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Piano Man Plays in Flooded Home; AG Holder Makes Scrapping Man- Min Sentences Retroactive; Grand Theft Auto Rakes in Cash on First Day; McCain Fires Back at Putin in Op-Ed; Openly Gay Democrat Features Tea Party Dad in Ads; France Considers Kid Pageant Ban

Aired September 19, 2013 - 15:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Vice President Joe Biden will be traveling to Colorado next week to tour the damage from the recent flooding. But, as you can see, this crisis is far from over. Officials say it's still not safe for so many people to return home. They say the big focus today is reaching those listed as unaccounted for. Crews are using helicopters and they're on the ground going house to house.

In fact, I talked to a man last hour who lost just about everything. And he went back home just to try to salvage what he could, and he ended up sitting down at his piano and taking a break by playing music.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: This is called "Mad World" by Tears For Fears.

Last hour, I spoke with Mark Changaris.

MARK CHANGARIS, PLAYED MUDDY PIANO IN FLOODED HOME: We had been moving about 10 hours straight at that time, and had just been in reaction mode, and it was just sitting there. And it seemed like the right time.

It was kind of a combination of exhaustion and just kind of wanting a little bit of a break from a little bit of the chaos surrounding all of us.

BALDWIN: He described it as haunting, sitting there and playing.

He said it is incredibly muddy, the piano even was encased in mud as he sat there and played.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Breaking now on CNN, prisoners waiting for sentencing could get less jail time thanks to Attorney General Eric Holder.

His controversial plan announced last month is designed to reduce the number of inmates by scrapping mandatory minimum sentences, therefore reducing the time in prison. It would apply to low-level nonviolent drug offenders, all of this to save some of the $80 billion a year Americans spend to feed and house them.

Evan Perez joins me now from Washington, and, Evan, this plan got a bit of an update. Tell me about it.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: That's right, Brooke. We're outside the Washington Convention Center where the attorney general is speaking right about now.

He's announcing essentially that this plan -- this new policy that they set in place a few weeks ago to change the way they handle nonviolent offenses is going to be retroactive.

So one of the criticisms that happened after this policy was announced a few weeks ago was that there were people who were charged, people who are awaiting to be sentenced, who have already pled guilty, and the concern was some of these people would not get the benefit of the new policy.

So the attorney general is announcing today that essentially the policy is going to be now retroactive so those people can also benefit.

This is something that there's a lot of support for, even among some conservatives. For instance, Rand Paul and Patrick Leahy are people working on congressional legislation to try to do something similar.

Right now, the administration is trying to do this by executive order while they wait for Congress to do something, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK, so breaking news from the attorney general.

Evan Perez, thank you, in Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your moment. Please don't make me ruin all the great work -

BALDWIN: It is one of the most violent video games out there. Yet, "Grand Theft Auto V," to be precise, just raked in more cash on its first day of sale that many companies pull down in a year.

I'm going to talk to a longtime gamer to see what all the hype is about, next.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: It is often criticized for its over the top violence, but, the latest installment of "Grand Theft Auto" video game series, it came out with guns blazing.

"Grand Theft Auto V" wracked up more than $800 million. Let me just say that again, $800 million in sales in its first 24 hours.

Folks, that's more than the top two "Harry Potter" movies or "The Avengers" made in their opening weekends, worldwide.

"Grand Theft Auto V" expected to breeze past the billion-dollar mark. It actually took the blockbuster film, "Avatar," 17 days to do that.

Peter Rubin is "Wired" magazine's resident gamer. He's in San Francisco joining me now.

And, Peter, let me be totally transparent and say I'm a Pac Man kind of gal, but I know the game is big business. I have a ton of friends who play.

Can you give me like three reasons why this is so, so huge?

PETER RUBIN, SENIOR EDITOR, "WIRED" MAGAZINE: Absolutely.

So, what you're looking at is a game that's the latest in a very popular franchise. And the Grand Theft Auto games really only come out every few years.

This is not an annualized franchise. Rock Star Games, the studio that makes it, has taken almost five years since the release of "Grand Theft Auto IV." This is a long time coming, super anticipated.

And this is the biggest Grand Theft Auto game we have seen, thanks to technological advancements, so the in-game world is as big as the entire L.A. metropolitan area.

You can play in the city, in the suburbs, in the foothills and mountains surrounding the city.

This is an absolutely vast in-game experience for people, and of course, being an open-world game, as they call it, you can do whatever you want to do.

BALDWIN: What does that mean, by the way? Open world?

RUBIN: It just means the world is open. It's not the most indirect way to phrase it. Other people call it a sandbox game.

Basically, the entire world of the game, rather than tasking you to go through in this very linear sense, it lets you just kind of play the way you want to play.

BALDWIN: OK. Just maybe wander around in the sandbox, proverbial sandbox.

I put this question onto Twitter, what do you love about this game so much? And the word I kept seeing over and over is "escapism," doing things in this sort of alternate reality you could never get away with in real life.

RUBIN: Absolutely. So many games that are so popular are cloaked in other forms, military games, futuristic science fiction games, games set in the past, games as a spy.

This places you in a modern-day fully recognizable setting. There's really this release valve that's in it. It lets you play with this kind of unrestrained id and do what you want without consequence, and because it looks like the world you live in, there's something visceral about the connection.

BALDWIN: And I just want to read a quote from "The New York Times." I was trying to read about reviews on the game, right?

So somebody writes about the role of women. "For all the game does right, it has a genuinely problematic aspect that is not its enthusiasm for violence or sex but its lack of interest in women as something other than lustful airheads. One of the young women in the game not oversexed and under-read is sucked into the jet turbine."

So you have these airhead women. You know, the "N"-word is all over this, you know, bong rips. You have prostitutes, strip clubs.

At the same time, the Supreme Court basically protected video games two years ago.

So are the critics not quite as loud anymore?

RUBIN: Well, the critics are always going to be loud, especially with "Grand Theft Auto" games.

Like I said, the fact this is a recognizable world makes the -- what people call exploitive nature of some of the things within the game, and certainly some of the sociopaths within the game be much more problematic to those people.

But I think we're bringing a whole lot of cards into this hand right now. There are a lot of games who have a problematic relationship with gender. No denying that. "Grand Theft Auto" is one of those.

You have underwritten characters who meet an untimely demise. Again, this can be expanded to a lot of other video games on the marketplace today.

There are tactics and there are characteristics of the people in the game that are not what you would ever be, do, say, or think in real life.

That's what makes it the escapism. The people who do these things in the game don't take on that behavior.

BALDWIN: I'm going to stick to my Pac Man, but I'm going to take your word for it.

Peter Rubin, "Wired" magazine, Peter, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

RUBIN: Thanks a lot.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, tough talk between Russian and American leaders that remind some people of the Cold War.

Vladimir Putin had some not so nice words to say about Americans, and now Senator John McCain is responding. And this veteran unleashes a tongue lashing for the president of Russia.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: John McCain's got fighting words for Vladimir Putin. One week after the Russian president wrote his antagonistic op-ed in "The New York Times," Senator McCain firing back with his own scathing article on the Pravda Web site in Russia.

The headline? "Russians deserve better than Putin." McCain accused Russia's president of ruling through violence and repression and allying himself with tyrants like Syria's Bashar al-Assad.

Jake Tapper, host of "THE LEAD," talking to Senator McCain today, what you going to ask him?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR, "THE LEAD": Well, it's interesting. First of all, the whole origin of this story is that he was on "THE LEAD," Senator McCain, last week, and we were talking about Putin's op-ed in "The New York Times."

And he said there's no way that Pravda would ever publish anything by him.

A writer with ForeignPolicy.com then contacted Pravda, the Web site, not the newspaper, and asked if they would.

Senator McCain --

BALDWIN: And viola.

TAPPER: There you have it, although it's not in the newspaper, which is, I believe, what most people think of when they think of Pravda, although it's a hollow shell of what it used to be, that newspaper.

So anyway, we'll have him on. We'll talk about the latest in Syria and how the United States can trust somebody who Senator McCain depicts in such scathing adjectives in this op-ed on the Pravda Web site.

And of course, we'll talk about all the other business going on in Washington, the showdown over funding the government with or without ObamaCare being funded, and much, much more.

BALDWIN: You've got a lot going on in that town, Tapper. We'll be watching top of the hour on "THE LEAD." Jake Tapper, thank you.

TAPPER: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: And now to this. You have seen political ads before, but probably not like this. A Democratic candidate comes out to his father. Nope, nope, not talking sexuality.

We're going to play the ad for you next, and we will talk live to the candidate who delivered the surprise message to his dad. You don't want to miss this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: OK. Follow me here. When then Senator John Kerry was chosen as secretary of state, the good voters of Massachusetts elected Congressman Ed Markey to fill his former seat.

And now in the race to replace Ed Markey, one of those running is an openly gay Democrat who is running an ad that features his own father who is more of a tea party type. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARL SCIORTINO, SR.: He wants to go to Congress to pick on the NRA and the tea party.

CARL SCIORTINO, JR., RUNNING FOR HOUSE OF REPRESENATIVES: I won't give up on an assault weapons ban.

CARL SCIORTINO, SR.: Or universal background checks, or banning high- capacity magazines.

CARL SCIORTINO, JR.: There are some things you don't stop fighting for.

Also the right to choose, equal pay for women, and equal rights for, well, everybody.

CARL SCIORTINO, SR.: He's been like this for 35 years.

CARL SCIORTINO, JR.: That's why I approve this message.

And I still love you, Dad.

CARL SCIORTINO, SR.: Me, too, son.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: Carl Sciortino, Sr., there at the end.

I want to bring in the candidate himself, Carl Sciortino, Jr. Carl, welcome.

Why did you put your dad in the ad?

CARL SCIORTINO, JR. (D), MASSACHUSETTS CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Thank you, Brooke.

Well, my dad and I have been bantering like this for 35 years, and I talked a lot about his influence on my life and how he raised my brother and me as a single dad and worked hard to take care of us, and despite our strong political differences, he loves me and supports me.

We can get along and I think it shows I'm a clear, strong, progressive in this race, I'm going to fight for progressive values, but I can still get along with people on the other side of the aisle, people that I disagree with and frankly, still have a positive relationship with people like my dad.

BALDWIN: Let's talk about that household growing up. Your dad, tea party Republican, totally different views than you on almost anything, I would imagine. At what point did you decide to join maybe in your father's eyes the enemy?

CARL SCIORTINO, JR.: I remember being in college when I came home from college and talked about some of my views in politics and how they were evolving and becoming a very staunch progressive in my younger days.

My father and I would just fight, especially around the 2000 election with George Bush. I kept saying, this is going to be bad, you don't know where this country's going.

He would say son, listen to me, listen to me. George Bush is the man and we had these fun bickers.

As I got into public office, he said, I don't know if you know what you're doing, but I disagree with you on a lot of things. But good luck to you.

BALDWIN: Let me ask you this, before you came out to your father, what were his views on same-sex marriage and has that evolved at all?

CARL SCIORTINO, JR.: Well, I came out to my dad as gay when I was 17. He was really remarkable, very supportive, very loving.

He was actually driving when I told him, and he gripped the steering wheel very tight, his knuckles went a little white and he said you know I love you, you're still my son, this doesn't change anything.

That meant a lot to me. I knew we had a really close relationship growing up and I was worried to tell him, but he handled it like a trouper.

I'm actually getting married 10 days before the election. That was planned before the special election date was set. He'll be at the wedding and supports me in that as well. He's a wonderful dad.

BALDWIN: That's great. I imagine with a few exceptions, you're on one side, he's on the other, that is such a microcosm of the country. Which areas do you two see eye to eye?

CARL SCIORTINO, JR.: Well, recently in my congressional race, I came out first of all to candidates in opposition to a military strike in Syria. I was strongly opposed to that.

The other candidates took a week or so to come around to that position as well. I called my father and mentioned it and he said finally we agree on something, because he and I see eye to eye on that.

I had a lot of friends and family, including my own brother, serve in Afghanistan. My experience was that it was a mistake, the two wars we have been in the last ten years, how they have been handled. I found something, common ground with my dad on that particular issue. He knows I fight for progressive values and we get to banter about it all the time. If you see in the ad, that's actually how we interact.

We get along very well, we tease each other a lot while we disagree on things.

BALDWIN: I'm sure dinnertime at your house is fun. Thank you very much. Good luck to you. Appreciate it.

CARL SCIORTINO, JR.: Thank you so much.

BALDWIN: Young kids in fancy dresses and heavy makeup walking the runway, it is all too much for one country.

Now backlash as lawmakers in France look to ban child beauty pageants. Could the U.S. be next?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: They are pretty, they are popular, but child beauty contests are not welcome by some French lawmakers.

The senate there passed a bill to ban them for girls under the age of 16 and now it goes before a lower house.

Listen, we've seen the reality TV shows. We have seen the use of glamour, beauty pageants and shows like TLC's "Toddlers and Tiaras." That's where Honey Boo-Boo became, oh, so famous.

But it's images like these from "Vogue" magazine photo spread that prompted French lawmakers to want to roll up the red carpet. Parliament members say little girls are too young for that spotlight and have to be protected.

Joining us is Kelly Wallace. I remember that "Vogue" spread. We did a segment on that on this show because we were all like, what?

But with the ban specifically on the pageants, do you think they're overreacting or do they have a point?

KELLY WALLACE, CNN DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT & EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Say that again, Brooke? I couldn't hear you.

BALDWIN: Do you think the French are overreacting or do they have a point in banning this?

WALLACE: It's interesting because we put it out online to the American audience.

The majority of people who responded say they definitely have a point and think that we should ban these child pageants, especially for girls as little as three, four, five, those sporting fake tans, teeth and wigs.

Others say government shouldn't be getting involved, dictating what programs kids can be involved in.

There's this middle-of-the*line approach where people say what about just some guidelines, some rules, what's appropriate, what's not appropriate.

Maybe the pageant bodies could get together and kind of do a little more self-regulating. That's a sentiment we heard quite a bit as well.

BALDWIN: Let me throw sound in here, because this is a perspective. This is from the newly crowned, this was history a couple nights ago, the newly crowned Miss America.

This is what she had to say about this whole thing this morning on "NEW DAY."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NINA DAVULURI, MISS AMERICA: I started at 16. I definitely do think there -- a maturity level has to be there before you can begin.

I made the conscious decision on my own because I knew I had to pay for some of my education and this was a great avenue.

But. yes, there definitely does have to be a maturity level to be able to handle everything that comes with the pageant world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: She's right. There are benefits here in the U.S.

Do you think what's happening in France might actually impact what happens here in America?

WALLACE: You know, I think so. In a way it's getting the conversation going.

But just as you mentioned at the top, think of the ratings gold, the ratings magic for some of these reality TV shows.

I kind of think about it in the way that some people say, you know, what, there's too much crime in local news, yet the stations that cover crime get high ratings.

It's kind of the same thing. People say oh, no, we don't want to see it, yet they're watching it.

So it's hard to see an outright ban, but maybe some more conversation about guidelines might take place.

BALDWIN: Maybe.

Kelly Wallace, thank you.

And now to a preview of tonight's primetime lineup.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CNN tonight, at 7:00, "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT," the Navy Yard massacre, how did a man with a history of mental issues pass a security review?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eight disciplinary actions that were kind of swept under the rug. Sounds a little familiar to me, I mean, the political correctness.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then at 8:00 on "ANDERSON COOPER 360," were money and diamonds the real motivations behind televangelist Pat Robertson's work in Africa?

Robertson denies it, but Anderson talks to the filmmakers behind the film "Mission Congo" about their explosive allegations.

And at 9:00 on "PIERS MORGAN LIVE," the Billy Ray Cyrus interview, guns, America, Miley.

It's all tonight on CNN starting with "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" at 7:00, "ANDERSON COOPER 360" at 8:00, and "PIERS MORGAN LIVE" at 9:00, tonight on CNN.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for watching. See you back here tomorrow.

Now "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts now.