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Tech CEOs Meet With President Obama; Mega Millions Fever

Aired December 17, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And we roll on, hour two, top of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. The millions, they are growing by the hour. Can't you hear them? The top Mega Millions prize inches closer to the $1 billion mark. The jackpot got even fatter today, folks. Right now it sits at $636 million. Lottery officials say if no one wins tonight, we could be at $950 million by Friday. That is quite a bit of money, the odds of winning, not in your favor. I don't have to tell you that. You know that anyway. You got to play to win as they say. That's certainly not stopping the fever.

Alison Kosik, you have been hanging out at this 7/Eleven in Times Square all day. What do you have, like 50 tickets by now?

(LAUGHTER)

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Actually, I only have five, but the day is still young, but lots of people continuing to line up here to my right. You know, this is not really a big deal.

These numbers are just astounding because, yes, if this jackpot rolls over again, it could go to $950 million on Friday. If it rolls over yet again, it could go to $1 billion on Christmas Eve. What a gift that would be. Many are asking, why is it that this is rolling over so many times?

Part of it could be that there's been a rule change with this game. Back in October, lotto officials changed the rules. They made the pool of numbers that you pick from a lot bigger. You used to be able to choose one and 56. Now you choose between one and 75. So more numbers means more combinations, means you have got, you know, longer odds of winning.

What are those odds? One in 259 million. That got us wondering, what would that look like? I want to kind of illustrate that. Here's your odds of one in 10. We have got 10 dollar bills lined up. I'm going to pick a winner. Let's just say this. Ooh, that was easy.

But now imagine this line stretched out into 259 bills. What would that look like? If I laid out these bills end to end lengthwise, that would stretch around the world once, and get this, Brooke, you would still have $1,100 left over. Try to win among 259 million of those. I say good luck to you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. Here's the thing. This is what I want to talk about, because, listen, I don't know who's going to win the $950 million, if it even gets that high. But there are -- you have to hang on to your ticket. This is my takeaway for the day. Hang on to your tickets, because people are still winning $1 million, but they chuck the ticket because they didn't win the big drawing.

KOSIK: Exactly. So when you see those jackpot numbers hitting, you look at your ticket and you say, oh, I didn't win, don't throw the ticket out yet. Look closely at those numbers because there are a lot of lesser prizes. There's proof that a lot of people have left behind a lot of money; $800 million in lotto prizes on average are left behind. Just in New York last year, $65 million in lotto money just poof, never picked up. California, $22 million, that's a lot of money.

One other thing to keep in mind. If you have got a winning ticket of any kind, you have got only a certain amount of time to actually claim your prize, anywhere from three to 12 months. You don't want to sit on it too long, especially after you have maybe waited in this line especially, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Good luck, my friend. Good luck tonight, you and your five tickets. Alison Kosik, thank you very much.

KOSIK: You too.

BALDWIN: Now to this story developing right now, this wildfire, look at this. This is burning in the beautiful coastal region of California's Big Sur. Officials say the fire has burned more than 500 acres. It is only 5 percent contained.

And when you think about the terrain, this is rough terrain, and a lot of heavy smoke making fire fighting extremely, extremely difficult at this moment.

In North Carolina today, 14 people, passengers and a crew member, have been taken to it the hospital after this ferry ran aground near Battery Island. This is a 64-foot boat, came to a sudden stop, hurling people across the cabin, crashing into tables. It's still unclear at this point why the ship ran aground. Updates as we get them.

And six U.S. troops were killed today when a helicopter crash-landed in Southern Afghanistan. One person survived the crash, which officials say was apparently caused by engine failure. There was no enemy activity in the area the at time. The troops were members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

And to Washington now, where some of the world's biggest tech bosses just finished a meeting with the president. I'm talking Google, Yahoo!, Apple, Microsoft, and Twitter, among others. This meeting scheduled a week ago after these industry leaders asked the government to change its spying practices.

And the timing here of this meeting, it's pretty incredible, because we broke the news yesterday -- yesterday. This was a day after the federal court ruled that data mining performed by the NSA, revealed to the world by former contractor Edward Snowden was most likely unconstitutional. Jake Tapper joining me now, Jake Tapper, host of "THE LEAD."

The meeting just wrapped. So, what do we know? Do we have a readout yet or who are you talking to about what was said behind closed doors?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, sources tell me that the first 45 minutes of the meeting were spent discussing healthcare.gov, the tech executives meeting with some senior White House officials, including Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff.

But then the president and vice president came and spent most of the next two hours talking about the big concern of these tech companies, and that is reforming the National Security Agency and the requirement that these companies have to abide by instructions from the U.S. government.

They talked about bulk collection. They talked about the PRISM program. They talked about the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. They talked about the secret court, the FISA court, where these decisions are made, as opposed to public courts. And in general, the tech companies argued for more transparency from the Obama administration.

Remember, this is not just an issue of principle for them. This is actually also an issue of money, because if people cannot rely on these tech companies to keep their information private, and they can't in the United States, then they might take their businesses elsewhere, especially if there are companies that deal with things that are very confidential in nature, such as banking transactions and the like.

So the big push from the tech companies, from you saw in the shot there Marissa Mayer of Yahoo! and Tim Cook and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, was more transparency, more reform.

BALDWIN: OK. So this is what they want. But then we have -- we talked about this yesterday, this federal court ruling, you know, that this is possibly unconstitutional. Snowden wrote that -- quote -- "NSA spy program is collapsing," collapsing. I mean, some people see him as a hero. Some see him as a criminal.

Here he is, perhaps single-handedly bringing down the NSA. You agree?

TAPPER: I wouldn't say he's bringing down the NSA. He certainly is bringing more attention to a bunch of surveillance programs that the public did not know about and therefore in many ways obviously did not care about, even when some of them were hinted at or discussed in previous years, than anyone has ever done before.

He's certainly been a disrupter of public support and congressional support for these programs. But as of right now, I haven't seen any major changes to any of them. There have been admissions from the intelligence apparatus in this country, for instance, from the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, that he was not honest before Congress when he testified earlier this year. That's an admission it's hard to see that he would have made had it not been for Snowden bringing to the attention that there was this bulk collection of metadata, but in terms of major reforms, not yet.

BALDWIN: Not yet. Not yet. Jake Tapper, thank you.

TAPPER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Reminder, "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts at the top of the hour, 4:00 Eastern, here on CNN.

Coming up, a fan reaches out to Justin Timberlake, asks for a little favor, and the singer accepted. The whole thing played out on stage. We have it for you. It's a pretty special moment.

Also, a gay rights magazine has just named Pope Francis its person of the year. I will talk live to a conservative Catholic about his pope and the direction the pope is taking the church.

And multivitamins, you take yours in the morning? Are they a complete waste of money? Wait until you hear what doctors are saying about this today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Justin Timberlake's concert Sunday night in Louisville packed with thousands of screaming fans, but it turns out some of them were actually not screaming for him this time, because they went absolutely berserk when a fan prearranged to propose to his girlfriend on stage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, MUSICIAN: What's your name?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Josh.

TIMBERLAKE: Say hello to Josh. Josh called me earlier. He's got something he wants to tell you.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Louisville affiliate WDRV says Joshua Clemons there on his knee, taking a knee, wrote a letter to Justin Timberlake asking to make the big proposal to his longtime love Kim Martin. And just judging by her face here, she said yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSHUA CLEMONS, PROPOSED: We finally caught each other on the phone. And they told me that Justin had a big plan and wanted to know if I was ready to do it big. And I said, definitely.

KIM MARTIN, ACCEPTED MARRIAGE PROPOSAL: I didn't know why this is happening right now. And then I got up there and it was. And I was just like in total shock. I couldn't do anything but just stand there and like, oh, my goodness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Clemons says it took nearly 100 e-mails and phone calls to pull this thing off, that Justin Timberlake planned the entire thing. Clearly, congratulations, a night to remember for all three of them.

And now the pope. Got to tell you, Pope Francis, he has one heck of a marketing strategy. Not only does he continue to be in the headlines -- I feel like I'm talking about him every day here -- on a daily basis really -- but now this. Take a look at the cover of "The Advocate." He's the person of the year in this gay rights magazine.

They even slapped, see on his right cheek, the no hate mark there? "The Advocate" saying Francis was the most influential person on the lives of LGBT people. Why? Mostly because of his groundbreaking comments that if someone is gay and tries doing right by God, who is he to judge?

Keep in mind, the pope did not come close to endorsing same-sex civil unions or marriage, but at least to this magazine he's taken one huge step forward.

Joining me now, Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, to talk a little bit about this.

Nice to see you, sir.

WILLIAM DONAHUE, PRESIDENT, CATHOLIC LEAGUE: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Does this -- the fact that he is now on the cover of "The Advocate," do you feel even more of a conflict with the pope? Does this put you at conflict with him?

DONAHUE: No, it doesn't.

I will tell you the truth, I have to say when I heard about it, and I was just surfing around the Internet, I saw the article. I said, oh, boy, it's going to be snarky. There will be some digs.

BALDWIN: It's not.

DONAHUE: Quite frankly, it wasn't -- no, it was very respectful. And it was accurate.

In other words, they did say that he's reaching out to gays as person, but he's not bending on same-sex marriage. I have no problem with that. I thought it was very respectful. And I think if this is a sign that maybe some people in the gay community will stop bashing the church, maybe there's enough people out there who are bashing gays ought to lay low also.

BALDWIN: Let's talk about the laying low. There are one billion or so Catholics worldwide, many of whom are conservative, many of whom, you know, some would argue, have a lot to learn and are learning a lot from this pope. Would you say you fall in that camp? And do you think you are learning from the bits and pieces of the news that the pope is making?

DONAHUE: Well, I look at the Catholic catechism and it says very clearly that we should treat with respect and compassion and sensitivity people who are homosexuals.

I don't think that Pope Benedict XVI or John Paul II said anything different, except that he is reaching out more. So tone does matter. I don't think you're going to see substantive changes.

BALDWIN: How do you feel about him reaching out more?

DONAHUE: I think that's good, because I think we ought to get the monkey off our back.

Look, the Catholic Church is against fornication and adultery. Those are acts that are normally committed by heterosexuals. I don't think we're anti-straight because we're against fornication and adultery. I know the Catholic Church has a very hard bar to clear on sexuality. It's very hard.

But I have to tell you the truth, though. I don't think the Catholic Church is anti-gay. I'm not saying there are Catholics who aren't anti-gay. As far as I'm concerned, they ought to throw them out of the church.

BALDWIN: Does it bother you, though, that, like I said, he's not necessarily coming out and endorsing same-sex marriage, but he's saying,hey, if they do right by God, who am I to judge? Are you OK with that, as a conservative Catholic?

DONAHUE: I have never had a problem with it.

And I think are a lot of times -- there are conservative Catholics who stereotype homosexuals. I will give you that. But there are homosexuals who are activists, not the average homosexual, who stereotype Catholics because we think that marriage should be between a man and a woman, therefore, ipso facto, you're a bigot. I think that's insanity.

BALDWIN: What about the fact that more and more gays and lesbians are becoming involved with the church and are in support, i.e. with the cover of "The Advocate" magazine, of the current Pope Francis?

DONAHUE: Well, like the pope said, as long as you're following God's will, straight or gay doesn't make any difference.

I don't think -- the Catholic Church has never been officially given any kind of a tilt toward heterosexuals over homosexuals. I don't really see the problem. But you know what? I think the gay publication "The Advocate" surprised a conservative like me.

And I want to commend them for choosing the pope as the person of the year. I don't -- I will probably get some flak now from some conservative Catholics over this, but it was written very fairly and respectfully. And I say hats off. If I can help you out, I will too.

BALDWIN: Bill Donahue, thank you, sir.

DONAHUE: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Happy holidays to you. Thank you.

Coming up, new tracks from the Beatles. Beatles fan, perhaps, here?

DONAHUE: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: And 59 super rare bootleg tracks, this is from 1963. If you have not heard them yet, we have some we will share with you. And we will also talk to a Beatles expert about whether they're any good. Here's a quick answer to that. Yes.

Also, those multivitamins you're taking might be a total waste of money -- why a medical journal says you should avoid taking them, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Some major health headlines pit marketers against medical experts. And they involve products the marketers have been saying for years we all should be taking. But now medical experts are casting some serious doubt today.

The latest, I took mine this morning, multivitamins. An editorial in the "Annals of Internal Medicine" says that using them is a waste of money. Keep in mind this comes just after the FDA announced a proposal to go after antibacterial soap. The FDA wants soap makers to prove the antibacterial stuff is more effective than simple soap.

So with me now, rheumatologist Dr. Natalie Azar.

Nice to see you here.

DR. NATALIE AZAR, RHEUMATOLOGIST: Nice to see you. Thank you.

BALDWIN: I took my multivitamin this morning.

AZAR: So did I.

BALDWIN: Should I not be taking my multivitamin?

AZAR: You know what? If you believe the research, then the answer is no, quite simply.

BALDWIN: Do you believe the research?

AZAR: What I believe is that the researchers who analyzed the data did a good job of it, and their conclusions are that for an otherwise healthy person, OK, who is eating a well-balanced diet and exercising, taking an additional multivitamin supplement on a daily basis will not decrease the occurrence of, you know, risk for chronic disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and what we call all-cause mortality. So what does that mean? Does that mean if you get sick and you want to take zinc supplements or some people swear on certain supplements make them feel better, there's probably a subgroup of people who benefits and perhaps a subgroup of people who is harmed by taking supplements.

But the overall overwhelming evidence really for years has consistently shown what we call a null effect, meaning that it's not really affecting these important long-term outcomes.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: OK. So maybe for kicks, I will keep taking my multivitamin.

AZAR: You know what? But here's the thing. If you look at the bottle of a multivitamin and it says it contains this much iron, it contains this much zinc, if you look at the percentages, it's exceedingly low. It's like 10 percent, 13 percent of what the recommended daily allowance is.

So for anybody to, you know, go around thinking that they can have a poor diet but take a multivitamin and...

BALDWIN: It's not a solution.

AZAR: It's not a solution. But what's nice and elegant about this is that these researchers looked at studies, around 30 studies, covering over 400,000 people and found no benefit in terms of these major important outcomes, mortality, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Those are big ones.

BALDWIN: OK. So, just in 30 seconds, is there any one group of people who absolutely should be taking them?

AZAR: Absolutely. OK, so I think not just taking, generally taking a multivitamin, but if you have a specific nutritional deficiency, you're definitely vitamin D deficient...

BALDWIN: You need that supplement.

AZAR: You need that supplement. People who are malnourished, such as either from sickness or from disease or alcohol abuse, you know, things like that, people who have had parts of their bowel resected and they can't absorb so they have malabsorption, those are certainly exceptions to that rule for sure.

BALDWIN: Natalie, thank you.

AZAR: You're welcome.

BALDWIN: Thank you, thank you.

Coming up here, Congress close to passing a budget. Shocking, I know, but find out what's in this current deal that's not really actually making either side happy. We will take you to Washington.

Also, a teenager suspended from school for, wait for it, hugging his teacher.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was thinking that maybe she had a bad day or something. But usually a hug would help a person in that case. But, I mean, she took it the other way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That young man suspended for a year, and that's not the whole story. Stay right here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right. Here we are, bottom of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me here today.

Question, did you know that on the day after Christmas, December 26, that about 1.3 million Americans will run out of unemployment insurance? They have used it all up, state and federal, poof, gone. For them, it is a frightening holiday season.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARY CARY, UNEMPLOYED: Are you ready to see me on the street begging for food? You know? I know I'm not ready to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All right. So this is the bones of contention in the two- year budget that's just about law by now. Since it passed that test vote, this procedural vote in the Senate late this morning -- by the way, you see rookie Senator Cory Booker here. He's manning the president's chair. How about this? This is the Senate version of hazing, making freshmen carrying out this little chore, Cory Booker for you, a picture for you.

Anyway, Democrats have been demanding to extend the expiring jobless payments. But they didn't just get their way. This just wasn't part of the deal.