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Plane Crash Investigation; Interview With California Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez; Donald Trump Attacks. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired November 03, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes. There are too many people. Marco doesn't show up to the United States. He is representing the people of Florida, which, by the way, that poll just came out today. And I'm way up in Florida.

Well, he has a very bad record of finances, if you look at what happened with his houses, with his -- he certainly lives above his means. There's no question about that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Catch that? Hard to miss. Marco Rubio clearly in his sights as a target, the senator's finances, his immigration plan, his work in the Senate, his experience, not a coincidence, because we all know Donald Trump looks at those polls.

Take a look at these numbers. This is how Marco Rubio is performing in the latest polls. Take New Hampshire, everyone just about at the same standing, except for Rubio. He has tripled his support there since September.

CNN political reporter Sara Murray is here with me. She was at that event with Donald Trump earlier today.

And you were to me, today, he was on a warpath.

SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: He definitely was on a warpath today, Brooke.

Look, Donald Trump does not like to not be the number one guy in the polls. So, today it was like he couldn't decide who he wanted to go after, so he just went after everyone.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You look at Marco Rubio, very, very weak on illegal immigration. You look at Ben. He's very weak on immigration. And he wants to get rid of Medicare. I mean, Ben wants to get rid of Medicare. You can't get rid of Medicare. Jeb, he lacks the quality that you need. We're talking about everybody in the world is ripping us off. You need a very strong person with tremendous energy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: So, weak on immigration, weak on Medicare, low energy, it's almost like he's just throwing the kitchen sink at these guys and there's good reason for it.

Donald Trump looks at the people he's attacked in the past. He looks at people like Rick Perry, people like Scott Walker who are no longer in the race and says these attacks are effective. I should keep working at it.

BALDWIN: He doesn't like not being number one. I'm sure he will be looking at the ratings for "Saturday Night Live" after this next weekend. Today, he's meeting with Lorne Michaels.

What did he say about that?

MURRAY: He says she's excited. He says he's not nervous when he's preparing for "SNL," but he's excited to meet with Lorne Michaels today. They are going to start going over the scripts, picking their scripts.

And, look, Donald Trump is amazing at self-promotion. There's a reason he's excited to do "SNL." He likes being on TV. He likes being in front of the camera. The reason we see so many Republicans doing it is this is a smart way to reach out to younger voters. It will be very interesting to see if he busts out a Jeb Bush impression there. He would not do it for us today.

BALDWIN: Speaker of, this is what he said about "SNL."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: This evening, I'm meeting with Lorne Michaels and the whole staff and we will start the preparation. We will pick our skits. Am I nervous? Not too nervous. Not too nervous. But we will do a good job and we're going to have a fantastic show. We're going to all have a lot of fun.

My Jeb impression? No, I don't want to do that. I don't like showing a person sleeping at a podium.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Ouch.

MURRAY: He is holding at least one thing back. I get we're just going to have to check out "SNL" for that one.

BALDWIN: OK. Sara Murray, thank you. Not everyone is laughing, by the way, as we just were talking about here ahead of a big appearance this weekend at 30 Rock. And earlier on CNN, we actually heard from a man who knows certainly a thing or too about "Saturday Night Live," comedian turned Senator Al Franken.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. AL FRANKEN (D), MINNESOTA: I think it will be an entertaining show. I watch the show whenever I have the chance.

I thought Hillary did great on it. I have known her for 20 years. She's really -- she's actually a really funny person and is going to make a great president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Of course, Donald Trump might take issue with that last statement there.

Not everyone is amused at Trump's upcoming appearance on "SNL." There's a growing chorus of voices protesting his hosting the show Saturday.

One of the loudest voices, California Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, a senior member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. She joins me, along with Matt Wilstein, entertainment writer for The Daily Beast.

So, to both of you, welcome.

And, Congresswoman, let me just begin with you. What specifically are you and other members of Congress asking of NBC or "SNL" or Lorne Michaels?

REP. LORETTA SANCHEZ (D), CALIFORNIA: So, "SNL" has had plenty of presidential candidates on before.

The problem is that they are allowing Donald Trump the entire time. They are asking him to -- he's going to host this. And that hasn't happened in the past by a presidential candidate. And we believe that it's an affront to Latinos in particular, Mexicans and Mexican Americans, my parents in particular, because of all of the negative things that Donald Trump has said about us.

BALDWIN: But doesn't "Saturday Night Live," Congresswoman, have a right to book whether it's one little sketch and Hillary Clinton making a cameo or Donald Trump for the entire hour-and-a-half, have a right to book Donald Trump, just as you certainly have a right to speak up and not tune in?

[15:05:03]

SANCHEZ: Well, in the same way that I believe in free speech and the First Amendment, you're correct from that standpoint, except for you're not allowed to go into an auditorium and yell, fire, fire, fire.

And in the same way, believe it's up to "SNL" to understand that when they put a Donald Trump in front of people and he says these type of derogatory comments, that has a direct relationship to what is happening out in everyday lives of Latinos.

For example, back in June, when in Boston a Hispanic male was beat up almost to the point of death, and the person who beat him up said to the police, well, Donald Trump is right, these illegal aliens are just not supposed to be here. So it's very detrimental as we try to hold our community together and they try to move along in the normal course of American life to have an instigation of that type against us.

BALDWIN: Matt, I promise I'm coming to you.

But let me just follow up with that, because I know a lot of people, Congresswoman Sanchez, absolutely agree with you, although I did speak with a Latino woman just recently who would disagree with you coming from within the community. She loves some Donald Trump. This was Myriam Witcher.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MYRIAM WITCHER, TRUMP SUPPORTER: I'm Hispanic and I vote for Mr. Trump. We vote for Mr. Trump. Yes, Mr. Trump, we love you.

He's our man sent from heaven. He's a very, very beautiful human being. Beautiful heart. A lot of love and compassion. If you can read or hear about the charities he's doing, this is something that touched my heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: I realize that is one woman's opinion, but she's a big Donald Trump supporter. And I'm wondering, though, with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus making -- very, very frustrated over NBC having Donald Trump that you're actually going to have people tune in. I can imagine people at "SNL" loving this right now.

SANCHEZ: Well, I happen to like the "SNL" show. Quite honestly, I don't stay up that late. I'm either working...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: You have better things to do.

SANCHEZ: Gone to sleep. So, over the years -- but, certainly, there have been sometimes when "SNL" and its skits have gone overboard.

But, in particular, we are upset that Mr. Trump is hosting this, rather than just being a skit. It is enabling him, after he has said these derogatory comments. And NBC Universal said to us early on, we're not going to stand for this. So we are simply pushing back at "SNL" and saying, uh-uh, this is not correct and you're endangering Latinos when you do this type of a thing.

And that's our concern. Our concern is about people living their everyday lives and trying to be good Americans.

BALDWIN: OK. OK.

Matt, I woke up and read your piece in The Beast first thing this morning. And you walk through a lot. But let me just ask you first, have you heard anything from NBC? Do you have any sort of scoop as far as how they will cast Donald Trump in these sketches, anything?

MATT WILSTEIN, THE DAILY BEAST: NBC is staying awfully quiet about everything surrounding Donald Trump's appearance this week, including not reacting at all to these calls for him to be removed.

I mean, to me, that indicates that they are not going to budge one bit on keeping him on air as host of the show this weekend. And they are not giving away much in terms of what he's going to do, but we do have about 11 years ago when he hosted the first time as a precedent to look back and he was, for most of that show, Donald Trump as Donald Trump.

And I don't see him venturing outside of that too much this time, including that Jeb Bush impression which is hard to imagine hum taking on a character besides himself.

BALDWIN: I know. We will have to see. But you do point out in that appearance in '04 he had a very different relationship, what did you write, with not only the media, but the American people. This will be very different.

WILSTEIN: Well, he was very different figure then. Obviously, he was then just at the beginning of his time as host of "The Apprentice." He didn't have any serious political time under his belt.

And he hadn't made a lot of the, frankly, xenophobic comments that are now making people so angry.

BALDWIN: Right. All right, Matt Wilstein, thank you.

Congresswoman Sanchez, who will not be staying up late this Saturday night to tune in, I appreciate both of you very, very much.

SANCHEZ: Thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

WILSTEIN: Thanks. I will be watching.

BALDWIN: OK.

Jeb Bush, by the way, will be live on "THE SITUATION ROOM WITH WOLF BLITZER" in just a couple of hours. Do not miss that interview, 5:00 Eastern here on CNN.

Coming up, what happened? Was it a midair blast? Satellite data, black boxes, evidence on the ground offering new clues into this mysterious midair heat flash in the downing of a Russian passenger plane. We have new developments on that next.

[15:10:07] Also, you have to pay attention to this, the massacre here that never

happened. This is incredible. CNN looks back on the shocking case of a teenage boy admitting to planning a deadly attack, killing his family, killing students, going so far as to build practice bombs. This attack plot was foiled, so why were most of the charges here dropped? Don't miss this CNN in-depth investigation.

Also ahead, Facebook and Instagram, video games, listen, it's no secret teenagers spend a lot of time on some sort of screen. But you might be shocked about how much time they spend on an average. We have crunched the numbers, the impact of what that could mean for them coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:15:10]

BALDWIN: New questions today about whether a bomb may have brought down that Russian airliner, that passenger plane killing all 224 people on board.

U.S. officials say a military satellite spotted a heat flash somewhere in the skies above the Sinai Peninsula there over Egypt suggesting a possible explosion on board the passenger plane, this as Russia makes its own mysterious findings.

And joining me now from Saint Petersburg there in Russia is Matthew Chance.

What are you hearing now from Russian officials, Matthew?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Officially, not much is being said at this point about what the investigation has found.

They are keeping whatever they have seen officially under wraps. We are not expecting any kind of announcement for the next several days at least. But there have been reports that have emerged on a prominent news agency there called Interfax, which is privately owned, but is very close to the Kremlin, quoting an unnamed source in Cairo, where the black boxes are being examined, referring to the contents of the voice data recorder, saying that there was some uncharacteristic sounds is the phrase that were heard on the flight recorder in the moments before the plane was lost.

An emergency and non-standard emergency, the report says, apparently took place instantly, which may have accounted for why the pilots of the Metrojet aircraft flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to here in Saint Petersburg did not have a chance to raise the alarm or make an emergency call or anything like that.

If you take that alongside the report coming to CNN from a U.S. official that there was that heat flash detected as well, and we begin to see the kind of picture painted of the last few moments of this Metrojet aircraft which cost the lives of 224 people.

BALDWIN: Matthew Chance on that, Matthew, thank you.

Les Abend is here with me, CNN aviation analyst, 777 airline captain and contributing editor of "Flying" magazine.

Matthew Chance's reporting here is that the -- quote -- "uncharacteristic sounds heard." What does that mean?

LES ABEND, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: It could be anything, Brooke. It's hard to say.

BALDWIN: Yes.

ABEND: I think the good thing about it is that they can attribute it to something if you have got audio experts. And it sounds like they have a lot of people on the field helping out according to this report, that maybe they can attribute it to something, whether it's an explosion, whether it's something inside the airplane that's coming up.

It's hard to say. What it does say or at least what we're all getting to at this point without getting into speculation is this is something catastrophic.

BALDWIN: A heat flash on satellites.

ABEND: Yes. I know we all kind of move in the bomb direction. However, listen, it could be a catastrophic engine fire that would cause that heat flash.

We saw Thursday at Fort Lauderdale an evacuation with an engine fire, OK? If this happened in the air at that rate of the fuel dripping, it's possible it could have -- the back end of that engine could have torched that fuel if all of a sudden a leak developed within that engine.

This is something we handle every day, so it's hard for me to go that direction because it's a handable emergency for us, something we train all the time, but could it have been catastrophic enough to get into the fuel tanks in the wings and cause that issue? It's hard to say. It's all speculative.

BALDWIN: With everyone on the ground, the investigation there and when you look at this debris field and I'm also thinking of the families and maybe not -- certainly you see the bags, but victims being identified and maybe not everyone being found. What does all of that tell you? Anything?

ABEND: Well, at this point, I'm actually a disappointed in the investigation process to begin with, but I think they are keeping it under wraps at this point.

But what it says to me that is that it's kind of obvious the airplane came apart in flight. One of the things that I found curious is that I have studied -- and we have brought this up on air -- the Flightradar24 data. This is an Internet site that tracks airplanes and so on and so forth.

They claim the data is accurate. They claim it is real-time. It has some very erratic things about it with reference to altitude and with reference to ground speeds, positions.

The basic trend without getting into the weeds on this is that the airplane was headed down. You could tell when this emergency started. What's curious to me is all this is tied into transmissions. If there was an explosion or a bomb, why did it continue to transmit without electricity?

Something says to me that maybe it wasn't an explosive device. Listen, we're speculating. Anything is up for grabs.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: We don't know. Les Abend, thank you so much.

[15:20:05]

Next here, teens, tweens love their social media. Maybe some of do as well. Guilty. But we know that a new study, though, has some surprising numbers about exactly how much time the younger folks are spending staring at the screen. We will look at that what means for their development and get the perspective from a teenager him who started his own YouTube show.

And, later, he's the new speaker of the House and one of Paul Ryan's first orders of business, taking down the portrait of one of his predecessors and perhaps fumigating his new office. We will let him explain, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right, Parents, if you have teens of your own or spend any time around them, then you know it's no surprise how much they love doing this, tweeting, listening to music, texting, what have you.

[15:25:00]

But just exactly how much time they spend doing it might come as a shock, nine hours a day. Nine hours, that's according to this new report by Common Sense Media. Even when it comes time to do homework, more than half of the teens say they are also either watching TV, using social media, and 60 percent are texting, and more than 75 percent are listening to music.

And the gender divide is interesting too. Teen boys overwhelmingly love playing video games while teenage girls enjoy spending more time on social media. So let's discuss.

We went straight to the sources, CNN digital correspondent Kelly Wallace and Robert Malzberg. He's a teen who co-hosts his own show, AthleticAlert on YouTube. Just hit the big 100 subscriber mark. Congratulations. He's also, full transparency, the son of one of our CNN producers here. So great to have both of you on.

ROBERT MALZBERG, CO-HOST, ATHLETICALERT: Thank you.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Nice to be here.

BALDWIN: First to you just on the reporting and the facts, so nine hours a day. But what does that mean?

WALLACE: Yes. That's right.

But let's put that in perspective. That's watching TV, watching videos, listening to music, playing video games, reading, scrolling around the Internet. So it's all of that, but it's nine hours a day. And for teens, it's about six-and-a-half hours of their time on screens.

So really what this report shows, Common Sense Media's founder says it's like the digital transformation of childhood and adolescence is complete. They are now using screens and using media so much more than really maybe when we were kids.

BALDWIN: You're nodding.

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: Yes, I completely agree.

And I was just talking behind the set. You have to look at generation after generation. Let's take generation one.

BALDWIN: Let's do it.

MALZBERG: People -- when kids played, they were always outside, throwing the baseball around. They were exploring the world.

Generation two, your generation, to hang out with someone, you had to call them, say, hey, let's go outside and play. Now it's texting. Let's play video games or let's tweet to each other on social media. The world is becoming a different place to people of my generation.

BALDWIN: But you don't even know what it's like to have to talk to Sally Sue's mom and get to know parents when you're waiting for your friend to come to the phone. It's just like a totally different experience with all the screens. You don't know what it was like back in our day.

(LAUGHTER)

MALZBERG: Right.

WALLACE: Yes, exactly.

MALZBERG: Well, yes, you can see that.

And I know for me, every morning, I always watch TV. When I'm doing my homework, that maybe I'm a little bored of the topic, I have to listen to music to get motivated to do it.

WALLACE: Wow.

MALZBERG: So, kids in my generation have to do stuff like that. I don't speak for myself.

And I know that I play video games with my friends, and I do that, I think, more than I actually get some sleep sometimes.

WALLACE: I know. That, I was saying in my piece.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: That's more than teens typically sleep.

There's that one issue, though, of multitasking, right, so that you put up the stats that we're texting and we're listening to music, as you said, or on social media.

BALDWIN: By the way, I'm guilty as well. Like, I'm watching a show on Netflix. I'm on my laptop. I have got my phone with me.

WALLACE: I do it too. Every time I'm writing a piece, I think -- and I'm checking Facebook or Twitter.

BALDWIN: Totally.

WALLACE: I'm wondering, why exactly is it taking me this long to get the piece done? You know what? We're just not as focused.

Research shows multitasking doesn't work. And so that's a little bit of an issue with this digital generation.

BALDWIN: Let me tell you what, though. It's funny. I was researching to talk to you guys. It just so happened this e-mail popped into my inbox. We were covering the story of this Australian Instagram star totally has up and quit social media. This is what she is saying.

WALLACE: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ESSENA O'NEILL, MODEL: I told myself that when I hit the views, people will view me, I will feel valued, I will feel happiness. I don't even know what is real and what is not, because I have left myself be defined by something that is so not real.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: She's absolutely serious about -- she's telling people get off your screens and interact with human beings. It's really resonated with her. But I just don't know if this is like a one-off.

(CROSSTALK) WALLACE: Well, but one thing that the report did find when teens and tweens were asked their favorite media activity, only 10 percent of teens said social media.

So the sense is that they are on it, yes, they want to be on it. They might be addicted to it, but they would prefer watching TV or listening to music than being on social media. And that's kind of a good sign, I think.

MALZBERG: Yes, I agree.

I got an Instagram because I said, mom, all my friends have an Instagram. I ought to have one too. And it just grows on you after awhile. I have never done drugs, but I can say that this social media is a little addictive. It feels like I have to do it.

When I'm bored, I just automatically go to my app on my phone, scroll, scroll, like, whatever, and it's just the talk of school. As for that video, I think her experience is a little extreme because she had over 500,000 followers.

I have around a little less than 500. And, as you know, my AthleticAlert YouTube channel has 100. So I can say that I'm always looking at the screen, but maybe not as much as her and trying to make it seem like I'm someone else.

But I definitely think there's a problem with kids in my generation and being exposed to the real world. And when they're exposed, it's not going to be good. And I feel like maybe it's going to lead to the unemployment raising, because we're not going to be -- know what to do in the real world.

BALDWIN: Let's hope not, but just good to see you in person.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: Look what a fine young man he is.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Murray (ph), wherever you are, you have done an amazing job.

But it's all about balance for all of us.

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: We're doing just fine.

BALDWIN: There we go.

Kelly and Robert, thank you both so much.

MALZBERG: Thank you.

WALLACE: Thank you.

BALDWIN: I appreciate it.

How awesome to see.

Coming up next, CNN looking back on a shocking case here.