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CNN NEWSROOM

Margaret Thatcher's Legacy; Should the Rutgers Scandal be Politicized?; National Geographic Explores 80's; NCAA Championship is Tonight; Seven Year-Old Runs for Glory

Aired April 8, 2013 - 09:30   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Thank you so much for being with us. I'm Carol Costello. Stories we're watching right now in the NEWSROOM, at 30 minutes past the hour, Wall Street hoping for a rebound as the opening bell sounds. Investors are waiting on corporate earnings. Alcoa will announce first quarter results after today's closing bell.

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died. She suffered a stroke. Known as the "Iron Lady," she was the worst woman to become Britain's he prime minister. The man who holds the job now, David Cameron, says, quote, "we have lost a great leader and a great Britain's prime minister, and a great Britain."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Her legacy will be the fact that she saved her country so well. She saved our country, and that she showed immense courage in doing so. People will be learning about what she did and her achievements in decades probably centuries to come. That's her legacy. (INAUDIBLE)

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COSTELLO: Lady Thatcher was 87 years old.

Police are looking for a man who once held hostages at a Hillary Clinton campaign office in 2007. Leland Eisenberg apparently escaped from a halfway house in New Hampshire. He has a history of mental illness but is not considered armed or dangerous.

To politics now and Rutgers university. Yes, it's political now. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will take part in a public event later this morning and he may well talk about Rutgers and calls for its president Robert Barchi to step down. As you well know, Rutgers is a twisted sad mess. Its abusive coach has been fired, its athletic director is gone. And now the man who turned over the incriminating tape to ESPN is under investigation by the FBI. Accused of extortion. That's according to the "New York Times." Christie has reached ought to know Notre Dame's coach, Mike Brey.Brey talked about that on CBS Sport Radio on Friday.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

MIKE BREY, HEAD BASKETBALL COACH, NOTRE DAME: My phone rang two days ago at 8:00 in the morning. He was finally on his first family vacation after going through all of that, and he goes I need to talk to you. I just got some video. He's a good friend. And obviously --

JOHN FEINSTEIN, CBS SPORTS RADIO HOST: What did you tell him?

BREY: You know what, what he said, he said here's how I think this needs to be addressed. I listened. I said you're right on. Any logical person would say you have a mess to clean up there. And obviously they're doing it, and --

FEINSTEIN: Doesn't the president have to go, though, too?

BREY: I wonder. I wonder if he need it is stay there to help kind of clean the whole thing up.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Clean the whole thing up. Is that even possible. So let's talk about that. With me L.Z. Granderson, a CNN contributor and senior writer for ESPN, and Will Cain, a CNN contributor and columnist for "The Blaze." Welcome to you both.

WILL CAIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Good morning.

L.Z. GRANDERSON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: Let's start simple, shall we? Should the Rutgers president be fired, L.Z.?

GRANDERSON: Yes.

COSTELLO: That's simple.

GRANDERSON: I'm not sure why he's still there. This notion of him staying to clean up a mess, you have to remember, he's the reason why the mess has festered and the reason why the mess has got to the point that it has. So, yes, he should be fired. He should have resigned.

COSTELLO: Will, do you agree?

CAIN: I do. I guess I'm not capable of quite the amount of certainty that L.Z. just gave you. Here is the deal. One of the amazing questions is how did this Rutgers scandal metastasize into this national issue. I played college athletics. L.Z. is around athletics a lot. What you see in this Rutgers tape is unique, is bad, but not as unique as you might want to think. And there are gray lines where coaching is not necessarily -- it's not a hand holding exercise. The point of all that (ph) is to say this, none of that makes the Rutgers thing right. And Mike Rice had to go. But how did that go from, you know, a scandal, a localized scandal at Rutgers or in the immediate area to this issue that's on CNN and the Chris Christie must deal with.

COSTELLO: Because the video was so egregious. How could anyone look at that and not immediately fire the coach? CAIN: So here is the deal, Carol. The problem is I just told you, L.Z. may disagree, I've been behind the wall, I never had a coach like this, but I also know this video meaning so much, you've never seen anything close to this. So the point I'm making is this. How did this get so big? How did this become such a national issue? And the answer to that question will sooner or later land at the school president's doorstep in which case the answer to your question is, yes, he's going to have to go.

COSTELLO: Go ahead, L.Z.

GRANDERSON: I don't know if Will is asking this question to be on contrarian. I don't know if he's doing it because he just likes to see people get upset. But will is a very intelligent person, so I'm sure he knows why bullying especially bullying and then covering up the bullying on this level is a national story. Especially given the university, the same university that had to deal with the Tyler Clementi suicide and highly publicized court trial that was subsequent to that and all the things put in place in the state of New Jersey following that suicide.

(CROSSTALK)

CAIN: All of that is true. But what you have to be able to do --

GRANDERSON: I'm sure he knows that, but he's just being a contrarian.

CAIN: No, I'm not.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: It's an exercise in when will we ever learn.