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Obama: We "Fumbled" Health Care Law Rollout; CNN Special: "The Assassination of President Kennedy"; Snapchat's 23-Year-Old CEO Turns Down $3B Offer from Facebook; Passengers Panic after Hearing Southwest Pilot Say "We're Going Down" over the P.A.

Aired November 14, 2013 - 14:30   ET

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

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ZORAIDA SAMBOLIN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Zoraida Sambolin alongside John Berman in New York. Just a short time ago, President Obama addressed the millions of Americans who are furious with his Affordable Care Act. The president offered a plan that could allow Americans to keep their individual insurance plans for one more year. Insurers had canceled policies that do not meet Obamacare requirements. During his session with the media, President Obama admitted he is not a perfect man or president, but said he will do all that he can on behalf of Americans.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining me now from Washington to talk about all this is Democratic strategist, Kiki Mclean and Republican strategist, Rich Galen. Kiki, I'm going to start with you, put you on the hot seat because a lot of action has been happening on the Democratic side of the aisle.

One of the things the president said is he acknowledges that he now has to work to restore his credibility, to win back his credibility on the health care issue and other issues as well. With Democrats in Congress who have been very frustrated, both publicly and privately, did today's press conference do anything to begin winning back some of the credibility?

KIKI MCLEAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, look, the only thing that truly wins back credibility is when the site is up and working well and all those people are able to enrol. That's what has to happen every day. So all the time we spend talking about what kind of an apology, was it enough of an apology? Republican committee chairs hauling people up to grill them.

Let's focus on getting this done. Everybody knows it didn't work well. Everybody knows there are things that are messed up that have to be fixed. Let's focus on getting that done so we can see how the policies and the plan and the affordable care plan really works, because the reality is this is really big change, right. Big change doesn't come easy.

And we've got to work on it to make it work as opposed to sitting around in circles pointing fingers and asking people to get whacked around in press conferences. Let's get to the work because the real credibility builder will be more people covered by insurance. We know between enrolment in Medicaid and even what people are calling the low numbers of enrolment in the marketplace, we already have more Americans covered this week, and that's a good thing.

BERMAN: So Rich, what are Republicans willing to do --

RICH GALEN, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Hold it. You can't let that go. Millions, Kiki, of people, have been told that their insurance is going to be canceled.

MCLEAN: And the president addressed that.

GALEN: Thousands have gotten through the system. So for you to say that more people are covered today than they were yesterday, effectively, is simply not correct. Now, here's the question I think we need to answer. I agree with you on the whole web site thing. That will get fixed. That's a technical thing.

My big question is the web site was a big, gigantic blinding light in our eyes. Is there something besides that that is so structurally wrong that really what the president proposed today is the right answer, whether he can do it administratively or not, somebody else has to figure out, or is there something structurally wrong with the way the ACA is proposed that it really does need to go through major surgery?

BERMAN: Kiki.

MCLEAN: I think what's really interesting here, and this is something that the president has said from the very beginning of the debates on the proposal, the mere idea of ACA, is that where there needs to be work done, he's willing to work on it and willing to work with both sides. Again, I go back to this concept of major change. Major change does not happen without hiccups.

Rich and I are in agreement. The debacle of the web site is just that, a debacle being fixed, being worked on. But the idea and the reform as a whole for our country is leading us on a path to ultimately a stronger economy, a healthier country, and a better place for everybody. We've got --

GALEN: Well, I don't know --

MCLEAN: We've got to be willing to look for those places. Rich, let me finish. You have to look for those places --

BERMAN: Go ahead, Rich.

MCLEAN: We've got to look for those places where we may be willing to do the tinkering and do it.

GALEN: This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. For us to have people who have to go on bending knee for health care, whether it's prescription drugs or actual treatment, is a sin. I absolutely agree with you. To come up with this unbelievably complex and top-down top-heavy system, I think is wrong. I agree with you that we need to have health care. This is just the wrong way to go about it.

BERMAN: Hang on, Rich. That was the debate from 2010 and the plan passed. Now it's about implementing this plan. Good or bad, at this point. There have been a lot of liberals, and they're all over my Twitter feed, all the editorial pages, saying one of the big problems over the last several months has been the Republicans have been standing in the way of implementing this all in the right way.

State governors won't set up the Medicaid money. They won't set up the state exchanges. The question now is are Republicans or should they be willing to make changes to make the system better rather than just voting time and time again to do away with it completely?

GALEN: I haven't seen any proposals from the Democratic side, for the Democrats over the last, I don't know, three and a half years. This has been perfect. They had plenty of time to fix this. The president had plenty of time to fix this. The HHS had plenty of time to say we probably need to do these things. Nobody did it until October 1st. That is a collapse of responsibility in the administration.

MCLEAN: The question is, we can sit here and spend hours and days and weeks and more months and years talking about what didn't work in the last six weeks, or we can focus on what we need to fix, get it fixed, learn the lessons from this, and move forward. And I think that's the difference in how people are looking at this.

You know, it's kind of like, I'm reminded occasionally when my 11- year-old son does something wrong and I'm furious with him and he keeps apologizing, and at a certain point, in fairness to him, he can only apologize so much, but he's got to change his behavior. That's how he wins my confidence back. That's how the president will win the confidence of the American people back.

GALEN: I would like to see him change his behavior.

BERMAN: I would like to hear more apologies from my kids, but that's a completely different story. Rich Galen, Kiki Mclean, thank you so much for joining us.

GALEN: I have to apologize to my kid.

BERMAN: That's a different story. Rich, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Kiki, you too.

SAMBOLIN: All right, some 50 years after the death of President Kennedy, did Lee Harvey Oswald really act alone? You're going to hear from the "Time" article writer that Oswald had help. Plus, never before seen pictures are revealed.

BERMAN: And they're amazing.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John F. Kennedy died at approximately 1:00 Central Standard Time today, here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot wound in the brain. I have no other details regarding the assassination of the president.

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SAMBOLIN: It's so hard to watch, right? That announcement and so many indelible moments are part of our riveting special, "The Assassination Of President Kennedy" tonight at 9:00 Eastern and Pacific. In case you haven't noticed the major news organizations are all offering special coverage of the Kennedy assassination. "Time" magazine is calling it the moment that changed America.

We'll talk in just a moment with the writer of "Time's" cover story. First though, "Time" is allowing us to show you some of the last photographs ever taken of President Kennedy. Come over to your screen. These pictures sat in a trunk for nearly half a century and were found only recently in that trunk in New Zealand. Here is a moment where the president passes the lens of H. Warner King whose daughter only recently found these photos.

BERMAN: And I'm struck looking at these by something reporters said at the time. When you saw the president, you could see his tan bursting through, the vibrant and colors are so vivid. Joining us now from Kansas City, Missouri to talk about this is David Von Drehle. He is "Time" magazine's editor-at-large. You wrote the magazine's cover story on this. David, like so many others called this the moment that changed America, a real pivot point. How did it change?

DAVID VON DREHLE, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, "TIME": Well, you know, we had always had doubts and suspicion and conspiratorial thoughts running through the country as long as we have been a nation. But this assassination was such a shock, such an incredibly sudden moment where the president of the United States goes from that youthful tan, that happy individual in those photographs, to he's dead in a matter of seconds.

It's such a traumatic event, such a shocking event, that it really brought the conspiratorial, suspicious, you know, tendency in the American psyche out of the shadows and made it really a mainstream trait, I think, that we have never left behind since then.

SAMBOLIS: Can you tell us more about these amazing pictures that we're seeing?

DREHLE: Yes, they're really something. Warner King was a jeweller in Dallas who had previously been a photographer in New Zealand and when the president was coming to visit Dallas, he took out his trusty camera and went down to the motorcade route. You can see how close people were able to get to the president. You see him and the first lady in their raised back-seat of that open-air limousine and so they went right past him.

He was so traumatized, Mr. King, by the event that he took these images and put them in a box and never looked at them again. And it was only when his daughter was going through his things after his death that she came across them and realized that he had once said his life's goal was to have his photos published in "Time" magazine. He admired the magazine and we've been able to make that come true.

BERMAN: David Von Drehle of "Time" magazine, thank you so much for bringing them to us. I encourage everybody to take a look at these pictures in the magazine, and tune in for our special tonight "The Assassination Of President Kennedy." It's remarkable and riveting. It airs at 9:00 Eastern and Pacific right here on CNN.

SAMBOLIN: All right, so imagine being offered $3 billion. That's billions with a "b" and saying yes, no thank you.

BERMAN: That wouldn't happen with me, no way.

SAMBOLIN: Up next, we'll tell you which social media site just said no to Facebook's $3 billion deal.

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SAMBOLIN: My favorite story of the day has a lot of people asking what type of person turns down $3 billion.

BERMAN: A nutty one.

SAMBOLIN: That's what Evan Spiegel, the 23-year-old CEO of Snapchat reportedly has done. Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, reportedly offered Spiegel roughly $3 billion to acquire his photo messaging app company, he was rejected.

I want to bring in CNN's Samuel Burke in Atlanta. Samuel, it's an understatement to say Snapchat is popular among teens. Can you explain this Snapchat phenomenon?

SAMUEL BURKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Zoraida, in theory, it's all quite simple. You take a photo or video with your phone and send it over Snapchat to a friend and it disappears after 10 seconds. But we all know once you share something online, it doesn't always disappear. So at least you can say this is a teenager's attempt to have some type of semblance of privacy in their lives, sending a photo that disappears on Snapchat after 10 seconds instead of sharing it with a wider group of fends on Facebook or Twitter.

And Zoraida, 350 million messages are sent each day on Snapchat, and that gives you an idea of why Facebook might have shelled out so much cash or at least offered to shell out so much for this free application.

SAMBOLIN: I know but how do you monetize all of this? When Facebook bought Instagram, they offered $1 billion. So it seems like they want control of the social apps that all of these teenagers are into, but the question is, how do you make money here?

BURKE: Well, a lot of people thought Facebook was crazy when they offered almost a billion dollars for Instagram when it hadn't generated even a penny of revenue. But now looking back, so many people said what a smart investment from Facebook. They took the talent from Instagram and made their own mobile application so much better on Facebook, and now that's where they're having a lot of their success.

Facebook has been struggling in the demographic of young teens lately. But for the teens they lost there, they made up for it with Instagram and that's what Facebook want. They want to do well with teens. Snapchat is so popular with teens. They're going after that demo, trying to keep them on some of their platforms. That's what they would do if they acquired Snapchat.

SAMBOLIN: All right, Samuel Burke, I got tell you, I'm still shocked. I would not advise my child to turn down $3 billion, but who knows? Maybe he's brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us today.

BERMAN: I like you pretending you're not an avid Snapchat user.

SAMBOLIN: I actually joined today just to see what it's all about.

BERMAN: Up next, passengers on a Southwest Airlines flight say their pilot told them, we're in trouble. We're going down. You'll hear a chilling account from one passenger and the response from Southwest coming up.

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BERMAN: Welcome back, everyone. So imagine this, imagine being onboard a plane and hearing a panicked captain saying over a loud- speaker, we're in trouble. We're going down. Those are the horrible words passengers on a Southwest airlines flight say they heard during their flight to North Carolina this week. Seconds after that announcement, the plane went into a nose dive before it levelled out and made an emergency landing at the Raleigh Airport.

SAMBOLIN: A passenger told our Carol Costello today, she thought she was about to die.

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GRACE STROUD, SOUTHWEST AIRLINES PASSENGER: But what I heard is, what I heard was what sounded like static, and then this loud shooting sound on the plane, and right behind it, the same thing. Two sort of loud sounds. The lady next to me heard it, too. We both looked at each other with that, you know, kind of look. Then seconds later, I heard what sounded like a panicked captain. He could have just been deliberate, saying we're in trouble. We're going down.

And I was very clear about that. And then the flight attendants, of course, started taking action and you know, they appeared somewhat panicked to me, but you know, when you think your plane is going down, and they heard the same message, they're just humans, but they did their jobs as far as securing every.

We thought the masks were coming down and the masks didn't come down and one flight attendant said, captain, the masks aren't coming down, deploy the masks, or something like that. And then, you know, of course, I'm sure everybody went through their private moments of what, you know, of their experiences. And my moment was that, you know, OK, this is how I'm going to die and at least it will be quick. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SAMBOLIN: My gosh, all right, So southwest released a statement saying there was a maintenance issue. And quote, "As part of the procedure to resolve the issue, the captain notified the crew using the public address system that he was going down to a lower altitude just before an unplanned but controlled descent. The maintenance issue was resolved before the flight safely landed." The FAA is investigating this incident.

BERMAN: Glad they were all OK.

SAMBOLIN: Unbelievable.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman alongside Zoraida Sambolin. We are live in New York. You may have heard it right here on CNN. It was a very, very interesting moment, President Obama offering up a plan to try to resolve his broken promise that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.

SAMBOLIN: We have seen his poll numbers sliding. We're seeing Democrats plead with the white house to halt the political fallout. The president says he fumbled, plain and simple.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: That's on me. I mean, we fumbled the rollout on this health care reform. I am very frustrated, but I'm also somebody who, if I fumble the ball, I'm going to wait until I get the next play and then I'm going to try to run as hard as I can and do right by the team. So ultimately, I'm the head of this team. We did fumble the ball on it and what I'm going to do is make sure that we get it fixed.

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