record, right? The American public always thinks what they want is somebody who is outside of Washington and doesn't have a record.

And, you know, as he keeps saying, he's not going to be beholden to the PR police and all of that. But he's got some fairly conservative comments likening to Obamacare that I think would be a big problem.

TAPPER: Although, one of the problems that Obama ran so early was so that he didn't stick around the Senate and acquire a record.

KEILAR: I was going to say, but if you talk on background and Republican operatives, they dismiss the whole Ben Carson thing out of hand and when they look at the poll numbers, they say that is more about name I.D. and they don't really think it will translate to votes.

But, you know, look at Iowa, Ben Carson has been there a lot. He seems to be somewhat popular, but I think the question is, could he go beyond that? TAPPER: You never know. Let's talk about Jeb Bush for a second because in the last few hours, he acknowledged publicly that he's thinking about running and he says that the kind of campaign a Republican needs to waged in order to win. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEB BUSH, FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: It has to be much more uplifting, much more positive, much more willing to, you know, be practical now in Washington and lose the primary to win the general without violating your principles. It's not an easy task, to be honest with you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Jim, you went on to praise Mitt Romney, but it seemed to be that he was kind of taking a shot at Mitt Romney running too hard to the right, especially on an issue where they really disagree --

GERAGHTY: I have to point out. It's not often that someone says you have to run a downbeat campaign, as negative as possible. Nobody ever set out to run that kind of a campaign. Look, if Jeb Bush runs and it looks like he's increasingly going to have two big problems with the conservative base.

One is immigration. It's some variation and there are a lot of conservatives who don't like that and the second one is common core and this issue makes conservative activists set their hair on fire. They cannot stand it.

They can't understand their kids homework and circles and pictures and all kind of stuff that they've suddenly elect -- wait a minute, why is my teacher like speaking a different language to me?

It doesn't seem to make any sense to me and to go out as a Republican primary kind -- for presidential candidate and say, everybody, common core is terrific. You're going to hear chirping crickets in a place like --

TAPPER: Karen, I have to ask, this whole idea of whether or not we're going to be facing a Bush versus Clinton --

FINNEY: One more time.

TAPPER: -- do you think that Hillary Clinton would want to run against Jeb Bush or does it cause the images and legacies for both of them?

FINNEY: You know, I think that's what people might think but, at the same time, unlike Jeb Bush, she has a record that continued beyond the '90s. She ran for Senate. She was secretary of state. She has a body of work to talk about that distinguishes her.

Beyond being governor, what has Jeb Bush been doing? A couple of comments that he's made, as Jim pointed out, definitely potential liabilities for him so I don't think that the calculation is quite that direct the way people are thinking about it actually.

KEILAR: I do think that what Jeb Bush was saying is what you hear a lot of Republicans saying, which is it's no secret. They feel that Mitt Romney was not a good candidate. He didn't run a good campaign. He didn't have a good message.

And also I think a lot of them feel, though, that Mitt Romney, it makes sense why he made that calculation that he had to tack to the right. He had vulnerabilities. You mentioned, of course, that Jeb Bush with immigration.

But I also wonder if perhaps he doesn't have better conservative credentials that is sort of damaging to those issues to him, but when you compare him to Mitt Romney, his starting point might be a little bit better than, you know --

GERAGHTY: One of the great ironies of Jeb Bush getting on the common core bandwagon is before that his pre-imminent education crusade was school choice, but the general conservative thinks it's super doper terrific.

TAPPER: Jim Geraghty, Karen Finney, and Brianna Keilar, thank you so much. Great discussion.

Coming up next, NFL runningback, Ray Rice, breaks his silence about that horrific elevator video of him punching his now wife, but will any team forgive what he refers to as just one bad night.

Plus, President Obama heads to the National Institutes of Health for a major change in how the U.S. battles Ebola. High-tech solutions are on the horizon. We'll show you one of them.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. The Sports Lead now, with his legal problems behind him and the OK from a judge to return to football, former Baltimore Ravens runningback, Ray Rice, is now pleading his case in the court of public opinion hoping for forgiveness and a team willing to hire him.

In an interview that aired on NBC's "Today" show this morning, Rice once again apologized for knocking his then fiancee, now wife, Janay, unconscious in a casino elevator earlier this year. He insisted that the violent clash was a one-time thing and now he and his family are ready to move forward.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAY RICE, NFL PLAYER: Did we say things to each other? Yes. Do we want to take it back at times? Yes, we crossed that line before, but it never got to an altercation that went that far. You know, me and my wife, had one bad night and I took full responsibility for it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Rice was initially suspended for two games, but when a security tape showing the brutal blow itself was released, the public backlashed, intensified. NFL Roger Goodell was heavily criticized for initially only giving Ray Rice a two-game suspension.

Since then the NFL has taken steps to try and shed its image of being too lenient with players accused of domestic violence. Just hours ago, an NFL executive joined higher ups from other major sports leagues at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on domestic violence.

Troy Vincent who is also a former player choked up while talking about growing up in an abusive household.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TROY VINCENT, FORMER NFL PLAYER: I relate to the 20 million victims of domestic violence, sexual abuse and every community across our great nation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: I'm joined now by "USA Today" sports columnist, Christine Brennan. Christine, it's so great to have you on the show. Thanks for being here. Do you think ray rice did enough in this interview to convince fans and maybe even a team out there that he's a changed man?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN, SPORTS COLUMNIST, "USA TODAY": Jake, that's a pretty tall order because what he's fighting is the video, the video that aired beginning on September 8th and I don't think any of us could get it out of our minds. That was the second of the two videos.

So no matter how many words he says and I understand this PR campaign and it's exactly what he should be doing, but I don't know that it's ever going to be enough because it's one of the most important pieces of evidence and pieces of news that has happened in the sports world in the 21st Century.

TAPPER: Do you think that there is a team that would hire him?

BRENNAN: It's a great question. You know, there have been reports -- names of teams surfacing, one is the Indianapolis Colts a couple of days ago and then almost immediately the Colts said, no, we're not interested.

So if the report said that four teams are interested, two have said no, I think it's going to be very difficult, at least this year. And then you throw in the football part of this which is not something we focused a lot on.

Ray Rice will be 28 in January. So he is not young. He had his worse season ever last year and spent this year out of football. That's a pretty difficult thing for a general manager to look at or coach or general manager to look at themselves and say, let's bring him in knowing what is going to bubble to the surface in terms of a public relations nightmare.

TAPPER: And of course, there is someone else playing defense on this and that's the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell. There's been confusion surrounding what exactly he knew and didn't know about that elevator incident before that tape was released.

Listen to what Janay Rice had to say when asked whether she and her husband misled Goodell.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, says Ray was ambiguous and the NFL was a starkly different sequence of events, is the commissioner lying?

JANAY RICE, WIFE OF NFL PLAYER RAY RICE: I can't say he's telling the truth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you think the league and the commission covered their butts?

RICE: I think they had to do what they had to do for themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: I can't say he's telling the truth and then you have that combined with what a judge said on Friday when basically she reinstated Rice and said he could play. They didn't mislead anything to the NFL. How bad is this for Roger Goodell?

BRENNAN: It's not good, Jake. There is no doubt about that, but at the end of the day, he serves at the behest of the owners. It's really about what the owners want and they are very pleased obviously with the way the league is going because of the fact that there's been no financial backlash against the league even this year, in the face of the withering news.

But having said that, there's a lot of internal politics between the union and the commissioner and the commissioner has a lot of power because of the collective bargaining agreement. The union gave him that. But I think we will see this move forward as the commissioner takes these losses even though I wonder, in the court of public opinion.

Bottom line is, the nation wanted him to do more. He did more in September. Of course, now he's criticized and in fact loses and rules that he did too much. So I think we are seeing the National Football League have to deal with an issue that no other league has dealt with and it's the beginning steps of a conversation that we'll have in this country for a long time.

TAPPER: Before I let you go, I want to ask you about embattled NFL star, Minnesota Vikings runningback, Adrian Peterson, who is in court fighting to get his indefinite suspension for hitting his son with a switch reversed. Does he have a decent shot?

BRENNAN: I think he does. He should have gone to that meeting with Commissioner Goodell. That was a major miscalculation by the union and by Adrian Peterson a few weeks ago. Having said that, it's a different kind of story, a different situation and I wouldn't be surprised with the way things are going that he may well win that hearing as well.

TAPPER: All right, Christine Brennan from "USA Today," thank you so much. Great to have you here. See you soon. Look who is here. I didn't hear you come in.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": I snuck in.

TAPPER: You're like the pink panther. So you're digging deeper with the crisis with ISIS today?

BLITZER: Yes. And a new FBI bulletin came out this week, we're going to have the spokesman for the Pentagon, John Kirby, he is going to be joining us, hundreds of thousands of U.S. military personnel are now being told, be very, very careful what you post on social media, whether Facebook or Twitter, pictures you post.

ISIS is threatening the United States military. And a lot of people are worried, should U.S. military personnel when they are on leave, for example, around the holidays, wear their military uniforms and civilian clothes? We're going in depth on that.

TAPPER: All right, Wolf Blitzer in "THE SITUATION ROOM," that's in 8 1/2 minutes, we'll be watching. Thank you so much.

Coming up, the Obama administration is asking Congress for more money to fight Ebola, but is the answer to stopping the killer disease a new kind of rapid test? That's coming up next in our tech lead.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. In the tech lead, a breakthrough in the global fight against Ebola, doctors are desperate for new ways to identify the disease in its early stages that could help save thousands of lives as Ebola continues to ravage West Africa.

Here in the U.S., a new plan is in place, should there be another outbreak of Ebola. Right now, President Obama is at the National Institutes of Health where he is about to announce that 36 hospitals across the country are now designated to deal with infected patients.

Quite an upgrade from the four that were especially equipped before the outbreak, but what if medical professionals could use a blood test to protect Ebola in the early stages before patients got so sick?

Well, a California company says they have one ready for distribution to the front lines. It's currently awaiting FDA approval and it's not been independently tested.

Joining me now is Cary Gunn, the founder and CEO of Genalyte, the company that makes these rapid response tests. Cary, thank you so much for joining us. Do you have any indication how accurate these tests are compared to the current Ebola testing system?

CARY GUNN, GENALYTE FOUNDER AND CEO: There are two different types of testing. There's rapid testing and then testing for nucleic acid. That's not suitable for use in Africa. The technology being used being deployed in Africa is a lateral flow based on a piece of paper and it's not very accurate at all. Our technology is substantially more accurate and more sensitive than any other rapid test.

TAPPER: OK, so you brought some of these silicon chips. What are we talking about?

GUNN: So this is the technology. There is a small silicon chip at the top and we draw blood up this -- it's essentially a straw. We draw it up over the chip and we can detect viruses and proteins as it binds to the chip.

TAPPER: You said these tests are most effective within the 8 to 10 days after someone contracts Ebola. There's always this room between contracting Ebola and showing symptoms. Theoretically, somebody could have Ebola, be tested on that before they get on an airplane and then still actually end up with Ebola. That's different from other tests not at all but it's not perfect, right?

GUNN: You can't close the window to zero days. There's time between the infection and when it's detectable. We believe we're going to be able to close that window more substantially than any other rapid test, but we can't close it to zero days.

TAPPER: If you're given FDA approval, how long would it take to use these tests where they are needed the most in West Africa?

GUNN: So the technology is commercial today. It is for sale. The instrument is commercial. The chips are commercial. So we're ready to start supplying this as soon as we get approval.

TAPPER: And lastly, they don't only detect Ebola, right? They detect other diseases, malaria?

GUNN: Exactly. The biggest need in West Africa, if someone comes in with a fever, it can be one of 15 different fevers, there is a large number of different fevers. There's yellow fever, malaria, dengue, the list goes on and on. So the trick is when someone comes in with a fever, is it Ebola or is it something else? We can detect 15 different pathogens at one time.

TAPPER: Are there a lot of competing devices?

GUNN: There's no other rapid test that can do 15 at one time. There is one technology that might be able to do three.

TAPPER: All right, Cary Gunn, thank you so much.

GUNN: Thank you for having me.

TAPPER: Make sure to follow me on Twitter @jaketapper. Check out @theleadcnn, check out our show page @cnn.com/thelead for video, blogs, and extras.

That's it for THE LEAD on this beautiful Tuesday. I'm Jake Tapper. I now turn you over to one Mr. Wolf Blitzer. He's right next door to me. He's in "THE SITUATION ROOM" -- Wolf.