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March Jobs Numbers; Religious Freedom Measures Revamped; "Finding Jesus:" Mary Magdalene's Role; CNN Hero: Guitars Over Guns; The Good Stuff: Man Returns Sack of Money Fallen from Truck. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired April 03, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:30:35] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we want to take you back to this breaking news we have now, a massive fire. Let's get to the pictures that we have here in Louisville.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, my goodness.

CUOMO: We know the area is dealing with droughts.

PEREIRA: Yes.

CUOMO: Now this. This is a GE appliance factory. It's on fire. Mich, you were saying it's a four alarm fire.

PEREIRA: At this point that we - the latest information that we have from our affiliate on the ground there is that it's a four alarm fire. It is said to have started in building six. They believing that building six is a total loss at this point. You can imagine they're having to pump a whole lot of water into there. But, of course, all the weight of that water is going to cause the roof to be -

CUOMO: Right, and you're seeing that.

PEREIRA: Yes, it looks as though it's collapsing.

CUOMO: The pictures are telling the story. And, obviously, Louisville dealing with flooding. We don't know if there's a connection to that. The good news is, that building was said to be evacuated. It is a massive place. We can't confirm that everyone got out of there, but that's the latest reporting. A four alarm fire is big. It's also an area that's going to need the resources and obviously they're behind on this one.

PEREIRA: Well, and here's the challenge, as you mentioned. All that flooding that's going on is already taxing local first responders. But the fact that they have a four alarm fire here means a whole lot of engine companies and ladder companies are going to be there on scene battling this blaze. And you can tell by the thickness and blackness of that smoke, there's a lot of fuel in there. This is not anywhere close to being a knock down. They have a lot of work to do.

But we understand building six was evacuated. The rest of the plant, I don't know. But I can imagine that the evacuations would have happened in short order given the fact that you could see the smoke from miles and miles away.

CUOMO: I mean the plume is very impressive, obviously. They're very dramatic pictures. The question is, what started the fire, what is the accelerant in there and what is that fuel? We know they make appliances. But that's going to be a big part of the task for the firefighters there on scene. As we get more information, we'll bring it in to you. But we wanted to just pick you up on that right now.

Again, as it says on your screen, Louisville dealing with a huge fire at a GE plant there. And we'll give you more information as we get it.

All right, we have other breaking news for you as well. The Labor Department releasing the March jobs report. Let's get right to CNN Money correspondent Alison Kosik.

What are the numbers?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Chris.

You know, we did find out, actually, a huge hiccup in the jobs numbers for March. We found out that only 126,000 jobs were added. This is a huge miss because what was expected, 244,000 jobs. So you're seeing a trend actually head lower.

To add insult to injury, we saw January's numbers fall, we saw February's numbers fall as well. They were adjusted lower. That's not good news. Unemployment rate, bull's eye, right where we expected, staying at 5.5 percent. Here, just the same thing as what we saw in February.

Another good indicator that I'd like to look at about the health of the U.S. economy, I'd like to look at the labor force participation rate. What that is, is the percentage of Americans who are actually working or looking for work. And here's what concerns me the most about the labor force participation rate. It's at levels we haven't seen since the late 1970s.

So we want to see more people in the work force. Right now we're seeing 30 percent of Americans not actively looking for work or working. So what you see, Chris and Michaela, is that portion of the population just on the sidelines or some saying just vanishing. So that's a little concerning too.

Once again, I give it a - I give it a miss and a sad face for the jobs report simply because 126,000 jobs added to this economy in March.

PEREIRA: Yes.

CUOMO: Well, that's a very indicative symbol that you give us there for it.

KOSIK: Yes.

CUOMO: Obviously, that's the concern. You hear the unemployment number, it sounds good, but there are a lot of people who've simply quit looking.

KOSIK: Exactly.

CUOMO: And that has to be addressed.

KOSIK: Yes.

PEREIRA: That's more concerning for sure. All right, Alison, thank you for that.

Presidential hopefuls are sounding off on Indiana's controversial religious freedom law. Will this be a big issue in the upcoming election? We've got someone we can ask that question to coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:38:12] CUOMO: It's all about perspective, right? The final four is still going to happen and Indiana and Arkansas did fix their laws. So I guess this is all over with, right?

PEREIRA: No.

CUOMO: Wrong. There are more than 80 similar measures being considered around the country, these RFRA laws, Religious Freedom Restoration Acts. And if you're running for president in 2016, you're going to have to weigh in. And some are actually not just weighing in, they're doubling down.

Let's discuss. Here to weigh in, CNN political commentator -

PEREIRA: There he is.

CUOMO: And host of CNN show "SMERCONISH," Michael Smerconish.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

CUOMO: Good to have you with us.

SMERCONISH: Happy Easter.

PEREIRA: Hi. You too. You too.

CUOMO: So, what did you see in this situation?

SMERCONISH: I saw disaster for the GOP long term. This is how you win a nomination. This is how you placate the evangelical base in Iowa. This is not how you win independents and moderates who live in my backyard, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and are truly swing voters.

PEREIRA: I was thinking about the fact that they have to be very, very careful in crafting their message because then if you say the wrong thing, you're talking about intolerance here and nobody's going to stand for that.

SMERCONISH: Correct. And you take a look at someone like Governor Bush who, in the past, has said, Republican candidates need to be prepared to lose the primary in order to win the general. Well, he had a perfect example here of where I think he could have distinguished himself from the pack but he didn't. Instead, he very hurriedly gave an interview to Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, and towed the party line with Governor Pence, and then two days later, you know, Pence had a reversal. So where does it leave Jeb?

CUOMO: Or does this conflagration of culture that's going on strengthen the resolve of evangelical and Christian conservative communities and embolden them to come out in a way that maybe they hadn't?

SMERCONISH: Chris, that's true, and that's great for primary season, but there aren't enough of them in the nation to sway a general election.

CUOMO: And you don't think this issue plays not just to the fringe? You don't think it tries to get you into the mainstream of Christianity?

[08:39:59] SMERCONISH: I think that all of the trend lines of the country are on the side of recognition of increased rights of gays and lesbians. And for every day that the GOP is talking about this or other cultural matters, like abortion, it's a day they are not talking about the economy, they are not talking about the Iranian deal, they're not talking about things that could really bring out people who would decide the election.

PEREIRA: Talk about a conflagration. You talk about the economy and you talk about these social issues that are going on.

SMERCONISH: Right.

PEREIRA: Business really getting involved in this debate. We saw Angie's List. We saw the NCAA. We saw all sorts of businesses voicing their concern and downright dismay with what was going on in Indiana. Although recently, and let's pull up this reaction from Angie's List CEO, sort of saying they're not happy with the fix. They say the position is the fix is insufficient. There is no repeal of RFRA and no end to discrimination of homosexuals in Indiana. Do you think that's an indication that maybe business isn't warming to the fix as they say?

SMERCONISH: Well, Michaela, I - now I think you've really put your finger on it. I don't think that what triggered this was the evangelical reaction or the blowback from gays and lesbians. I think that it was this natural constituency for the GOP. The chambers of commerce were on the flip side of this issue. If the final four were not in Indy this weekend and into next week, I don't think there would have been resolution of this issue. But the Republican Party in Arkansas to be at odds with Walmart or to be at odds with Angie's List or any number of major corporations, including Apple, over what went on in India (ph), that's not where they need to be.

CUOMO: Money talks, there's no question about it. But, you know, I have to tell you, one of the things that stood out to me is, I don't think we've seen something happen this fast and furious on a social issue in a long time.

PEREIRA: Very rapid, absolutely.

SMERCONISH: Right.

CUOMO: A coalition that had states, sports and big business coming out and driving a change to a social issue.

PEREIRA: Yes.

SMERCONISH: Right. Well, you saw Republicans -- you saw Governor Pence and you saw Governor Hutchinson both try and wrap themselves in Bill Clinton from the early '90s. I think the problem with that argument is that the entire nation has gone through this metamorphosis since the early 1990s, unlike anything I'd ever seen. In the early 1990s, you know, remember what I do for a living. I answer telephones from people across the country. And in answering telephones in the early '90s, people would have been lock step on the side of the baker who didn't want to bake the cake for the same-sex couple. Those days, I think, are largely over.

PEREIRA: All right. Well, since you're taking calls and I feel that you've had a kind of a --

SMERCONISH: Michaela from New York City.

PEREIRA: Michaela from New York has this question.

SMERCONISH: Go ahead.

PEREIRA: A big week of news that you'll be sort of recapping and looking at and digging through. Iran. I mean, a big, big, big historic story, but it's not done yet. Obviously just a framework at this point. But also the fact that the president now has to come home and make the case to Congress.

SMERCONISH: And I think he's got a tough sale on his hands given, and you've already been discussing this, and I saw the interview from the last half hour, Israel really holds a lot of cards with regard to what the GOP controlled House will do. So to the extent that Prime Minister Netanyahu has already dug in on this, and I saw the interview with Mark Regev, and so I think that they clearly have, it puts the GOP leadership in a very tight spot. I'd be very hard pressed to see Boehner and company take a position different from that of the Israelis.

CUOMO: Do you think that there is anything they won't use as a political football or do you think that this is not a political football, this is a legitimate, earnest difference of opinions about how to deal with a potentially dangerous country?

SMERCONISH: Well, I think that there are - I think there are legitimate concerns to be expressed against this deal. So I don't want to just say that this is part and parcel of Obama's for it, we're against it, although there's a heck of a lot of that that takes place in the country. What we've seen recently is that the partisan divide on domestic issues has leapt into the foreign policy realm. And so now, today, everything is subject to that red state/blue state divide.

CUOMO: All right, hey, Michael, thank you very much. Appreciate you being here.

SMERCONISH: Great to see you, guys.

PEREIRA: Great to see you.

CUOMO: This is just a taste. Of course you check out "Smerconish" Saturdays at 9:00 a.m. Eastern on CNN. And you hear him weekdays on Sirius XM also at 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

PEREIRA: We are continuing to monitor that massive industrial blaze that's going on in Louisville, Kentucky. Part of the GE appliance park, if you will. We're showing you some live pictures right now of that blaze. We're told it's a four alarm fire right now. The building, it appears that parts of it, the roof of it, is collapsing. We're going to continue to monitor this and bring you more updates after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:47:53] PEREIRA: There are many unanswered questions about one of the most prominent women in the bible. Mary Magdalene. What was her true relationship with Jesus? Were they married? Or was she, as some scholars believe, a wealthy financier of the early Christian movement. Well, this Sunday's episode, the final episode, in fact, of CNN's "Finding Jesus" explores Mary Magdalene's true role.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As a first century Jewish man, it would have been incredibly likely that Jesus would have been married during his lifetime.

PROF. CANDIDA MOSS, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME: This is high stakes stuff. So, if Jesus, the Son of God, was married, maybe he had children. If he had that kind of an intimate relationship, people want to know. And if he had children, that means there might be people wandering around today with sort of holy blood in them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Let's bring in one of the biblical scholars featured in "Finding Jesus." Nicole Denzey Lewis. She's a professor of religious studies at Brown University. Married? I don't member that from my Bible classes when I was in Sunday School.

NICOLE DENZEY LEWIS, PROFESSOR OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES, BROWN UNIVERSITY: They didn't teach you that?

PEREIRA: They didn't teach me that. How mind-blowing is that? How much of a revelation is that?

DENZEY LEWIS: I think it's a big revelation for people, but it's also a kind of nice alternative to a story that sometimes you might hear in Bible class in Sunday School and that was that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, she was this repentant sinner. To kind of focus on this other aspect of her that she might have been Jesus' wife is a great kind of tantalizing thing that we want to know about.

CUOMO: Tantalizing is not always the same as being actual, though.

DENZEY LEWIS: Right.

CUOMO: What do you see as you start to lay out the two different roads of who this woman was? We do believe she existed.

DENZEY LEWIS: Yeah.

CUOMO: So what do you think?

DENZEY LEWIS: We definitely think that she existed. There's no question about that. She's mentioned in the New Testament 12 times but really very elusively. There's very little that's said about her. I think this kind of adds to the mystery about her. And one thing that we know is that it was a common thing for people to be married at the time. It was a common thing for Jesus to have been married as a Jewish man in the first century, and also especially for a woman in that context, also, would have been associated with a man.

[08:50:02] So for these two figures to show up somehow associated with one another but are not explicitly said to be married, again, makes you wonder what's going on there.

PEREIRA: We know that Mary was present when Jesus was crucified, we also know that she was there -- was among the first to discover that he was missing from the tomb. That's not changed, but that speaks to her importance in this story of Jesus.

DENZEY LEWIS: Yes. Absolutely. And I'll take this as two kind of separate things. Her presence at the crucifixion is a little weird, it's a little strange, because she is not named as a family member, he has his mother there with him, and she's not named as a disciple. There is another disciple who is present and there is a little dialogue in one of the gospels about how Jesus there says to his mother, please kind of take over, taking care of John, my disciple, as your son. But Mary Magdalene doesn't get factored in, yet she is mentioned. Why is she even mentioned and why is she there at that moment? Now, in terms of the resurrection, that's hugely important because it says in all four gospels that she is a witness to the resurrection. And that's tremendously, tremendously important for the Christian tradition.

CUOMO: How do you factor in the rules of the time with what you're able to find in documentaries? You know, like none of the disciples were women. Was it because it was sanitized because it was such a male dominance theory and when you look at it it was equally likely to people like you that he was patronized early on, Jesus, by women, by older women, by couples and that he may have had a lot of couples involved, but that didn't go with the narrative the church wanted when they were drafting different versions of the Bible? How do you balance that? DENZEY LEWIS: I think the writings that are now in our New Testament,

I don't think that they were necessarily being exclusionary. I think they were talking about particular characters and they would name those people as disciples, but I don't think that they necessarily thought, oh, by not calling Mary Magdalene a disciple, we all know that she shouldn't be considered as one. Paul, in his writings, doesn't talk about Mary Magdalene and he's a very early Christian writer. He does talks about women disciples, or women apostles, actually. So they're there in the tradition. We see them. But gradually as the church kind of masculinizes eventually around the 4th century, they have got to do something with these early traditions about women as equals or as disciples or as followers. So they're there early on, we see them, but they start to fade out.

PEREIRA: Hopefully this is a planted seed for you in the finale, the sixth and final episode, in "Finding Jesus." It airs conveniently, perfect for your Sunday traditions, this Easter Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Nicole Denzey Lewis, thanks so much for joining us and giving us a little food for thought today.

DENZEY LEWIS: You're so welcome.

CUOMO: A little bit more food for thought. What do you think about this? Do you think you could live on $11 a day?

PEREIRA: Not in New York.

CUOMO: Right? That's what some Miami, Florida, residents have to do. That place ain't cheap, either. It's the other side of Miami, though. Far from scenic South Beach. Children living in communities surrounded by high crime and very deep abject poverty. But this week's CNN hero is using music to inspire them to choose guitars over guns. Meet Chad Bernstein.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Guitar Over Guns will be meeting today. Please be on time and ready to rock.

CHAD BERNSTEIN, GUITARS OVER GUNS PROGRAM: As a professional musician, the disappearance of music in schools concerns me because I would be lost without music. Our program offers free after school programming to at-risk middle schoolers. Music is the most important tool we have in reaching these kids.

Guys, if you could go to the instruments.

In the classroom, we split the program up in 30-minute chunks. Mentoring, exorcise, instrument instruction and ensemble experience. Our mentors are professional musicians who build relationships.

How's everything?

We get to know what their lives are like at home. A lot of times these kids only see to the end of their block. We like to give them exposure to the rest of the world. Over there is where we're going to be recording vocals.

The best part about our program is watching these kids really transform.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: Before the program, I wouldn't think that I would be in a studio.

UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: You're a little bit off timing.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: But now, I probably could even be like a teacher.

UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: You want to punch in the ending?

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT: Without this program, I would be in jail or dead.

[08:54:26] BERNSTEIN: When I see a kid have their moment, it makes you realize that we're doing work that matters.

(CHANTING)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Pink Floyd was singing just about this.

PEREIRA: (INAUDIBLE) Pink Floyd. Was it -- really -

CUOMO: Yeah. Today's Good Stuff is straight out of a fantasy, maybe even a movie. Here's the deal. This Brink's truck, okay, is in Utah, hits a bump. Turns out, they left a door unlocked in the back. And it's --

PEREIRA: You're making this up!

CUOMO: Yes. A garbage bag-size sack of money falls out --

PEREIRA: Get out.

CUOMO: -- right in front of driver Dan Kennedy. It was so big, he pulled over and didn't even know what it was. He wanted to pull it out of the highway because he thought it would cause an accident. Of course, he did what you're supposed to do. He checked inside, he saw it was money and he took it and nobody's heard from him yet. Not his wife, not his kids.

PEREIRA: Come on.

CUOMO: No. I'm just kidding. He returned it, but not right away. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DAN KENNEDY, FOUND A 75LB BAG OF CASH: I had to show a couple of people at work. I said, guys, you won't believe this. Check this out!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: (Laughing.) I would have done the same thing.

CUOMO: After that, he called the Utah Highway Patrol, they praised him for his honesty.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Obviously, someone was presented with a situation and he made the right choice.

KENNEDY: You'd do it. You'd do it. I mean, wouldn't you? Everybody would.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Eh! The bag of money weighed 75 pounds!

PEREIRA: How much money is that?

CUOMO: Who knows? He doesn't.

PEREIRA: That's a lot of money.

CUOMO: He didn't take any of it. He didn't touch a dime, say those who give us the story. So how about that?

PEREIRA: That is really incredible. That's incredible. I do love his honesty that he took some pictures, showed some friends at work. I would have done the same thing. You know what I want to know what he would do?

CUOMO: Who?

PEREIRA: Don Lemon who is in for Carol Costello. What would you do? Come on, Lemon. Tell me the truth.

CUOMO: We wouldn't even know who Don Lemon is if that happened to him.