Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Obama to Outline Foreign Policy; Poet & Author Maya Angelou Has Died; Michelle Obama versus GOP on School Lunch

Aired May 28, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, sad news to impart to you right now. Well-known poet and author Maya Angelou has died. Angelou had been battling health problems recently. As you know, she was a strong voice in the civil rights community, speaking out many times on racial issues. She was a strong voice on so many fronts. She held a variety of jobs, from a fry cook, to a journalist, to a poet, to an author. Her most famous book perhaps, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." She won a Grammy Award three times. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2011. Angelou is just the second person to recite a poem during an inauguration. She spoke at President Bill Clinton's first swearing in. Maya Angelou was 86 years old. We'll have much more on this later on in the NEWSROOM.

Just after the top of the hour, President Obama discusses foreign policy as a war-weary nation emerges from more than a decade of conflicts. The president will deliver the commencement speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He will underscore the need to forge international unity in dealing with crises and avoid open-ended wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. He'll also push back against credits who say his military reluctance have left the United States weakened and openly defied by the likes of Russia and Syria. With me now to talk about this, Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS."

Welcome.

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, CNN's "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": Good to be with you.

COSTELLO: OK, Fareed, I'm going to put you on the spot right away. Is America weak?

ZAKARIA: No. Gosh, America is stronger than perhaps at most points in its history. You think about, you know, when we faced the Soviet Union, when we faced a communist China that was funding revolutionary movements all over the world against us. Even when we faced a pretty powerful jihadi terrorist movement only 10 years ago. The United States is basically very strong, very secure. This debate is not really about American strength or weakness, it's about American engagement. How should America engage with the world?

COSTELLO: And that is the question because I guess some might argue it's easier to appear strong when you're fighting one known enemy, like Japan during World War II, or Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan after 9/11. But now the United States is dealing with Russia, Syria, China, Boka Haram, al Qaeda affiliated groups all over the world. Should the president focus on one or two or all of them? What should his foreign policy be?

ZAKARIA: That's a very, very good point. I think that it's not just that there are lots of different challenges as opposed to the central challenge during the Cold War. You know, you had the Soviet Union and that was a kind of moral and political and strategic challenge, but the world of many different challenges is also much more complicated. For example, China is our second largest trading partner, yet at the same time in some sense it is a strategic rival in Asia (ph). We have good commercial ties with Russia and yet Russia is a strategic adversary on many issues.

So, how do you deal with that, right? It's a kind of -- some people -- you might think of the FaceBook term frenemy or, you know, some kind of in between category where we have to be able to figure out a way to engage with the world, resist certain kinds of bad behavior, but at the same time not launch some kind of grand crusade. I think a lot of the president's critics are nostalgic in a way for the Cold War when it was very easy because your ideological enemy, your political enemy, your economic enemy and your strategic enemy were all the same person. It's a whole new world out there.

COSTELLO: And I would suppose that, in most Americans' minds, strength translates to troops. American -- Americans want the United States to appear strong, but most are against boots on the ground these days. So how do you appear strong without the threat of military action?

ZAKARIA: I think you put your finger on exactly the challenge the president is going to try to address in this speech. My guess is he's going to try to point out that being strong, being engaged, being internationalists, even being interventionists in the world doesn't mean necessarily boots on the ground. That we have rallied the world on the Ukraine issue or put in place sanctions against Russia, are opposing Russian efforts to destabilize Ukraine, but it would be crazy to try to find a land war with Russia over Ukraine.

And so a lot of times I think the president's frustration comes from the fact that the critics seem to be saying, you're not doing enough. You're weak. You're, you know, you're giving in, when I think his feeling is, well, I'm doing lots of things that are deeply engaged and take a lot of time, energy and effort. What I'm not doing is using the military, and I'm going to be disciplined about that. I think that one of the things that is very much part of this president's core belief is that overusing the military actually undermines American power and strength rather than builds it up.

COSTELLO: All right. And you're going to stay with us in the next hour when President Obama begins speaking at West Point. Thanks so much, Fareed Zakaria.

ZAKARIA: A pleasure.

COSTELLO: All right, back to that breaking news, sad news. Maya Angelou has died. The great American poet and author. A strong voice in the civil rights movement. She was 86 years old and she had long been suffering health problems. Fredricka Whitfield has a look back.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MAYA ANGELOU, POET, AUTHOR AND ACTIVIST: The hells we have lived through and live through still have sharpened our senses and toughened our will.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Celebrated poet and activist Maya Angelou may have been speaking about herself on that day in 1995. Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, April 4, 1928, the hells she lived through began at the age of seven when she was raped by her mother's boyfriend. After she spoke out against him, he was beaten to death by a mob. Young Marguerite blamed herself.

ANGELOU: I was seven and a half and my seven and a half year old logic deduced that my voice had killed him, so I stopped speaking for almost six years.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And it was during those years of silence that she discovered poetry and her love of art.

WHITFIELD: Her poetry was first physical, winning a dance and drama scholarship in San Francisco, then later touring Europe in 1954 in "Porgy and Bess." But her growing love for the written word took her to Egypt and Ghana, where she became a newspaper editor. In Ghana, she met Malcolm X and returned to the U.S. in 1964 to join his fight in the civil rights movement. After Malcolm X's assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked her to join him.

He was killed on her birthday, 1968. The following year, her first memoir was published, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." More bestsellers would follow. Her books detailed personal struggles, like having a baby as an unwed teenager. That son later became novelist Guy Johnson. Blazing trails on the big and small screens, she directed documentaries. Her screenplay for 1972's "Georgia Georgia" was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Maya Angelou was nominated for a Tony Award. She won three Grammys and, in 2011, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She called herself Maya, which was her brother's nickname for her. Angelou came from her first husband's name, Tosh Angelos. She had created her own name, just as she had created poetry, from pieces of herself.

ANGELOU: I am the hope and the dream of the slave. And so, naturally, there I go rising.

WHITFIELD: Fredericka Whitfield, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news. COSTELLO: All right, we're talking about Maya Angelou's death just before the break. She was 86 years old. She's been suffering health problems for quite some time. In fact, Major League Baseball had just asked her to attend a civil rights game so they could, you know, hand out some awards and Maya Angelou couldn't attend because she was too ill.

Gosh, her accomplishments were so many. She was a great poet, an author. She had a strong voice in the civil rights movement. But I think one of the things I enjoyed most about Maya Angelou was her voice. It was so deep and powerful and it made you listen. Charles Blow is on the phone right now. He writes op-eds for "The New York Times." He's also a CNN commentator.

Charles, I mean there are so many great things to say about Maya Angelou, it's hard to know where to start.

CHARLES BLOW, CNN COMMENTATOR (via telephone): Yes, I think it's just a profound loss. And, I mean, I was just rereading "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" last week. I'm just so stunned and taken aback by her passing away. And, you know, I have this group of writers who I call my literary mothers and fathers. And, you know, this is one of the people who I've always put in the category of one of the mothers and the people who have inspired me and allowed me to see myself when I could least see myself and when I felt least seen and who could articulate a vision of what it meant to be and how it meant -- how you could be and how -- you know, how you could find your strength, particularly as a child. Particularly as a child that felt (ph) -- I mean I grew up -- I spent part of my early life in a place called Kidwell, Arkansas. That's about 40 minutes or so from Stamps, which is where Maya grew up. And so when she's writing, I'm visualizing everything that I knew. I was -- I was with my grandmother there. She was raised with her grandmother in Stamps. It just -- the echoes to me of what it felt like and what it meant to be and not to have to apologize for being who you are and to be able to articulate the African-American experience in a way that makes it central and universal to the human experience was the gift that Maya --

COSTELLO: Don Lemon is also on the phone. CNN's Don Lemon.

And, you know, in looking back at Maya Angelou's life, she was everything from a fry cook to a journalist, to a poet, to an author. She suffered a great deal of pain in her life. She's the ultimate survivor.

DON LEMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Are you talking to me, Carol?

COSTELLO: Don, yes.

LEMON: Yes, she is. And you know I think Charles is absolutely right in everything he said. Much of my stuff is in storage now. But every year I try to read "Why the Caged Bird Sings" and I read "Price of a Ticket" by James Baldwin. And these are -- those are people who are just two literary giants -- who I try to read a couple of books, the same books over every year because it reminds me of what it is to be a great writer and what it is to be a great person. And Maya Angelou is that.

And Carol I don't know if you know this, I also collect vinyl. And I have a vinyl album by Maya Angelou when she was -- she sang calypsos. She was a calypso dancer and she also cut an album. And she's done so many things from you know from Broadway to being the first woman to ever to read a poem.

Do you remember "On the Pulse of Morning", when she did that for the Clintons -- for President Clinton? And it was one of the first times that you know people would say, I thought a poem was supposed to rhyme, you know. And she taught us also many things and I think -- I think the larger culture found out about Maya Angelou, not that she needed to be found out, but through Oprah Winfrey -- she and Oprah -- she was Oprah's mentor.

COSTELLO: Right.

LEMON: And she would be on the Oprah show all the time giving such great wisdom. But this is indeed an incredible loss. And I'm shocked to wake up this morning to hear it and saddened.

COSTELLO: And Charles, I want you to look at Maya Angelou's last tweet. It came on May 23rd. She tweeted "Listen to yourself and in that quietude, you might hear the voice of God." Even her tweets were poetic.

BLOW: So it's amazing. I mean I think what Maya is able to do with language and the distillation of the meaning and the mystical and the spiritual and to weave all of that together and give meaning to language is just an amazing gift of a writer that that we as writers all aspire to have a voice that transcends kind of the back-and-forth and the hubbub and actually touch the soul.

And I think that's what Maya was able to do with her writing. And I think that was -- that's what great writers are able to do. They're able to find in us our basic humanity and make us central to their lives by telling their stories.

And I think, you know, Maya will always be remembered as a person who kind of put people at the center of her. I mean I think there's an amazing gift here and I think that that can never be glossed over. And I think it almost sounds -- it comes off as an easy thing to do because it comes out so beautifully and lyrically but it's an incredibly hard thing to do. Even for the gifted it's a hard thing to do. But she made it look easy. And I think that we will be forever indebted to her.

COSTELLO: I think, Don, one of her other gifts was speaking -- you mentioned you collect vinyl and you have an album where she's speaking. But she was able to read her poetry and make you listen. And that is an incredible talent. She just had this great persona about her that forced you to listen. I think I'll miss her voice the most, Don.

LEMON: Yes and that's -- that's what I wanted to say, her voice, it just -- it just resonated. You know some people are natural singers. They open their mouth and music just pours out, Aretha Franklin is one, Patty Labelle, Donny Hathaway, Luther van Dross is one and Maya Angelou is one, they just you know -- Karen Carpenter was one. They just -- they would just open their mouths and music would just flow.

And so I think the same thing with Maya Angelou. She would speak and you -- you just had to listen. If she -- if she was in a room full of people, it was quiet. If you were watching on television at home, you turned the volume up. And I remember being there and she stood at the podium for President Clinton's inauguration and she looked over her glasses and she said "A rock, a river, a tree, hosts the species long since departed", and you just was with her throughout that point until she got to the end. And I think it apropos on her death to say you know she said "here on the pulse of this new day," speaking of the morning, "you may have the grace to look up and out and into your sister's eyes and into your brother's face, your country and say simply very simply with hope good morning".

And it was just that simplicity mixed with the complex that just -- you know it just -- you know were enthralled by it.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. Don Lemon and Charles Blow thanks for helping us remember Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou dead at the age of 86. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Tomorrow the House Appropriations Committee will vote on a bill that would revamp part of the 2010 Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act to keep part of Michelle Obama's pledge to fight childhood obesity since she moved into the White House.

The Republican-backed proposal would make several big changes to the law and that had prompted the First Lady to go on the offensive.

Athena Jones joins me now from Washington with more. Good morning Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. This is really interesting we're seeing the First Lady get publicly involved in a political fight for really the first time. This goes beyond urging young people to sign up -- excuse me for health insurance. She's taking a position on a legislative debate that's ongoing and over this issue she's been passionate about. Children and healthy eating.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: It's unacceptable to me not just as First Lady but as a mother.

JONES (voice over): Fighting words from the First Lady sending a message to House Republicans who want to relax school nutrition standards she fought for four years ago.

OBAMA: The last thing that we can afford to do right now is play politics with our kids' health especially when we're finally starting to see some progress on this issue. JONES: It's part of a rare political push by Mrs. Obama to battle a bill that would give schools facing financial problems an extra year to comply with rules to limit fat and sodium and encourage more fruits and vegetables in school meals.

The Mom-in-Chief is known for her Let's Move campaign against childhood obesity, her White House garden and her focus on healthy eating. But she hasn't waded into the political fights at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue until now.

OBAMA: Parents have a right to expect that their kids will get decent foods in our schools and we all have a right to expect that our hard earned taxpayer dollars won't be spent on junk food for our kids.

JONES: Supporters of the legislation say some school districts are struggling to find cheap, healthy options and need more time to make sure kids will eat the healthier foods, not just throw them away.

JULIA BAUSCHER, SCHOOL NUTRITION ASSOCIATION: So we're not saying let's put junk food back on the serving line. For most districts that hasn't been part of the school meal in many, many years. But we want to make sure that students are comfortable with these changes and are willing to take what's offered to them and will find it acceptable and enjoyable.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: And so as you mentioned there at the top, this bill is set to go to the full House Appropriations Committee tomorrow. And we expect the First Lady to stay involved in this fight. As long as the current nutrition standards are under threat, we'll probably be hearing more from her -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right Athena Jones reporting live from Washington this morning.

President Obama's speech on foreign policy expected to get under way soon at West Point. Our special coverage after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello.

I would like to welcome CNN viewers here in the United States and around the world.

Just minutes from now, President Obama discusses the future role of the United States in the world and he'll outline his foreign policy before the next generation of military leaders.

Let's head to Washington now and Wolf Blitzer. Good morning, Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": Good morning Carol. Thanks very much. The President's commencement speech is at the U.S. Military academy at West Point but it also is aimed at a nation that is weary from a decade of war. He will stress the value of international cooperation in dealing with world crises and avoid the open ended kind of conflicts that left American troops bogged down for so many years in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Obama will also push back against his critics who say he is a weakened president defied on the world stage and no longer packing the threat of swift and decisive military action. This will be a major foreign policy address by the President.

We have our CNN correspondents covering all the angles and they are spanning the globe. We have live reports from London to Washington to Ukraine and elsewhere.

Let's go to London first. Our chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour is there, as well as Jim Sciutto our chief national security correspondent. Christiane, the President has a very significant agenda on his plate this morning.