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New Russia Sanctions "Teed Up"; Spokesman Gets Clinton Redo; Bluefin On 12th Mission To Find Missing Flight 370; Pope Francis Stirs Communion Debate

Aired April 24, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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

JULIANNA GOLDMAN, "BLOOMBERG NEWS": There won't be a change of behavior before they get to this next round of sanctions, but they have kind of been outgamed over the last week. Geneva, the accord last week, it really bought Putin some time here. So, yes, it looks like this next round of sanctions will be within a matter of days. We are not talking weeks. Possibly by the end of this week.

And then we're probably looking at other rounds of sanctions and the big issue to look at is this threat of the sectorial sanctions. Hitting Russia's gas industry, hitting the energy industry, hitting the banking sector, that's where Putin will really feel the pain because ultimately for him it comes down to his own stature in the world and that is based on Russia's economic standing.

JOHN KING, HOST, CNN'S "INSIDE POLITICS": That is the process you just laid out if you understand the bureaucracy, that's months. They don't see any short-term resolution here.

GOLDMAN: You heard Hillary Clinton saying that the U.S. and Europeans, it's going to require some patience on their part.

KING: Peter, do you see any space between the former secretary of state and former boss, current president, you of office so she's free to use different language sometimes. The president has to say we're coordinating, working, teed up, but got work to do. She can say tighten and widen. Is that a difference or maybe the rhetoric is a little tougher?

PETER HAMBY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Hillary Clinton isn't just a former secretary of state. She's one of the most famous people in the world and a representative of the people of the United States to people around the world no matter what her position is. On this specific instance there's not a ton of daylight that we're seeing.

But, you know, she does choose her words carefully and the only time that I can remember so far that there's been a ton of daylight or she's caused a headache for the operation on the foreign policy front was when she made that holocaust comparison in a private fundraiser in California a few weeks ago. So I think she learned from that and is being fairly cautious when it comes to American foreign policy.

KING: You say she chooses her words carefully. Let's pick something else, if you look on the conservative blogosphere and read it including we can show you an image from the Drudge Report. There have been a lot of conservatives and conservative suggesting that Hillary Clinton would be too old to run for president in 2016. Treading a little bit on dangerous ground here. In that same appearance last night she didn't reference herself directly, but she talked about age discrimination against women.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: A lot of women who drop out of the workforce in their late 20s and their 30s, they raise their children, you know, their brains have not atrophied.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Their brains have not atrophied. Look, you know, in some ways you could say that had nothing to do with the criticism of her but she's very smart. Whether you like her or not. She understands, she pays attention. Wasn't an accident.

GOLDMAN: She brought that up on her own. It wasn't part of the question and answer session. So sounds like she's sort of laying the groundwork, maybe not so subtly for some campaign arguments going forward.

KING: If you look at the demographics, Peter, in the last couple of presidential elections, the Republicans, I'm going to be kind, have had a huge crisis. It's actually worse than that. Trying to get the votes of anybody of color. Why would they risk now alienating older white women who are part of the Republican base by saying Hillary Clinton is too old?

HAMBY: Yes, we were talking about this before the show. The entire reason -- not the entire reason, much of the reason Democrats have been so successful on the national level is that the share of the white vote in this country is declining and Democrats are absolutely cleaning up among the parts of the population that are growing, Hispanics in particular. So, yes, to your point, I don't think this is necessarily helpful thing for all conservative blogs to be flogging this, she's too old to be president thing. You know, I just don't think it's good for them.

KING: My mom raised seven kids at home and went back into the workforce. I'll stay out of endorsing Hillary Clinton, but a lot of women who raise their kids and go back to the workforce. Former secretary of state is dead right about that. Yesterday, we had a laugh at Jen Psaki's expense. Jen Psaki is John Kerry's spokeswoman over at the State Department.

She was asked a technical question that was really a question about Hillary Clinton. What was her response? Could you cite something good that happened at an additive in the State Department at a time when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, Jen Psaki, she fumbled. She didn't have a good answer. Yesterday, she had a do over.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON: And I wanted to just highlight, as an example of how effective this process was during the first term, what some of the examples of how we're implementing it are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Too much so about this, but clean-up on aisle four.

GOLDMAN: Doing it with humor, too. She's having a little fun with it there. I just shows you how crazy the appetite is now, anything having to do with Hillary Clinton, from supporters or detractors and ultimately her record at the State Department, the narrative is someway is going to be defined by the book that she has coming out next month. And also not by the internal review processes that this question was about but the Asia pivot, Iran, Syria, the Russian reset.

HAMBY: To some extent I think a lot of the criticism Republicans have certainly been seizing on this trying to find every instance of Hillary supporters or Clinton herself not being able to identify what she's done in the State Department, but I'm not sure most Americans could identify what any secretary of state has done and this is what's more interesting to me is just how this is any bold point here, how she's going to manage, you know, her relationship with the administration if she decides to run. Foreign policy is at the end of the day dictated by the White House and how she answers for that over the next few years is going to be the intriguing reference.

KING: We will see some of that in the book that comes out in June. Warren Buffett is one of the wealthiest individuals in the United States. He's been very helpful to the current president of the United States. Barack Obama on a number of issues designed to help lower income Americans. Warren Buffett, for example, has said raise taxes on me, the rich. He said let's expand the earned income tax credit, which helps low income families.

But listen here with CNN's Poppy Harlow, Warren Buffett asked, should he help the president maybe raise the minimum wage?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARREN BUFFET: The real question is, are more people going to be better off, you know, if it is raised? I don't know the answer to that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Is that an I'm not an economist or I'm punting?

GOLDMAN: Might be some of -- some punning and also saying to the administration, look, don't make this the Buffett route like they did with the tax issue. I'm not sure what his secretary would think about that. Remember the Buffett rule from a few years ago the administration used to argue for a higher taxes on the wealthy/

HAMBY: Yes, I mean, I think the administration and the Democrats probably realize that they have to keep their base motivated in this election. I sat down with Mike Pidoras, the political director at the AFL-CIO, the big labor organization, who said minimum wages should be what Democrats should only be talking about in this election. But again, that's a labor guy. Warren Buffett is a business guy. That's the division you are seeing right there.

KING: Julianna, Peter, thanks for coming in early. I know they are both soccer fans. As we go back to New York, you know, presidential trips can be a grind especially when you go to Asia, the time difference and all that. Look at the video here. President Obama having a little bit of fun. This is Honda's trademark robot. What do we think? Is he any good?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: I think he's pretty good. The robot is a better dancer than maybe the robot is at soccer. I think he's -- I think he's pretty good. Would you be able to beat a robot at soccer, John?

KING: Robot has a little spring in his step there. My knees might not be as flexible.

BOLDUAN: Right, exactly. We might need those robotic knees sometime soon.

KING: No, the original parts, they still work.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: I respect John King laying off the Yankee controversy, by the way.

BOLDUAN: He's being nice. It's too easy.

KING: One game at a time. We'll let baseball deal with the pine tar. I have no pine tar.

BOLDUAN: I checked. I was looking at your neck to see. Thanks, John.

KING: Take care, guys.

BOLDUAN: Coming up next on NEW DAY, the Bluefin-21 searching the last 10 percent of the focused search area. They called it the highest probability they had. So far, nothing. Our experts will weigh in.

CUOMO: Did you hear what appropriate Francis did? He gives a personal message to a divorcee being heard around the world. We're live at the Vatican with the latest.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Overnight, the Bluefin-21 started the 12th mission to try to find the plane. It's searching the last 10 percent of the narrowed down search area. That area was calculated based on where the pings from the data recorders were last detected. Now, some are wondering if those calculations were correct and if experts should try again.

David Gallo is here, CNN analyst and director of special projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Let us discuss it while you are here. Good morning.

DAVID GALLO, CNN ANALYST: Good morning, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Let's look at this. This is that object of interest. You are an expert at this kind of things so I want you to look at this and tell me -- I'll stay in my lane as a news anchor.

GALLO: Lacking any evidence and if this washed up on a beach in Western Australia it would get your attention. It's got the rivets. Looks like the skin of an airplane. You can't fault anyone for drawing attention to it.

PEREIRA: Mary Schiavo said fiberglass connected to it doesn't point to it being --

GALLO: Right. You would have to know what's beneath that skin, but from the outside this part would certainly get your attention.

PEREIRA: But again, they're saying it is not connected.

GALLO: Right.

PEREIRA: Now authorities are saying it's not connected to Flight 370. All right, let's talk about the efforts, deep under water. We know we've talked about before in our oceanographic folks to talk about the currents and how the pings can be distorted under the ocean.

GALLO: Sure.

PEREIRA: Recap that for us for folks just tuning in.

GALLO: You have an underwater mountain like the zenith plateau south of the area they're looking at. The scale is distorted because this is a couple of miles of ocean water.

PEREIRA: A couple of miles.

GALLO: Yes. This is a tiny ship way up there and this is a tiny vehicle hanging down by a long cable. This is also much bigger than it really is. This would be a tiny spec on this type of topography. So what we're looking at is the sound emanating from here. Most people think the sound would come directly to the listening device but that's not true. This sound is bouncing off topography like this and getting bent around by ocean currents and ocean thermal structures so it's got all different paths that the ocean is taking that sound.

PEREIRA: Many say the ocean does play tricks with sound. I think this gives us an idea. It occurred to me those currents change. So from one day to the next you're not going to have a consistent --

GALLO: From hour to hour, the sun is constantly heating up and cooling down so ocean is constantly heating up and cooling down. The thermal structure is changing.

PEREIRA: It makes it challenging then if a ping is detected to know that it's going to be the exact same place where it's then detected again.

GALLO: Exactly right. Sure. I mean, the ideal circumstances if you're in the same place you're going to hear it again. That's not the way it works.

PEREIRA: Is there a way to test conditions so that they can sort of get a game plan going?

GALLO: Yes, I think many people think you can go out there and recreate that.

PEREIRA: You can't really recreate it, can you?

GALLO: Right. So you can go to a laboratory and set up conditions where you have maybe say we have a pinger at this depth and there's a mountain like this and then we have various --

PEREIRA: Let me get you to the drawing tool again.

GALLO: So we have various thermal structures. Layer of warm water here.

PEREIRA: You can recreate that model.

GALLO: Yes, you can do that on a computer and then make the sound happen and see what happens.

PEREIRA: Here's one of the challenges though. This topography is unfamiliar to us. We don't have this mapped in the South Indian Ocean.

GALLO: Yes, that's exactly right.

PEREIRA: That changes it for us. We don't know what we're dealing with.

GALLO: If you know the topography you can model it better in a computer but not knowing it, you really don't know where all the valleys are or all the peaks and what's sediment, what's not.

PEREIRA: Now in terms of the folks they're bringing in, we know there's an international team being assembled. It's a specific type of expert that's going to understand this type of thing.

GALLO: Acoustic experts especially underwater.

PEREIRA: Do you know if they're involved in the team?

GALLO: I would imagine they are. That's the kind of person you need, someone that understands the environment.

PEREIRA: We're looking back at the pings for a second. We know that you're instrumental in 447 Air France.

GALLO: Right.

PEREIRA: We know there were no pings, but there was surface debris and you know roughly where the plane was last.

GALLO: Sure.

PEREIRA: Even then searching in the wrong place.

GALLO: People said, you know, Air France you had the debris. The debris, we had a whole team of people retrodrifting it. Where did it come from because that was going to be the center of the hay stack? They were fairly confident. We're pretty confident the plane in that box. We spent two months inside that box day after day, night after night that team was out there. Found nothing at the end of the two months. It does -- it's difficult to rebound from that.

PEREIRA: So we could be searching in the wrong spot and it's not unreasonable to shift it again then.

GALLO: It's very -- wouldn't surprise anyone to find out that these pings were not necessarily from the plane or they come up empty handed after this search.

PEREIRA: Do you think these are from the plane?

GALLO: You know, got to go by what the Australians are telling us the ping rates were right, frequency is right. A lot of arrows point to this spot. Got to go with that. It's pretty much the only evidence we have that the plane is in this part of the ocean.

PEREIRA: Ten percent left for the Bluefin to search in this search area. We'll see what they expand and what other tools they bring in. David Gallo, really a pleasure. Thanks so much -- Chris, Kate.

BOLDUAN: All right, Michaela, thanks so much.

Coming up next on NEW DAY, is Pope Francis breaking with Catholic tradition? What he reportedly told a woman who is married to a divorced man? What she can do and what the Vatican is saying about it. We are live with the details straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Welcome back. Pope Francis continues to rattle the cage of the righteous. Here is the situation. He's on the phone with an Argentine woman, one of the cold calls to Catholics that he makes and reportedly told her she could receive communion even though she's married to a divorced man. Now if this is true, it will be a huge departure from church law.

Let's bring in Delia Gallagher. She is CNN's Vatican correspondent live from Rome. Let's deal with the first part. Delia, do we believe this was actually said? Is this report accurate?

DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Chris, we know that the Vatican is confirming that a call was made. They will not discuss the details of the conversation, which they say are private. So the report we have only from the woman who says that the pope said she was absolved of her sins and could, indeed, receive communion. CUOMO: Now the clever indication to me is that the Vatican also said you cannot interpret anything that happened on the call as a comment about church teaching, which to me is a suggestion that he may well have said it because the Vatican doesn't like these type of departures. The rule, Delia, talk to us about what the rule is. If you are divorced or married to someone who has been divorced as opposed to annulled, which is the Catholic equivalent, what is the rule?

GALLAGHER: The rule is if you are divorced, you can receive communion. If you are remarried, you cannot. If you're remarried, that relationship is considered adulterous. It's a rule which is based on various passages in the bible and on centuries of church teaching. It's a rule which is being debated at the Vatican right now, which is why the pope's call is so significant.

Because Pope Francis has already indicated he would like the cardinals to look at this issue and see how divorce and remarried Catholics might be allowed to receive communion. But they haven't pronounced on it yet. So the pope's call is significant in that respect.

CUOMO: So my understanding is at least locally, if you're divorced, even if you're not remarried you can be given a hard time and be counseled not to because it means being divorced, which is technically not allowed, puts you in a state of grave sin. All of that is just dogma. What winds up mattering here is Pope Francis trying to move the bar of what is supposed to matter most in the faith. What kind of reaction are you getting on that score from the Vatican?

GALLAGHER: Well, what Pope Francis has said about the issue is that it's a moment for mercy. He recognizes the difficulties of divorced Catholics and of divorced and remarried Catholics. He, in general, wants to be more inclusive. There are cardinals who are also in favor of looking at this issue. The problem, Chris, is that it's a century's long theological issue. So they've got to figure out what is going to be the rule if they are going to change it. They're set to discuss it in October at the Vatican and again in 2015. So if there is any change in terms of this church teaching, we won't know about it really until 2015.

CUOMO: My prediction is this may be the first example of Pope Francis actually making a change that is reflected in teaching. Because if his message is we have to be inclusive and be about mercy and love because that's Jesus' message, no better way to prove it than this. Let me ask you about this, the new canonization about Pope John Paul II and John XXIII should be a big deal. How are those being received?

GALLAGHER: There is a lot of anticipation. We're expecting millions of pilgrims to come to Rome for this double canonization. It's a significant time because I think the pope is choosing these two particular popes to be cannonized together which is what he would like to model, John XXIII opened the second Vatican Council, which modernized the Catholic Church. That's something in the spirit of Pope Francis saying he's the son of the church. He wants to be faithful to tradition but also be open to change. CUOMO: It will be interesting because, of course, John Paul II got painted with that brush about the scandal and what he knew and didn't know. Always interesting to have a modern day person cannonized. It will be very interesting to see how it's received going forward. Delia, thank you very much. I look forward to talking to you more about this as we go forward -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up next on NEW DAY, war of words. Russian President Vladimir Putin addressing attacks in Eastern Ukraine this morning and President Obama saying more sanctioned are teed up. An update on the situation that has turned deadly when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Breaking overnight, three American hospital workers shot and killed in Afghanistan while they're volunteering at a children's hospital. You will not believe who officials say is behind the murders. We're live with the latest.

BOLDUAN: Final search. Australian and U.S. teams almost done with the first underwater search area for Flight 370 with no signs of the missing plane. Where do they move next? We're live with the latest.

PEREIRA: Also breaking overnight, the FDA taking a giant step to regulate e-cigarettes as well as cigars and pipes. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us live with what this means for America's health.

CUOMO: Your NEW DAY continues right now.