And the pop culture lead. Hes been a mass genius a glab yaiter, a biblical hero. Now hes playing director for the first time. Russell crow joins me here on the lead to talk about his new film and its message. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the lead. Im jake tapper. Well begin today with our politics lead. Just hours ago a major anoungsment kentucky senator rand paul declaring washington, d. C. Broken. He wants to be mr. Fix it. The chance of president paul, the senator announced hes running for the oval office and coming to take our country back and crush the washington machine. Both democrats and republicans, its a message that echos the tea party tune that first helped paul get his seat in 2010. And on to the short list of potential republican frontrunners. Todays speech was about limited government, closing the income gap, slashing foreign aid and railing against the surveillance state. His new Campaign Web Site is even hawking nsa spy cam blockers. And, yes, if you were wondering you can buy that or other rand branded chotskis with bitcoin. Thats how 21st century this guy is. The same Establishment Republicans paul is seeking to defeat made it clear today they consider him a threat. Im going to get to dana bash now. Shes in louisville kentucky. Dana senator paul today clearly trying to thread the needle between his base the libertarian leaning voters and more mainstream republicans. How did he do . Reporter he absolutely is. And at the same time hes trying to reach out beyond both of those to constituencies he says republicans need. He had an africanamerican minister saying that he is key in helping wanting to help those groups. He had a doctor who talked about the fact that he ishas helped people in need with his medical practice. But it all comes down to the question of whether or not this former Tea Party Darling can expand even more broadly to win a republican nomination. In many ways rand pauls platform for president sounds a lot like the 2010 tea party creed dough he used to snatch his senate seat from the cg 0 p establishment. Too often when republicans have won, weve squandered our victory by becoming part of the washington machine. Thats not who i am. Reporter but any successful president ial run would require a much larger coalition. And paul insists he will build it by bringing what he calls opportunity through liberty to minority communities who usually vote for democrats. This message of libt ert is for all measure ofamericans, from all walks of life. Reporter paul is inheriting throngs of young enthusiastic youth. I say the phone records of lawabiding citizens are none of their damn business. Reporter his fathers appeal had limits. For rand paul to win the white house nomination now, hes been moving toward mainstream gop position. No doubt why here ron paul was seen but not heard. And while some rhetoric mirrored antiinterventional views of his dad like opposing foreign aid i say it must end. I say not one penny more to these haters of america reporter much of his Foreign Policy talk was aimed at proving to gop hawks hes no isolationist. The enemy is radical islam. You cant get around it. The i will do whatever it takes to defend america from these haters of mankind. Reporter but even before he announced, the man who made infamous ads against john kerry released one against paul for his stance on iran. Rand paul is standing with him. Reporter in an unusual move for an announcement speech, paul got into the wed weeds to explain his iran position, saying he opposes any deal that doesnt end Irans Nuclear position. But trust but verify is in any know goegs negotiation. But the goal is peace, not war. Reporter and, jake part of his announcement tour is going to include a stop in south carolina, the first in the south primary state, of course hes going to be standing in front of the historic uss yorktown, a warship. That really is indicative of how much he has changed or at least hes trying to appear to have changed on matters of defense. Wu of course he also is going to hit the live free or die state of New Hampshire which has been pretty good to the paul family and to caucus states iowa and nevada where his organization issues and Organization Ability again with his fathers help should make him do pretty well there, jake. Dana bash thank you so much. Lets bring in cnn political commentator and molly hemingway. Thanks for joining me. Effie lets start with you. I know youre not senator pauls biggest fan. But removing your views on him, he could be be a serious contender, i think. Oh, absolutely. Look hes got a lot of younger fans and he comes in with something established, a brand. Thats the hardest thing to do especially in a crowded primary, to distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack. He already has spent four years making those distinctions pretty clear. Now, i think hes got a long way to go in terms of clarifying his positions on a number of issues. But he comes in with the readymade brand. That will certainly help him distinguish himself from the 20 other republicans slated to run pfr mol pfr. Molly, senator paul in his speech obviously trying to disswath fears of people who prefer a more muscular policy said that radical islam is the enemy. Hes not afraid to take it on. He will do whatever it takes to defend america. Were you vised at how much he talked about National Defense and iran and isis . Not at all. There is a tremendous amount of hostility toward rand paul precisely on this issue. The hawks in the party are very nervous about his position. So he needed to come out strong. And he is a threat. He is sort of the middle grandd ground between what you normally hear in d. C. Politics either the peace nick were never going to identify what flets face us versus the were going to get involved in every conflict in the middle east. He presents stortd of a middle ground. We wont get involved in war, but when we do were going to win and not just get bogged down in nation building. But heres the problem. He has not been clear on his position. I understand the political expedience of getting less isolationist, more moderate on Foreign Policy. Hes done that on israel. But there are glaring contradictions and gaps. How do you go from the noninterventionist pgsosition to suddenly okaying i mean, hes changed so much that libertarians in particular should be asking why. Is it because your politics have become unpalatable so youve made the calculation they need changing. Work or have you discovered theyre just impractical so youve kind of matured as a senator and understood you need a more pragmatic governing philosophy . I think people have never quite understood his position and he does need to clarify it. But his view seems to be we should mind our own business america should mind her own business, but mind it hard. Youll hear Different Things zs zs depending on the situation. He may not see the need of getting involved in every random countrys conflict. But when theres a threat that vofrls america or americas people, hes hard core about the need to go to war. But it comes off differently because so many people in d. C. And so many people who are engaged in Foreign Policy discussions are at one extreme or another. Hes at a middle ground but i think its much more palatable to average american voters. I just want to run, there is this Republican Group that came out with an ad attacking paul for his position. I dont know if the control room if we have it. There it is. Negotiations with iran. But he doesnt understand the threat. You know, its ridiculous totyto think theyre a threat to our National Security. Rand paul is wrong and dangerous dangerous. This is a very forceful out of the gate attack on rand paul from some of the Foreign Policy establishment. Mollie, i had dick cheney on the show. I said, if it came down to rand paul versus Hillary Clinton, who would you vote for . Hes not alone. John mccain and Lindsey Graham have been very tepid if supportive at all. I dont know if that thats a mrob. A lot of Republican Voters and a lot ever voters in the country didnt like the way the country waged its last dumbcouple of wars. We didnt win. We had resources spread out and didnt have a good strategy for winning them. Have people who are critical of this position who were part of the that bad war fighting effort are not thats not necessarily a proob. Theres one or elle fant in the room, ron paul his father who is i dont know how to say it without ending up with 9 million tweets but has very objectionable views to many americans, to many hadrepublicans and has affiliated himself with some real crackpots on the right. I think that will guarantee those tweets. Incoming. How do you deal with that somebody like ron paul . Rand paul sort of i think spent the past decade watching his dad run for president , and thought to himself, i can do that better. So i think youve seen him moderate because he understands rightly that ron pauls views were completely unpalatable. So hes starting from that you know far right or left i dont even know what to call it place of ron paul and moderating toward the center. The trick is going to be to take the ron paul supporters the young folks who liked ron pauls libertarianism and also make his again governing philosophy which is different from his libertarian philosophy work for the center. Thats going to be a tough thing to pull off. I know youre confident he can, but i think hes going to have a tough time with that. We have to leave it there. Mollie, appreciate you being here. S. E. Thank you so much. Our National Lead now. A widespread power outage across washington, d. C. , affecting not only local residents and businesses but several news organizations and the white house and state department. What caused it . Does it expose a vulnerability in the d. C. Power grid . Thats next. [ laughing ] want to play hide and seek . Yeah 1. 2. 6. 10 [ female announcer ] pina colada yoplait. It is so good when you need a little escape. [ mom ] still counting. Doug, we have the results, but first, we have a very special guest. Come on out, flo [house band playing] you have anything to say to flo . Nah, ill just let the results do the talking. [crowd booing] well, he can do that. We show our progressive direct rate and the rates of our competitors even if progressive isnt the lowest. It looks like progressive is not the lowest ohhhh when we return well find out whether doug is the father. Wait, what . Welcome back to the lead. Our National Lead the white house the state department, the jusz department and other very sensitive, very high security areas went dark this afternoon after a major power outage affected thousands in the washington, d. C. Area. A federal official now tells cnn that a blast at a power transfer line in Southern Maryland caused the blackout. Of course a widespread outage such as this in the Nations Capital on what was stormfree early spring day does more than just send people huffing and puffing up the stairway giving the lack of working elevate rz but sends suspicions in the minds of many who live and work in this area including military and homeland officials as far as an attack that could be life changing in a way that most of us never, fr think about. Rene marsh joins us now. What happened . In addition to the white house and the department of justice which you just mentioned, power also out briefly at the Capitol Building also some smith sewn yum museums lost pure. They had to evacuate. This expanded to mass transit as well. Several train stations were forced to operate on backup power. And i want you to take a look at the moment at the state department. There you see it. Thats when the power went out. Spokeswoman marie harf using her cell phone, being very resourceful there, as a light source. There you see it. The power at this hour we can tell you has been fully restored there at the state department and the other federal buildings, you know. Jake pepco says around 1 00 this afternoon there was a dip in the voltage and because of a problem with a transmission line that problem we know stemmed from a fire explosion at a switch irstation. And thats what kind of led to this Ripple Effect of power being out. We should point out they say at this point the department of Homeland Security no connection to terrorism. Good to know. Rene thank you so much. Joining me live from los angeles to discuss the Bigger Picture is sean henry, former fbi executive assistant director and president of Cyber Security firm crowd strike. Sean good to see you. Thankfully this doesnt appear to be a willful act, an attack. What can we learn about todays outage about the fragility of our infrastructure, especially in washington, d. C. The Nations Capital . Yeah jake. So i mean this is really indicative of the impact that some type of lack of resiliency of our infrastructure can have on washington, d. C. When you look at the white house and state department other buildings that we really rely on day to day from a National Security perspective, for hemthem to be out of power, certainly a cause for some concern. And our adversaries are looking at this. Theyve been targeting our infrastructure for a long time. Theyve made no point about it that they are going to target from a cyber perspective our infrastructure because they recognize how fragile it is and they know what the impact would be on our Critical Infrastructure if it was taking down. It would have a cascadening impack on our society. Shawn, as we have discussed, theres a huge disconnect between how much National Security officials and people like you worry about a cyber attack or successful attack on our electrical gripd and how much the public know bz this as a threat and how much they worry about it. Explain to our viewers, how bad could it get . What would a successful attack on our grid do to this country . Well, weve got a lot of vulnerability in hardware and software, and we have critical pieces of infrastructure that are increasingly being connected to the network, all of those connections provide an ingress for an adversary to get into those networks. And by manipulating code by inputting malicious software, adversaries can potentially disrupt or take control of some of the Computer Systems that run our critical infrom structure. There are people who dont take this seriously. Today on my way to this studio to come talk to you, i talked to a highlevel official in a State Government who expressed some concern to me about the Energy Sector in his state. And he said he talked to somebody in the department of energy, and the person in the department of energy said no need to worry about this energy is not a target of the adversary, which is absolutely wrong. We know for a fact that nation states, terrorist group shgz activists have identified the Critical Infrastructure, energy spifkt specifically, the power grid as a target. We have to be concern birthday that. Shawn, just a week ago president obama signed an executive order aimed at retaliation against foreign cyber attacks. What exactly would that executive order do and does it go far enough . I think thats a great step. Weve been calling for this for a long time. We called out the government and the prive sector certain nation states, russia china and iran specifically, nor some of the ingress into networks where theyve stolen intellectual property and research and development. And theres been no real retaliation or response from the government. What this zuf executive order is lays out financial actions sanctions that can be be taken against individuals, organizations or countries that are proven to have taken data out of the u. S. , u. S. Corporations or have launched some type of an attack or disruptive measures against Critical Infrastructure. And this is very similar to some of the actions weve taken against organized crime against major drug cartels, seizing assets and holding them financially accountable. At that its a good step. The devil is in the details. It will bear out in the future when we start to see some of these actions being put into place. Its a major cyber war going on that most people arent really paying attention to. Shawn henry, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Coming up next his lawyers say he was there when the murder happens, but that former new England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez did not pull the trigger. Our reporter inside the courtroom says he looked confident as the jury gets the case. Plus hes an oscar winning actor who not only stars in but directs his latest film. Russell crowe will join me live on set to tell me what it was like to be behind the camera for the first time in his important war movie. Thats ahead. And back when i wasnt eating right, she got me drinking boost. Its got a great taste and it helps give me the nutrition i was missing. Helping me stay more like me. [ female announcer ] boost complete nutritional drink has 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin d to support strong bones and 10 grams of protein to help maintain muscle. All with a delicious taste. Grandpa [ female announcer ] stay strong, stay active with boost. 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