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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Obama Uses Selfie Stick To Sell Obamacare; Deadly Parking Dispute Or Hate Crime?; Boston Braces For Another Blizzard; Legendary Newsman Killed In NYC Car Crash

Aired February 12, 2015 - 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. Our Politics Lead now, the White House found a way to get in on those fun and intriguing "Buzzfeed" videos that has millions of you literally clicking away on Facebook right now.

This new video features President Obama with a selfie stick and dropping the line, "YOLO," in case you lost your street cred, that's short for "you only live once." Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President?

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Can I live?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You do you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: These are hip references that I don't necessarily get, but there is a bigger reason for this silly video. The White House is looking for creative ways to promote the affordable health care act, also known as Obamacare, and the sign-up deadline is this Sunday. The president mentions that in between selfie stick action moments in that video.

Let's bring in Barbara Lippert, editor-at-large at "Media Post." I also have with me, Ben Labolt, who was the press secretary for Obama's 2012 presidential campaign.

Barbara, let me start with you. What do you make of this? There's a lot of snark out there that this is demeaning of the presidency. What's your take?

BARBARA LIPPERT, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, "MEDIAPOST": Well, I think it's going to reach the young demo they want to reach and it's so much better and so much more natural and so much funnier than the ads that, you know, the Affordable Care Act had to begin with, when each state made its own ads, went to its own ad agencies.

And they were really trying to get down and talk to the youth and use the rap and show the skateboarders with the baseball caps backwards. It was really cringe-making. This just feels natural and fun and child-like and that's why it's going to be contagious to use a health care word.

TAPPER: This is obviously part of a larger strategy to pursue non- traditional media. We saw President Obama do those YouTube interviews a few weeks ago, the sit-down on "Between Two Ferns." I guess the big question is, is it effective?

BEN LABOLT, FOUNDING PARTNER, "THE INCITE AGENCY": I think it is. Look, 71 percent of young people get their information online right now as their primary resource. The big nightly network news audience where you can reach the entire country, that doesn't exist anymore.

The media landscape is very fractured and so when we are talking about something like health care enrollment where you are trying to reach the so-called "invincibles," young people who don't have coverage, you have to go to new and innovative platforms like "Buzzfeed."

TAPPER: But Barbara, there is a down side, right? There's a risk of as they say in your business, damaging the brands, right?

LIPPERT: Right. Well, they find that millenials, you know, love brands, but they hate advertising. So they don't think it's going to damage the brand if they find it and they like it.

You know, everybody takes selfies. It's great to see him posing like a little kid. It's amazing to see that the White House also has dirty mirrors like the rest of us.

TAPPER: Filthy.

LIPPERT: It's an inside look that, you know, everybody likes. No one wants to look away and it's not as -- I think it's got more credibility for millenials than your average TV commercial, which seems very sort of forced and dated.

TAPPER: And it's being seen by more people than will see a commercial. This video already has more than six million hits. But Ben, people are not walking away from this thinking, I need to sign up for health insurance. The enrollment is Sunday.

They are walking away from this thinking isn't that funny, the president's saying, you know, can I live, the president has a selfie stick. Isn't there fear that when you do something like this, you are not really -- you're not really selling anything substantive at all, even though there is substance there, it might not be reaching those people.

LABOLT: I got to tell you, this is going to reach many more people than the president's weekly address or the sorts of government PSAs you see week after week with a member of Congress droning on about policy to the camera.

It's the type of thing that you see on Facebook. You share with your friends. They will see healthcare.gov. They will see the day February 15th and the deadline coming up.

It doesn't beat you over the head but it will be seen by many more people and the White House really thinks that the "Between Two Ferns" interview was one of the big turning points in enrollment the first time around.

TAPPER: Barbara, we have seen the president on YouTube. We've seen him on "Buzzfeed." What's next?

LIPPERT: Well, I just want to add that when they do watch this, there's a button they can push that takes them straight to applying for the Affordable Care Act so that really works.

I just want to say, the controversy within journalism and advertising is that it's branded content or native content, which means it's a mix of both and it lives in this somewhere/nowhere world that makes everybody very nervous.

But it's the stuff of the future. I think he will be doing more of this because it works. I think any president in the past would have had to embrace it. It's just that it didn't exist when they were in office.

TAPPER: Ben, will Republicans be able to do this? Will they have to do this?

LABOLT: I think they are. I think you are seeing the Republican 2016 candidates look to places like Silicon Valley to hire digital teams. You not only need a media relations department on the next presidential campaign, you need your own production studio, producing content about the candidate that could be shared on social networks.

TAPPER: Ben Labolt, Barbara Lippert, thank you both so much. Appreciate it.

Coming up next, a brutal cold front heading east bringing temperatures so low, even Florida will be below freezing. And that winter storm headed for Boston is looking more like it could turn into a blizzard.

Plus, forget a will. What happens to your online life when you die? Facebook now has a possible solution. That's our Money Lead, next.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. Our National Lead now, the families of three Muslim students killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina earlier this week say they have no doubt that hate was the motive.

Deah Barakat, who was 23, his wife, Yusor Abu-Sala and her younger sister, Razan, aged 19, they were all shot at a condo complex Tuesday afternoon.

Witnesses told police the killings stemmed from a dispute over parking, a dispute that had been going on for a long time in that condo complex, but the victims had a history of arguments with the accused shooter, their neighbor, Craig Hicks.

The arguments were so intense one of the women felt it necessary to tell members of her family.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MOHAMMAD ABU-SALA: My daughter, Yusor, honest to God told us on more than two occasions that this man came knocking at the door and fighting about everything with a gun on his belt. She told us, Daddy, I think he hates us for who we are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Hicks apparently posted comments about his hostility towards people of faith in general on Facebook. In one post, he wrote, "When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I."

CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the post and it does not mention a specific religion. CNN's Jean Casarez joins me live from Chapel Hill. Jean, what have you learned about Hicks and his background with weapons?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, a law enforcement source with knowledge of this case says that the defendant said that he likes guns. That he likes to shoot, he likes to go to the shooting range, but he hasn't done it a lot lately because of the cost.

Well, we've learned a lot more about 46-year-old Craig Hicks. He's a full-time student at the Durham Technical and Community College. He is working toward a certificate as a paralegal and he actually was due to graduate this May.

The school says he is a stellar student. He is on the dean's list and that he is always there to help professors and students and everybody just loves him. That's not what we heard from the apartment complex.

Neighbors there say that he's always upset, upset about cars and parking places and the wrong car in the right parking place or wrong parking place, and cars he had never seen before.

But meanwhile, he is behind bars facing three charges of first degree murder and today, it was the funerals that took place of the three Muslim students. It was one funeral for all three victims.

Many, many people attended and at the prayer service, they talked about how they wanted an investigation into whether this was a hate crime. I have confirmed there were autopsies yesterday with the chief medical examiner's office of all three victims.

Also, it is the Capital Public Defender's Office that will be representing this man that up until this point does not have a criminal history at all -- Jake.

TAPPER: Jean, what would a hate crime charge mean for the case? CASAREZ: Very interesting, because ultimately, as far as amount of time, it might not mean too much. Here in North Carolina, if you get a conviction for first degree murder, and it's life in prison, it is life day for day or it is death because this is a death penalty case. But what it does do is it gives prosecutors motive for that jury, a reason why this happened and that could be extremely important.

TAPPER: All right, Jean Casarez, thank you so much. It's a heartbreaking story.

A triple weather threat across most of the country right now, today's the first round with some snow, but very cold temperatures as well. It will feel like below zero for many of you tonight and tomorrow, even parts of Florida, believe it or not, will feel the freeze on Friday.

But wait until the weekend. That's when parts of New England could get another blizzard, another foot of snow. That's of course already on top of snow mountains that have piled up over the last three weeks there.

Let's go to our meteorologist, Tom Sater, in the CNN Severe Weather Center. Tom, many people in the northeast are not again.

TOM SATER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Not again. Last time we had a chat, Jake, was on Monday. Talked about the latter part of the week snowfall and I don't even want to go into next week's storm, but there is another one.

Here we go. Watches have been issued by the National Weather Service, blizzard watches for Coastal Maine. It includes Boston and the Cape. That's not for tonight's nuisance snow, coming down pretty good, Southeast Virginia into lower Maryland, snowing better there than it is in Hartford.

Hartford right now, 32 degrees, light snow. Boston, light snow. This will drop a dusting to maybe an inch, two inches on the extremities of the Cape. This system is going to be too far offshore but it's the next one, Saturday night through Sunday that takes the same track, but it will be stronger and it will hug the coast with blizzard conditions.

That means low visibility and winds over 35 with the snowfall. Now, notice the crosshairs on this map. Historically speaking, if the low is right where we have the apex, that's where Boston has its blizzards.

We will go with this top model, GFS, 12 to 24, leaning more about 8 to 12 for Boston. There will be a foot and a half in some areas but it's elongated across the same states that have been hit over and over but mainly Massachusetts.

Behind tonight's nuisance snow, cold blast of air, coldest of the season, and then back behind Sunday's storm, it trumps this as the coldest of the season. Then a third round, this is new, this is going to go all the way down and give farmers fits in parts of Southern Florida.

This will be the coldest air of the season. Notice the jet stream. It could be this weekend we will watch a snow and ice event in the southern plains take this path again for another nor'easter with accumulating snow into the early part of next week.

TAPPER: This is nothing short of cruelty by Mother Nature. Today's snow along with what's to come will probably shatter records for February, I would think.

SATER: Well, we already had the greatest snowfall from a storm in January. All we need is a half inch, Jake, to add on to give us the snowiest cumulative snow for February. This is where we are. We only need 11 inches to get to number three. That's 89.2.

We can have that by the end of Sunday and then if we get into next week, if you're going to have this much snow you might as well break the record with all the misery we have been going through. Hang in there.

TAPPER: That's easy for you to say. You're not in New England. All right, Tom Sater, thank you so much.

Turning now to the Money Lead, your Facebook page is forever. You're not, but your Facebook page might be. Finally, Facebook has figured out what to do with pages after their owners' deaths, of course.

Facebook will now offer an option that lets users choose to have their account wiped out when they go to the big social media group in the sky, or you can also designate a legacy contact that will be able to post and accept friends on your behalf and download your photo archive.

And if they invite anyone to play candy crush in my name, I may in fact come back and kill them. It's estimated that tens of millions of Facebook pages have already outlived their owners.

Coming up, he survived some of the scariest and most dangerous assignments imaginable but last night, "60 Minutes" correspondent, Bob Simon died in a car accident in Manhattan. Next, we have new details on the tragic crash.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. A little lighter fare now in our Pop Culture Lead, let's be honest, everyone in every walk of life has his or her arch nemesis. Batman has Joker. Superman has Lex Luthor. Seinfeld has Newman.

And I have John Berman, an anchorman cyborg whose evil lair is hidden behind the green monster in Fenway Park where presumably he was deflated and then inflated again with evil thoughts and many, many facts.

His latest sinister scheme is to bury yours truly in the latest presidential edition of the CNN quiz show premiering Monday, Presidents Day, Monday night, February 16th, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The smack talking got a little ugly between all the contestants. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "AC 360": It's rare that we are all together in one place so it's an interesting dynamic. Jake Tapper takes this game really seriously.

TAPPER: Martin Van Buren. Erin Burnett, John Quincy Berman, you guys are going down like the dude President Jackson shot in that duel.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR, "EARLY START": Dead weight is how I describe that. Dead weight Jake.

COOPER: Anything can happen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's Don. There's the testosterone overload.

TAPPER: Look out for Cuomo. That fancy boy from the governor's mansion.

COOPER: Just nice to see these anchors sweat.

ANDREW CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": What competition? The purpose of the question, there is no competition.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: I'm nervous already. Joining me now is my arch enemy, John Berman. Berman, good to see you. First set up the game show for all these viewers who are wondering what the heck this things is. What is the CNN Quiz Show?

BERMAN: You know, that is the exact question that I asked when they came to me and said do you want to be on the CNN Quiz Show. I thought first of all, I thought who would want to watch this. Second of all, I thought why on earth would any of us want to be on this? I saw only downside.

But Jake Tapper, let me tell you this. Having now gone through it, it was incredibly fun. I think it is incredibly entertaining and I think people will learn an awful lot, some of it even accurate.

TAPPER: These questions were not easy, I have to say. You had Erin Burnett as your designated partner. I had Alisyn Camerota from "NEW DAY." Who was the anchor of your team?

BERMAN: There is no I in anchor. We came at this from different perspectives. I have a political background like you had. Erin has the business background. She was also obsessed. She came in and said I'm really excited about this. I have been studying up on presidential mistresses. She had that entire area down cold.

TAPPER: Do you remember during rehearsal when they asked a question about he worked as a tailor's apprentice and she was like Andrew Johnson. I was like what the heck. She really came to play. I want to ask, we all studied for this big event Monday night. What was the presidential fact that you learned that you most enjoyed?

BERMAN: Well, there was so much, but just because we were talking about Erin, I will sell her out. She was obsessed with the presidential mistresses. Warren Harding, it turns out, named his, you know, his little friend. He had a nickname for his little friend. It was Jerry, which was my father's name. I think completely coincidental. That was the best fact.

TAPPER: This is also we should point out, a thing for charity. We did it for a group called Homes for Our Troops, which provides specially designed mortgage-free homes for the most severely disabled veterans from Iran and Afghanistan -- Iraq and Afghanistan. Who were you playing for?

BERMAN: We did Save The Children, which obviously does so much work with so many kids all around the world to fill the needs for those who truly, truly need it. I don't want to make light of this, but I have to say it actually added to the stress level because if we screwed up, I was nervous not only was I letting down myself and my family and my high school teachers, but kids all around the world, they would lose, too.

TAPPER: It's $40,000 at stake. Let's also be real, Berman. This is about you and me. I went to Dartmouth, you went to Harvard. I'm from Philly, you're from Boston. I am terrified of you and what you are going to bring to that game.

BERMAN: For good reason, right? Look, there are eight presidents who went to Harvard. None of them with me, but you have none, you have Mr. Rogers and Dr. Seuss and I don't know --

TAPPER: Robert Frost.

BERMAN: Robert Frost.

TAPPER: And Andrew Shoe.

BERMAN: He was very good at soccer.

TAPPER: How about again during rehearsal, when they talk about James Garfield being shot, this was you versus me, who was the inventor who like used his special technique to try to scan for bullets after James Garfield elected in 1880 was assassinated and you knew it like that?

BERMAN: That was like Alexander Graham Bell, right?

TAPPER: Yes.

BERMAN: Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I vaguely remember reading that once.

TAPPER: That's from your days at the Hasty Pudding Club? That's what you guys do at Harvard, sit around and do presidential trivia.

BERMAN: The Hasty Pudding Club we dressed up as women and did presidential trivia. Exactly right.

TAPPER: And told droll jokes. You're going down. Tune in Monday night, 9:00 p.m. Eastern for the CNN Quiz Show, Presidents Edition hosted by Anderson Cooper. You can test your presidential knowledge at CNN.com/CNNquizshow. Berman, always good to see you.

Now on a more serious note, at a time when media credibility is under fire with the nation's number one news anchor suspended for embellishing stories about his experiences and many news organizations running away from international and political coverage, Bob Simon of "60 Minutes" stood as a beacon of what journalism could and should be.

But tragically, this man who escaped some of the most dangerous situations any journalists have ever experienced died in a car crash last night in New York City. Investigators are telling CNN that the town car in which he was riding may have been speeding during the fatal crash.

They also say Simon was in the rear passenger seat and apparently was not wearing a seat belt. Bob Simon had a career that spanned nearly half a century. He left Saigon on one of the last choppers out of the city at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

He was a prisoner of Iraqi forces for 40 days during the first gulf war in the early '90s. He was working until the day he died on a piece for this Sunday's "60 Minutes." Bob Simon was 73 years old. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and with his friends and our friends at CBS News.

That's it for THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

I now turn you over to Wolf Blitzer. He is in "THE SITUATION ROOM". Wolf.