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11 Killed in Deadliest Anti-Semitic Attack in U.S. History; Rescue & Recovery Operation Underway for Victims of Indonesia Plane Crash; Hate Crimes on the Rise in Trump Administration. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired October 29, 2018 - 07:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RABBI JONATHAN PERLMAN, NEW LIGHT CONGREGATION: What happened will not break us. We will continue to thrive and sing and worship.

[07:00:16] ROBIN BLOOM FRIEDMAN, FRIEND OF VICTIMS: She had a lot of years left. It's not something we'll ever be able to wrap our heads around.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have disturbed minds with hate in their heart and guns in their hands.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Donald Trump has, in effect, unleashed the dogs of hatred in this country.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think I've been toned down, if you want to know the truth.

KIRSTJEN NIELSEN, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: The president has made it extraordinarily clear that we will never allow political violence to take root.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We cannot tolerate these kinds of acts of violence. It's time to stop.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. We are following breaking news this morning. A passenger plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Indonesia's capital. At this hour, there's a frantic search for survivors, 189 people on board. We're going to have much more on this coming up.

But this morning, the United States of America is frankly shaken, mourning the loss of 11 lives after a hate-filled crime. The city of Pittsburgh is coming together in a vigil to remember those shot and killed while attending shabbat services at the Tree of Life synagogue Saturday. This is the deadliest attack targeting Jews in U.S. history.

CAMEROTA: Later today, the suspect will be in court. He is facing 29 charges, 11 of which could carry the death penalty.

Investigators say the suspect told officers he wanted all Jews to die.

President Trump says he plans to travel to Pittsburgh, but we do not have exact details of that trip at this hour. The president issued a statement condemning anti-Semitism. He also ordered flags to fly at half-staff to honor all of the victims.

BERMAN: This massacre capped a week where 14 mail bombs were sent around the country to targets of President Trump. And in Kentucky, two African-Americans were killed by a gunman at a supermarket. We're now learning he tried to enter a black church minutes before that attack.

We want to discuss the state of this country right now, the condition we are all in, with CNN political analyst David Gregory; former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Elie Honig; and assistant professor to the University of Virginia and co-host of the A-12 podcast, which explores the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, Nicole Hemmer.

And I want to start with you, Nicole, because of that and something the president said after this massacre in Pittsburgh, the killing of 11 Jews. He said, "This is something you wouldn't believe would still be going on."

Well, maybe unless you paid attention to what happened in Charlottesville, and what was said in Charlottesville, which was overt, out loud deadly anti-Semitism.

NICOLE HEMMER, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: One of the more puzzling things about what happened in Charlottesville was how overt the anti-Semitism was over the whole summer of 2017. And how much it hasn't stayed part of our analysis, what happened, you know, we have a tendency to think about white supremacy as primarily about anti-black racism. And of course, that's the core of it.

But anti-Semitism is quite important to the racism of the alt-right and white nationalists today, and I think we really need to keep an eye on that and understand it and keep it central to the story. And I think now, unfortunately, more people are going to become aware of that.

CAMEROTA: And Nicole, just one more question on that topic: Why do you think that it's so, we don't focus on that? Is it just that there's so happening, that we can only focus on so many things, or something else going on?

HEMMER: I do think that there is something else going on, and I think it's that primarily we think of anti-Semitism as something America fixed, like, 50 years ago, that this was a problem that we solved and that Jews in America largely became accepted and, in many ways, became accepted as white. Ad so fitting them into modern white supremacy is something that people don't necessarily have a language for.

BERMAN: Anti-Semitic attacks rose 57 percent in 2017, in 2017. That's one year, the biggest increase in one year ever on record.

And Elie, one of the reasons we brought you here is just to give us some perspective on what happened this weekend. This attack at the synagogue, this shooter, this deranged man made clear that one of the reasons he was going to murder these people, ranging in age as old as 97 years old, was because of HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an organization which helps immigrants come to the United States. Initially, it was to help Jews come to the United States. Now it's all immigrants. Your grandparents were among them?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So John, yes, people all over the globe and the country have been affected by this in deep ways, personal ways. And everyone feels their own sense of connection.

For me, the connection is two of my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. They survived the concentration camps and were refugees in Europe and came here in 1949 and settled in North Jersey. And HIAS was instrumental in helping them settle here.

And I think that mission carries on to today, and it's sort of -- it's hard to comprehend that this group became one of the spurs for this person to go in and shoot up the synagogue. His last tweet, he says, you know, HIAS is funding and sponsoring this caravan, paraphrasing, which is about to come in and attack our people; and it's so contrary to the mission of HIAS and, I think, the Jewish people, which is to express compassion and charity.

CAMEROTA: David, your thoughts.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, and HIAS, you know, HIAS reflects a deeply-held Jewish religious principle, that we should love the stranger as -- as ourselves, because we were once strangers in the land of Egypt. That's from the Bible.

But that is, of course, also an American secular virtue of this country and deeply-held belief.

And what's so virulent about this kind of anti-Semitism is that it targets the outsider -- the refugee, the immigrant -- as, you know, as a criminal, someone coming to attack us. These are actually words that the president uses, as well.

And then, as this hate-filled, you know, murderer used, then to say, "Oh, and by the way, then there's a -- not only are the immigrants bad, but there's a Jewish power structure behind them." That is the essence of anti-Semitism that is so dangerous.

And what really worries me about how the president expresses this is this ignorance that, "Jeez, I can't believe this is happening in this day and age." Well, he should know, and he should also take responsibility for the language, the dog whistles he's used that are anti-Semitic tropes, because these ignorant people out there, who are anti-Semites and racists, they know that. They know going back to "Mein Kampf." They know what the tropes are to attack Jews.

BERMAN: Go ahead. CAMEROTA: Well, Nicole, and yet, you know, the president has talked about Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and his daughter, who converted to Judaism. And so there's different messages that you get from the podium and the president. How do you square those?

HEMMER: Well, a couple of different things. First of all, I think that the president understands the usefulness of anti-Semitism wherever his personal beliefs lie.

But we also saw in Charlottesville and elsewhere that, in times of tragedy or even when accused of things like racism or anti-Semitism, the president tends to say one sort of covering or protective statement and then quickly goes back to calling for violence or making racist statements. And so I think that this kind of two-sided approach to these kinds of tragedies is something that's part of how the president communicates.

GREGORY: Can I just make, too -- the other thing is the division in the Jewish community around the country, I do a lot of speaking at synagogues and Jewish federations around the country. They're so politically divided over Trump, because there's concern in a lot of synagogues.

Now again, you have denominational splits: orthodox, conservative, reform. The reform and even some conservative tend to be more progressive politically, right? Conservative is the denominational title.

And the feelings about Trump really run closely to your views about Zionism and his position toward Israel. He's very strong toward Israel, and that can create conflicts, given his views about immigrants and other things.

BERMAN: He's pro-Israel. He may be one of the more pro-Israel presidents we've had. He also has three Jewish grandkids which he adores. So I can't get in his head. I'm not going to say -- I don't think he's an anti-Semite.

The question for the president, Elie, though, is is he aware, and does he need to take ownership of the words that he speaks that are used and heard by the white nationalist movement, by the white supremacist movement. After Charlottesville, after the "both sides" comments, you heard from some of these people, who said things along the lines of "We interpret his 'both sides'-ism as an endorsement."

HONIG: It's a great point. Of course, he's the president of the United States. He's the most influential person in the world. And there's some ambiguity here about to what level is the president responsible.

But we can connect the dots here. I'm using my prosecutorial sort of approach a little bit. Look at the shooter. Look at -- look at what he said on Twitter his motivation was. He was motivated by the notion that Jewish people, HIAS, were funding or sponsoring the caravan.

CAMEROTA: He called them invaders. HONIG: Right, invaders. Now, where do we think he got that idea

from, the shooter? Do we think he came up with that on his own? Who's been, you know, playing up the caravan? Who's been using the caravan as a fear point for the last several weeks? Again, I'm not saying the president necessarily -- certainly did not want someone to go in and shoot, but who's playing up the caravan as a propaganda piece?

And look at -- you have Congressmen who are putting out their anti- Semitic dog whistles, as David said, saying Soros and Michael Bloomberg are trying to buy the election. We've been through this. We know what that means.

BERMAN: Kevin McCarthy, the majority leader --

HONIG: Exactly.

BERMAN: -- tweeted a tweet which had them with giant piles of money --

HONIG: Right.

BERMAN: -- Michael Bloomberg and George Soros and Tom Steyer, whose father was Jewish, trying to buy the election.

HONIG: And George Soros trying to -- there was another Congressman who said that George Soros was funding the caravan. So you put that all together, you can see how this intent, this notion came together in the shooter's mind.

And so did Trump intend for this to happen? Maybe not, but at best it's reckless. It's like flicking a cigarette onto a pile of weeds.

[07:10:04] GREGORY: Also, and ahistorical, as Nicole said. When you talk about being a nationalist, it is to elevate, you know, your people, you know, that are necessarily better than other nations and other people around the world. And that is such a singular vision that has been appropriated by modern rulers in Europe and, of course, going back to fascists using that, as well.

That's the kind of thing where, I -- if I'm the president, I would want to get up and say, "Do not use my words to seek comfort in them or to use them for anti-Semitism," if that's how he feels. He has an opportunity and, I think, an obligation to speak out. Unfortunately, he's used such loose language and such dog whistles he's got to correct that.

CAMEROTA: David, Elie, Nicole, thank you very much for the conversation this morning.

So coming up on NEW DAY, we will speak to the counselor to the president, Kellyanne Conway. What does she -- what's going on inside the White House during all of this? We'll also speak to the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt. Also this morning, we have former senator Joe Lieberman and former Congressman Charlie Dent on how they would suggest dividing -- uniting this divided country.

BERMAN: Unity is what we need.

Breaking news, a frantic search under way after an Indonesian plane crashed in the Java Sea. A hundred and eighty-nine people were on board the Lion Air flight. It vanished from radar just 13 minutes after takeoff. Investigators are pulling up debris from the ocean. We've learned six bodies have been recovered.

Our Will Ripley live with the breaking details -- Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, there are ambulances lining the shore near that crash site 34 miles off the coast of Jakarta, but it seems increasingly unlikely that there will be anybody alive to put in them, as bodies have now started to rise to the surface, as well as the debris from this plane. Passengers' items like cell phones and pieces of luggage, backpacks, life jackets and, of course, debris from the aircraft itself.

This was a new plane, just 800 flight hours on this Boeing 737, which was delivered to Lion Air, a discount carrier here in Asia, back in August.

The flight crew was seasoned: more than 11,000 hours of combined experience. The weather in the area, scattered thunderstorms but nothing that would have posed a risk to this plane.

So that raises the question: what happened? We know the plane took off and, after 13 minutes, it disappeared from radar screens, dropping from an altitude of 5,200 feet. At one point, the pilot reportedly called air-traffic control and made a request to turn back around. But the plane never made that turn. Instead, it made a sharp descent.

The unanswered question this morning is why. One hundred eighty-one people onboard, including two infants and one child; and a whole lot of families really in agony at this hour -- John, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Understood. Thank you very much, Will.

Well, after a week of hate-filled attacks, what should leaders do to stop the madness? Former homeland security secretary, Jeh Johnson, is going to join us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:16:52] CAMEROTA: In the past week, we've seen a series of hate- filled crimes, including a massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 people during services on Saturday. This comes after more than a dozen mail bombs were sent to people that President Trump had criticized and a deadly shooting at a supermarket that appears to be racially motivated.

So joining us now is former secretary of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, to talk about all of this.

Secretary Johnson, thank you very much for being here. If you had -- if you were secretary today of homeland security, and there was this spate of hate crimes, what would you and your president do?

JEH JOHNSON, FORMER SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Well, first, Alisyn, thanks for having me on. One of the reasons, frankly, I accepted is I wanted to express support for your colleagues here at CNN who work in this building.

So I believe that the attack in Pittsburgh on Saturday, which represents the worse single attack on the Jewish community in the history of this country, plus the pipe bombs last week, come in the context of an increasing toxicity in our politics, and it should be a wake-up call to all Americans to insist that their leaders tone it down and try to restore civility to our dialogue.

Because we're in an environment now where there are deranged individuals who feel that it's their place to -- to try to bring about change with an AR-15 or a series of pipe bombs.

And so if I were secretary today, I'd be engaging our president, because our president is the one with the loudest microphone, the biggest bullhorn, who can at the top, try to reset the tone. And that is almost everything in this environment right now.

Our leaders -- the American people listen to their leaders. Our leaders, those who are in office, those who are running for office, are the ones that set the tone; and so change has really got to start at the top, and the American people insist on that.

CAMEROTA: Do you believe that President Trump's words are leading to violence?

JOHNSON: Alisyn, I'm not going to point the fingers at any one individual. I will say that the president of the United States and, in particular, this president, has the largest bullhorn by a factor of five. And so if there's going to be change; if there's going to be change in our dialogue, it has to start with the president of the United States. Everyone listens to him. Everyone listens to every single world he says publicly.

And part of the job of being president is to set the tone. It's not only just being the CEO of the executive branch of the U.S. government. It's setting the tone, setting the mood in our nation.

CAMEROTA: Well, if he is setting the tone and if the current secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, they're talking a lot about the caravan. And we know that the gunman in Pittsburgh drew a connection between his fear and his hatred of the caravan or invaders, and what he did.

And so do you see a connection between that, that and what the president focused on and this violence?

JOHNSON: Alisyn, I'm very distressed that immigration -- legal immigration and illegal immigration -- coming from Central America is being used to score political points, to pander to our fears, our biases, our prejudices. [07:20:16] For the most part, people coming across our southern border

-- and the numbers now are as high as they've been in recent years -- are desperate people trying to flee from the most violent region on this planet, from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. They should have a right to assert a claim for asylum, but we do have to enforce our border security. We are a sovereign nation. We don't have open borders.

But I object to using this issue to -- to pander, to bring about fear and anxiety.

CAMEROTA: Look, last week the secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, was at the border doing an interview with the FOX channel --

JOHNSON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- and talking about, you know, all of the perceived dangers of what might happen, hypothetically, if this caravan were to, on foot, make it the 2,000 miles to the U.S. border. Is that -- should that have been her top priority last week?

JOHNSON: When I was in office, Alisyn, I was careful in my discussions with the public and my public comments not to unnecessarily create fear. I think it's the role of the secretary of homeland security to inform the public of all the things we are doing to protect the homeland, to secure our borders.

And then the American people will understand that we live in an open society where you can't have zero risks. There is always some risk. But the American people want to know all the things that we are doing to protect or homeland and secure our borders without spinning out a lot of scenarios, hypotheticals that may unnecessarily create fear.

CAMEROTA: I mean, the irony is that last week the domestic terrorism was here. It was inside the U.S.

JOHNSON: Correct.

CAMEROTA: Those were the biggest threats, from receiving bombs, these improvised explosive devices, to obviously, these crazed gunmen. And so what do you wish that Kirstjen Nielsen had said during all of that?

JOHNSON: Well, for starters, I'd like to see the Department of Homeland Security continue on the road we went down in 2015, 2016 in the prior administration, which is to support local efforts across this country to counter violent extremism, including domestic-based violent extremism.

The Congress gave us grant money to support these efforts, and that -- that really needs to continue. We worked a lot with American Muslim communities, because those are communities that terrorist organizations overseas would target for recruitment.

But right here, there are domestic groups that also need focus, and I'd like to see that effort continue. But in a time like this of high anxiety -- and we had periods like

this in the prior administration -- it's the role of the president, the secretary of homeland security to describe all the things that the U.S. government is doing to secure the homeland, to secure our borders.

And Americans will understand, if you do that, that we live in an open society, and there is -- there is always some risk. But they want to know what their government is doing without unnecessarily pandering to fear and anxiety.

CAMEROTA: Former secretary of homeland security, Jeh Johnson, thank you very much for being here with your expertise.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: John.

BERMAN: 11 people murdered, because they were Jewish. Coming up, we're going to speak to someone who knew so many of the victims at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and learn just what we lost. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:27:35] CAMEROTA: All right. So what is the truth between a rise in hate crimes since the 2016 election? Is that really happening? Let's get a CNN reality check from senior political analyst John Avlon.

What is the truth, John?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Ally, the number of anti-Semitic incidents is up dramatically in the United States: 57 percent in 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

ADL says the increase comes from increasingly divisive politics, emboldened extremists and the rise in social media.

And the social media accounts of the man behind the synagogue massacre were littered with anti-Semitic statements and unhinged conspiracy theories. But what stood out to me was the specific mention of HIAS, a group he said, quote, "likes to bring invaders in that kill our people."

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society has been around since 1881. They've helped helped countless people find refuge in America, including the co-founders of Google and WhatsApp. HIAS has placed 233 people in the Pittsburgh area in 2016, 122 in '17 but just 42 this year.

And that's because of the Trump administration's crackdown on the number of refugees let into America, cutting the threshold from 110,000 in 2017 to just 30,000 in 2019.

So the number of refugees is declining dramatically. So is the number of people illegally crossing our southern border, but the unfounded feeling of threat or invasion seems to continue; and tone comes from the top.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The Democrat [SIC] Party is openly encouraging millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our borders and overwhelm our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: This is intentionally scary stuff, the language of invasion. And the shooter apparently picked up on it.

To be clear, I'm not saying the president is anti-Semitic. His own daughter converted to Judaism, and polls show he's more popular in Israel than the United States. But in his embrace of nationalism, he has been strikingly reluctant to condemn white nationalists, from David Duke during the campaign --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: OK, I'm just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here. But --

TRUMP: I don't know any -- honestly, I don't know David Duke.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: -- to campaign ads that played off anti-Semitic tropes about globalists, to Charlottesville.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jews will not replace us!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jews will not replace us!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jews will not replace us!

TRUMP: Very fine people on both sides.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Snow, some extremists have been emboldened by this president, and according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, hate crimes rose more than 12 percent in America's largest cities last year, while violent crimes overall decreased.

Likewise, the ADL found a 250 percent increase in white supremacist activity on college campuses in 2017.

And what's especially odd in all of this is that white national movements, like militias, typically increase in reaction to Democratic presidents.