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American Morning
GOP Presidential Candidates Prepare for Debate in Las Vegas; Herman Cain Polling Neck and Neck with Mitt Romney; Israeli Soldiers Held by Hamas Released; Interview with Henry Blodget; Hillary Clinton in Libya; Berlusconi Acquitted in Tax Fraud Case; Iowa Caucuses Slated for January 3; Pizza Man Turned Politician; Report: President's Podium, Prompter Stolen; McCain: Obama's Bus is Ugly; Senator Claire McCaskill Sets, Meets 50-Pound Weight-Loss Goal; Red Sox Starters Ate Chicken, Drank Beer; China 3rd-Quarter Growth is 9.1 Percent, American, 1.3 percent; Giuliana Rancic Breast Cancer Linked to IVF?
Aired October 18, 2011 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Showdown on the strip. Las Vegas, the backdrop for tonight's big CNN western Republican debate. Too many voters went bust in the city, and they want jobs now. Will they hear solutions?
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Herman Cain going into tonight's debate as the GOP frontrunner according to a brand new poll released an hour ago, but do you really know the man behind the 9-9-9plan? We'll speak to someone who hired him and someone who worked for him.
ROMANS: A reality TV star revealing her battle with breast cancer and raising questions about whether fertility treatments had anything to do with it on this AMERICAN MORNING.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
All right, good morning, everyone. It's Tuesday, October 18th. Is it only Tuesday? Yes, it's Tuesday. Welcome to AMERICAN MORNING.
VELSHI: My first day here this week. I'm bright and perky and glad about the whole thing. Carol Costello is particularly excited today. She has a very big morning today and tomorrow morning. She's in Las Vegas. Good morning, Carol.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Ali and Christine. It's kind of windy here. In fact, a little bit ago I thought the tent was going to blow down. So that could create more excitement.
Seriously, though, we are at the gambling capital of the world. A fitting location for tonight's Western Republican presidential debate, because this is a city that makes or breaks fortunes every single day. A lot of preparation has gone into tonight's event co-hosted by CNN and the Western Republican Leadership Conference. In just three days a 45,000 square-foot set built from the ground up at Venetians Sand Echo and Convention Center. That including two humongous monitors, an enormous chandelier, and seating for, get this, 1,500 people. Workers have been going around the clock since Friday.
Yes, it is quite the political circus here in Las Vegas minus the big white tent, although they have one here in Las Vegas, they could just ship it over. Tonight at 8:00 eastern a field of seven Republican presidential hopefuls will face the glare of the Las Vegas spotlight with most of the focus on Mitt Romney, the standing frontrunner, and, of course, Herman Cain, the long shot lightning rod.
The numbers tell the story. The latest CNN-ORC poll released earlier this morning shows Cain and Romney in a statistical dead heat, Romney with 26 percent and Cain one point back at 25 percent. Rick Perry and Ron Paul round out the top four. Fifth through eighth, Newt Gingrich with eight percent followed by Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman.
Let's bring in CNN's senior political analyst Ron Brownstein. Good morning. Sure to be a crazy night.
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Or good night. I'm not really sure. One or the other.
COSTELLO: I was trying to count up how many debates we had so far and how many debates there are to go. There are actually 12 more debates to go.
BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely. You know, and the debates are dominating the race. And I think we're really seeing in this election the continuation of a trend that's been going on the last few cycles amounts to nothing less than a transformation of the way people run for president.
When I started covering presidential politics in the 1980s people talked about the year before the first votes in Iowa and New Hampshire as the invisible primary. The idea was candidates go burrow into those states out of the public eye meeting with people in their homes or coffee shop.
Now we're evolving into something very different. You can call it the national audition. Everybody is watching the same big events and debates, and these are driving the national numbers which are in turn affecting the numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire. The race is nationalized before our eyes.
COSTELLO: But at some point won't voters go through something called "debate fatigue"?
BROWNSTEIN: Maybe. Right now it has the feel almost of a reality show. Each candidate, become an "American Idol." Who's going to get voted off? The candidates are, you know, acquired their identity. There's a role in the family almost through these debates. And they have been a way, it's really symptomatic of the way everybody in the country now is exposed to much more information about politics, really exposed to the same media.
Now, once the candidates start going on television in Iowa and New Hampshire, that has the potential to change the dynamic. But right now these debates themselves are shaping the race to a greater extent than ever before and really, as I say, continuing this process of changing the way people run for president.
COSTELLO: You certainly could not argue that the debates have been helping Herman Cain, because that's really been a big part of this appeal. He's a great debater, charming. He gets to show personality and hasn't been challenged so much until maybe tonight.
But let's talk about Herman Cain, because you brought us two very interesting polls. From our own poll, we appreciate that, the CNN-ORC international poll you see that Cain leads Republicans with 33 percent, but most of his support comes from the Tea Party with 44 percent. Romney can't say that. Only 20 percent, 21 percent of the Tea Party support Romney. So what does that tell you?
BROWNSTEIN: Look, one of the big story lines, perhaps the biggest story line of the Republican campaign so far has been the successive audition for who is going to be the more conservative alternative to Mitt Romney? Essentially you have these overlapping circles of the tea party, evangelical Christians, blue collar Republicans, all resistant to Romney and have gone through a process of going through candidates one after the other.
At the beginning of the year it looked like it was going to be Sarah Palin. Then because of a performance in a debate, Michele Bachmann emerged in the summer, but she could not sustain that support. Rick Perry then seemed the next most likely to inherit that support. But through his performance in the debates he's lost.
And now the moving finger has settled on Herman Cain, who is emerging as a champion for that more conservative part of the party that is very dubious about Romney on both, particularly on issues, whether they feel he is a true conservative, a commitment to their causes. Right now it's Cain. Can Cain hold it any more than Perry did, Bachmann did, or Palin, who's not even running? That will be the question.
COSTELLO: But is the real question for Mitt Romney at least whether he can gather the support, because he hasn't exactly been fully embraced the Tea Party
And on the flipside of what we're describing, the successive audition on the right, the other big story in the race again in your poll, Mitt Romney, despite candidates rising and falling around him, he's steady but stuck. He's right around 25 percent, 26 percent in your poll.
When you ask people who agrees with you on the issues, one of the other big questions you asked, he's only at about 20 percent. And again, on the Tea Party side I think only at 14 percent among those voters saying that they agree with him most on the issues. The one positive leading indicator for Romney in your poll, beginning to establish some gap with the others when you ask who is most likely to beat Obama and win? They are kind of hoping to be in effect the last man standing.
You don't have to have a majority of support to get nominated. We have talked about this before. There may never be a majority in the party that wants to nominate Romney. But as long as they don't coalesce behind a single candidate he can be in effect a plurality nominee.
COSTELLO: So in other words, voters will just hold their nose and vote for Romney because they know Romney can beat Barack Obama, sort of like the last time they held their nose and voted for John McCain.
BROWNSTEIN: I wouldn't quite say hold their nose in the sense that the voters with Romney by and large are OK with Romney. He is a strong candidate for the other half of the party, which is more secular, more college educated, more managerial, more coastal, more focused on the economy. But those voters, Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels would have been a big competitor, but Jon Huntsman hasn't taken off, those voters are pretty comfortable with Romney.
His problem is the other half of the party. You see it in your polls. They're not excited about his economic agenda. But critically have not been able to coalesce around a single alternative. And that's why even at 25 percent he's hanging right in there.
COSTELLO: Everything could change tonight. That's why it's such an exciting time here in Las Vegas. Ron Brownstein, thank you very much.
BROWNSTEIN: Thank you, Carol.
COSTELLO: Stay with CNN all morning long for the best political coverage on television. At 8:45 eastern I'll be joined by Ron Paul. Ron Paul has just released his economic plan and he says he'll make $1 trillion in cuts to government spending. Ron Brownstein is nodding his head, saying, yeah, sure. And Ron Paul also says he will balance the nation's budget in his first year in office. How the heck can he do that? We'll ask him.
And join us tonight at 8:00 eastern for the Western Republican presidential debate. Anderson Cooper will be the moderator and I'd be there, too, to bring you all the post-debate analysis Wednesday on AMERICAN MORNING. Back to Christine and Ali in New York.
VELSHI: Christine just said, Ron Paul can do it, he can do the $1 trillion in cuts. he could grind the economy to a halt at the same time.
ROMANS: Turn off the lights and rent off space at all government agencies.
VELSHI: He might have to run Congress with candlelight.
(LAUGHTER)
VELSHI: But you know what, it might be good to hear what he says he can do. Carol, we'll see you in a little bit.
COSTELLO: Yes, let him have his say first.
VELSHI: Absolutely. Happening right now, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Tripoli to meet with Libya's new leader. She arrived in the past hour on a surprise trip. Clinton is the first cabinet-level U.S. official to visit the Libyan capital since it was liberated from Gadhafi loyalists two months ago. She plans to sit down with the members of the ruling National Transitional Council, stressing American partnership in their political future.
ROMANS: All right, this morning both Israelis and Palestinians are celebrating a historic prisoner swap, Israel releasing nearly 500 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been held by Hamas for the past five year. CNN's Kevin Flower following all these developments as they're unfolding this morning live in Jerusalem for us. Good morning, Kevin. What's the latest?
KEVIN FLOWER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Christine, the latest is that Gilad Shalit has just been reunited with his parents at an air force base in central Israel. He was also met by the Israeli prime minister, who said to his parents as the reunion went on, "I have returned your son." And he said, "Shalom, Gilad. Welcome back to the state of Israel." So this was the moment that the Shalit family and much of Israel had been waiting for five long years, this reunion with his family.
So this is -- we'll probably expect to see pictures of this later on today. That will play big in the Israeli media here. This story has been followed all day from the crack of dawn. His return from the Gaza, his handover from the Gaza Strip in Egypt and back into Israel, and later today he will be on his way home. He has been checked by the military doctors. The initial bill of health is that he is in stable, good condition. Obviously there's concern going forward about his mental health.
And on the other side of this story is the return of over -- some 477 Palestinian prisoners today. They went both to the West Bank and to the Gaza Strip. And scenes of celebration and joy playing out in both of those places, too, as Palestinians -- Palestinian families welcomed home these members of their families, some of whom had been in prison up to 30 years, some for violent attacks against Israel and others for a range of other crimes.
But this is a really big day for Palestinians as well. The issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is one that cuts deep here and is a very emotional issue, Christine.
ROMANS: All right, Kevin, thanks so much. You'll continue to follow that all morning as this unfolds. Thanks.
VELSHI: Still to come this morning, an ex Wall Street insider now speaking for the protesters. In fact, he may just have made their manifesto and is here to lay it out for us.
ROMANS: Plus, either aliens are landing or it's another haboob. Amazing pictures of a dust storm swallowing a U.S. city, 800, 1,000 feet in the air. VELSHI: Unbelievable, with hurricane-strength winds.
ROMANS: We'll tell you all about it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: All right. Welcome back.
Wall Street protesters getting an unexpected visit in the form of a guy named Henry Blodget, a former top stock analyst famous for getting the boot from Wall Street after he was named in an SEC complaint about conflicts of interest a few years ago actually now. Blodget has gone on to find the website called "Business Insider" where he's recently written a hugely popular post, almost four million views and counting. It's called "What the Wall Street protesters are so angry about." And he's here to break it down for us, Henry Blodget himself.
Thanks for coming on CNN.
HENRY BLODGET, COFOUNDER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BUSINESS INSIDER: Thank you for having me.
ROMANS: Nice to see you.
All right, let's look at some of the things that you put out here, because this is getting a lot of attention. Your first slide, no surprising, the unemployment rate showing here at the highest level since the Great Depression with the exception of the '80s. Underemployment, oh, look at how dangerous that's been over the past couple of year.
Here's a really good one as well, corporate profit at an all-time high. This is something that infuriates the people, right?
BLODGET: Especially juxtaposed with unemployment, absolutely.
ROMANS: Right. And then you look at what the wages as a percent of the economy, what is this telling you?
BLODGET: People are getting less. Corporations are doing incredibly well, but average Americans are not seeing that and we'd hit an extreme now with unemployment over nine percent where people are saying, well, we've had enough.
ROMANS: Are these kinds of charts what's driving - look at this. This is the top one percent of earners share pre-tax income. Look at how it's climbed. You've got to go back to the - the roaring '20s. Remember what happened after that.
And then you look - oops, that was the last one. Sorry, guys. And then you look at what the - the rest of us are earning and it's going down, down, down.
BLODGET: That's right. And we've hit this peak of inequality in the economy that, as you say, we haven't seen since the late 1920s and that was solved by, unfortunately, the Great Depression, changes in the tax code. Very long period of prosperity in the '50s and '60s.
So a lot of people think we've got to just tweak things and get more equality.
ROMANS: So does Wall Street get it? Does Wall Street get what's happening in the streets have to do with these sorts of numbers?
BLODGET: No. I think most people on Wall Street look at it saying this is ridiculous. You're talking about people who want to sit around in drumming circles and talk about drugs and peace and everything else. They all would say about to that is look back at the 1960s. Those protests were ridiculous in many ways.
ROMANS: Peace and love.
BLODGET: Exactly. But the core complaint, end the Vietnam War. People look at that now and say, OK, that was smart. And I think the same thing is here. There's a fundamental complaint here that I think Wall Street has to acknowledge.
ROMANS: And a change in that movement in the '60s changed how whole generation thinks.
One of the things that you hear from Wall Streeters is they say, OK, look. Now you;ve got the Iranian hikers, who have joined. You've got the Free Tibet Movement. You have in Washington a group of people stormed the National Air and Space Museum on the mall to protest drones. This isn't about us. This isn't about Wall Street. Does that hurt the movement?
BLODGET: Oh, sure. You've got everybody who has a grievance with anything jumping in and saying finally. People who are protesting the status quo are getting attention, so I'm going to air my grievance, too.
But, again, the fundamental issue here, which is the inequality in extreme we have not seen in 70 years is worth paying attention to, and I don't - I think if the country does not pay attention to it you're going to have more and more social unrest.
ROMANS: Dallas Mavericks' Mark Cuban recently wrote on his blog, a pretty good blog posting that there's a great CEO white lie that they all believe that they're acting in the best interests of our shareholders. He said, OK. Maybe the movement needs to accept that lie and play by those rules. Buy a share of the stock. Go and occupy the shareholders' meeting, but you're not going to change anything unless you start to think like Wall Street.
BLODGET: Absolutely true.
ROMANS: You agree with that?
BLODGET: I think so, and I think it really one of the things that's happened is we've gone from a period of the 1970s, where we had Wall Street, greed is good. It's good to shake things up. Make the economy more efficient. But now we have taken that to an extreme where all the emphasis is on the bottom line. Corporations need to care about a lot of things besides the bottom line. And one of them is their employees, the environment, the country, society, and I think you're going to see that emphasis shift.
ROMANS: At some point those things affect shareholder value, you know? And maybe -
BLODGET: Absolutely.
ROMANS: -- until it affects their results in shareholder value, maybe they don't get it.
BLODGET: Absolutely.
ROMANS: So where does this movement go from here? I mean, some people on Wall Street who think that it's, you know, going to peter out. The "New York Times" this weekend had a great piece on Saturday that said basically that a lot of Wall Street insiders and corporate leaders think that they're - it's interesting that these people are kind of unsophisticated.
BLODGET: Sure. Again, if you listen to the fringe of it, absolutely. There's a lot to ridicule.
But I think that this complaint, inequality, corporations doing great, rest of the country getting hosed, that is going to continue to rankle people and until the economy really starts to get going again, I think you're going to continue to see unrest.
ROMANS: Everybody loves to hate the banks. But a couple of interesting things you notice in bank earnings. Wells Fargo actually had loan volume up and Citigroup across all of its lending I think except for housing, Citigroup lending also up a little bit.
So maybe that mantra, the banks aren't lending, maybe that's starting to help.
BLODGET: It's starting to. It is picking up and that's great. Every little bit helps. But the idea that we bailed out the banks three years ago so they could start lending wholesale again -
ROMANS: Right.
BLODGET: -- just hasn't happened.
ROMANS: All right. Henry Blodget, the - I'm going to tweet a link to the screens.
BLODGET: Thank you.
ROMANS: They're very, very good. I know four million people have watched them so far, Ali. Four million people have clicked on those screens because they feel like that's sort of the manifesto for the movement at this point. It really puts it into - into stark reality - VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: -- the numbers, Ali.
VELSHI: Good - good information, good discussion, Christine. Thank you.
All right. The same engineering team who rappelled down the Washington Monument last month are now assessing the National Cathedral in Washington. The two men and two women assessed both the inside and the outside of the building yesterday. They say the cathedral is structurally sound. The northeast tower was damaged by the earthquake, if you recall, back in August.
Hey. Rob Marciano is in the Extreme Weather Center for us right now. Rob, I've been - I've been watching that stuff that you showed us about the - the dust cloud in - was it Lubbock, Texas? Is that a haboob?
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: That is a haboob.
VELSHI: OK.
MARCIANO: A dust storm created by, you know, winds that kick up the dust in Texas. No stranger there. And, you know, getting closer to Halloween, you could actually say a h-a-b-o-o-b, I suppose.
Seventy-four mile an hour wind gusting up the storm. There wasn't a whole lot of rain, although they did see rain in the past few weeks. That's good news. The bad news is not nearly enough to knock down this dust. This thing rolled through, created whiteout conditions. Visibilities well below 100 feet and at times knocking down trees and some power lines. And you can see some damage at the airports fallen on some airplanes around.
Still windy today across Texas. We've got a red flag warning that's up for the eastern part. A potential for fire exists there.
All right. Some thunderstorms down across Louisiana. That's the storm or the line of storms that rolled through Texas last night, and then some of that rain stretches all the way up into Indiana. That will combine with this, which is what is a tropical disturbance that's trying to get itself together. Probably wouldn't become too much more. Maybe a depression, potentially, but it's still - it's the wind and the rain that will combine with this system that came through Texas last night, and that will head up the East Coast over the next day, day and a half, and it will hit just about everybody on the Eastern Seaboard here, especially across the Mid-Atlantic today and tonight.
And even across the Northeast, we'll see a fair amount of rain with this and a fair amount of wrap-around with this, not in the form of moisture, but in the form of some cold air.
Game one tomorrow night of the World Series, guys. It will be blustering. Temperatures will probably not get out of the 40s. Ali, Christine, back up to you.
VELSHI: Forty's. All right, Rob. Thanks very much. We'll check in with you a little bit later.
ROMANS: All right, still to come this morning, who is the real Herman Cain? We'll talk to one man who worked for him and another who hired him.
VELSHI: Plus, banks across the country doing something they haven't done in months. We're "Minding Your Business" next.
It's 22 minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Twenty-five minutes after the hour. "Minding Your Business" this morning.
U.S. stock futures are mixed. This follows a sharp sell-off yesterday. The Dow, NASDAQ and S&P 500 were all down by about two percent because of these lingering concerns about Europe's debt crisis and, of course, continuing worries about bank earnings.
Now, let's talk about that. Bank of America showing some signs of recovery despite running up billions in mortgage-related losses. The bank just released its quarterly earnings and they beat estimates. We're still waiting to hear from rival bank Goldman Sachs.
Also as far as earnings go, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Intel, Apple, Yahoo! all reporting their earnings. Those tech giants Apple, Yahoo! and Intel will release their earnings later on today.
And it was banks that were hit hardest by yesterday's sell-off. The declines fueled by a disappointing third quarter earnings report from banking giant Wells Fargo. After months and months of sitting on their hands, the banks appear to be lending again. Several of the nation's biggest banks including Citigroup and Wells Fargo are making more loans compared to last year. Experts say the increase may be because banks have more confidence in consumers and businesses.
Apple is breaking sales records with the iPhone 4S. The company sold more than four million of them since its launch on Friday. That's more than twice as many as the iPhone 4 during its opening weekend last year.
And don't forget, for the very latest news about your money, check out the all-new CNNMoney.com.
AMERICAN MORNING back right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: It is half past the hour. Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. Top stories for you now. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arriving in Libya just in the past hour under extremely tight security. She's the first cabinet-level official to visit Tripoli since Moammar Gadhafi was driven from power. She plans to meet with leaders of the National Transitional Council and also U.S. medical assistance to Libyans wounded in the fighting.
An elaborate prisoner swap between Israel and the Palestinians: Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas in 2006 was freed overnight. In exchange, Israel released 477 Palestinian prisoners with 500 more to come in the coming months.
New this hour, a prosecutor telling CNN that Italian Prime Minister Sylvia Berlusconi has been acquitted on charges of tax fraud and misappropriation of funds. He was accused inflating the price of TV rights for his media empire, and then skimming off the top, to create illegal offshore slush funds.
The Republican primary season coming into focus. Break out the calendars. Iowa Republicans have decided to move up their caucuses from February to January 3rd. That move comes on the heels of an announcement by Florida that its primary will be held on January 31st.
And in just over 12 hours, seven Republicans will take the stage for the Western Republican Presidential debate. A lot of preparation has gone into tonight's event.
It's co-hosted by CNN and the Republican Western Leadership Conference. In just three days, a 45,000-square foot set has been built from the ground up at the Venetian Sands Expo and Convention Center that includes two huge monitors, an enormous chandelier and seating for 1,500 people.
I'm telling you, Ali and Christine, this venue is amazing.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, whatever. There goes my raise.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: You get a raise?
VELSHI: No, because they built that 45,000 square foot set. Carol, are you in the middle of the street or close to the street?
COSTELLO: I am very close to the street.
VELSHI: Yes.
COSTELLO: You see behind me, that's the Venetian with the big Anderson Cooper head hanging on it, it's gorgeous. People are actually passing by, even though it's very early in the morning here in Las Vegas, you know, with the time difference, but people are kind of lucid and they're gambling.
ROMANS: Carol, if you say it's very early in the morning. Carol, I've been to Vegas. It's late at night.
VELSHI: The sun comes up, it's still late-night.
ROMANS: Two more hours you get to bed.
COSTELLO: Yes.
VELSHI: We'll see you very shortly.
All right, Herman Cain is hot right now. In fact, a new CNN/ORC poll has the Georgia business executive locked in a statistical dead heat with Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination.
While he did rescue a struggling pizza chain for Pillsbury years ago, turning around the U.S. economy is a bigger challenge. So let's talk about Herman Cain with two people who have worked closely with him.
Spencer Wiggins was recruited by Cain in the 1980s to work at Godfather's Pizza. He joins us live from Nashville this morning. Jeff Campbell is the former Pillsbury executive who hired Cain to take over the pizza chain. He's in San Diego.
Gentlemen, good to see you this morning, Spencer and Jeff. Spencer, let me start with you. One of the things that people talk to Herman Cain or know Herman Cain say is that he's -- he's just likable. People seem to like him. He connects with voters very well. Is this -- when you first met him, what was your response to Herman Cain?
SPENCER WIGGINS, RECRUITED BY CAIN IN THE 1980s: What you see is what you get. When I first met Herman in 1984, I walked into his office. I had never met him.
He got up from behind his desk and said, Spencer Wiggins, I've been trying to get you in here for the last three days. Come over here. Let's talk. We talked for about two hours. It was like he had known me all my life.
VELSHI: You were at Kraft foods at the time when he brought you over to work at Godfather Pizza. Jeff --
WIGGINS: I was at Burger King when he brought me over from Kraft Foods.
VELSHI: I'm sorry. You were at Burger King. All right, very good. Let me ask, Jeff. Let's talk about Herman Cain being a likable guy, but there are questions about his experience in government.
He likes to point out that that's his strength, that he doesn't have experience in government. That he's not a career politician. Tell me, having picked him to run Godfather's why you think people should pick him to run the country?
JEFF CAMPBELL, PROMOTED CAIN TO RUN GODFATHER'S PIZZA: I think the reason that people should take a hard look at Herman is the same reason I took a hard look at him all those years ago. He's a leader, a natural leader.
Full of dynamism and energy and he knows what he's doing and the fact he doesn't have a background as a career politician I think given all the issues the country's got to face right now, that may be a big plus, actually.
VELSHI: Let's take a look, Jeff, at something that's up on Herman Cain's web site. It talked about the time that he was a CEO at Godfather's and it says, in just 14 months, Herman returned Godfather's to profitability as he led his management team to a buyout of the company.
People have tried to fact check that. But Godfather's didn't report its profits as a stand-alone company because it was a unit of Pillsbury, which you ran. How did he do?
CAMPBELL: He did very, very well. I asked him to take on that assignment as CEO of Godfather's because the business did need some serious leadership.
We had acquired it several months before I asked him to take the job, and we need to make a change and I needed to find someone who was a dynamic leader.
And that dynamic leader was sitting in our Philadelphia region at Burger King. And that was Herman, and he did go in there and turn it around.
VELSHI: Spencer, what kind of boss was he? What was it like to work with him?
WIGGINS: Herman is demanding but fair. He often tells me he'll never put anything on my shoulders that he didn't think I could carry. And he would give you all the rope he could to make sure you were successful.
And he always wanted to make sure that we were prepared. No matter what we were doing or what we were presenting, he always wanted to make sure that we were prepared.
VELSHI: Jeff and Spencer, let me ask you first, Jeff, you both say that you're independents. Would you consider voting for Herman Cain, Jeff?
CAMPBELL: Absolutely.
VELSHI: What about you, Spencer?
WIGGINS: Yes.
VELSHI: What do you think, Jeff, about -- I have to say, it's not been a lot of gasp. I mean, he's out there a lot. He puts himself out in the media a lot, but had to say a couple things in the last few days that he said were jokes.
He wrote op-eds some years ago about Tiger Woods being president. You know, how do you square that? How do people who are seriously thinking of voting for this guy as president deal with the fact that he does do some things that step off the line a little bit?
CAMPBELL: Well, I want to make it clear that I'm not endorsing Herman at this point, but I think people need to take a very hard look at him.
VELSHI: Yes.
CAMPBELL: His strengths are his leadership skills, and those of us who have known him for 20-plus years know that he is also an honorable person, a good man.
In the heat of campaigning and being out there, as you said, putting it out there, you're going to have your bumps in the road. So what we need to focus on is the substance of he's doing, what he's talking about.
VELSHI: Right.
CAMPBELL: But he's a serious person.
VELSHI: He doesn't seem to mind the bumps. He doesn't seem to mind dealing with them. We certainly know as we cover these campaigns that he is somebody who makes himself available and talks to the media a good deal. Jeff, what do we not yet know about Herman Cain?
CAMPBELL: I think you're just going to have to keep watching. He has lots of leadership qualities. His ability to define reality, his ability to energize other people around, solving problems, and frankly that's the kind of thing we need.
We're not getting a lot of leadership right now. So I'm particularly interested in watching what he does going forward. As I think everybody's discovered already, he's great with people, and he's got a great sense of humor. Of course, that can get you in trouble every now and then in politics, but it's also refreshing as far as I'm concern.
VELSHI: Spencer, what about you? I mean, you made a point that he's demanding. He doesn't demand anything of other that he doesn't demand of himself, but being demanding as president of the United States is tricky because there a whole lot of people who don't agree with you. They aren't going to follow you and might not be at qualified as you might like him to be?
WIGGINS: Well, with Herman, he's always come into situations where he had to turn around either a region or a company, and he always inspired the people who worked for him, and he would inspire you to a point where you would bust through a wall for him.
I think those are the kinds of qualities that you'll need if you're going to be president of the United States. Everybody's not going to agree with everything that you do, however, I think Herman has the mettle and the wherewith all to do what he needs to do to lead this country.
VELSHI: All right, not endorsements as Herman Cain as presidential candidate, but certainly two ringing endorsements of Herman Cain as a person and as a businessman and as a working man.
Spencer Wiggins, good to talk to you. Jeff Campbell, thanks very much for telling us a little about who Herman Cain is. Now, who is Ron Paul? At 8:45 Eastern, he is joining us live.
He just released his economic plan and says he'll make a trillion dollar cut and balance the nation's budget in his first year in office. Ron Paul joins us at 8:45 a.m. Eastern, and, of course, joining us at 8:00 p.m. Eastern tonight for live coverage of the Western Republican Presidential debate.
ROMANS: All right, still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, how can tweeting help you drop 50 pounds?
VELSHI: Tweet so much you don't have time to eat.
ROMANS: No, that's not why. Ask Claire McCaskill. Have you seen her lately? This is Claire McCaskill before. We're going to show you the after and tell you how she did it and what in the world tweeting had to do with it. It's 40 minutes after the hour.
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ROMANS: Good morning, Washington, mostly cloudy, 57. What is that stuff that comes up there?
VELSHI: I think the camera is in front of like one of those sewer drain things or an exhaust pipe.
ROMANS: Partly cloudy, 73 later on this morning.
Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. President Obama turning up the heat on congressional Republicans, he's making another appearance today in North Carolina and then in Virginia to pressure lawmakers to pass his $447 billion jobs plan.
You know, they didn't. So now he's going to take it apart piece by piece, and if you folks didn't understand it altogether, maybe take one piece at a time and pass it that way.
VELSHI: He's trying that. All right, how does something like this happen? A truck carrying lots of President Obama's stuff including the podium and teleprompter, a truck carrying that stuff is reportedly been stolen in Richmond, Virginia, ahead of an appearance tomorrow.
A local NBC affiliate says there was about $200,000 worth of presidential equipment in the truck. By the way, it's recovered, but it's not clear whether everything that was stolen was there or if anyone was arrested.
ROMANS: Imagine you're the guy opening up the back and you're like, you know what? I think we just need to walk away. You see the presidential seal and you say, I'm going to walk away before the secret service gets here.
Senator John McCain is not a fan of President Obama's tour bus. McCain who had his fair share, of course, of campaign buses, he slammed the president's bus and his three-day bus trip on the Senate floor yesterday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: So the president has taken to the road, and he spent a number of minutes attacking our plan, and I understand that. I think he has the -- certainly in a political venue, the right and privilege to do that.
I think the question might be, though, is that appropriate on the taxpayers' dime, since it is clearly campaigning, and I must say again, I've never seen an uglier bus than the Canadian one. He's traveling around on a Canadian bus touting American jobs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Oh.
VELSHI: Canadian buses -- these -- most big coach buses, many big coach buses in America are made in Quebec.
ROMANS: We should note that Secret Service got two of these buses.
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: One for the president, one for the Republican presidential nominee as well.
(CROSSTALK)
VELSHI: It's Volvo. It's Volvo trucks that makes that brand of bus, that the Canadian -- that John McCain is talking about. It's a pretty sweet bus -- Carol?
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: But it's really not that attractive. You have to admit that.
VELSHI: No, it's not.
(CROSSTALK)
VELSHI: It's got a lot of stuff in it, but it's a big, black bus, yes.
(LAUGHTER)
COSTELLO: OK. On to other things, better things. Have you heard this story -- have you heard about Claire McCaskill?
ROMANS: Yes, I love this story.
COSTELLO: About five months ago -- isn't it great? About five months ago, Senator Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, tweeted she just needed a change. She said she's tired of looking and feeling fat and she wanted to lose 50 pounds. This is what she looked like at that time. Since then, she's used Twitter to stay motivated. She started hitting the gym and she started eating healthy. August 11th, she tweeted that she passed up the funnel cake at the state fair and that is big, because who can do that? September 9th, she announced her divorce with bread and pasta. And take a look at her now. The Senator tweeted that she has reached her goal. She reached her goal October 8th. Ah. Doesn't she look fantastic? Congratulations. That's just awesome.
Let's talk about something not so awesome now. Shall we? The World Series starts tomorrow night. OK, that's awesome. But in Boston, they're still talking about how the Red Sox blew their chance to get to the World Series. Now starting pitcher, John Lester, is coming clean. He's admitting that he and other starters drank beer and ate fried chicken in the clubhouse during games when they were not scheduled to pitch. But he says they only ordered about once a month, and it was just one rally beer in the ninth inning. He called all the reports in the Boston media, about players clowning around, a witch- hunt and says there's a simple reason why they blew the biggest lead in baseball history. He says, simply, "We stunk."
(LAUGHTER)
Although, you always want to think of your baseball -- you know, you want to think of baseball players as heroes, right?
VELSHI: Right.
COSTELLO: And to learn the most popular and supposedly the best pitcher on your staff was in the clubhouse eating chicken and drinking beer while your team is trying to hang in there, doesn't sit well, does it?
VELSHI: I don't know why Carol always has to deviate on fried chicken.
(LAUGHTER)
COSTELLO: Maybe if they brought the fried chicken up and ate it in the dugout while cheering the boys on it would have been better.
VELSHI: Right. Or if it was in the ninth inning, just wait until the game's over and do it afterwards. Do whatever you want.
COSTELLO: Exactly. Exactly.
VELSHI: Carol, we will see you again in just a few minutes.
Coming up ahead on AMERICAN MORNING, she's made her struggle to get pregnant very public on reality TV. Now, "E! News" host, Giuliana Rancic, is revealing another struggle with breast cancer. But is there a link between the two? Elizabeth Cohen has the answer.
ROMANS: And today's "Romans' Numeral," 9.1 percent. And here's a hint. It could be a sign the global recovery is slowing, a number that is the envy of the U.S., but what does it mean for you?
48 minutes after the hour.
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ROMANS: It's almost 10 minutes to the top of the hour. Here are your morning headlines.
Wheels down in Libya. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arriving in Tripoli this morning on a super secret visit with an offer of U.S. aid to the National Transitional Council going forward.
U.S. stock futures for the Dow, NASDAQ and S&P 500 are all lower after two major banks released their quarterly earning report.
And with just over 12 hours to go before tonight's western presidential debate, a new CNN/ORC poll has Mitt Romney and Herman Cain in a statistical dead heat. The majority of voters saying Cain is best suited to get the economy moving while Romney is most likely to win the nomination and beat President Barack Obama.
The coroner's office now saying IndyCar driver, Dan Wheldon, died of blunt head trauma in a fiery crash involving 15 cars on Sunday. Some racers now questioning the safety of that track.
That's the news you need to start your day. AMERICAN MORNING is back right after this break.
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ROMANS: You'll be up on this one (ph).
Ali knows the answer of the morning's "Romans' Numeral." It's a number in the news today. We were talking about it earlier in "Wake Up Call." The number is 9.1 percent.
VELSHI: I know. The increase in the price of gold.
ROMANS: No.
(LAUGHTER)
You know what it is. It's China's economic growth during the third quarter. Believe it or not, that's slower.
VELSHI: Right. Right.
ROMANS: That's slowing down. And, in fact, it's obviously an envious number because our growth in the second quarter was, what, 1.3 percent.
VELSHI: 1.3 percent. So in the third quarter the estimate is that it will be between 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent. Even if we are at the high end here in the United States, that is still three times -- their growth is three times as fast as ours.
ROMANS: Yes. And the U.S. and Europe just not growing strong at all.
VELSHI: Europe is almost flat. In fact, we're worried it might be less than flat. India, 7.8 percent. That's also a slow down for India. So it just shows you how the world is just moving at different paces.
ROMANS: Yes, our part of the world is moving slowly.
VELSHI: Yes.
All right, an "A.M. House Call" now. "E! News" news anchor, Giuliana Rancic, has shared her struggle to have a baby on her reality show, "Giuliana and Bill." And after two rounds of in-vitro fertilization treatment and one miscarriage, she's now revealing that she has breast cancer.
ROMANS: Oh. The diagnosis raising a lot of concerns about fertility treatments and possible ties to the disease.
Senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, has looked into this for us.
Elizabeth, is it bad to go through IVF if you have cancer? That's what she has to decide now, I guess, whether she will continue all of this, trying to have a baby and fighting the cancer.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. What usually happens in this situation, Christine, is that they tell the patient, let's put off the IVF treatments, let's put that aside. We're going to treat your cancer and get you healthy, and then we'll decide what to do from there.
VELSHI: You need hormones to do IVF. Does that make the cancer better or worse, or the treatment, how does that affect it?
COHEN: Right. Here's the problem. Many breast cancers just love estrogen. They feed off estrogen. So when you're going through IVF to get pregnant, it's a double whammy. When you're pregnant, you have a ton of estrogen running through your body, and that's not great for most breast cancers.
Then, number two, you're taking hormones to get pregnant. So the concern is that those extra hormones that you're taking as medicines, really, that that's even worse. It sort of adds insult to injury. That's why doctors don't want someone with breast cancer to go through IVF. They want someone to get rid of that breast cancer. She didn't know she had breast cancer. What happened was that her doctor said, you know what, before we do another round of IVF, let's give you a mammogram. He likes to do that, apparently. Many doctors do that. And that's when they found the breast cancer.
ROMANS: Wow. So then they found it. And now, does the estrogen or the IVF process, does it cause cancer or does it, I guess, make it worse if you have beginning breast cancer? Is there any tie or link?
COHEN: No, what experts think is what is going on is that it wouldn't cause cancer, but what it does, if there is maybe sort of a cancer that your -- that is in the incipient stage, if there is a very small cancer or cellular changes that are happening already, it would aggravate that. It doesn't really cause cancer, but it could make a really small cancer grow bigger. That's the big concern.
VELSHI: She says she will get cancer treatment and then, after the cancer is gone, she'll try again to have a baby. Any issues with that?
COHEN: You know, it's interesting. Doctors have really changed over the years. They used to tell women who had had breast cancer and then treatment, we don't think you should get pregnant at all. But now, they don't quite say that. They want to wait some time. They sometimes want women to take certain drugs. Many women who have breast cancer and recover do go on to have children.
ROMANS: So many women are waiting later and later to have children and then they have this window that's closing in on them and then, suddenly, this medical experience --
VELSHI: Right.
ROMANS: -- trying to get pregnant and the process is fraught with just all kinds of emotions. And certainly our hearts go out to them as they deal with both of these things now.
Elizabeth Cohen. Thank you so much, Elizabeth.
COHEN: Thanks.
VELSHI: Let's go to Las Vegas. Carol is standing by.
Hey, Carol.
COSTELLO: That's really disturbing and really interesting. Thanks to Elizabeth Cohen.
Just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING, Herman Cain in a statistical dead heat with Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination for president. We'll take a look at the challenges he will face in tonight's western Democratic debate.
And he says he will balance the budget in his first year in office if he is elected president. We'll ask Ron Paul how exactly he plans to do that. He'll join us live from Las Vegas in the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING.
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