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2016 Presidential Race; Families Want Answers to MH370 Mystery; Defunding Planned Parenthood; Puerto Rico Could Default Today on $70B Debt. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired August 03, 2015 - 10:30   ET

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


[10:29:50] M.J. LEE, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: So I think some of his GOP rivals are going to understand that and will probably try to highlight that on the debate stage to show the audience, you know, this is not someone who, you know, may not particularly be ready to really be a serious candidate yet.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Nia-Malika, to you. This ABC interview with Donald Trump yesterday getting a lot of attention, particularly for this part where he addressed the controversial tweet that he made about President Obama in November and the future for other black presidents. Let's roll it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So let me ask you about something you tweeted last year. You said of Barack Obama, "Sadly, because President Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won't see another black president for generations." What did you mean by that?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think that he has set a very low bar. And I think it's a shame for the African-American people. And by the way, he has done nothing for African-Americans. You look at what's going on with their income levels, you look at what's going on with their youth. I thought that he would be a great cheerleader for this country. I thought he'd do a fabulous job for the African-American citizens of this country. He has done nothing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Nia-Malika, what does that do to him as a candidate?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, you know, it tells us who Trump is as a candidate and, remember, he is king of the birthers in many ways. If you flash back to 2011 this is the kind of rhetoric about the President, questioning whether or not he should have really gotten into those ivy league schools, questioning whether or not he was, in fact, born in America.

So he's always had this kind of approach in talking about the President. His talking about the President in terms of how he's done for African-Americans. It actually is very much in line with what you heard from other Republicans. When they were reaching out to African- American voters in 2012, they were making the same kind of appeals and criticisms of Obama, those same kind of appeals to African-American voters saying are you better off now under this president than when you were four years ago.

But I think he is sounding a different note than the Republican party more generally. They very much want to expand their appeal to African-Americans. You heard Reince Priebus last week down at the Urban League talking about African-American voters. Jeb Bush was there as well.

He hasn't been a candidate so far who has made that kind of outreach. Part of his portfolio even though he does say that he would win the African-American vote, win the Latino vote. That seems to be very unlikely given all of his racialized rhetoric.

HARLOW: He asserted that again at the end of that ABC interview saying I will win the African-American vote, I will win the Hispanic vote. Very quickly to you, M.J., he did fire -- his campaign fired Sam Nunnberg, an aide, yesterday for a racially charged Facebook posts that Nunnberg says he did not post. So what does that do on the issue of race and Donald Trump as a candidate?

LEE: Right. I mean as you clarified, these are Facebook posts that a Nunnberg, the aide himself says that he did not write. I think that didn't really matter to the Trump campaign which gets that it only has a couple days before Trump takes the debate stage which is going to be a very important moment for him and for him proving himself to a wider audience.

I think that the Trump campaign understands that its GOP rivals have a long list of attacks that they can use against Trump, whether it's comments on immigration or John McCain, so I think this was not one more thing that they wanted on that list.

HARLOW: Yes. Nia-Malika Henderson, M.J. Lee, thank you both very much.

HENDERSON: Thank you -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Still to come, sometime this week investigators will begin trying to determine if that piece of plane debris found on an island is indeed part of MH370. The victims' families want and deserve answers as soon as possible.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[10:32:49] LIOW TIONG LAI, MALAYSIAN TRANSPORT MINISTER: The wreckage found earlier is confirmed to be the flaperon from a Boeing 777.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: That was a Malaysian transport minister earlier this morning confirming the debris found in a remote island in the Indian Ocean is in fact, from a Boeing 777, the same type of plane that went missing 17 months ago -- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. French officials will now try to determine if the wreckage came

from that doomed flight. All of this though doing very little to ease the pain felt by those grieving families.

CNN's Will Ripley has the latest from Beijing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Anger is growing for the families of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 demanding this meeting with Chinese transport officials.

"You just say whatever you want", she says. More than 500 days on, they're tired of crying, tired of waiting, waiting that's not over. Even if debris suspected to be from the missing plane offers new clues.

STEVE WANG, SON OF MHE70 PASSENGER: Just that -- it is (INAUDIBLE) anybody. It doesn't mean as anything more. They still cannot help you to find the plane and it still cannot help you find the truth about what happened and why.

RIPLEY: Steve Wang hasn't spoken his mother's name since the day she and 238 others disappeared. Wang keeps her photo private along with her last message asking him to bring her coat to the airport.

Do you still listen to the voice mail she left you?

WANG: Sometimes, sometimes.

RIPLEY: when did you listen to it last?

WANG: Wednesday evening.

RIPLEY: You listened to it on Wednesday when you heard about the debris.

WANG: Yes.

RIPLEY: New evidence washing ashore on Reunion Island forces families to face a new wave of agony.

"I feel so sorry for my two grandsons. What have they done wrong", asks this woman Jong Mei Ling? China's one child policy allowed Jong and her husband just one daughter who was flying home with their only son-in-law.

[10:39:56] "Not a minute has passed without me thinking of them," she says. Jong says she once tried getting information at the Malaysian Airlines office. Police detained her for eight hours.

More than 150 Chinese were on MH370. China's Communist Party discourages families from gathering and protesting as they did after the plane vanished. The assistance center in Beijing closed.

What do you need? WANG: The truth.

RIPLEY: Wang says the discovery of suspect the MH370 debris doesn't bring closure.

WANG: I think the only closure will come at the time when they find the plane, find everybody, and find the truth.

RIPLEY: His biggest fear, the search will slow. The spotlight will fade and the families of 239 people will be left as they are today, still waiting.

Will Ripley, CNN, Beijing.

HARLOW: Heart breaks for those families. Let's talk more about this with CNN safety analyst David Soucie and CNN contributor David Gallo -- he is the director of special projects for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Gentlemen -- thank you for being here.

One of the family members you just heard from said this one piece of debris cannot help them find the truth. Can experts though, David Soucie to your first, can they determine what might have happened to the plane from the information they can get from a piece of wreckage?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, not really give information as to what happened. What it might do is improve their ability to search for the aircraft because of the fact that it may narrow the search area if, indeed, this part came off of the aircraft as a result of a rapid descent. So there's something that can be gained from this certainly.

HARLOW: But certainly not. A lot of the information which they needed is what happened, especially in that cockpit and they need the voice recorders for that.

David Gallo, to you, when you talk about the search area for MH370, if indeed this piece is confirmed to be from MH370, what does this tell us about the search area? Does it help? Does it move the search area because as you see on your screen, this piece, 2,300 miles from the main search area.

DAVID GALLO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Hi, Poppy. Well, it floated almost assuredly it floated there from wherever the plane impacted the water if it is from MH370. So as David said, David Soucie it may help narrow the search area, it may shift it a tiny bit but it's not going to change the overall plan of where they're working now 2,300 or 2,500 miles away across the other side of the Indian Ocean.

HARLOW: But when you look, David Gallo, at this, 17 months later after the flight's disappearance would you expect a lot of the wreckage to be together in one place or would you expect that much of it has floated as perhaps this piece did 2,300 miles?

GALLO: Well, it almost follows exactly Air France. About within a week after the Air France disaster, Air France 447, there were thousands of small bits and big bits of plane on the surface of the ocean, but it wasn't for two more years that we actually found the main body of the wreckage which had sunk to the bottom, and I would imagine that that's the case here, too.

To find the black boxes, the engines, the landing gear, these are all heavy things that would sink to the bottom and that's the goal is to find that bit of wreckage that sank down to the bottom of the ocean.

HARLOW: Right. David Soucie, a lot of us are puzzled as to why the people analyzing this part in France, in Toulouse, France, at that laboratory are waiting until Wednesday to start doing that. It arrived over the weekend and these family members are desperate for answers. Why wait?

SOUCIE: I don't think they're waiting, Poppy. It's mostly about the fact that this is a forensic investigation and it is for criminal investigation at this point as well. It may very well be a criminal investigation, so, therefore, everyone who even touches it, the chain of custody has to be recorded.

Each person going into that laboratory, I went to that laboratory myself on occasion, and when you go in there it takes a day and a half just to get cleared to be the person that goes in there, the background checks, everything.

HARLOW: Can you tell us -- I mean you were there, you have a unique perspective, can you tell us a little bit about it, about the laboratory?

SOUCIE: Well, it is -- as I mentioned, it is a forensic laboratory. These are the best in the world. The people that are there don't mess around. We're not talking about some kind of just observational opinions like what we're able to give from afar. But this is a very in-depth forensic investigation. They'll be able to tell us exactly what stress each piece of the metal has been under and they will look at that microscopically to tell us how it was torn, how it was removed from the aircraft.

HARLOW: All right. David Soucie, David Gallo -- thank you for the expertise. Of course, we'll bring you more answers to these major questions as soon as we have them.

[10:44:42] Just ahead here in the NEWSROOM, future funding of Planned Parenthood could be on the line today in the senate. A live report from Washington -- next.

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HARLOW: Just hours from now the U.S. Senate is expected to vote on a bill to potentially remove federal funding from Planned Parenthood. Senator Rand Paul, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, says he introduced the defunding bill following what was captured in undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the price of fetal tissue for medical research. Emotions are so high on this issue some Republicans, including

Senator Ted Cruz, have vowed to shut down the federal government over it if necessary.

Let's go straight to Washington correspondent, Joe Johns, joins me now. Look, the White House addressed this, Josh Earnest coming out on this and quote, "A writer that would on whole sale basis defund Planned Parenthood would draw a presidential veto."

[10:50:00] What's the overall plan here from the Republicans that want to see Planned Parenthood totally defunded from any federal money?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think there's a big different between a plan an objective and policy at this stage and there's a difference between and Policy and policy.

So what we're seeing right now is an uphill battle for this measure, not only because Republican leadership needs 60 votes to get this thing over the finish line, but also because of, as you mentioned, the President's veto threat. But what is clear is they feel like they have to do something simply because of the videos that you mentioned which anecdotally talking to some Republicans around the Capitol, it seems it's really picked up steam at least on the right.

So the question of messaging, the question of doing something because now Republicans are in control of both the House and the Senate, and their constituency expects them to set the agenda.

Planned Parenthood for its part is in the position of defending itself along with a lot of the pro-abortion forces and Planned Parenthood pointing out that it's mainly contraception that that organization does, only 3 percent of their services are directed to abortion clients.

At the bottom line, this is the type of situation that you're going to hear a lot more about here on Capitol Hill simply because we're moving into an election year. There's also the question of whether those 18 Republicans in the House along with people like Ted Cruz over in the senate side can push this thing very far once we get down to the issue of funding for the government at the end of September. Expect to hear a lot more of it. There's not a lot of hope here that this thing is going to pass tonight, Poppy.

HARLOW: And will this ultimately lead to a fight over another potential government shutdown? We'll see. Joe Johns, thank you.

Checking some other top stories for you tonight 14 GOP presidential candidates not including Donald Trump will take part in the first voters' forum on C-SPAN. The forum is not a debate. It's a chance for the candidates to answer a series of brief questions from local radio hosts. That is at 7:00 Eastern tonight.

Period. More than 100 people have died, thousands more have been displaced because of heavy monsoon rain and flooding in India. Officials are now saying the situation is, quote, grim, as people are flocking trying to find shelter in relief camps. Rescue and disaster forces have been deployed. They're working to help those people in very hard hit areas.

Still to come here in the NEWSROOM, more than one in every ten people in Puerto Rico is unemployed. That coupled with a huge $70 billion in outstanding debt leads to another crisis for Puerto Rico.

You're going to want to hear this because it matters for American investors.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:57:23] HARLOW: Puerto Rico is very likely to go into default by the end of today after the island missed a $58 million debt payment over the weekend. The governor there warning the economy is dangerously close to entering a, quote, "death spiral".

Let's talk about it with CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans. Bottom line, they've had a lot of problems for a long time, very high unemployment. What does it mean for American investors?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Look a lot of the American investors who may have had exposure to this once debt was downgraded to junk status, you know, a lot of bondsman couldn't hold it. But this was something that had really good, you know, tax treatment: So a lot of people had exposure to Puerto Rico.

This has been called America's Greece because it's right here. This is a big problem a lot of debt from $70 million in debt it's going to have to be restructured. And really the people of Puerto Rico have been bearing the brunt of this so far, quite frankly. You know, you talk about the unemployment rate, it's like 12 percent there, it's like double what it is here.

HARLOW: And that's the official number.

ROMANS: That's the official number -- very, very difficult. They've had a brain drain. They have people leaving for a long, long time so they have a tax base that's shrinking as its debt is going up, poverty is rising and the age of its population is rising. That makes it that much more difficult in terms of the math of running a country.

HARLOW: What about the entity here. When you talk about this, some are pointing to a potential strategic default on this payment because it's not like they're defaulting to a hedge fund that could sue them. This is sort of like a big pension fund that a lot of individual folks paid into.

ROMANS: Right. So these are individual people in the country, in Puerto Rico. Look, in Puerto Rico people through their credit unions have exposure to this and they're less likely make to sue than maybe a big, rich hedge fund. When you look at our story on CNN Money, you can see we kind of in two minutes wrap through all the different angles. And one of the interesting angles here is that it's the people of Puerto Rico, not necessarily Wall Street banks that will suffer most by a default here.

So this is a very difficult situation, and it's a reminder I think when you look at public debt and public finances, we've looked at some other states that have had big issues, but the states have different treatments than Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico technically can't go to the IMF like a country could --

HARLOW: Like Greece.

ROMANS: Right. But it's also not officially a state.

HARLOW: And state like Detroit filed bankruptcy.

ROMANS: So it's really in a unique position here. The governor there has said that the economy is in a death spiral -- Poppy. He said we don't have the money. Now you will see them starting to strategically pay certain bills and not other bills as they try to figure out how to work this out.

HARLOW: It's a great way to put it. A sad reality though but our Greece basically. Christi Romans -- thank you very much.

Again, you can go to CNNMoney.com, you can learn all about why this matters for you -- right there. Puerto Rico's crisis in two minutes

[11:00:02] Thank you so much for being with me today. I'm Poppy Harlow. Carol Costello is back tomorrow.

"AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan starts now.