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THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER
Protecting Your Family from Flu; Steve Scalise's Apology for Talking to Neo-Nazi Associated Group; Going To Have A Ball; Uber Expecting 2 Million Rides On NYE; Why We Get Drunk Is Still A Mystery
Aired December 31, 2014 - 16:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KAHN: First, children who are less than six months of age can't get vaccinated and they don't respond so the vaccine, so they are prone to influenza and certainly children who have underlying medical conditions, respiratory conditions like asthma are particularly prone to severe influenza disease.
TAPPER: So, with all that background here's the question I'm sure many parents are yelling at their televisions wanting me to ask you, what should they be doing in addition to getting the flu shots? How can they protect themselves? How can they protect their children?
KAHN: So, certainly, one comment about the flu vaccine, the people who are at highest risk of getting influenza are household contacts of people who have influenza. So, if you have small children in your house, the way to protect them is not only to immunize them, but immunize everybody in the house. As far as what you can do with influenza and as you mentioned earlier it's widespread right now is once an individual or a child develops symptoms then bring them to a healthcare provider. We know that antiviral therapy is very effective if used early in disease and that's typically within the first 24 hours of symptoms. Flu typically starts with sudden onset of fever, body aches, cough, other respiratory symptoms, so if you go to a health care provider, there are oral medications and the spray medication that will treat influenza.
Fortunately, the strains that are circulating right now including this mutated h3n2 strain are still susceptible to the antivirals that we are using, so if you have somebody in your house who has influenza like illnesses, please take them to the health care provider.
TAPPER: All right. Chicken soup and going to bed early not enough. Take the kid to the doctor. Thank you so much, Dr. Jeffrey Kahn. Happy New Year to you.
KAHN: Thank you.
TAPPER: A top Republican apologizes for talking to a white supremacist group, but did he actually even address that white supremacist group at all? New details on what might have happened, and whether this will cost the congressman his leadership position. And think about this where you toast the New Year tonight could impact your degree of buzz tonight and your degree of hangover tomorrow morning. The bar effect on booze. That's ahead in our very "LEAD."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: Welcome back to "THE LEAD." I'm Jake tapper. In our politics lead today, it seems that there are actually more questions than answers now surrounding Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise. He's the third ranking Republican in the House. The big question, of course, is now whether or not he even spoke to this white supremacist group back in 2002. He apologized yesterday for doing it, for appearing at the Convention of the European American Unity and Rights Organization which was founded and headed by David Duke, the notorious former Klan leader and neo-Nazi, and state lawmaker, but Duke's former campaign manager told slate.com that Scalise actually had been invited to talk to a local civic association gathering in the same location before the convention saying, quote, he spoke early in the day to a contingent of people prior to the conference kicking off, adding he was not there as a guest speaker at the conference though he did acknowledge some of the attendees to hear Mr. Scalise were with the white supremacist group, but if that's true, and I'm not saying it isn't, then why did Scalise apologize? What did he apologize for? CNN's Athena Jones has been digging into the story. She joins us live with the latest. Athena, the story is getting stranger by the day. The first day we were covering it we were saying we went by his staff as to whether he attended, we said he likely spoke there, because that's what the stuff did, then they said that he did speak there, so we reported it now. What?
ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is getting stranger. The issue, as you mention now, seems to be did Scalise speak right before or maybe right after the conference officially kicked off and also how many white supremacists may have been in the audience at the time he spoke. So, they are still lot of questions surrounding this event. Right now Scalise has the backing of some key Republican colleagues, but more and more people outside of Capitol Hill are saying he should step down from his leadership post.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JONES: More fallout today regarding a 2002 speech, the number three House Republican gave before a white supremacist group, founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader and neo-Nazi David Duke.
DAVID DUKE: Hello, I'm David Duke.
JONES: GOP leaders are circling the wagons around embattled majority whip Steve Scalise after he apologized for speaking at the European- American Unity and rights conference and even Democrats like former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards are coming to his defense. The Democratic former U.S. Senator Bennett Johnston saying this about Scalise in the telephone interview with CNN. He's just not a racist. The pair joined Congressman Cedric Richmond, the only black member of the state's congressional delegation who also expressed support for Scalise.
KEVIN MADDEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Cedric Richmond coming out, an African-American Democrat in his defense making those key points as a surrogate for Steve Scalise has been very important in managing his way through this issue.
JONES: But not everyone is supporting him. "The Chicago Tribune" today called on Scalise to bow out of leadership, a call echoed by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer on Fox News.
CHARLES CRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS: It's the worst time. And if Scalise had wanted to make it easy for the party he would have just stepped down on his own from leadership. Nobody is demanding he leave the Congress and his career is over.
JONES: So, what does Scalise think of Duke back then? In a 1999 interview with "Roll Call," Scalise told the paper he embraces many of the same "conservative views as Duke," but Scalise said this week he wholeheartedly condemns the Duke group's views.
MADDEN: There will continue to be additional questions as long as there's no information that contradicts Steve Scalise, I think it's very likely that he will hang on to his leadership position.
JONES: When I spoke to one of Congressman Scalise's Democratic supporters today, former senator Bennett Johnston, he told me, I just don't think we ought to be playing gotcha here and that's what this is. His feeling was that he could completely understand how Scalise can end up speaking before this group. So, this support from state Democrats is important, but as you know, Jake, there are a lot of other people who still feel like Scalise has some more explaining to do.
MADDEN: All right, Athena Jones, thank you so much. Jarvis DeBerry is the columnist for "The New Orleans/Times-Picayune and Nola.com. He joins us live. Jarvis, thanks so much for being here. I guess the first question I have is are you surprised to see so many Louisiana Democrats come to the defense of this very conservative Republican?
JARVIS DEBERRY, EDITORIAL WRITER, THE TIMES-PICAYUNE/NOLA.COM: Well, there aren't a whole lot of Louisiana Democrats left ...
(LAUGHTER)
DEBERRY: So I wouldn't say that there are a whole lot coming to his defense. I'm not surprised to see Cedric Richmond in particular defending him because they are very close friends. They have had a very warm friendship since their days back in the Louisiana House and this is actually where Scalise was and where he was serving when he did or did not speak to this group that we're talking about, but the friendship between Richmond and Scalise is real and genuine and deep, so it's not surprising at all to hear him in particular come out in his defense.
TAPPER: And of course, I would suggest that, you know, Steve Scalise is not racist if he has a very close African-American friend and has gone on for years and maybe that's naive of me to say, but do you think that inoculates him from charges that he's racist?
DEBERRY: You know, I don't think that that's even the most important question whether he is a racist or not. I think the more important question is what do white Republicans in this state, in Louisiana think that they have to do to gain support and to win elections? Scalise, did he or did not he speak before this group came after we had a governor who paid David Duke $150,000 for mailing lists. After that, Woody Jenkins who ran for Senate in 1996 paid almost $83,000 for a computerized phone list of David Duke supporters. So it seems that people in this state, politicians in this state have found it to their benefit to deal with Duke or his surrogates or his supporters in some way or another.
So I don't know if it's important to say is Steve Scalise a racist or not or he has this black friend or he doesn't have this black friend. To me the question is, can a politician stiff arm these particular groups and these people who have these views and still be successful politically. I don't know that one can if he's trying to win the conservative vote.
TAPPER: And that - but that really is the point. It's about what are you willing to do to appeal to people who are racist, because I don't want to cast dispersions on white voters in Louisiana, but David Duke ran for governor in 1991. He lost, but he won the white vote 55 percent of the white.
DEBERRY: 55 percent. Yes. 55 percent of the white vote and that was 23 years ago, so you can imagine that many of those people are still around and many of those people are still voting and that they particularly were around in 2002. And so, yeah, what do you do if you're running in the same geographical area that Duke was just a few years after he enjoyed political success? You know, I don't think that Scalise had any business even dealing with any of Duke's people. I don't think it was the right or ethical thing to do. Kenny Knight who is a political director of Duke said that Scalise knew who I was, but he didn't hold it against me.
TAPPER: Well, you know, I think he should have held it against him. I think that's the main point here.
DEBERRY: Jarvis DeBerry, thank you so much. Good food for thought, we appreciate it. Happy New Year.
TAPPER: Thank you.
Brianna Keilar is in for Wolf Blitzer. She is here with a preview of the situation room. Is it still the situation room? You don't have a different name for it?
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, the room stays the same. I'm really the only thing that changes.
(LAUGHTER)
TAPPER: Is that right?
KEILAR: Or we do.
TAPPER: You're not putting any flourishes, any decorating?
KEILAR: No. Wolf's "Situation Room" needs no flourishes, but we do have a really big guest.
TAPPER: Who do you have? Who do you have?
KEILAR: That's right. We have Captain Chesley Sullenberger, sully, the pilot behind the miracle on the Hudson. So we're going to talk to him about how - really what the pilots maybe should have done here because a lot of experts are wondering if this plane didn't stall and we're also going to talk to him about whether pilots should be better trained when it comes to flying, really, not relying so much on automation, what they could have done. He had the obvious benefit of immediate help after he landed that plane on the Hudson River and it's also been days since this has happened. So we're going to ask him about that and whether these planes should be monitored and we'll also talk to a spokesperson for the U.S. Navy about resources headed in that direction.
TAPPER: All right. Looking forward to it on the situation room with Brianna Keilar. I like the sound of that. Brianna, thanks so much. Millions of you will opt for Uber as your designated driver tonight, and god bless, but that ride might cost you much more than usual. Why Uber is hiking prices tonight plus what the extra charges might mean for the competition. That's next in our Money Lead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TAPPER: Look at that. It's 2015 somewhere. This is the year we were promised hover board, of course, Jaws 19, a Cubs World Series, that's all from "Back to the Future Part 2." This was the celebration in Moscow, at the top of the hour as Russia probably thankfully rang in a new year, hoping for a new year, after all, their economy is tanking.
President Putin canceled the New Year holiday for government workers, but that did not stop the party outside the Kremlin where they're partying like it's 1799.
This was the scene earlier in Taiwan, 106 stories of fireworks as the Taipei 101 Tower lit up in celebration.
And at a very emotional and tense time for the NYPD, its officers are, of course, in charge of protecting as many as a million people at the biggest party of them all in Times Square. That loose cannon Kathy Griffith will be there with Anderson Cooper trying to make him giggle for CNN tonight.
We have no idea what she's going to, do of course. Right now I want to go to Rosa Flores in the middle of it all in New York City. Rosa, set the scene for us there. Anderson Cooper is not giggling, but there are a lot of people in very high spirits.
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. You know, Jake, I'm not any loose cannon, but I can tell me my best friends tell me that I fashion some 2015 glasses like nobody and this is what New Year's eve at Times Square is all about.
It's about people from all over the world coming to celebrate the New Year. I've met a lot of them, Jake. Some of them from far, some of them from close by. Where are you from?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are from Japan.
FLORES: From Japan. I've met a lot of people from Japan. A lot of them saying it's really cold today and my beloved New Orleans. Great to see you again. To our beloved Nola, lots of kisses and hugs. Where are you from?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: South Hampton, England.
FLORES: From England, it's a little cold today.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's freezing.
FLORES: You can see a lot of people have really nice, fashionable hat which is the thing to do at New Year. Where are you from, sir?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From Mexico!
FLORES: From Mexico! What are you hoping to see today?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible).
FLORES: Of course, everybody is talking about the 12-foot ball. Jay, I've got to tell you, I stand about 6 feet tall so it's twice my size, but I can tell you I weigh a little less than this ball, it weighs 11,875 pounds, and anyway, I leave you with the crowd, Jake, all of these folks very happy to be here on New Year's Eve.
TAPPER: All right, Rosa Flores, thank you so much for that report. That brings us, of course, to our Money Lead, it might be the last thing you remember tonight, getting into your Uber. The ride-sharing app has been blamed pretty much everything this year except the Sony hack.
And still despite all the bad press, tonight alone the company is expected to generate $100 million in revenue in one night, $100 million in large part because they jack up their prices during the biggest party night of the year.
Last year, one five-mile ride in Pennsylvania cost $265, but you know, you're going out on New Year's Eve. You're going to overpay for everything else, am I right? Joining me now is "Business Insider" senior editor, Steve Kovach. Steve, thanks for joining us.
Uber says it's staffing up in an effort to keep your tab down, but wouldn't the best way if they really cared to stop surge pricing to stop surge pricing?
STEVE KOVACH, SENIOR EDITOR, "BUSINESS INSIDER": That isn't the mission of Uber. It isn't your traditional taxi cab company and they want to make sure you have a ride when you need it and one of the ways to do that is to increase using their algorithms, increase the price when demand is so high and make sure that people who want a ride get one. So that the most important thing to them. They want to make sure when you tap on that app and you asked for a car, it's with you within 5 minutes.
TAPPER: You seem much smarter than me when it comes to math. Is there a strategy to beat the system?
KOVACH: Uber even said their peak times tend to be between 12:30 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. So one thing you can do is leave the party earlier and have extra beers and wait until 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. to call an Uber and the pricing should be a bit lower.
TAPPER: Uber took a lot of heat for inflating prices, of course, during the Sydney hostage crisis and we've already seen some cab companies and even police offering free rides tonight to prevent drunk driving. Is Uber doing anything to raise good will?
KOVACH: They are. They partnered with "Mothers Against Drunk Driving" and there is a special code when you put in a request for a car and they donate a dollar or two for every ride to "Mothers Against Drunk Driving." That's one of their big things at Uber is that it helps reduce drunk driving when people call Uber instead of driving themselves.
And one of the things is as soon as they realized that that situation was happening they turned surge pricing off and they have the ability, and they have humans watching these things and when something like that kicks in, a terrorist attack or gunmen or something, they can switch off the pricing and make sure people can afford to get it out.
TAPPER: Uber has gotten a lot of bad press this year, but they still had a great year. They gave people 140 million rides in 2014 not even including tonight. They're delivering groceries now and government and cab companies seem like they're just fighting an unwinnable battle against this company.
KOVACH: Right. You know, they're still primarily a car company and making sure people get to where they need to go, but if you want to look at Uber's business in the long run, yes, it's a logistics company, you order anything, soap, toilet paper, groceries and they want to have it on demand and that attacks Amazon and Google and a lot of other companies.
TAPPER: I have to say, as a journalist, I cover these companies, Amazon and Uber, and I know about the problems that people have with them and the things that they do that are troubling and yet, I use them both all the time.
KOVACH: Right. You're voting with your wallet. If people didn't use it, that surge pricing would go away in a second and I guarantee it and right now people are paying for it. We have to keep in mind. You and I live in New York and you're used to hailing a cab whenever you want and there are so many cities that don't have the public transportation infrastructure that we do and it's beneficial in those areas.
TAPPER: Steve, have a great New Year. Don't drive drunk.
KOVACH: Thanks. Happy New Year.
TAPPER: All right, Steve Kovach of "Business Insider," thank you so much.
This brings us to our Buried Lead. You know, marijuana got all of the headlines in 2014, but when it comes to Americans' favorite method of altering their states, booze still remains on top.
Gallup reported earlier this year that 64 percent of American adults say they have occasion to use alcoholic beverages and other studies suggest that that increases significantly this evening.
There will be tragic ramifications, of course, and here is where we caution you to drink responsibly or tack a cab home or Uber, but let us think of the glass as half full. Think about it for a second.
Most of us tonight will drink whether champagne or beer or wine or liquor, it's a process and a tradition older than most of the world's religions even though it's often bad for us. After all, as Frank Sinatra once said, alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER (voice-over): For a lot of us, tonight's New Year's celebration will be occasion to toast with adult beverages in hand whether you're partial to whiskey as in animal house.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thanks. I needed that.
TAPPER: Tequila like the three amigos or just a brewski like E.T. Your libation is part of a proud tradition thousands of years in the making.
ADAM ROGERS, AUTHOR, "PROOF: THE SCIENCE OF BOOZE": There's 10,000 years of human farming and 2,000 use of engineering and technology all of that comes down to picking up a glass and taking a sip.
TAPPER: Adam Rogers is the author of "Proof, The Science of Booze." He's a reporter pal, and we've been doing research together on this subject for years.
(on camera): I should disclose, you and I have known each other for 15 years and imbibed many of these liquids from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. This is not unfamiliar sitting down in bars.
ROGERS: Sure.
TAPPER (voice-over): It urns do down the bars in which we sat and the one you may celebrate in tonight can actually affect the taste of your beverage. It all depends upon your view.
(on camera): You write the design of a label, the shape of a bottle or the decor of a bar may be just as important as what's actually being poured and we're at a high-class establishment here, Jack Rose Saloon, the largest collection of whiskies in the hemisphere.
ROGERS: So they tell us.
TAPPER: So this is as important as this fancy whisky.
ROGERS: Because that's the way the human sense of smell and taste works. It is so tied up in what the expectations are for what we're going to experience.
TAPPER (voice-over): Even if your experience does not include alcohol, Roger says you can get buzzed on virgin drinks if you don't know the difference. It's all about expectations.
ROGERS: You'll get flushed and you'll slur words a little bit and your behavior will change and if you're getting a drink with alcohol in it and you'll have less of an effect.
TAPPER: When it comes to booze, we know how to ferment it, sweeten it, distill it, manufacture it, mix it and age it, but do we know why it causes us to react the way we do? We know that ethanol alters brains neurotransmitters affecting speech, motor skills and decision making skills, but despite various scientific explanations, drunkenness is still a bit of a mystery, Roger says.
ROGERS: They have some good ideas, but which receptor in the brain and it could be that and could be that, and I'm pretty sure it's that and not quite positive.
TAPPER: Now if those decision making missteps lead you to have one too many. You may wonder what all of this boozy research has done to help you in the morning.
ROGERS: But the fact is that hangovers are poorly understood also and it's frustrating and that's a bummer, right? Because you would like somebody to fix that, I would like somebody to fix that.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER: Two aspirin and a glass of water, I think. Be sure to watch New Year's Eve live with Anderson "Giggles" Cooper and Kathy Griffin. That starts at 9:00 tonight Eastern right here on CNN.
And that's it for THE LEAD for 2014. I'm Jake Tapper. I will still be Jake Tapper in 2015 when I see you next. I'll turn you over to Brianna Keilar. She's in for Wolf Blitzer in "THE SITUATION ROOM" with Brianna Keilar. Happy New Year. Be safe.
