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Jeopardy! "Villain" Returns To The Show; Baldwin Wrote Seething Op-Ed In "New York" Magazine; New Signs Jeb Bush May Be Considering A Run For The Republican Nomination; Boy Escapes Restraints After Home Invasion

Aired February 24, 2014 - 14:30   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: Just past the bottom of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching CNN and this is for you Jeopardy lovers, champion or villain? Jeopardy contestant, Arthur Chu, he is said to be back on the show tonight. His, we will call it unconventional tactics on the game show, have definitely irked some fans and some players, but Chu is not apologizing for his style.

Here's a background from CNN entertainment correspondent, Nischelle Turner.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here is the clue to help you all.

NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDEN (voice-over): He has been blasted by Jeopardy purists for his unconventional winning strategy dubbed a mad genius and villain on social media and is currently the quiz show's reigning champion. The answer is, who is Arthur Chu? Yes, Jeopardy's polarizing 30-year-old insurance analyst is back.

Tonight he is playing for more cash and to defend his four-game winning streak. Much to the chagrin of many show traditionalists who feel Chu is gaming the system.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a wise champion that knows which categories are good for him. That applies to Arthur Chu.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have the wine 1000, month of annuals for 1000, 31 days of Oscars, 2000, 1200 Canadian bodies.

TURNER: Breaking from the typical game playing strategy of going through one category from top to bottom, Chu jumps all over the board, throwing his opponents off with his unpredictability and upping his chances of finding the prized daily doubles early on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arthur Chu is rewriting the rules of Jeopardy. All he wants is the money.

TURNER: His tactics drew. He did backlash on social media, but Chu says his strategy is fair game and he's simply in it to win it. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you realize we are playing for actual money?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of money. The rules are what the rules are.

TURNER: And while some of the adjectives used to describe him sound like they were ripped straight from the pages of a superhero comic book --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Villain.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jeopardy villain.

TURNER: It is Chu that just might be having the last laugh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Even if I were to lose the next game, a hundred grand is nothing to go home and cry about.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Yes, I don't think so. Let me talk to this other Jeopardy Champion. He is Brad Rutter. He is the biggest money winner ever on Jeopardy. So Bret, nice to see you. Welcome to the show.

BRAT RUTTER, "JEOPARDY" HIGHEST PAID MONEY WINNER: Thanks, Brooke. Good to be here.

BALDWIN: So if you were up against this guy, would you be thinking annoying or genius?

RUTTER: You know, I might actually play a lot like he does and especially since we were playing the IBM computer and it played that way and was fantastically successful against me and Ken Jennings. It has been in the back of my mind for a while.

BALDWIN: Here's what I want to know. Why didn't someone come up with this a long time ago? I mean, Jeopardy has been around for some years, right? I mean, is this really --

RUTTER: Somebody did come up with it in 1985, a guy named Chuck Forest who is probably the first famous contestant on the show. It's just the fact that there a bunch of social media people who weren't Twitter in '85 and people aren't used to the way Arthur is playing. It is causing kind of a backlash.

BALDWIN: Why do you think people -- I mean, folks, it's a game. I know there is serious money involved, but it's a game on television. Why are people so up in arms about this, these traditionalists --

RUTTER: Yes. Jeopardy has kind of become an institution and people are used to the vast majority of contestants playing exactly the same way going down the categories like that. So it's almost as if -- I would compare it to the forward pass in football. In the old days, it was three arts and a clouded (inaudible) that you couldn't pass it all. Now all of a sudden, the game has opened up a little bit and I'm sure the traditional back then didn't like it either.

BALDWIN: But as rules in football have evolved, do you think rules in Jeopardy should evolve. Do you think you should be able to do this?

RUTTER: No, I don't think so. In fact, I think if people will start playing like this more, people will just get used to it and it won't be a big deal in a couple of years. I kind of see that as the way it will probably go because there is some solid game theory behind it.

BALDWIN: Brad, be honest. Are you rooting for him?

RUTTER: Well, whenever anybody wins more than about three games, I start rooting for them because if they go on a huge ten Jennings Escron, that means they will probably going to bring me back to play and I always love to go on the show.

BALDWIN: Well, we like to see you win, of course. But let me ask you since I have you and we are talking Jeopardy, something else came up last week. The show raised eyebrows. You have the three white contestants and the college students and there was the black history category. It was like no one had picked that until everything else. All the other boxes had been checked. You were on the show. I'm curious how you went about choosing categories.

RUTTER: Well, you always go from what you are most to least comfortable with. I don't know. I would be probably be pretty comfortable with African-American history and you see anything that wouldn't be common knowledge that you can probably know if you will go on the show so, yes.

BALDWIN: OK, just curious, just looked great to see that whole column.

RUTTER: Yes. But in fairness, it's tough to answer any question on Jeopardy. You are up there in the front of the lights. There is Alex Trebeck 10 feet from you so you know, nerves can come into it too.

BALDWIN: I can't even begin to imagine. Brad Rutter, thank you very much for playing. Appreciate it.

Emmy-award winning actor, Alec Baldwin said, he is saying bye-bye to public life. There was a lengthy op-ed piece in "New York" magazine, who says, he has not changed, but public life has. Baldwin is burning multiple bridges on his way out because when you read this piece, I mean, he is being specific. He is calling out his former employer, MSNBC and the media in general using words like toxic and super flus.

In regards to retiring from the public spotlight, let me just read you part of what Alec Baldwin wrote, "Now I don't want to be Mr. Showbizness anymore. I want the same thing everybody else wants. I want a happy home. For the first time in my life, I have one."

He goes on to write, "I am aware that it's ironic that I'm making this case in the media, but this is the last time I am going to talk about my personal life in an American publication ever again." So Alec Baldwin is saying goodbye to public life, but his public life is really going to say goodbye to him. Michael Musto is back. He is our out.com columnist, but we like to call on to join us. Michael, welcome back.

MICHAEL MUSTO: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: So my question is because I was actually one of the last to tweet with Alec Baldwin during the whole words with friends debacle. He said goodbye to Twitter. We all know he is back. My question to you is how long do you think this is going to last.

MICHAEL MUSTO, COLUMNIST, OUT.COM: It's never going to happen, Brooke. Let's not forget that years ago Alec threatened to move to Canada if W. Bush won and I think maybe Canada put up a barricade so he stayed here. He never moved, OK, and as I recall Bush did win.

This time, I think maybe some New Yorkers are willing to say we will escort you to the airport because Alec is threatening not only to give us on public life, but to move his family to L.A. He has every right to do that wherever his family wants to be happy. That's fine.

However, his reasoning is a little bizarre. He thinks it's too celebrity crazed in New York. There are too many people with camera phones and paparazzi. That's what L.A. is really based on.

BALDWIN: Do you think that is going to be different in L.A. I mean, maybe you can sit behind some beautiful gates in a lovely home, I'm sure he'll have a mansion, but do you think that is really possible?

MUSTO: Well, L.A. is built on the celebrity culture. It's a city about stardom. However, he argues that you spend your time in your car and go to the gates behind your mansion. That's not a way to live. You are more prisoner that way than if you live in New York in my opinion. People in New York are a lot more blase about celebrities. They don't go crazy about celebrities. Everybody here is an achiever in some way.

BALDWIN: Right. Brad Pitt walks on the street and no one barely looks.

MUSTO: Except me. I start screaming.

BALDWIN: Well, you know, maybe I would as well. Alec Baldwin's two points because he said, you know, basically that there is this fascination and people romanticized the life of a celebrity and they are all over them. Not we all, but a lot of people buy tabloids and two, you know, on social media, people fixate on the negative instead of the positive and I'm wondering if he has a point.

MUSTO: Well, he does. The media can be very sensational, but I think he should look to his own behavior. He provides bad copy for himself with his flare-ups. I met Alec many times. He is very charming. He can turn on the charm and he's a terrific actor. He is a rightful award winner. But when he gets angry, he's a lit keg and that lead to the bad press and the bad press feeds on itself. That's going to happen in L.A. too. News flash, don't you think he is going to get into road rage incidents or something like that?

BALDWIN: What's the next story line? When you come back on and we talk about Alec Baldwin again, what's the story do you think?

MUSTO: He is still going to be in New York. He is still going to be pursuing stardom. He is still going to be on Twitter and that's fine. You know, welcome to New York. It's the place of cookie crazy people who speak their minds.

BALDWIN: Michael, what about the personal attacks? I mean, he took stabs at fellow actor, Shia Le Buff. He was very specific in MSNBC, Chifel Griffin, Rachel Maddow. Why go there?

MUSTO: I think maybe with Shia he does have a point because apparently that actor's behavior was unprofessional on the set of a Broadway show they did together. As for MSNBC, you know, they canceled him so naturally he is going to rage against them. He's a man full of rages who alternates between, you know, very debonair charm and (inaudible) you know, smoked through the nose billowing. That's what Alec Baldwin is all about. His current wife must be very patient.

BALDWIN: She's a yogi, right? You have to be.

MUSTO: That helps.

BALDWIN: Very flexible, I suppose. Michael Musto, we will talk again. We'll see where the story line goes next with Alec Baldwin. Appreciate it.

Coming up next, the mystery illness sitting students and the symptoms they say are similar to polio.

Plus the longest serving lawmaker in Congress is finally calling it quits. He's first elected way back in 1955. We will tell you who is looking to replace John Dingle.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: A big name in political circles leaving politics and another big name now considering this come back. Let's bring in CNN's chief political analyst, Gloria Borger. And Gloria, we are going to talk about Congressman John Dingle here in just a minute, but first there are these new rumblings about former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, possible run for president.

And the thing that is really making the news here is that he is not saying no to all the speculation. In fact he's talking to this group on Long Island. Gloria, this is markedly different from his normal "I'm not interested" answer.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. He's not, not running.

BALDWIN: He's not, not running. Is that politically correct?

BORGER: So I think that particularly given Chris Christie's problems lately, there has been a lot more speculation about Jeb Bush. In talking with some folks who are close to Jeb Bush, it's very clear to me that he is doing what he has been doing for the last seven years, which is he has been speaking about education which is near and dear to his heart.

He is working on behalf of mid-term candidates running in 2014, and he is thinking about a presidential race seriously although his mother may not want him to run. She said no more bushes. There is got to be another family besides the Bush family and the Clinton family.

I think there is a lot more interest on behalf of the people who raise money for Republican presidential candidates. Again, because of Chris Christie is damaged and if they want somebody who they believe is electable. That's always a consideration. Maybe they believe that the former governor of the state of Florida is someone they should be looking at.

But as far as he's concerned and his people are concerned, he's doing what he has been doing all along. We are paying a lot more attention to him and he sounds a little bit different.

BALDWIN: He sounds different. He is also not afraid to criticize his own party. I mentioned a moment ago, he is speaking on Long Island. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEB BUSH (R), FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: I remember the days when Republican candidates were the optimist. They were the ones that were more positive and had most of the ideas not complete dumbness on the ideas, but we had more than our fair share of ideas and there was a real passion for reform. We need to get back to that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Optimism. Gloria Borger, might this be a new possible White House theme, campaign theme?

BORGER: Right, remember he said he would only vote for the presidency -- I mean, would only run for the presidency if he could do it joyfully. What we are hearing him say now is if I were to do it, I would be an optimistic candidate. That worked very well for President Obama. I think his undercurrent there is that Ronald Reagan was an optimistic candidate.

I think he would also argue that George W. Bush was an optimistic candidate. Remember, talking about compassionate conservatism. If he does run, this is going to be the kind of theme you will be hearing over and over again. He has been for immigration reform, for example, which is very controversial in the Republican Party right now. But I think if he doesn't, he wants to make sure that he will actually enjoy it. He will inspire people, which is something that seems to be missing from our politics these days.

BALDWIN: Well, speaking of someone who knows the joys and the pitfalls, someone who has been at the job for quite a while, Congressman John Dingle retiring the news that we are hearing today, retiring at the end of the year, first elected in 1955. Tell me his story and some of his real influence, Gloria?

BORGER: Well, you know, one of the great congressman of our time, people don't come to Congress and stay as long as John Dingle anymore and nor do they accomplish what John Dingle has accomplished. They had good luck to cover with him and I will tell you if you look back at the legislative record, it's unmatched. Those were the days that Congress did a lot of stuff and got a lot of stuff done.

If you go back to the civil rights act of 1964, Medicare, 1965, clean air and safe water, endangered species act and a part of all of that. I think the one thing he would say that he didn't get to achieve. His father was a congressman before him wanted to achieve was universal health care. He was there for the passage of the affordable care act.

BALDWIN: Quite a resume. Gloria Borger, thank you very much as always in Washington for us.

The world's most wanted drug kingpin is behind bars. El Chapo, it means shorty, was arrested in Mexico over the weekend and now the U.S. is fighting to bring him to the U.S.

Coming up, we will talk to a man who can take us much deeper inside this world of a drug lord. But first Dr. Jim Withers spends his days and nights on the streets of Pittsburgh climbing under bridges and piles of garbage. It's a makeshift clinic for a doctor who is truly impacting his world. Here is CNN's Chris Cuomo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY" (voice-over): For more than 20 years, Dr. Jim Withers spent as days like this. Operation Safety Net is looking for patients.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have seen people out here with all kinds of things that should never be on the treat, catheters and tubes coming out of them.

CUOMO: Working in these conditions is rarely easy, but Dr. Jim Withers says turning his back on the homeless in Pittsburgh was never an option.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were sometimes when I was kind of scared. I had a guy point a shotgun at and had a guy threatened to cut my throat. But when you get to know people and they become real to you, it's hard to forget them.

CUOMO: Days like this when temperatures are below freezing. The stakes are especially high.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When it gets below 15 or somewhere in that range, everybody is at risk so we do extra patrols.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sometimes you sense when a person is giving up. I found that that is a pretty strong predictor of who might make it.

CUOMO: Withers says the payoff has been worth it. That's why he founded The Street Medicine Institute to brings his vision to cities across the world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think there was a sense that if we were not doing this, they'll be no one there for them and it gives incredible amount of meaning to everyday work. I wouldn't give it up for anything.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: How about this story? He can't even drive a car, but a 12- year-old California boy managed to get away from a situation that would terrify any adult. A home invasion where two of the three robbers, this is according to our affiliate, KTVU, had guns. It happened Sunday afternoon in Concord. This is a suburb of San Francisco.

KTVU said the men taped up the 12-year-old and his grandmother, duct taped. The boy somehow got out of the restraints and ran next door. It's the home belonging to State Senator Mark Desaulnier and that state senator joins me now live from Sacramento. Senator, welcome.

MARK DESAULNIER, NEIGHBOR WHO HELPED VICTIM OF HOME INVASION: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: This is wild reading about this story. I mean, tell me what you were doing on Sunday afternoon when you hear this knock at your door.

DESAULNIER: Well, I've just come back from some events and I was sitting in my backyard, a beautiful day out here, unfortunately because of the drought. I was reading. So I heard a pounding on the door. I have seen the young man earlier when I first come home. He was out mowing the lawn for his grandmother.

So he pounded the door and came to the door and he was quite excited obviously. He explained to me what had happened. Their cell phones had been stolen and I called up the Concord Police Department and they were there in force very quickly.

BALDWIN: What did this little boy -- he was mowing the lawn of his grandmother, what did he say to you had happened?

DESAULNIER: He said that they were inside. There was a knock on the door and the doorbell rang. His grandmother opened the door just a little bit to see who is there and they forced the door open. Then they duct taped them up, stole some things, took the safe, I believe and then left. He was able to get out.

When I came out in the front of the house of his grandmother, my neighbor was coming out towards us. They said they weren't sure whether the bad guys were still in the house or not. So we stayed out front until the police got there and they went in with their service revolvers around and went through the house.

BALDWIN: So what did do you? Did you pick up the phone? Did you call police? What were you telling this little boy as well?

DESAULNIER: I used my cell phone because he didn't have one.

BALDWIN: It was taken.

DESAULNIER: They were taken so I called the PD and I was talking to them and then they asked to speak to him. As I said they came very quickly, but it's very nice neighborhood. I've lived there for a long time, very quiet, and that's of the reason I lived there. Nothing like this ever happened. Unfortunately it's somewhat a sign of the times.

BALDWIN: And just finally, how was the 12-year-old. I know you told me you talked to the grandmother before she left in the ambulance?

DESAULNIER: Yes, that's the last time I saw her. He was being interviewed by the police. I actually left in a little while after once I've talked to his parents and everything seemed fine. It's a troubling thing nowadays that we have such things.

BALDWIN: It is. It is. Senator Mark Desaulnier, thank you so much for joining me. Lucky to be able to talk to you and that are able to help them. Thank you.