out for the first time about some shocking revelations that cremated remains of american war dead were simply dumped in landfills. i m wolf blitzer. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com it may have been the most awkward 53 seconds of the presidential campaign so far and certainly the most widely seen. texas governor rick perry s brain freeze during last night s republican presidential debate was the most viewed video on youtube in the united states earlier today. if you haven t seen it, you re about to as we look ahead to what happens to rick perry s campaign now. jim acosta is in auburn hills, michigan. the scene of perry s monumental stumble. how does he recover from this? wolf, after last night s debate and rick perry s meltdown in michigan, the candidate and his campaign seem to have a new strategy. get the voters to laugh with him and not at him. commerce, education and the what s the third one there? let s see i
and so it s with great respect that i speak of him and proud to say that i worked for him. it s been a seismic cascade of events since last weekend s arrest of a former penn state defensive coordinator on charges of raping and molesting a number of other boys. two of the university officials are charged with failure to report those crimes. paterno is charged with nothing, but says he wishes that he had done more than simply tell his superiors what an assistant reported to him back in 2002. i want to go now to penn state campus and cnn s jason carroll. jason, we know it was a pretty rough night last night. what s been the atmosphere on campus today. reporter: things much, much calmer out here today. vast difference from what was experienced out here last night by many. so many of the students trying to get a handle on things today. just about half-an-hour ago some students gathered just behind us here trying to speak out, trying to speak in terms of the victims. but just a
they simply did not happen. the fact is, these anonymous allegations are false, and now the democrat machine in america has brought forth a troubled woman to make false accusations. was it tough last week? yes. is it s that been tough the last couple of days? yes. but you see, that s one thing about herman cain that i think a lot of the american people know and that is, just because it s tough is no reason for me not to do what i feel like i have to do. because of what the american people have said to me, during these turbulent times, we will get through this. we will get through this. sometimes feisty news conference that ended moments ago, mr. cain said he cannot recall ever meeting the chicago whom who says cain upgraded his room to a suite, made an aggressive and unwanted sexual advance. with respect to the most recent accusation, i have never acted inappropriately with anyone. period. i saw ms. allred and her client yesterday in that news conference for the very fir
victims and charges could be coming. this is moving far beyond sandusky and threatens to taint the golden legacy of head coach joe paterno. joe paterno s tenure as a coach will be over soon and penn state is planning his exit. the time cites two people briefed on conversations with penn state officials who says the board of trustees has yet to determine the timing. if this is a sign of anything, paterno was scheduled to hold his weekly news conference about an hour ago. reporters including our jason carroll were there ready to ask paterno about sandusky, the rape and abuse charges and what paterno knew. that news conference was canceled. instead penn state issued this statement saying due to the on going legal circumstances centered around the recent allegations and charges, we have determined that today s press conference cannot be held and will not be rescheduled. so the big issue still remains who knew what for how long and how was the situation with sandusky dealt with? p
italy s prime minister. i want to start with jason carroll. jason, we know today s weekly news conference with the legendary joe paterno canceled. the new york times reporting that he has days, maybe weeks numbers. what are you hearing? well, for one thing, let me tell you just literally, we have a comment from joe paterno, caught up with him outside of his house, i m reading this for the first time. i know you all have a lot of good questions. i want to answer them. we re going to have more of his comments coming up. also, i can tell you with regard to that report that he would be stepping aside or retiring. his son, scott paterno, tweeted something a few hours ago basically saying those reports were premature, according to his tweet. we live in the world of twitter now. no discussions about his retirement. that is what we re being told now at this point in terms of whether or not joe paterno for his role in all this, whether he will step down. as you know, he was schedu