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New Nutrition Labels; New Info Emerges on Christie Scandal; Ukrainian Crisis

Aired February 27, 2014 - 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: Here we go, hour two. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

I want to begin this hour as well with Ukraine, fear of this Russian invasion here very, very real, despite today's promise from this man, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. The war games near the border have nothing to do with Ukraine, this as Putin orders these military drills and battle-readiness checks on armed forces right at the nation's borders.

You have -- look at these pictures, 150,000 Russian combat troops now at the ready. And we are learning from this U.S. military source telling us here at CNN that troops could potentially move in very quickly if and when an order comes from Moscow.

The feared goal, to storm and reclaim Ukraine, specifically -- you see the red here on your screens? -- specific this Crimean peninsula. It's a peninsula that connects Ukraine to Russia in the east. Now, 50 gunmen have taken over this parliament building there, cutting the wire, storming the grounds, and look at what they raised, the Russian flag.

It's a move that many in the Ukraine fear may be symbolic of what to is to come.

So, Michael Crowley, chief foreign affairs correspondent with "TIME," joins me now to chat about this one.

Michael, we know that Russia denies these war games have anything to do with the unrest in Ukraine. Let me just play some sound. This is Secretary of State John Kerry addressing this today.

OK, we don't have it, but basically he says he is back and forth with Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov saying, listen, we are going to not step our big toe into Ukraine, but I'm curious if you think this is simply chest beating on behalf of Russia or does Putin eventually leave the wings and step forward?

MICHAEL CROWLEY, DEPUTY BUREAU CHIEF, "TIME": Right.

What the Russians are saying is that this was a previously scheduled military exercise. Who knows? At a minimum, it's interesting that they chose not to cancel it. They had to know that it appear very provocative to do this at this moment where there is so much unrest and there was already concern that may might take some kind of action to intervene in Ukraine.

Most of the people that I spoke to -- in fact, I think basically all the people I spoke to for the story I did for "TIME" this week on this situation said they could not imagine Putin intervening in Ukraine. I think there would be a really strong international backlash.

He does not necessarily want to encourage the breakup of different ethnic groups in the region and different territorial claims, because there some within Russia already that he is wary of. However, a lot of people I spoke to also said they couldn't imagine Ukraine reaching this point. They were shocked that it got so violent and so chaotic. So, to some degree, we are in uncharted waters here and it's hard to say for sure.

BALDWIN: You have the now fugitive former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who apparently at the word of Putin, who was really pulling the strings, many people there calling him really Putin's puppet, in your article, you say "Putin's loss in Ukraine could be Barack Obama's gain."

How do you mean?

CROWLEY: Look, Obama tried to do this reset with Russia and there was some thought that maybe the Bush administration had misplayed the relationship with Moscow and that why it had reached success a low point.

Turns out really is Putin is really difficult and he's caused a lot of problems for Obama just in the last couple years, stymying policy in Syria by supporting Assad and of course taking in Edward Snowden. And who can forget the obnoxious "New York Times" op-ed that Putin published several months ago?

So, here's an opportunity for Obama for the first time to kind of poke Putin in the eye, in theory. Putin is on the defensive and he's worried about potential protest movements at home and so he is feeling a little bit vulnerable. The problem is, we just don't have a lot of leverage in Ukraine, particularly and unless we want to really put our money where our mouth is, in a way that I think the American public and the American taxpayer is not going to support, because what you really need to win over Ukraine right now is either a bunch of tanks, which we are definitely not going to do, or a whole lot of money because their economy is a complete basket case.

BALDWIN: Let's get to the money, because really this has been going on, this sort of West -- this proxy war between the West and Russia for quite a while.

But it comes down to money. You point out in your piece that it's like a $35 billion price tag for Ukraine to avoid bankruptcy by the end of the year. Russia has got the money. Even if the U.S. gets involved, why would Ukraine never be truly politically and economically dependent from Russia?

CROWLEY: Right. I think that some of the talk about this in the West is maybe a little starry-eyed and doesn't fully appreciate the deep economic integration in addition to cultural, ethnic, all the other reasons why they are so tied.

But one reason that Ukraine's now deposed president decided not to accept this deal from the E.U. back in December which touched this whole thing off was that the E.U. said you have to reform the economy. It is being plundered by crooks. It's a total joke and you need to impose structural reforms that will be really unpopular with your public.

And Putin kind of came in and said I will give you basically a free lunch if you stay with us.

BALDWIN: And he said, Putin, I'm going with you.

CROWLEY: And he said of course I'm going to with you, because that would be so much easier. In the long-term, Ukraine really does need to reform its economy if it wants get out of this rut.

But in the near term, all the political incentives for politicians who don't want to anger their population are to take basically the free lunch from Moscow and stay in that orbit.

BALDWIN: We are watching it. You are watching it. We are watching it. Michael Crowley, "TIME" magazine, thank you so much. We're reading your piece.

CROWLEY: Thank you so much.

BALDWIN: And now some new disturbing information about specifically your privacy. "Guardian" newspaper reporting that the spy agency GCHQ with a little bit of help from the NSA collected and stored millions of Webcam images.

Got a Webcam? Millions of Webcam images from Yahoo! users and a large quantity of those images were sexually explicit. This is a program actually had a code name. It was Optic Nerve and started back in 2008 and continued all the way through 2012, all of this according to NSA documents provided to "The Guardian" by, you guessed it, Edward Snowden.

Yahoo! is denying any prior knowledge of the program. They say if the report is true, the program represents this whole new level of violation of its users' privacy that they say is absolutely unacceptable.

Bombshell revelations in the bridge scandal linked to New Jersey Governor's Chris Christie's office. Now we have this treasure trove of text messages going public. These are texts between these two key players accused of deliberately snarling traffic on the George Washington Bridge back in the fall as political revenge on Fort Lee's mayor, who declined to support Chris Christie for reelection.

Now, these texts that we are getting our eyes today here show then Port Authority official David Wildstein and Christie's then deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, mocking this prominent New Jersey rabbi.

So, Chris Frates of our CNN Investigations Unit has been really digging into this.

And tell me about this rabbi and also these texts. Why are they being released now?

CHRIS FRATES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, this new information, it is coming from documents that we have all seen before.

But, if you remember, they were blacked out. And so today the committee that is investigating Bridgegate said some of that information shouldn't have been redacted. They released these new versions of text messages between a number of key players.

And the most interesting exchange is the one you were talking about. It involves a discussion between Bridget Kelly -- and she's a former top Christie aide -- and David Wildstein, who Christie appointed to the Port Authority. Now, in these texts, they joke about, of all things, causing traffic problems.

And Wildstein sends Kelly a picture of the rabbi and says -- quote -- "He has officially pissed me off." She replies, "Clearly. We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?" And he jokes, "Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed."

The rabbi in question here is a gentlemen called Mendy Carlebach. He is a chaplain of the Port Authority Police. And it's not clear from the text why Wildstein was so annoyed with him.

We have reached out to the rabbi to maybe find out, but we haven't heard back from him yet, Brooke. Now, there is also a separate exchange between Wildstein and a Port Authority police officer. And that shows us that Wildstein was on the George Washington Bridge the first day of those lane closures.

BALDWIN: Oh, wow.

And, Chris, are there any other telling details as you're going through these new documents?

FRATES: Well, there was one thing I found really interesting.

And that was that Christie's top appointee at the Port Authority, he is a guy named Bill Baroni. He texted Wildstein at one point and asked -- quote -- "Are we being fired?"

That text came about a month before he eventually resigned. And so I'm going to have more on this later in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

BALDWIN: OK. Wow. Chris Frates, thank you very much, new information, new texts, what was once redacted.

FRATES: Thank you, Brooke. BALDWIN: Thank you.

Coming up, it's something that can be a real comfort in a time of sorrow, a bereavement fare on a plane ticket. But one airline says it's no longer offering that discount.

Plus, first lady Michelle Obama this morning announcing changes to our nutrition labels on food. One critic told me it's a false victory not quite going far enough. We will get reaction from our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Also, very soon, as we are watching for this, President Obama is set to launch a program he is calling My Brother's Keeper intended to help young minority men. Any minute now, he will be speaking at the White House. We will bring it to you live as it happens.

Stay right here. You are watching CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: If someone passes away in your family, American Airlines will no longer give you a special bereavement fare. The discounted ticket had been offered to customers who had looked to book these last-minute flights because of someone's sudden death, but now American Airlines is adopting U.S. Airways' policy. It offers customers the option to purchase changeable and refundable fares instead.

And at a White House event earlier today, first lady Michelle called the FDA's latest moved a huge deal, because for the first time since they were introduced some 20 years ago -- I remember when this happened to begin with -- nutrition labels about to get a makeover to make them more understandable and hopefully turn away the sugars that we shouldn't be eating here.

The FDA is now taking the next three months to get your feedback, your input, and then will make the final call on these changes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY: In the end, our guiding principle here is simple, that you as a parent and a consumer should be able to walk into a grocery store, pick an item off the shelf and tell whether it's good for your family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins me to walk me through.

As you were saying before, there are proposed changes. This is not the final deal just yet.

GUPTA: Right.

BALDWIN: But what do the new labels, what would they look like? GUPTA: I think the best way of characterizing this is that the information you really want out of labels is going to be easier to find, more emphasized in the labels.

BALDWIN: OK.

GUPTA: Take a look at what the current labels are and what the proposed labels are.

Specifically, you are really talking about things like calories, for example. You would be able to see the calories very clearly right there at the top.

BALDWIN: There we go.

GUPTA: There, you see 230.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Much bigger font.

GUPTA: And it's not calories from fat and then calories from other things. It's the total calorie. That's what people really want to know when they are eating food.

And then some of the nutrients. For example, vitamin D is something that a lot of Americans are deficient in. It will be much more clear how much vitamin D you're getting here.

The thing that really struck me -- and I think we have all suffered from this -- is you look at a label like this and say, that's not so bad.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Is that where you're going?

GUPTA: But then you go the top and it says eight servings in this particular thing.

BALDWIN: As I am eying your pint of ice cream and thinking of a few nights ago that I might have filled a bowl of this. And you just look at the calories and you're like, no bigs. It's just that. But you have to do the math.

(CROSSTALK)

GUPTA: Can I ask you, how many servings do you think this is, just out of...

BALDWIN: Like the whole thing?

GUPTA: The whole thing?

BALDWIN: Five. GUPTA: Twelve servings. See, you are exactly right. Most people think that this is going to be fewer servings. This is not 12 servings for the average American.

And that's part of this as well. All kidding aside, it's funny. They want to make this much more reflective of the way Americans eat.

BALDWIN: Good.

GUPTA: A bag of potato chips, so a lot of people won't -- will eat this in a single sitting. You will get both the calorie information per serving. But, also, in case you decided to eat the whole bag, you get that nutrition information as well.

BALDWIN: But let's be real, Sanjay. You have the people that look at the labels and the people who could care less.

GUPTA: Yes. Right.

BALDWIN: How is the bigger font and the portion size or whatever changing really going to make those people who they're really trying to target read this stuff?

GUPTA: I don't know for sure, but I think sometimes these labels are a bit like calculus to people. They would rather just avoid it.

I think with the new labels, it will be easier to read. So, you will get -- you may be more likely to look at it. We do know that people who read labels do tend to make wise decisions about what they order at a fast food restaurant or what they purchase. At a food restaurant, they on average, will eat 20 calories less a meal based on labels.

It's not a lot, but it's a little bit and all those things add up. And I think when you look at labeling overall, it's a small part of a much bigger problem.

BALDWIN: I try to look. I really do. I really do try to look. I don't always, but I try.

(CROSSTALK)

GUPTA: Five servings.

BALDWIN: Don't forget.

GUPTA: This is for you. You can have this.

BALDWIN: It's really light.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: Ben Tinker, did you eat all this?

Make sure you watch Sanjay each and every weekend, "SANJAY GUPTA M.D.," Saturdays 4:30 p.m. Eastern and Sundays 7:30 in the morning right here on CNN.

Coming up next, we're going to get back this whole rant that director Spike Lee, remember everything he said a couple of nights ago on gentrification speaking to an audience? That sparked a lot of conversation and talked about this yesterday. We will talk about it today because my next guest said basically the Spike Lee comments are hypocritical. We will talk to him about what he means by that coming up next.

Also, as he mentioned, we are watching the White House, packed crowd here, because any minute President Obama is set to launch a new program. He is calling it My Brother's Keeper. It is intended to help young minority men. We will introduce you to some of the guys he has met with and bring you this event live here on CNN. Stay with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Director Spike Lee catching a lot of backlash for his fiery comments about gentrification. This was this Tuesday night tirade, lamented some of the changes he himself has witnessed in his hometown neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. The Oscar-nominated director went on CNN's "A.C. 360" last night to clarify, yet still defend exactly what he meant.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SPIKE LEE, DIRECTOR: I just hope that there's affordable house for everybody so New York City can keep -- can stay the great city it is. Because if you can't -- if you have to be a millionaire to live in New York City, New York City is not going to be the great city that it is because the arts aren't going to be there. You can't afford to send your children to private school it's just going to be a disaster.

We need affordable housing and just whole rethinking of what the city's going to be in the United States of America, in my opinion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Now, some of the critics from hipsters in Brooklyn and Harlem to Native New Yorkers, they are calling out Spike Lee, even accusing him of spurring on some of the neighborhood change.

So, joining me now, CNN political commentator and Harlem native Errol Louis.

Errol, welcome back.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Hi. Good to see you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Hello.

So, obviously, read your column two times over here. This is from "The New York Daily News," of course, where you are putting some of the gentrification onus back on Spike Lee. You write this in part.

"Somebody has to call bull on Lee's complaints about gentrification. This is a man who has made epic contributions to the phenomenon he finds so troubling."

And you lay out these examples, beginning with the Hatch House in your piece. Explain to folks who don't know. What do you mean?

LOUIS: Oh, sure.

Well, look, the artist Jasper Johns sold his estate -- it's 9,000 square feet -- to Spike Lee not so many years ago, and he sold it for $16 million. Spike has put it back on the market for $32 million. It's one of the few homes in New York City that has an interior courtyard. It's an unbelievable place.

Barbara Corcoran -- I mean, you can just Google "Hatch House Spike Lee," and you can see all of the photos. It's an unbelievable place. There is no corner of New York where you won't find working-class people kind of struggling to stay on. And right off the bat, it kind of raises the question, when somebody comes in and buys a $16 million estate and then looks to resell it at twice that price a few years later, what effect does that have on housing prices?

It's not that anybody should be condemned, but just like everybody else in New York, Spike Lee, he is buying and he's selling and he's trying to do what's right for him and his family. And there's no reason to criticize anybody else for doing the same thing, although their transactions might have a few zeros left off the end.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Yes, yes, yes.

You have Rosie Perez, longtime resident of Brooklyn and friend of Spike Lee. She talked to Piers, Piers Morgan, last night, and she said she agreed with and that she understood what Spike Lee was trying to say, but it's just easy to dismiss as him being crazy.

I think, Errol, you put in your piece at the top it's sort of like he he was, Spike Lee, in all his "mother F-ing" glory and this vitriol that just didn't sit well with people.

But does he have a point? Because folks who built Harlem, were part of the renaissance and lived the history are being forced out.

LOUIS: Well, look, this is the thing. This is the thing.

Rosie Perez is, look, part of this too. The art scene in Brooklyn -- you introduced me as a Harlem native, but I have lived in Brooklyn for the last 30 years, not so far from there. Part of that time was in Fort Greene. I did work down there.

BALDWIN: You were part of it too.

LOUIS: Well, I was more of a bystander, frankly but there was an incredible cultural outpouring and Spike Lee was the leading edge of that.

And he continued to market that neighborhood and make it cool and make it hip and make it interesting long after he had left, after he had sold his brownstone for $1 million and moved on. If you do that, you have to raise the question, what did you think was going to happen? When people saw this was the coolest place on Earth, did you think they were not going to come or did you think they weren't going to come and pay top dollar for the homes that many people had sort of sold and left behind? This is inevitable. This is what happens in a big, vibrant city.

BALDWIN: You talk about inevitability. This is how you end this. "Sooner or later, we all end up mourning the disappearance of our favorite dive bar or roller rink or coffee shop, and it's always painful to see friends uprooted and forced to seek their fortunes elsewhere."

You go on, "But turbulence and transition come with the city's exhilarating pace and all the cussing in the world won't change that. Better to build and savor one's corner of the city before the next bittersweet turn of the wheel."

And here's my little bit of pushback on that, which is -- and I'm not saying that The Apollo Theater is going anywhere. But a dive bar is one thing, Errol Louis, and The Apollo Theater would be another. No?

LOUIS: Well, look, there a million lesser institutions frankly. The Apollo Theater kind of stands alone. That's sort of iconic. That's almost like the Statue of Liberty.

But there are a million other places where -- there was a wonderful piece in "The New York Times" recently about a Danish social club, the Danish Athletic Club. Well, look, a lot of Scandinavians left Brooklyn a long time ago. The story was about how the New Mexican community, which is what Sunset Park, that area, has turned into, are using it for their parties and making their memories and sort of making the neighborhood and the city their own. And that to me is what the city is all about.

BALDWIN: A new history.

Errol Louis, I love having you on, CNN commentator. Come back any time. Thank you so much, sir. Appreciate it.

LOUIS: You got it.

BALDWIN: Coming up any minute now, we are watching the White House very closely here. Look at the crowd sitting in the White House because we are watching and waiting for the president. He is about to launch this new initiative. It's called My Brother's Keeper and it's intended to help support and create jobs and develop young minority men in this country.

And there are some -- some folks in the audience we want to point out. We will take you there right live after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)