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Al-Qaeda-Linked Militants Seize Much of Fallujah, Ramadi; Military Widow Describes Her Marriage; Harvey Weinstein Wants to Use a Movie to "Destroy" NRA; Chris Christie Tries to Move On

Aired January 16, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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

Want to take to you Iraq, because al-Qaeda-linked militants have now seized control of much of Fallujah and Ramadi.

You might remember these cities are in Anbar Province, an area so many of our American troops fought and died to take during the war.

And each day Iraq spirals deeper into violence. Just two years after the last U.S. combat troops pulled out the country, parts of Iraq are now looking more like they did during the bloodiest days of the war.

And CNN's own Michael Holmes covered the war. He is now back in Baghdad for us where, today, Michael, 14 people were shot dead just north of the city, 11 killed in other attacks in the country.

Our American troops who fought and sacrificed in Fallujah are no doubt wondering what is going on there.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, and the people who live in Iraq are wondering it even more, Brooke.

You know, they had some high hopes after Saddam Hussein was overthrown that things would get better.

Here we are, what, 11 years later, and things are as bad as -- I'd have to go back to 2006, 2007 at the height of the insurgency here to see things as unsecure as they are here.

I've got to tell you I've been here 14 times now, starting back at the beginning of the war. I was here when the Americans left, and it really does have an eerie sense of instability here.

People literally say, when go to work in the morning, they say goodbye to their families and they don't know if they'll come back that night.

Yesterday was a good example, nine explosions around the city, 60 people dead around the country, a hundred wounded. It's a daily thing here, and it's very unsettling.

And a lot of people are worried that it could downward spiral into that all-out Sunni-Shia sectarian war. Everybody hopes it doesn't, but it isn't looking good, I have to say, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Michael Holmes, thank you.

I want to stay with Iraq here, and according to Pentagon statistics just updated Wednesday, the Iraq war took 4,423 American lives.

For my next guest, Iraq also ripped apart an unlikely partnership bound by just the kind of love that would have lasted a lifetime.

That is how Artis Henderson describes her marriage in her book just released. It's called "Unremarried Widow," the official military term for her.

Henderson's husband Miles died from a helicopter crash, Apache helicopter crash, in Iraq more than seven years ago. A year before the soldier died, Miles had a dream about his death.

Henderson writes, "If I loved him enough, I reasoned he would come home. That did not happen."

After Miles was gone, Henderson found a letter from him that will break your heart, but will also renew your faith in true love.

And Artis Henderson joins me now. Welcome.

ARTIS HENDERSON, WIDOW OF ARMY SOLDIER KILLED IN IRAQ: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Thank you for sharing your story, and I want to get to your story in a minute.

But given the fact that we just heard from the correspondent in Baghdad, given what we're seeing happening in Fallujah and Ramadi and this was a mission that your husband embraced and accepted, how do you feel about all of this?

HENDERSON: It's very complicated. I have very complicated emotions about the war.

As I said in the book, I didn't support the war when it was happening, but once I met my husband and knew the military, I supported him and all the troops.

But it's alarming to see what's happening now.

BALDWIN: Alarming.

You were young 20s when you met. You were and are free spirit. You wanted to write and travel the world. And here you go, marrying a military man, unexpected, yes?

HENDERSON: Yes.

BALDWIN: Unexpected, and so you fall in deep, deep love with him. You get married. He goes off to Iraq. And at some point you get the knock on your door.

HENDERSON: Yes. Yes. That's right.

Actually, it wasn't a knock. It should have been a knock, but they were already in my house when I came home.

I was staying with my mother, and so my mother had let them in. So, when I came home from work, the soldiers were already there.

BALDWIN: And what did they say?

HENDERSON: They said, we regret to inform you that on behalf of the president of the United States, your husband Miles Henderson has been killed in Iraq.

BALDWIN: And after you -- and I don't know if you still are processing, but at some point, you summoned the strength to go through his stuff. You find this letter.

It was written to you by your husband and we have printed out a letter in its entirety. I want it to be in your voice. Would you will mind sharing some?

HENDERSON: Sure. Just a part about midway through, he said, "I died doing something that I believe is very honorable, worthwhile, and necessary.

"I pray that in my life and death I saved others lives and kept a few from ever having to experience this war.

"I regret that it had to come at the price of causing you any pain. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you in any way."

BALDWIN: I see your eyes sitting here, time has passed. What does it feel like to be reading that?

HENDERSON: It still feels like the first time. It has been years, but it still feels like yesterday.

BALDWIN: What do you miss most?

HENDERSON: I miss his laugh. He had such a great laugh.

BALDWIN: For those as we report and see what's happening in Iraq in the current day and for those who say it wasn't worth it, what do you say to those people?

HENDERSON: It has to be worth it. You have to believe it was worth it. I can't believe he died for nothing.

BALDWIN: Thank you so much for sharing. I really appreciate it.

HENDERSON: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Harvey Weinstein wants to destroy the NRA. His weapon? A big Hollywood movie.

You may not be familiar with Weinstein, but he is a Hollywood heavyweight. You know the movies, "Shakespeare in Love," "Pulp Fiction" and "Philomena," nominated just this morning.

Weinstein was on "The Howard Stern Show" talking about this upcoming movie based upon a novel about a Jewish uprising during the Holocaust.

The conversation turned and he took aim at the NRA. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARVEY WEINSTEIN, PRODUCER: This has been a project I searched for every since my aunt gave me the book when I was a boy. It's an important story to tell.

HOWARD STERN, RADIO HOST: It's an important Holocaust story.

WEINSTEIN: It's not a Holocaust story as much as it's Jews with guns. It's my whole philosophy. It's -- or anybody.

It's the idea that when injustice is that great, you just can't march into the camps.

This is a story of the opposite.

STERN: Do you own a gun?

WEINSTEIN: No.

STERN: You don't have any guns?

WEINSTEIN: I never want to have a gun.

STERN: But why, if that story resonates with you, why not own a gun so that --

WEINSTEIN: No. This is when you are marching a half million people into Auschwitz -

STERN: Right.

WEINSTEIN: I mean, I'd find a gun if that was happening to my people.

STERN: Right.

WEINSTEIN: I don't think we need guns in this country and I hate it and I think the NRA is a disaster area and I'm going to actually make a movie.

I shouldn't say this, but I'll tell it to you, Howard. I'm going to make a movie with Meryl Streep and we're going to take this issue head on and they're going to wish they weren't alive after I'm done with thing.

STERN: A documentary-type thing? WEINSTEIN: No, big movie.

STERN: A big movie?

WEINSTEIN: Like a "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington."

STERN: That will move people to perhaps rethink that whole situation.

WEINSTEIN: Those gun stocks, I don't want to be involved in that stuff. It's going to be like crash-and-burn.

STERN: Really? You really envision this?

WEINSTEIN: Oh, yeah.

STERN: You have great visions. You make these concerts for 9/11. You made the concert -- you know, you're --

WEINSTEIN: I think we can do something.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: So, Harvey Weinstein wants to make a big movie, starring, you heard him, Meryl Streep, to take down the gun industry and the NRA. Is that even possible?

Emily Miller is a senior opinion editor for "The Washington Times" and the author of the book "Emily Gets Her Gun," and Arkadi Gerney is a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress. Welcome to both of you.

EMILY MILLER, AUTHOR, "EMILY GETS HER GUN": Thank you.

ARKADI GERNEY, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Emily, I read your column, but let's hear it. What's your reaction to this?

MILLER: Obviously when Harvey Weinstein makes a movie, it's a big deal. It's a big movie with Meryl Streep. And he is going to try to move the needle.

The problem is, he's got 5 million, law-abiding, good Americans who are members of the NRA who are doing nothing but defending themselves and their families who he thinks he's going to persuade to suddenly hate their own group and hate gun stocks, which I don't know why people would suddenly hate something that's stuck in your shoulder.

But, you know, it's going to be a big movie, but I think the question is, who is its target audience. I think its target audience is for the liberal elite of Los Angeles and New York, which is clearly the ones who see his movies now.

BALDWIN: OK, let me come back to you.

Arkadi, your reaction, just hearing the conversation with Howard Stern?

GERNEY: Nine in 10 American support expanded background checks and stronger gun laws, so that's a huge audience of people who disagree with the NRA when it comes to what we ought to be doing with gun policy in this country.

And that group of people who disagree on those policies includes most gun owners and even most NRA numbers, according to polls of NRA members.

BALDWIN: OK, so that's initial reaction -- hang on. Hang on, Emily. Let me just get this in, just for people to refresh your memories.

Because we went through the different Harvey Weinstein movies, and there's huge, but a lot of them are very violent. You have "Pulp Fiction," the "Scream" series, "Rambo," "Halloween" movies.

Let me put this to you, Arkadi. Does Hollywood and does Harvey Weinstein bear some responsibility for the violence in our culture?

GERNEY: A lot of people have talked about violence in video games and violence in movies and what we -- you know, these movies that are popular in the United States and the first-person-shooter video games that are popular in the United States, they are popular all over the world.

But, if you look around the world, they don't have anything like the rates of murder and gun violence that we have in the United States.

So I think that many of our movies are too violent. I think that many of our movies are -- many of the video games are too violent.

But if you really want to take a look at the real-world violence and how to do something about it, we also have to look at our gun laws, tighten our gun laws and make it harder, not for law-abiding people like Emily to get a gun if she wants to get a gun and I know she is a gun owner, but for criminals to get guns.

BALDWIN: Go ahead, Emily. Respond to that.

GERNEY: Several thing. First of all, if Harvey Weinstein blames violence, the 9,000 people who are killed every year, on guns, on the law-abiding members of the NRA, then it's just as likely to blame -- if we're going to blame the guns then we should blame the movies.

Both of these are inanimate objects. There are human beings who make decisions, and the (inaudible) of violence are much more complicated than guns.

And the one thing that is being left out of this discussion and what he said is that every single -- there has never been a gun law in this country that has reduced violence, ever, not once.

And gun violence is down 50 percent now than it was 30 years ago, so gun violence is decreasing and gun ownership is at the highest rate it has ever been. Almost half the country has a gun in the home now. BALDWIN: Take it back to Hollywood, because that is the crux of this conversation.

And I don't want to talk about video games, because this is about Harvey Weinstein. These are about mega movies.

And he has actually, he himself, has said, We, Hollywood, need to have a conversation -- this is what he told The Huffington Post. Let me quote him.

" I think as filmmakers we should sit down - the Marty Scorseses, the Quentin Tarantinos and hopefully all of us who deal in violence in movies - and discuss our role in that."

To either of you, is it time and I hear you, Emily, on the law-abiding citizens who absolutely have their right to bear arms, but should Hollywood take a bigger role in combating violence in our society?

MILLER: Absolutely. Hollywood should.

And it's really outrageous for Harvey Weinstein now, after earlier on the show -- I listened to the whole show last night. He is talking about all his four different homes and all his money.

He's made all this money off these violent films and now he's blaming guns and he's blaming the NRA for the violence and now he's going to make another multimillion-dollar film with Meryl Streep.

Again, he is making money on all of this. I mean, this is --

BALDWIN: I hear you loud and clear, but maybe he's finally saying, OK, hey, it's time.

Given everything we have seen, even over the course of the last year to say we need to make this movie, and I'm taking Meryl Streep with me.

(CROSSTALK)

MILLER: The only issue is who's going to see it. And I can assure you that the 5 million members of the NRA are not going to see it.

BALDWIN: Arkadi, let me hear your opinion.

GERNEY: There are 300 million Americans who are not members of the NRA.

And the reason to make this movie is not because NRA members have been doing things that lead to violence.

It's because the NRA has blocked policies to cut down on gun violence.

And Emily is wrong when she says there's isn't evidence that gun laws lead to reducing gun violence.

MILLER: Name one then. GERNEY: There's a mountain of evidence -

MILLER: Name one.

GERNEY: -- that shows for the 10 states with the strongest gun laws in the country, if you compare that to the 10 states with weakest gun laws in the country, you see gun deaths that half, half the rate of gun deaths in those 10 states.

MILLER: Cite where you're getting that information.

GERNEY: That's a report that I wrote published last year.

MILLER: Oh, it's yourself.

GERNEY: You can find it on the Web site of The Center for American Progress.

MILLER: OK, so your leftist organization and your own information.

Well, the CDC did a government research study -

GERNEY: Well, it's a report that was published in "The New York Times," as well.

MILLER: OK, well, for the viewers to know, the CDC is government research -- is a government arm. Centers for Disease Control did a study of all firearms laws --

GERNEY: Which is the data we used.

MILLER: OK, so you're saying you're correct. The government is wrong and you're correct. That's fine.

GERNEY: No, no, no. We used the government data, along with looking at gun laws and looked at -

MILLER: And you just came to a different result?

GERNEY: -- the correlation between strong gun laws and lower gun death.

MILLER: OK.

GERNEY: And there's a very strong correlation.

BALDWIN: You two can continue this once we are done, but let me just tell our viewers, of course, doing our due diligence. We reached out to the NRA. We have not gotten a comment on exactly this conversation between Harvey Weinstein and Howard Stern, but we'll keep trying.

Arkadi Gerney, Emily Miller, thank you both very, very much.

MILLER: Thanks.

GERNEY: Thanks for having us on. BALDWIN: We are learning more about the investigation into the New Jersey bridge scandal.

The state senate approved its own investigation, and a top Democrat says more than a dozen subpoenas are expected today.

What will we learn and how will it impact New Jersey Governor Chris Christie?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: At this hour, a panel in New Jersey is believed to be preparing the very first subpoenas to former aides of Chris Christie in an effort to find whoever it was that ordered that mysterious traffic study, the one that clogged highways and side streets back in September.

Of course, the theory is it might have been political payback, and it's brought a lot of heat on Chris Christie, and he acknowledged that once again today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOVERNOR CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), NEW JERSEY: There's all kinds of challenges, as you know, that come every day out of nowhere to test you.

But I want to assure the people of New Jersey of one thing. I was born here, I was raised here, I'm raising my family here, and this is where I intend to spend the rest of my life.

And whatever tests they put in front of me, I will meet those tests because I'm doing it on your behalf.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Gloria Borger is with me.

Here we have the examinations and this is just the beginning. I know, I have to imagine that governor Chris Christie has to move on, but how does he do that with all of this --

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: He knows he can't. He's got committees investigating him, subpoenas flying. He announced today that he's going to have his own internal investigation.

So what he has to do is keep his eye on the ball, which is what I think you saw him doing today in the state of New Jersey, talking about Sandy recovery while understanding that these other issues are going on at the same time.

His problem is -- the good news for him is that on a national scale people aren't paying an awful lot of attention to this.

The bad news is, that since December, he's lost a lot of ground against Hillary Clinton in a potential 2016 race. It's early. The problem, though, is his favorability ratings are upside down. More people think negatively of him than positively.

So he's got some problems, but he's doing exactly what he ought to be doing.

BALDWIN: You have seen many, many stories like this, Gloria. You have been at this for a number of years. How important do you think these subpoenas will be?

BORGER: Very important. Very important, because people are under oath. They have to think about themselves.

You know, when you work in a congressional staff or a gubernatorial staff or presidential staff, every day of your life is about making that other person look good who's at the top.

When you're under subpoena, you have to think of yourself and tell exactly the truth and tell things as they occur.

Now, it's a whole different ball game. It's a legal ball game. It's not political anymore.

And I think this is -- you know, this is very, very difficult for all of the people who are loyal to Chris Christie.

And the big question out there, of course, Brooke is that you and I have talked about this. What was the environment like in that office that made people think that they could make Chris Christie happy by shutting down the George Washington bridge.

BALDWIN: Right. The whole "what-were-they-thinking" thing.

BORGER: That whole thing. Right.

BALDWIN: Gloria Borger in Washington, thank you.

BORGER: Sure.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, we will show you one of the worst parking jobs you will ever see.

And tell you about a big change for one of the country's most prestigious dog shows.

We'll look at day's best videos, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: "Girls" creator and writer and star, so many other titles, Lena Dunham, gracing the February issue of "Vogue" magazine, a lot of people love this choice, because "Vogue" usually features the thinner models or the stars, folks you would expect on the cover.

But now, the magazine has a more relatable, realistic woman, and might I add, quite talented, on its cover, Dunham, wearing Burberry in the cover photo, and also wears some Alexander McQueen and Prada.

Technology can baffle as well as dazzle, and mutts at Westminster, here's today's "Hit Play."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: BMW parking fail, the driver says he was using the car's self-parking feature when the BMW suddenly accelerated and hopped a median outside a Target store in Florida.

Note to drivers, BMW's park assistant, only meant for parallel parking.

How is this deal? $49 for a 49ers tattoo at a parlor in Concord, California. This diehard San Francisco fan rushed right over.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I actually heard through this through my wife. She called me at work and she told me, Go over there.

BALDWIN: The deal is good through the Super Bowl.

And this is the Super Bowl for pure-breed dogs, but this year there will be mutts at Westminster.

Labradoodles and other mixed breeds won't be in the running for Best in Show, but they will be able to show what they've got in a new agility trial.

And how is this for a pricey pedicure? A salon in Florida is offering pedicures with Swarovski crystals.

They paint your toes then hand-apply matching crystals, one by one by one. The cost? Two hundred bucks and 90 minutes of your time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Thanks for watching.

"THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts now.