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New Day
Investigators Search for Clues in Plane Crash; Bomb Suspect to Plead Not Guilty; Control of Congress after Midterms; Synagogue Attacker Echoed Fox Talking Points. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired October 30, 2018 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Kills all 189 people on board. What brought down this brand-new Boeing jet?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: Investigators are trying to figure out what brought down a brand-new Boeing jet that crashed minutes after takeoff killing all 189 people on board.
CNN's Ivan Watson is live at the point where the search and recovery efforts continue.
What have they learned, Ivan?
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.
Well, this is one of the dozens of ships and aircraft that are involved in what's no longer a rescue effort, but, frankly, a recovery effort. And they've been bringing in loads of debris and actually human remains from Lion Air Flight 610 as they've been finding the kind of (INAUDIBLE) floating on the Java Sea. What they have not found thus far is the data flight recorder or the main fuselage of the doomed plane. And that is something that perhaps could reveal some kind of information to solve the mystery of why this brand-new plane crashed into the ocean so soon after takeoff early Monday morning here. All we know really is that the cockpit radioed back to the main airport here in Jakarta requesting to return here, not explaining why, minutes after takeoff, and then it disappeared from radar with the terrible results here.
[06:35:35] And I'm very sorry to report, there is the smell of decomposition in the air here. The authorities have been collecting DNA from the grieving relatives of 189 passengers and crew to help with the delicate identification process.
We know that the crew had thousands of hours of flight time. They were experienced. It's a big question of why this Boeing 737, which was constructed in 2018, went down. And we'll bring you the latest just as soon as we get it.
John.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Right, Ivan, you're be watching that very, very carefully. So many questions still remain there.
In the meantime, CNN has learned that the man accused of mailing more than a dozen package bombs to critics of President Trump, also CNN, had a list of more than 100 names that he was targeting. The suspected bomber's lawyer says his client intends to plead not guilty.
Rosa Flores is live in Miami for us with the very latest.
Rosa.
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, good morning.
Cesar Sayoc was visibly emotional in court during his first appearance. His face was red. His eyes were full of tears. All this while he was sitting in the jury box in his tan jumpsuit with his hands and his feet shackled, his hair pulled back in a ponytail.
The proceeding itself was very short. The judge informed Sayoc of the charges against him, five federal charges. And then, after that, after a very short discussion, the judge determined that a pre-trial detention hearing and a status conference on removal hearing would be set for Friday.
All of this on the same day when another package was intercepted, bringing the number of packages to 15. This time a bomb, a pipe bomb, sent to the CNN headquarters in Atlanta.
We have also learned that Sayoc had a target list, about 100 people. This from a law enforcement source. Now we don't know all of the names of the people that were on this list, but we do know from authorities is that we have already reported on some of the people who have received packages. As for the rest, we're told that law enforcement is calling them to make sure that they are on the lookout.
Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Rosa, thank you very much for that update.
So, just one week until voters head to the polls for the midterms. How will it all play out? There's something about Harry, he gives us the forecast, next.
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[06:41:52] CAMEROTA: All right, we've been saying this for a long time, but we really are just one week away from the midterm election. We're serious now.
BERMAN: We've never said it's just one week away. This is the first day where it's just one week away.
CAMEROTA: We've been acting like it's one week away, but now we really are one week away.
BERMAN: We've been -- we've been building up the suspense till when it was one week away. CAMEROTA: OK. The balance of power in the House and Senate is up for grabs. I don't know if we've ever mentioned that.
There's something about Harry, so let's get the forecast with CNN's senior politics writer and analyst Harry Enten.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes.
CAMEROTA: This is your time.
ENTEN: Have you seen the promo? He's got a whole promo that runs on CNN.
CAMEROTA: We play big parts in your promo.
BERMAN: Who do you know -- who do you know where you can get a promo at CNN?
ENTEN: I know so little, but that promo appeared on air. I had no idea it was appearing. And it was only after my aunt, Neil Sedaka's wife, e-mailed me and said you have a promo on air --
CAMEROTA: He works it in.
ENTEN: And I was like, oh my goodness. There you go.
BERMAN: I've never had that conversation with my aunt, because we don't have a promo, but that's OK.
CAMEROTA: Or Neil Sedaka's wife.
BERMAN: Yes. Yes.
ENTEN: Oh, by the way, congratulations on the Sox and Vinnie, who is my friend from New Jersey, a huge Yankee fan, sorry, my friend, you lose, Red Sox win.
BERMAN: All right, forecast, House.
ENTEN: OK. There we go. So let's go to the forecast for the House. This has pretty much stayed basically the same, right, no change. Democrats still favored 226, Republicans at 209. You need 218 for a majority.
Let's go on to the Senate. The --
CAMEROTA: Hold on a second.
ENTEN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: I have a question.
ENTEN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: Is this staying the same because you're not polling or because it's that steady, the results? ENTEN: It's that steady. It's that steady. And we're going to get to
that in a little bit. Well, you know, why -- let's just go right here. I'm not changing slides. So this is one of the main drivers, the national environment, of what's going on. And what we see all the way back on April 30th, right, the generic ballot, the generic congressional ballot, had Democrats favored by 7 points. Now, jump ahead to October 30th, Democrats favored by 8 percentage points. So there's just not a lot of change.
Yes, there's changes in individual districts. So if you go on cnn.com/forecast, you'll see individual districts changing. But the overall top view, things really aren't because a few races might move towards the Democrats, a few might move towards Republicans, and they cancel each other out.
BERMAN: Now, you were talking to me about the difference between the mean and the median. Those are very big math terms. But it gets to what the ceiling is for the Democrats and what the floor is, correct?
ENTEN: Right, right, exactly. So the mean, the average, exactly, what you see here is we're providing a fairly wide range of different scenarios, right? And we normally show these in different slides but I thought it might be helpful to show it in one. Look, the distance between 226 and 203 is only 23 seats. The distance between 263 and 226 is 37 seats. So there is a wider sort of ceiling. They can go much higher than they can go low. And that is because there are a bunch of these seats where we don't think the Democrats are going to win, like Peter King out on Long Island, but they could potentially pick up one of those seats, or a few of them. There are a bunch of these seats where it's like Democrats are probably going to lose by nine, but in a wave year they might win a few of those.
CAMEROTA: All right. Now you want to look at the Senate.
ENTEN: I do want to look at the Senate. So what's our current forecast for the Senate? It's basically -- this one really hasn't changed, and that is Republicans with 52 seats to Democrats with 48 seats.
Now, we have been showing this sort of best case scenario, right, where Democrats get all the way up to 52 seats, but that really is a best case scenario. We really don't think that's particularly likely.
And why is that not likely? Well, let's take a look at the obstacles. Let's say that we gave the Democrats all of the close races, all those that are within 4 percentage points, that would get them to 50 seats. Of course they'd need 51 with Vice President Pence breaking the tie.
[06:45:04] Now, these are the three potential pickup opportunities, North Dakota, Tennessee and Texas. And all of them are five-point leads or greater for the Republicans.
BERMAN: And this isn't a pickup. This would be a loss for the Democrats.
ENTEN: Right. Exactly. BERMAN: So even if they flip Arizona, which, by the way, yes, Democrats, we know there's a positive poll in Arizona out this morning for you. But even if they flip Arizona, they lose North Dakota, game over.
ENTEN: Exactly. And then they'd have to flip one of these, and that just doesn't look likely.
If there's one seat where I'm not as sure, it's probably Tennessee. And the reason I'm not sure about that is there really hasn't been a high quality poll in a while. Hey, maybe we'll get one soon.
BERMAN: And I will note, it's not -- we don't have a graphic for it up here, but Democrats feel as if the field is widening. Why do they think that? Because Republicans are starting to spend money the last week defending seats which should be safer for them.
ENTEN: Exactly. And, again, if we're talking about that high ceiling, that's what this is getting at.
CAMEROTA: Harry, thank you.
ENTEN: Thank you.
BERMAN: Look forward to your promos.
Harry's forecast is available each day by 9:00 a.m. at cnn.com/forecast.
CAMEROTA: OK, so is the Fox Channel to blame for any of the violence and the heated rhetoric that we have seen this past week? There are conspiracy theories abounding. We explore them, next.
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[06:50:28] BERMAN: Social media posts by the man who police say carried out a massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue showed that he was railing against what he called immigrant invaders. Now, that is language you have heard from the president and also somewhere else a lot. A whole lot.
Let's get more from Brian Stelter.
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BRIAN STELTER, CNN BUSINESS CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: The Pittsburgh shooting suspect's hatred of Jews merged with his hatred of immigrants to deadly results. He called migrants "invaders," using the same dehumanizing language that's been saturating right wing radio and TV.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This invading hoard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an invasion.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is an invasion. STELTER: We may never know where the suspect heard these ideas, or why
he believed them, but we do know that the hate crime coincided with a rise in hateful language from the Info Wars fringe to Fox's primetime lineup.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have this invasion coming over every day.
STELTER: Almost as soon as the migrant caravan formed in Central America --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a kind of invasion.
STELTER: Fox News talking heads and President Trump made it out to be a major threat.
JUDGE JEANINE PIRRO, "JUSTICE WITH JUDGE JEANINE": You do not have the right to come here. We did not invite you here. You cannot stay here.
STELTER: Republican leaders echoed this line.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to treat this as an invasion.
STELTER: And look at the online reactions.
NEWT GINGRICH, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: This is an invasion. This is an act of attacking the United States sovereignty.
STELTER: Scroll down on any of these videos on YouTube and the fire was raging, with commenters screaming about an invading army, even though the migrants were 1,000 miles away and fleeing danger.
One voice on Fox tried to point that out.
SHEP SMITH, "SHEPARD SMITH REPORTING": The president has called it an assault on the U.S. border. It is absolutely not.
STELTER: But his audience rejected that. Shep Smith reading a tweet from the viewer.
SMITH: Sorry, Shep, we are not falling for your fake story. This is an invasion.
STELTER: Was the gunman watching? We may never know. But the right wing climate was full of outrage. Six days before the shooting, the suspect wrote, I have noticed a change in people saying illegals that now say invaders. I like this.
In the past two weeks, the word "invasion" was spouted on Fox more than 60 times and on Fox Business 75.
DAVID BOSSIE, TRUMP 2016 DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER: The American people are seeing these visuals on television every day and they think of it as an invasion.
STELTER: Combine that with the claims that Democrats were funding the caravan. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Another leftist funded operation.
STELTER: Laura Ingraham saying leftist were aiding and abetting. Congressman Matt Gates sharing a video saying people were being paid to storm the U.S. border. Soros is a favorite boogie man of the right. He's a billionaire donor and he's Jewish. Dark corners of social media filled up with conspiracy theories and it spilled on to TV.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From the Soros occupied State Department.
STELTER: This Lou Dobbs guest blaming the caravan on Soros, calling to mind an anti-Semitic trope about Jews secretly running the government. The suspect's final post on Gab blamed a Jewish refugee group for bringing in invaders. Now, "The Washington Post" arguing that the conspiracy theory about Soros and the caravan inspired the horror in Pittsburgh. And Adam Serwer (ph) writing in "The Atlantic" saying Trump's caravan hysteria led to this.
The president's reaction, he tweeted on Monday, this is an invasion of our country.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAMEROTA: Brian, what I'm so struck by is, do the president and the United States words matter or not? Let's just decide.
So, generally, up until 2016, we felt as a country that the president of the United States' words mattered. But now the White House -- and this is the part that baffles me, from Sarah Sanders yesterday, to the president himself, they're saying that they don't think that his words have any impact. He can say whatever he wants and people are not listening. I don't understand the logic.
STELTER: Well, I think that dodge, which is illogical, is specifically because Trump and his aides know he's vulnerable. They recognize that he's lit a fire and added more and more fuel every day and is not able to control it. By the way, he doesn't want to control it. He doesn't seem interested in controlling it. But even if he wanted to, I'm not sure he could. He has unleashed forces in this country. And so what do they do, they have to attack the press. They have to change the subject because they're vulnerable on this problem.
BERMAN: They may be vulnerable, but the president is leaning in.
STELTER: Yes.
BERMAN: I think it's fascinating how much he has chosen to lean in on these very subjects and it's -- he's telegraphing he's going to do it even more over the next few days. He's using the language of invaders since the murders in Pittsburgh. He's attacked the press since bombs were sent around. He's all in.
[06:55:15] STELTER: Yes, trying to limit his losses in the midterms by saying two things. Number one, hate the media. Number two, fear the caravan. Very clear messages. I think most Americans see through them, but not all Americans. So we can talk about fear mongering. We can talked about the ridiculousness of this rhetoric. But it is effective among some people. I sure hope some of those Fox hosts, some of those commentators, take a moment, take a minute to think about their role in this environment. Hopefully there's some soul searching right now in the wake of this massacre.
CAMEROTA: Brian, do you have a fever right now? I mean, what are you thinking? What are you thinking? They like ratings. They like winning the ratings war. That's what this is about.
BERMAN: Jeanine Pirro may want to lay off the coffee before going on air.
CAMEROTA: Well, also, I -- maybe she perhaps -- she doesn't know that you actually are allowed to seek asylum in this country.
BERMAN: Or move the microphone down further. It doesn't --
STELTER: I just want to ask her, what is she so afraid of?
BERMAN: Thanks, Brian, appreciate it.
CAMEROTA: All right, so the funerals begin today for the victims of the synagogue massacre as President Trump plans to visit Pittsburgh. So we will talk to the rabbi of the synagogue that was attacked. He's here next.
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