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CNN NEWSROOM

Team USA Versus Belgium: Win Or Go Home; World Cup Fever Hits Hollywood; "Nightmare Nanny" Breaks Silence; Lawmakers Change Rules On Free Trips; Baby Injured By Police Grenade Leaves Hospital; Plane Has Landing Gear Trouble

Aired July 1, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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


BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And here we go, bottom of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin. This is it, folks. Team USA right now preparing to face the Belgian menace. For our boys, it's beat Belgium or bust. Yes, we have won some. We've lost some as well. The same cannot be said for Belgium, though, who go undefeated this game here, into this game, let me be precise.

Team USA has their work cut out for them. Speaking of work, I'm guessing it will be a pretty unproductive afternoon maybe for some of you or definitely for some of these people. Fans are pouring into bars and pubs and into stadiums across America. We have cameras in Chicago at soldier field.

We had a camera at a bar in New York City, one in Boston, and we're even daring to step afoot inside a Belgian bar. The question now, can we do it? Let's ask the fans, shall we?

Let the chants continue. CNN's George Howell and Dan Simon are out there for us live surrounded by fans. George Howell to you live in Soldier Field. Are fans pumped? Are they ready to see us beat Belgium?

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Guys, Brooke Baldwin asked, are you pumped, are you ready to beat Belgium?

Look, it's just a big watch party out here. We have some 20,000 people -- if we can show you this live shot, if you can't be in El Salvador, this is the place to be, the headquarters for U.S. soccer. A sea of red, white, and blue. There are dedicated, loyal fans. Did anyone skip for? Nobody will admit it. What do you think? You were going to stay something?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm just glad that Jozy Altidore is back on the lineup today. I hope he can put a goal in.

HOWELL: Belgium, tough team. What do you think?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are a tough team, but I think the U.S. can do it. Let's win.

HOWELL: And you wanted to do something real quick, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Take a selfie. HOWELL: All right, but a lot of excitement here and I think people are anxious to see this matchup.

BALDWIN: I love the setting and I love the excitement among the fans. You have Team USA and, yes, we're playing this Team Belgium and we just happened to send Dan Simon to this bar in Belgium. Take it away.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is actually an Irish bar, believe it or not, but the Belgians have decided to take this over. This is your bar now, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is our bar now. I hope we'll be able to follow the next three to four games up to the finals. Yes, this is our bar today.

SIMON: As you can see, many people are excited.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a lot of technology and entrepreneurs and a lot of fans here in the bay area. We are all gathering today, which is exciting.

SIMON: Do you have any predictions?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been impressed with the U.S., but to be honest, I think Belgium will win. We'll win with 2-1. We have a golden generation with great players. I think this game will really nail it.

SIMON: I hope it's a great game.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Looking at the football or soccer, I think we'll see that.

SIMON: Thanks very much. Brooke, back to you.

BALDWIN: I have to point out something that is painstakingly honest, the enthusiasm with the Belgian fans in San Francisco. I have the faith as I wave my red, white, and blue. Gentlemen, thank you so much.

Even the Secretary of State John Kerry is sending good vibes to Team USA. Kerry sending this out on Twitter. He tweets "En route to Panama, I made sure to pack my US MNT jersey for tomorrow's USA versus Belgium's game. Entertainment correspondent, Nischelle Turner shows us the World Cup frenzy taking over Hollywood.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Will Ferrell kicks off a World Cup frenzy taking over Hollywood. Even stars on the hottest red carpet have their thoughts in Brazil.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't want to sound like a hipster, but I was a fan before everyone started jumping on it.

JOYFUL DRAKE, ACTRESS: I didn't even know I liked soccer until this year.

TURNER: It appears the sporting event really does have everyone enthralled. Don't tell me if you know who won.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I do care for the United States to win.

TURNER: Pitbull and Jennifer Lopez opened the flood gates of celebrity fanfare before the first kick off performing their official World Cup anthem "We Are One." It wasn't long before other stars got a case of football fever, Jay-Z, Hulk Hogan.

HULK HOGAN: When the men's team runs wild on you.

TURNER: Even Mick Jagger spoof kids love of the game. They are sending social media tweet outs to their team with Rihanna live tweeting, Justin and Jessica going red, white, and blue, and Hugh Jackman getting addicted while they are casting support behind different countries.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A final with Spanish accents.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll take Ghana.

TURNER: Many stars are rooting for Team USA.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's time. Go USA.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: America always gets excited when we're winning.

TURNER: Joining in on the wave of America's growing football fever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the first time where America is really paying attention.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's nothing like the joy of cheering on your country.

TURNER: Nischelle Turner, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Nischelle, thank you.

Coming up next, it is a debate over how to best protect your kids from illnesses. And now a new, wide-reaching study has the final verdict on whether vaccines are safe and effective for children. We'll have those results for you.

And have you heard, Republicans and Democrats are agreeing on something and that agreement has some groups furious. We'll tell you why coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: A major review of childhood vaccines puts to bed claims that they can trigger autism and other childhood illnesses, such as leukemia. This review looked at 67 new studies in the last year and they are safe, except in some rare instances. Let's take a look at this with senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen. So what do these findings mean?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm going to translate it into one sentence. Get your child vaccinated.

BALDWIN: There you go.

COHEN: That the benefits are huge, not just to your child so that your child doesn't get other children sick and the downsides are very few, and they are so few and far between that the benefits far outweigh the risks and you'll notice that I did not say autism. Vaccines do not cause autism. Yet again, doctors are telling us this.

BALDWIN: OK, so that's one story. We were talking in our morning meeting for women, when you go into the gynecologist and get your pap smear once a year, the gynecologist will sometimes do a pelvic exam. So internists are coming forward and saying, don't need to do this.

COHEN: Get the feet out of the stirrups.

BALDWIN: Why?

COHEN: OK, so first of all, internist do sometimes do these exams. We're talking about just the manual exam with the doctor. It's an external exam. It feels around for masses and makes sure nothing is growing where it shouldn't be growing. Internists say that we're not finding that lives are being saved by doing these exams. That's how the internists feel. If you ask the gynecologist, they say, wait a second.

BALDWIN: Who are regularly doing them?

COHEN: And I would say certainly do more than an internist would. I just got off a phone with a gynecologist who said I caught someone's ovarian cancer the other day but would a study show that in a whole the big picture is worth it? You know, this gynecologist I was talking to said, I think it's worth it because I'm catching that one cancer.

BALDWIN: As a woman, if I'm there in the doctor's room and if there's a possibility they could catch something --

COHEN: I think that's how a lot of women feel, go ahead. There's not a huge downside. The downside is that they go in there, feel something, it turns out to be nothing and you have to have more tests and maybe even tests that are uncomfortable, time consuming and expensive. I think a lot of women would say, I will take that test because I want to make sure that you catch something. That's how a lot of women feel.

Just to make things more confusing, you still need to have pap smears, you still need to put your feet in the stirrups. You're not having one every year but many years. A lot of women say, what's the difference? Just put your hands in and feel around. Sorry to be so blunt about it.

BALDWIN: We're grownups and I agree with you. Elizabeth Cohen on that, thank you so much.

Now immigration, minimum wage, unemployment, Republicans and Democrats don't usually agree on very much, but they did quietly agree on something and that has a lot of groups crying foul. We will explain why next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: A new twist playing out in the saga of this nanny who, quite simply, won't leave home. Marcella Bracamonte says she's living this nightmare because her live-in nanny who she fired almost four weeks ago because she stopped working won't leave her house, is refusing to leave this place in Southern California. So now the nanny says, hang on, I wasn't fired. I quit. What's more, she is talking to KNX Radio and saying, she is the victim here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (via telephone): They were the ones that were trying to exploit me as if I were some poor, migrant worker from a foreign country. When I was working there, I didn't get lunch breaks. I didn't get coffee breaks, I didn't get any holidays or -- basically, I was working 24/7.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Stretton is no longer staying at the Bracamonte's house because she's gone away, but her belongings are still there. She offered actually to move out over the 4th of July weekend, but the problems is the Bracamontes will be out of town and they are worried that if this nanny, if Stretton gets in, she could keep them out.

Did you know that last year, lawmakers took more free trips than they had since 2007? If you're wondering what happened that year, does the name Jack Abrahoff ring a bell? After his conviction in that massive corruption scandal, new rules were put in place to stop lobbyists from influencing peddling.

But lawmakers are quietly changing some of those rules. So to Washington we go to our chief Washington correspondent, host of "THE LEAD" Jake Tapper, you're all over this today. What exactly have they done here?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, "THE LEAD": Well, there are two forms that lawmakers have to disclose trips that they take. There's a travel and gift form and there is a financial disclosure form. Most people, good government groups, journalists, are very familiar with the financial disclosure form and the House Ethics Committee quietly, behind closed doors said that lawmakers no longer have to disclose these junkets on the financial disclosure form.

Now they are still required to do so on this other form, but it is definitely a step towards less disclosure and the chairman of the House transparency caucus and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has come out and said that this is the wrong move.

BALDWIN: So even though they have made this one change on this one form, does this fully, permanently go into effect or is this something that would about have to go to the Senate and that would be stopped and this will amount to nothing?

TAPPER: No, no. The House makes its own rules. This is just the House. Already lawmakers are saying they are going to introduce legislation to make the House Ethics Committee change it back so there's disclosure on both forms, not just one. They say it's duplicative and the travel and gift form is more detailed anyway.

But as others have said, it seems like it's going to be a step away from accountability, away from disclosing. As we know, most recently Congressman Charlie Rangel got in some trouble even though he had just won his primary, the Democrat up in New York, because he had forgotten to disclose a junket to China.

BALDWIN: OK. Jake Tapper, thank you. Welcome back from vacation. We missed you for the week. We'll see you, sir, at the top of the hour on THE LEAD.

TAPPER: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: A baby injured when a police grenade exploded in his crib left the hospital. This is what Baby Booboo looked like in North Georgia. Officers were looking for a drug suspect who was totally found in a different location. Heads up, the next photo is tough to look at. Baby Booboo suffered a brain injury, severe burns from this grenade that flashed in his crib.

He spent weeks in this medically induced-coma and just a couple of days ago, I spoke with his parents and they described those terrifying moments when the SWAT team burst in.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALECIA PHONESAVANH, MOTHER OF CHILD HURT IN SWAT RAID: One of the officers is came in and pinned my husband down and tore his rotator cuff in the process of having him pinned down. My girls were freaking out and then I heard my son start screaming and crying. When I went to go pick him up, another officer grabbed him first. I kept asking that officer give me my son, and give to him me. When I went to grab him, he told me to shut up and go sit down.

BALDWIN: So you couldn't even see what happened to Lee. You're seeing smoke and saw this bang and it literally landed in his crib.

BOUNKHAM PHONESAVANH, FATHER AND CHILD HURT IN SWAT RAID: During that time, we didn't know the yet because they tried to hide him from us and they pinned me down for a while and I told them I couldn't breathe.

ALECIA PHONESAVAHN: They kept telling us. He's fine, he has not sustained any serious injury.

BALDWIN: When did you first see your son?

ALECIA PHONESAVAHN: When we got to Grady.

BALDWIN: To the hospital.

ALECIA PHONESAVAHN: Yes.

BALDWIN: What did you see?

ALECIA PHONESAVAHN: I saw my baby boy laying there. His face is blew open and his nose wasn't even attached to his face. It was horrifying. Nobody wants to see their little kid like that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Watch that whole interview go to cnn.com/brooke. The family's attorney says the baby still faces a long road to recovery.

A breaking story for you out of San Antonio. Our affiliate is reporting a small airplane is experiencing landing gear malfunction burning off fuel before trying to land. We'll have an update on this next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right, here we go. Left side of your screen, live pictures of this tiny plane, four people on board. San Antonio, Texas, trying to land right side of your screen. This is Tate moments ago, comes incredibly close to the runway, things about it and not quite.

Presumably, Chad Myers, this plane making multiple attempts trying to burn the fuel because if they can't I'm assuming skim in and land if there is an explosion, they want as small amount of fuel as possible.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely. I mean, this is a Beechcraft A--36 six-seater airplane, on board four people, according to our affiliate there. They've made a very low pass for the tower to look to see if there was any landing gear down at all. There is nothing down there at all. I can't even see a main or any kind of nose gear.

Flaps down now, slowing the plane down. Hopefully he's burned off enough fuel. This plane is out of Baytown, Texas, these guys know how to do this. There might be a slight landing gear down there, almost see a piece. The propellers stop, they're on the ground, and that is about as perfect as you can get.

BALDWIN: Whew. We didn't want to take that live as you were talking over it. Here you go.

MYERS: They're out.

BALDWIN: And thank goodness. Chad Myers, thank you so much.

MYERS: Great landing.

BALDWIN: Emergency personnel responding and hopefully all four are A- OK. Let's move along. A murder mystery is haunting the San Diego area. This family of four disappears from their suburban home. Joseph McStay, his wife, two young sons gone. No apparent signs of struggle. Their bodies were found buried in shallow graves in the Mojave Desert. The question remains who killed them.

Randi Kaye has been tracking the mystery for years. I talked to her about this upcoming film.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was lunchtime at this Chick-Fil-A in Southern California. The last known place Joseph McStay was seen alive.

CHASE MERRITT: We got together. We had a lot to talk about.

KAYE: Chase merit has never talked on camera before about that day. He met with Joseph on February 4th, 2010 to talk business and business was booming.

MERRITT: We had 500 water falls coming up, the biggest project we had ever done.

KAYE (on camera): So he sounded like he was planning for the future.

MERRITT: He was definitely planning for future.

KAYE (voice-over): After lunch, they spoke on the phone a handful more times. So when Merritt's phone rang at 8:28 p.m. and he saw it was Joseph calling, he didn't answer.

MERRITT: I was tired.

KAYE (voice-over): Do you regret not picking up that call?

MERRITT: Hindsight is 20/20.

KAYE: It was the last known call from Joseph's cell phone. The call was made 41 minutes after a neighbor's security camera captured the McStay's white Isuzu pulling out of the McStay's cul-de-sac.

STEPH WATTS, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Did Joseph actually make that call from his phone or did somebody else take Joseph's phone and make that call or was he trying to call for help?

KAYE: That missed call is now a missed opportunity. The first of many missed opportunities.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: And CNN's Randi Kaye joins me now. We know that the remains in the McStay family were found four years after the night they disappeared in that California desert. You've talked to detectives. Do you get the sense that they were surprised?

KAYE: Yes, absolutely, Brooke. The San Diego Sheriff's Department had been investigating the case initially and they thought the family disappeared into Mexico voluntarily. And that's because they had found the McStays' Isuzu trooper parked near it the border and found computer searches looking for paperwork required to enter Mexico though it's still unclear who did the searches or when.

And there's security camera video of a family of four some say matching the McStays description crossing that border. But still Patrick McStay, Joseph's father, the husband in this case said they would never go to Mexico.

He said that his daughter-in-law didn't even like Mexico, but still investigators early on remained focused on the packet they went there, never imagining their bodies would be found more than 100 miles north of their home.

BALDWIN: So here we are who is handling the investigation now? Do they feel that they're closer to solving this?

KAYE: Well, the San Bernardino County sheriff has picked it up because it was in their county that the bodies, that the remains were found and they have a brand-new detective on the case that has gone out to the desert. He has looked at the shallow graves going through thousands of pages of paperwork. This was really a problem because critical time was lost here.

The house where they disappeared from, their home wasn't even searched with a warrant by San Diego, who was originally handling this until 15 days after this family disappeared. In that time, Brook, other family members came and went, came in and out of the home, so who knows what evidence could have been lost there.

BALDWIN: Randi Kaye, we will be watching. It's a one-hour special documentary called "Buried Secrets, Who Murdered the Mcstay Family," at 9:00 Eastern right here on CNN. Thank you.

That's it for me. Thank you so much for watching. Go Team USA. The lead with Jake Tapper starts now.