Inventor Admits Dismembering Journalist, Denies Murder; Spacey Accused Of Sexual Advance Toward 14-Year-Old
VAUSE: Well, a Danish inventor has admitted he dismembered the body of a Swedish journalist but insist he did not kill her. Kim Wall was researching a story on Peter Madsen and after boarding his privately- built submarine, she went missing.</s>SESAY: Madsen now says Wall died from carbon monoxide poisoning inside the sub while he was on deck, but earlier Madsen claimed she died after hitting her head on a hatch cover. Madsen's trial is scheduled for March.</s>VAUSE: Okay. Lesson of the day after BuzzFeed published a bombshell sexual assault allegation against actor Kevin Spacey, Netflix has announced it's pulling the plug on his show House of Cards which is filming its sixth season.</s>ALONSO DURALDE, AUTHOR AT THEWRAP: Thank you very much.</s>SESAY: So here's the thing, after years of telling journalist and basically the world that his sexuality is nobody's business, that nobody should care, it's just gossip, Kevin Spacey decides that faced with allegation of sexual misconduct, now is the time to come out and say that he is gay. Let me just put up on screen the reaction from one Billy Eichner, an actor and comedian. I know that you've seen this. He said this, "Kevin Spacey has just invented something that has never existed before, a bad time to come out." Here's my question here, Alonso, is this a definition of opportunism?</s>DURALDE: Yes, this is a grossly cynical move. This is -- this is classic, "Hey, look over there." Because yes, Spacey, you're right, he's been very off non-forthcoming for decades now, coy about that --</s>SESA: And aggressively toward some journalists.</s>DURALDER: Oh, definitely angry with some journalists, you know, making little slight sides about it when hosting the Tony Awards.</s>SESAY: That's right.</s>DURALDE: And now suddenly when someone comes forward with this allegation of sexual misconduct, of, you know, sexual misconduct against a minor.</s>SESAY: Yes.</s>DURALDE: Now suddenly he's gay and that becomes the story and shockingly for some news outlets, not CNN, I give you guys point for that.</s>SESAY: Thank you.</s>DURALDE: The original headline was, "Oh, Kevin Spacey comes out." I was like, "No, that's not the story here. The story here is that Kevin Spacey tried to have sex with a 14-year-old."</s>SESAY: Yes, and let's be part of the Spacey statement because we -- obviously we just read the first tweet but then he get along to say that -- and we'll put it up on screen, "This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life. I have loved and had romantic encounter with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man." Now, there's several things that are troubling about your statement. I'm going to take your side, but you tell me what you think. From some of the reaction that I'm reading it is conflating it would seem and he's deeply inappropriate behavior as told by Anthony Rapp with homosexuality so a minor --</s>DURALDE: Correct. A long time bugaboo that they -- that people try to conflate that all gay men our predatory and that all gay men are pedophiles, neither which is true. And on top of that he tries to use the "I was drunk" excuse which as one of my favorite tweets that I -- it says, "I've been very, very gay and very, very drunk and I have never hit on a teenager."</s>SESAY: Yes. And then there's a whole, "I choose now to live as a gay man." Do you want to take that?</s>DURALDE: Well, you know, using the word "choose" I think is a really bad red flag because that digs up the whole idea that somehow, you know, being gay is a choice, I mean, it's not. And, you know, yes, he can certainly choose to be out now for having chosen to not be for a long time. But Kevin Spacey has lived as a gay man for a long time.</s>SESAY: And a lot of people have known that.</s>DURALDE: A lot of people have known about it. He -- his friends have known, his co-workers have known. This isn't a sudden thing. He is choosing to make this public now which is a very different thing and he's choosing now to do that because he want to talk about anything but the Anthony Rapp story.</s>SESAY: GLAAD, you know, the media organization -- media monitoring organization founded by LGBT, individuals that monitor the media basically said that -- they put out a tweet as posted by "The New York Times" coming story should not be used to deflect from allegations of sexual assault, but you touched on this earlier that a lot of people in the media fell for it. What does that say about the media?</s>DURALDE: You know, it says that this publicists obviously knew what they were doing when they timed to this thing but it's a -- it's a terrible choice to make and, you know, I -- but what really becomes dispiriting about all this is that because he has been holding back this information for so long and because BuzzFeed, Adam Vary has been working on this story for quite a while, they approached Spacey many times for some kind of comment, as soon as the BuzzFeed story goes live they released this.</s>SESAY: So they had the statement ready?</s>DURALDE: So they had it -- they had the statement ready and then all -- and the -- and if you look at the long game, Spacey was, I think, holding back on this information, waiting for this kind of accusation to come forward.</s>SESAY: He does say, as you point out, holding back, waiting for this accusation, this kind of accusations come forth. "This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life." There are other stories out there. He touches on that.</s>DURALDE: You know, there's never one. As we've learned anything from what's been happening with Bill Cosby, with Harvey Weinstein, with Donald Trump, there's never just one. So I think that he's trying to get ahead with whoever's going to come following Anthony Rapp's would set with their own stories, with his -- with this ludicrous statement which is just -- it's offensive, it's cynical, and it's a distraction.</s>SESAY: House of Cards, it's a -- that's a -- it's done, they say, this had --- it had nothing to do with it.</s>DURALDE: And yes, for the -- what you hear from people who said that that was something that was long in the works, but frankly, I would've loved to have seen President Robin Wright.</s>SESAY: Your thoughts on what this means -- this means going forward.</s>DURALDE: You know, I don't know. Somebody asked me today, "Is Kevin Spacey over?" And a part of me likes to think yes but part of me thinks, well, you know, Hollywood forgave Mel Gibson. So everything is on the table.</s>SESAY: Interesting, which we'll see but I guess, that we'll only going to answer that question truthfully, if more -- if and when --</s>DURALDE: Absolutely, who else is going to have something to say about this?</s>SESAY: Still what they have to say.</s>DURALDE: Yes.</s>SESAY: Yes. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for the great conversation.</s>VAUSE: Well, next on CNN NEWSROOM. Now the toughest day on the Trump presidency played out on Fox news. First came denial, then anger, bargaining, in the hands of depression, finally acceptance. The five stages of grief.