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CNN NEWSROOM

Lewinsky: "I'm Patient Zero" For Cyberbullying; U.S. Tightens Travel From Ebola Zone; Wolf Blitzer Journeys To Auschwitz

Aired October 21, 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: Monica Lewinsky, she laid low for years after her scandal involving then President Bill Clinton, but now she's back in a big way on Twitter and, she says, not just on Twitter, speaking engagements. And she has admitted, yes, she fell in love with her boss. Why is all this happening now? Why are we seeing Monica Lewinsky now? We'll discuss that.

And President Obama had an unforgettable encounter with two young voters. Wait until you hear what one of them said to the president. And you'll meet them coming up live in just a little bit.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Arguably, modern history's most famous intern is now on Twitter and on a mission. Monica Lewinsky wants to fight cyber bullying. She's really taking this on becoming an advocate. She explained why during the speech at the "Forbes" 30 Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia Monday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MONICA LEWINSKY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN: I was patient zero. The first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the internet. There was no Facebook, Twitter or Instagram back then, but there were gossips, news, and entertainment websites replete with comment sections and e-mails could be forwarded.

Staring at the computer screen, I spent the day shouting, "My God, and I can't believe they put that in," or "that's so out of context." And those were the only thoughts that interrupted a relentless mantra in my head, "I want to die."

When I ask myself how best to describe how the last 16 years has felt, I always come back to that word, shame. My own personal shame, shame that befell my family, and shame that befell my country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: With me now, CNN national political reporter, Peter Hamby. I have to say, I 100 percent commend her for taking on becoming an advocate when it comes to cyberbullying. But then there's that little voice in me, Peter Hamby, that wonders, yes, she pinned that "Vanity Fair" piece earlier this year.

It generated a lot of buzz, but for the most part she's, you know, stayed out of the public eye. Do you read anything into her appearance why now?

PETER HAMBY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Why now? Hillary Clinton might run for president. That's not the reason she's doing this. I think she is absolutely sincere.

BALDWIN: Yes.

HAMBY: The main reason -- the main thing that surprises me about this is why it took so long for Monica Lewinsky to reemerge in the public spotlight. There's something in the character of American public life that allows for rehabilitation, that allows for forgiveness.

It's genuinely shocking to me that someone who is actually very sympathetic figure with a story to tell who, as the speech shows is actually very smart, very poised, you know, she gave a moving speech. She could've done this a long time ago.

But back to your question a little bit, which is I think -- I don't think she's reemerging as any kind of antagonist to the Clintons. But the fact that the Clintons are in the bloodstream now, we're talking about them in the media because Hillary Clinton might run for president again.

Sort of gives her a little bit of a platform to get back into the public conversation. In other words, if Hillary Clinton wasn't running for president, if Bill Clinton was a former president and they were sort of out of public life, I don't care I don't think we'd care that much about Monica Lewinsky.

But the Clintons, sort of news gives her a little bit of platform to talk about cyber bullying.

BALDWIN: OK, you know, it's that patient zero sound bite that people kept hearing over and over and over. But if you stay with the speech, she speaks a little bit more about that time when she was fresh out of college and about a certain love. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEWINSKY: Sixteen years ago, fresh out of college, a 22-year-old intern in the White House, and more than averagely romantic, I fell in love with my boss in a 22-year-old sort of way. It happened. But my boss was the president of the United States. That probably happens less often.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: She even had to retell that story because people in the audience may actually -- the younger years may not be familiar with that.

HAMBY: Right.

BALDWIN: But the real question I had is when she mentions, you know, in love with my boss. Did we, America, know -- had the "l" bomb been dropped before, Peter Hamby? HAMBY: I mean, not to my knowledge. She did say she was sort of head over heels for Bill Clinton in that "Vanity Fair" piece that she referenced earlier in the segment that came out back in May. This is again why, there's nothing sinister about what she's doing now.

The sort of -- people, you know, on Twitter talking about, this is awkward. What's she up to? Does she have an ulterior motive? It's obviously something the Clintons don't necessarily want to talk about.

But, again, I think she's genuinely out there talking about cyber bullying. She has said Bill Clinton took advantage of me. She said that in the "Vanity Fair" interview, but she said it was consensual and doesn't necessarily bear any ill will.

And when she talked about Hillary Clinton in that "Vanity Fair" piece, you know, she said she clearly felt bad for what happened when talking about Hillary Clinton. So the "l" word was certainly intriguing there, but I'm not sure --

BALDWIN: I thought it was. OK, Peter Hamby, thank you very much, my friend. Appreciate it from Washington today.

Coming up next, an interview you have to see. Quote, "Mr. President, don't touch my girlfriend." Those words from a man in Chicago whose lady love voted alongside President Obama. See how the president responds and we'll speak live with the couple. All smiles I see there today in Chicago. They're joining me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You cannot easily do the everyday things the rest of us comedians do when you are the president of the United States. A moment in Chicago yesterday, illustrates that precise point.

President Obama, here he was arriving in a polling place to cast an early ballot. But a fellow voter couldn't pass up the opportunity to joke with the commander-in-chief. He told the president, and I'm quoting him, we're about to hear from directly, by the way, "don't touch my girlfriend."

But he quickly learned, you know, it's tough to one-up a politician. Roll it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I really wasn't planning on it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am sorry, please excuse him.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: There's an example of a brother, just embarrassing me for no reason whatsoever. And now -- you'll be going back home and talking to your friends about what's his name?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mike.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I can't believe Mike, he was such a fool.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He really is.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I was just mortified. Fortunately the president was nice about it. And you know, so you're going to kiss me, give him something to talk about. Now he's really jealous.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: OK, that is just money. That is a fantastic moment and I'm so excited to talk to you about it. You could have shifted the balance in the race for distracting the president, like who knows. I kid, I kid.

Mike Jones and Aia Cooper, it is so awesome to talk to you and have you on. Welcome to both of you.

Where to begin with you two? Mike, let me begin. From everything I've read, you guys had no idea that the president would be early voting at this polling place, correct?

MIKE JONES, TEASED PRESIDENT OBAMA ABOUT HIS GIRLFRIEND: Not at all. Not at all. We got up there in the morning. And we knew that early voting started that day and the polling place is literally right down the street from our house. So she dragged me up and said, let's go get it done because between our work schedules, we probably wouldn't be able to get it done.

BALDWIN: So you -- I love how you said, you said, you know, I knew he was going to say something smart. When you saw the president, Mike, was it already churning in your brain, like, what can I say? How to talk to the president?

JONES: They kind of were. As we walked into the room, the shock hit me as, wow, this is the president of the United States. So hit me really quick, but after that, I was just right back to being myself. I was kind of churning and saying, I've got to say something to kind of put her off her rocker because she knows that's normally what I do anyway.

So that was the biggest thing. It wasn't a shot at the president at all. It was more to see how she was going to respond to it.

BALDWIN: And how you responded is, I think a way a lot of ladies have probably responded with their man, like, embarrassment and please excuse me. What were you -- were you nervous? Were you laughing?

AIA COOPER, VOTED NEXT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: I was nervous. I remember when I first got in there and there was a booth open right next to him, I was like, do I have to stand there? I don't really want to stand there. They're like, no, you need to stand there.

And I was like, OK, so then, I see Mike walk by and I heard what he said. And I'm like, come on. Seriously, this is the president of the United States. Just be quiet. Quiet, embarrassed and just shocked.

BALDWIN: And the moment, can you explain -- what is it that President Obama says to you about the whole jealousy comment?

COOPER: He basically says, you know what, we're going to make him jealous right now. And he kissed me on my cheek and gave me a hug. And it was nice. He's a really great guy, and I was just like, OK. I was just shaking, like, what the heck? What was I supposed to do? So nervous, I was a ball of nerves, a ball of nerves.

BALDWIN: I love you're all smiles 24 hours later. Obviously, it's the kind of thing you tell your grandkids. For the moment, you're boyfriend/girlfriend, but let's just, you know, in a potential situation if there were to be wedding bells and there were to be a wedding, would you send an invite to the White House?

JONES: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, they don't stay too far from us. So hopefully they'll get it and be in attendance if it were to happen.

BALDWIN: How do you feel that might happen?

COOPER: I'm for it. Let's go. I want to meet Michelle. I mean, hopefully she doesn't think anything about me, but I really want to meet her. I do.

BALDWIN: Let's go. Let's go. I love it. Aia, Mike, thank you, both, very much. Too fun. That is the story to tell for a long time, my new friends. Appreciate it.

Coming up next, another incredible story, but for a much different reason, Wolf Blitzer will join me live right next to me. He's in the building. He has an incredible emotional story. She's the child that holocaust survivors lost their own families met on the train searching for relatives here after the world war. We'll talk to Wolf about his incredible roots. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: The U.S. announcing a new step to fight Ebola. The Department of Homeland Security says everyone traveling to the United States from those three Ebola-stricken West African nations, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea must land only at airports set up for enhanced Ebola screenings and those five airports are New York's JFK, Newark Liberty, Dulles International, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson and Chicago O'Hare that goes into effect tomorrow.

And now to something I've been waiting for just about all day here. Everyone has a story and that, of course, goes for people, my colleagues here at CNN. Tonight at 9:00 Eastern, running for two hours, CNN will air 13 personal stories.

These are the stories of some of our own, just absolutely remarkable stories, and not a one more poignant than that of Wolf Blitzer. Tonight, women see Wolf in the city in Poland where his father grew up.

Tragically it is the same city where other Blitzer family members met their deaths during the horrors of the Nazi holocaust. Here now is Wolf Blitzer tracing his roots to Auschwitz.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some school, see this is information about the Rachel Blitzer.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": That's my aunt. Do you remember, by any chance, a family named Blitzer?

(voice-over): Before we leave Poland, we visit the only Jewish cemetery still left in the town of Auschwitz and I see a tombstone that says Blitzer. I don't know if this woman was related to me. But I do what my father would have wanted. I say the special prayer for the dead, the Kadish.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Wolf Blitzer joins me now. And it's answer credible story and we will watch it in its entirety, of course, tonight. We will get back to the moment in the cemetery for a moment.

First, let's just back up. CNN came to you, in the thick of covering a war overseas and they say to you, we want to trace your roots go back to where your parents or grandparents were from. Initially, you were reluctant?

BLITZER: Reluctant. Because I'm an old school kind of journalist, I don't want to report on other people. I don't want to report on myself. When I got my first job as a journalist working for the Reuters news agency, many, many years ago, they also said to me, remember, you're not part of the story, just report the news, get the facts out there.

Forget about yourself, what your thoughts are, nobody cares what you think. Everybody wants to know the story, get the facts, and make sure you're accurate. This is a little different. All of a sudden, CNN says we want you to trace your family history, your roots, not just me, a whole bunch of other people at CNN as well.

I felt a little uncomfortable. I got into and then it became a real labor of love and I really wanted to do it and learn more and I learned a ton. The piece that we did it's long, but there's so much more that I really lander experienced and, not only going to Buffalo, my hometown, but Poland where my patients are from, all four of my grandparents died in the holocaust. So it was a powerful experience for me.

BALDWIN: You talked in this piece how you were robbed of your grandparents, you never knew your grandparents. What happened to them?

BLITZER: They were killed during the holocaust. I obviously grew up knowing that all four of my grandparents died during the holocaust. What I didn't know with all these details where and when -- my parents were pretty open about, talking about all that, some holocaust survivors were pretty reluctant to discuss it with their kids or grand kids, my parents were always pretty open about it.

I didn't know, until I was covering the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in July, I thought I was going to go to Israel for three or four days, I wound up spending a month over there. And somebody said, you know, you should go to visit the Israel Holocaust Memorial Museum.

They have all the archives, the history, all the 6 million who died and I went there and it was there that I was going through the archives. I saw that place of extermination from my paternal grandparents', my dad's mom and dad, was Auschwitz.

And it was really -- it hit me at that moment that, you know, they died at Auschwitz and then I went to Auschwitz and I went around, not only Auschwitz, but the Birkenau Death Camp, a million-plus Jews were killed at Birkenau, to see the gas chambers and all that, hard to believe that human beings could be that cruel.

BALDWIN: You see all of this in the piece when you're tracing your roots, but then you tell the story of your parents, because ultimately, your mother, who is 92 years young and who you love.

BLITZER: She's probably watching us right now.

BALDWIN: Hi, Wolf's mom. But so she, through strength and bravery and courage, basically what, during -- she avoids the death march by hiding, was she with her siblings in the basement of this factory?

BLITZER: Her parents were killed, but she had sister, Paula, and my Uncle Mike, my Uncle Urich, her two brothers, working in the slave labor camp, and right at the end when the Nazis were losing, they forced all these death marches and forcing all these Jews to just march away.

And my mother knew if she did that with her younger sister, Paula, younger brother, Mike, they would never make it and so they went in the basement of this factory where they had been working and they hid out for several days until Russian troops actually showed up and liberated them and she save their lives. She saved her own life probably as well.

BALDWIN: So then flash forward before you appear. Your parents are both, what, on the same train, looking for lost loved ones?

BLITZER: As most of the holocaust survivors, after the war, they didn't know who lived, who died, what happened to their relative, what happened to their family, their friends and so they were searching, my mom. This is 1945 so my dad was 25 years old. My mother was 22 years old.

BALDWIN: On the train.

BLITZER: They met on a train and they fell in love and within three days, my dad proposed. A few days later --

BALDWIN: Three days? BLITZER: Three days, my dad used to say, you know, in those days, you didn't know what was going to happen week from now, two weeks from now, you meet someone like that, you just got to go for it and they met and they got marry and that was that. U.S. Army chaplin, a rabbi, married them in Germany.

BALDWIN: You got to go for it.

BLITZER: Yes.

BALDWIN: A good quote from you and finally, where you talk in your piece about here you are, we all, everyone, in front of the camera, behind the camera, revere you, respect you, 100 percent.

BLITZER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: And to hear you talk in this piece that almost your stature and how you -- this person you have evolved is this incredible journalist is revenge. Is it your mom who says this?

BLITZER: No, my dad always said, my mom, too, when they would see me on TV, always, pinch themselves, our son is on TV, anchoring big stories, you know, and reporting the news.

BALDWIN: Yes.

BLITZER: They would always look at each other and say this is the revenge to Hitler around the Nazis that our son is now on television. So, it was a very emotional experience for them throughout, and is sill for my mom, who is 92 years old, living down in Florida.

BALDWIN: It is a moving piece to watch and make sure you watch Wolf's story, this two-hour special it is airing tonight here on CNN, just the stunning backgrounds of a number of my favorite colleagues here at CNN, anchors and reporters tonight at 9:00 Eastern and Pacific only here on CNN. Thank you.

And now, "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts now.