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Trump Announces FBI & Justice Dept. Probe of Jussie Smollett; WH Official: No 'Fresh Plan' to Replace Obamacare; Fed Watchdog: Boeing Crashes Have 'Shaken' Confidence in FAA; Betsy DeVos Proposes $18 Million in Cuts to Special Olympics. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired March 28, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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


JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Chicago's top prosecutor is defending her decision to drop all the charges against the actor who was accused of staging a hate crime attack on himself. Ryan Young is live in Chicago with the breaking news, Ryan, and you've got some fresh reporting on this overnight into what now appears to be a federal investigation. Explain.

[07:00:17] RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Absolutely, John. We were looking into this yesterday. In fact, some sources were telling us this could happen that the FBI and the DOJ could start looking into this case. But we just weren't at the point to be able to report it, as far as we are now.

And then you have this tweet from the president, who basically confirms what we've basically been talking about now: "FBI and DOJ to review the outrageous Jussie Smollett case in Chicago. It's an embarrassment to our Nation!"

If you think about this, over the last few days, so many people have been upset about how this sort of went away. There is a 16-count indictment that was just sort of dropped. It was an emergency hearing. So many people had questions about this. And it sort of spiraled on.

Let's not forget that Jussie Smollett reported at the end of January that he was coming back from a subway when two men attacked him. They threw a noose around his neck. They were apparently wearing red hats. They were screaming, "This is MAGA country" and they also screamed racial epithets at him.

At that point, so many people around the country came to his defense. The Chicago Police Department responded with 12 detectives around the clock to try to figure this case out.

It took almost a month before they sort of figured out something didn't seem right to them. And of course, there were these two brothers, the Osundairo brothers who gave police all this evidence that started pointing the finger, according to them, back toward Jussie Smollett.

And after all this, you had this reading of the evidence. After this video was released. And the fact that they said that Jussie Smollett was upset about what he was paid, and he wanted more money, he wanted more attention and that they did this hoax to pull this off.

So everybody thought this was going to go to court. This was going to have a case. They didn't think maybe he would go jail. Maybe he would settle. Maybe he would do a plea deal. But then those charges were dropped. In fact, listen to the state's attorney defending her decision to drop that 16-count indictment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIM FOXX, COOK COUNTY STATE ATTORNEY: The court has not found him guilty. Based on the facts and the evidence that was presented and the charging decision made by this office, this office believed that they could prove him guilty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: John and Alisyn, I think the thing that stood out to a lot of people was the fact that, after this was dropped, we found out that Jussie Smollett went to the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, did two days of community service. He forfeited the $10,000. And then he stood at the mike and basically said he was always innocent and that he -- he wouldn't have done this.

And so you have the response from the police department and the mayor so forcefully say they believe they had the evidence against Jussie Smollett. You saw all this going back and forth. This has been a crazy story, to say the least, but now you have this tweet from the president only adding more fuel to this fire.

BERMAN: All right. Ryan Young for us in Chicago. Ryan, thank you very much.

Joining us now to talk a little bit about this and also some other major developments overnight, Margaret Talev, senior White House correspondent at Bloomberg News and a CNN political analyst. Astead Herndon, he's a national political reporter for "The New York Times" and a CNN political analyst. And Laura Barron-Lopez. She is a national political reporter at Politico.

And Astead, I want to start with you here. The federal investigation going on into the Jussie Smollett case, that is based on reporting that Ryan Young did overnight.

But to hear from the president of the United States this morning via Twitter on this subject, to me was interesting. This indicates to me he thinks it's politically advantageous to do so, in this case specifically. And it indicates, B, maybe he's not happy with all the health care talk that's been going on in the last couple of days.

ASTEAD HERNDON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Those are two pretty good guesses. You have a president that often is responding to talk in the conservative media and understands that those are the issues that his base is animated by. And those issues, sometimes the White House rallies around.

And yesterday, you had kind of conservative commentators and pundits saying things like this was an outrageous show of justice out in Chicago, and that things needed some -- things were fishy, and people needed to get to the bottom of this.

So it does not surprise me that you have the president responding, using this as a wedge issue, again on those kind of racial and lines of criminal justice, and saying that he's going to go out there and use the FBI and DOJ to look into this case.

I would say, though, that this is kind of opposed to some of the things we've heard the president say in the past about when President Obama or other -- other national outlets tried to -- tried to use the DOJ and the FBI to look at Black Lives Matter or police shootings and look at prosecutorial decisions in those cases.

So it's funny that we see the president coming out on here and saying the FBI and DOJ is necessary to look at the Cook County attorney's decision now, when previously, they wanted the federal government to stay out of these cases.

CAMEROTA: Laura, what I can't tell is if the president is calling upon the DOJ and the FBI to investigate or announcing that they have decided to investigate. And if the president, in other words, is instigating this and if any U.S. president can tell the FBI, "You need to start investigating Jussie Smollett," or his wording, I just can't quite understand from the wording who initiated.

BERMAN: I can tell you. "FBI and DOJ to review" --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: -- "the outrageous Jussie Smollett case in Chicago. It is an embarrassment to our nation." That's not an order exactly, but it's an announcement that it's happening.

CAMEROTA: Laura.

BERMAN: Right. Well, I guess we'll have to see exactly what the FBI or the DOJ does.

Again, we -- the president has done this before: sent signals to his cabinet members about what he would like to see happen. Whether or not they follow through is something that we'll have to see.

But I want to go back to something that Astead said, saying that this is Trump using to rile up his base, which I think is completely accurate. We know that Republicans repeatedly loved to hammer Democrats about using, quote, "identity politics."

But this is an attempt by Republicans to repeatedly, you know, push racial issues in this country ahead of the 2020 election, because they think that it is advantageous for them.

BERMAN: It's interesting. I mean, there are federal questions here about whether mail was used to send a letter to Jussie Smollett that may or may not have been --

CAMEROTA: Well, there's a lot of questions --

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- to dive into with Jussie Smollett that, I think, call for an investigation. I just don't know if the president --

BERMAN: The FBI might have been doing this on its own anyway. You don't usually hear the chief executive get involved like this in a federal investigation.

Margaret, the other side of this is, if he is trying to change the subject, it would be from this issue of health care, which is a lot more reporting now on how it came to be that the White House decided to support a judicial strike down of Obamacare, to weigh in on this course case that says they want Obamacare declared invalid immediately.

We now know that there is no immediate White House plan to replace Obamacare, which is telling.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. John, nor is there an immediate Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. And so you have a huge amount of consternation among Republican lawmakers. Mitch McConnell among them not delighted that this landed in his lap. The same with the House minority leader.

And some divisions inside the White House about whether this is the prudent tack to take. The -- you know, what the president is saying and what the chief of staff, the sort of strategy they're pursuing is that, if the courts invalidate this, then Republicans have to come up with a plan. And it would be good for Republicans to have a plan heading into the election.

There's obviously a huge chance of backfire since when they controlled both chambers, they were not able to actually come up with a replacement plan; and there is no replacement plan now. And Democrats successfully ran on this issue in the midterm elections.

And, of course, the president is thinking about the 2020 election. But a lot of Republicans in Congress still have midterms in 2020 also.

So there are a number of pitfalls.

But I think the Jussie Smollett case, in addition to having the effect of perhaps moving away from health care. Also, it's such a core issue for the president and his family and team because of the sort of allegations that the supposed facts of the case of the beginning, which prosecutor -- the investigators later kind of ruled out were the idea that these were Trump fans who were going after him.

So it's very personal for the president. You can ask is it appropriate for the president to be taking such a personal issue and personally instructing the Justice Department about how to proceed. But I think this is a case not only that can impact how the base is -- base feels about it but that would be personally satisfying for President Trump to have a win on.

CAMEROTA: That's an interesting perspective.

So Astead, back to health care for a moment. I think that the Republicans do have lots of plans. I mean, we just heard one touted yesterday by Rick Santorum. They have lots of plans. But when they controlled both houses, it didn't -- those plans didn't fly.

And what we heard Rick Santorum saying yesterday to us was sort of blaming John McCain; that, you know, John McCain is who scuttled it then for them. But why they would think now that they don't control the house that one of their plans is going to be able to move forward? It just seems possibly overly optimistic.

HERNDON: There's no indication that the Republican health care plans that failed kind of so spectacularly last year are any closer to passage this year.

And as you point out, there's a big obstacle now, which is a House of Representatives that's now controlled by Democrats, almost purely because Democrats ran on this issue in the mid-term elections.

The fact that the White House coming out of a weekend in which they had kind of the news of their dreams would pivot to this issue, kind of defies political logic. You've heard some Republicans come out and say, "I don't know exactly why we're doing this." And you've had some Democrats come out and say, "I can't believe that they're doing this" and kind of gleefully.

I can -- I know, on the 2020 side, the Democratic presidential candidates are eager to talk about more kitchen-table issues like health care, rather than to parse out the Mueller probe and parse out questions of collusion.

[07:10:12] But to get back to your -- to your question, I think that's a good point. We don't know that these Republican plans are any closer to passage, and it seems like it's kind of unfair to blame the late Senator McCain considering that there was a lot of Republicans at that time that were uneasy about a wide number of those plans.

BERMAN: Laura, I want you to listen to the language the president used overnight in a conversation with his friend, Sean Hannity, on health care. Because I think the language here is very telling. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (via phone): So many things that we're going to do incredible health care that the Democrats, frankly, wouldn't even know how to do. We're going to have great health care. The Republican Party will be the party of great health care. We're going to have pre-existing conditions, absolutely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: "We're going to have pre-existing conditions, absolutely." I don't know what he means there.

And more importantly, I don't think he knows what he means there. I don't think he has proven that he understands the issues surrounding protecting people who have pre-existing conditions. This one guaranteeing that they can get health coverage and, two, guaranteeing that health care can be affordable. And I think he needs prove that he understands the nuance here, other than just the words and the syllables, pre-existing conditions.

LAUREN BARRON-LOPEZ, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Right. Well, this lawsuit that the administration supported specifically worked to dismantle protections for pre-existing conditions that existed under the ACA.

So again, you know, this was something that drastically hurt Republicans in the 2018 midterms. They lost 40 seats in the House because of their repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and go after protections for pre-existing conditions.

On top of the lawsuit that we just saw, which also entirely dismantles the law. And so Democrats want to take this and run with it, because it's the reason that they control the House now.

They're hopeful that it will either help them maintain their majority, as well as pick up more seats in the Senate in 2020 and then, of course, the ultimate win would be the White House for them.

So, it's a little bit ironic that the president is mentioning protecting pre-existing conditions given the fact that the lawsuit that the administration signed onto attacks those.

CAMEROTA: So Margaret, quickly, is that the plan for Democrats? They're going to harness somehow, figure out how to harness this horse and ride it to 2020?

TALEV: I think they'd like to do that. And I think President Trump is counting on the fact that Democrats sometimes divide and conquer themselves.

There are some disputes inside the Democratic Party about, you know, whether or how quickly to pursue Medicare for all, whether there should be, still, a private insurance system or not.

And so, to some extent, the president may be looking at dividing and conquer. I think on the other hand, he's kind of a student or an enthusiast of rhetoric. And you can see -- you can kind of see the wheels turning when he comes up with catch phrases and repeats them like three or four times in a sequence like we saw him do there.

That's him trying to see if that will work, if people will begin to redefine the idea and associate Republicans with the word "health care" and pre-existing conditions.

BERMAN: We're going to have the best pre-existing conditions.

CAMEROTA: We have some. BERMAN: We have some of the best.

CAMEROTA: We have a lot of pre-existing conditions.

All right. Panel, thank you.

They're not amused by our humor.

BERMAN: No. Exactly. I'm used to that.

CAMEROTA: That was a good focus group.

BERMAN: That's like being at home for me.

CAMEROTA: Up next, lawmakers grilling the FAA and transportation secretary about the safety crisis involving Boeing jets. We have a former head of the FAA to explain what went wrong here and what needs to be fixed.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:17:48] CAMEROTA: An internal federal watchdog raising concerns about the FAA's safety oversight, following two deadly crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CALVIN SCOVEL, DOT INSPECTOR GENERAL: Clearly confidence in FAA is a gold standard for aviation safety has been shaken.

ELAINE CHAO, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: I am, of course, concerned about any allegations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now is Randy Babbitt. He led the FAA under President Obama from 2009 to 2011. He's also a former airline pilot.

Mr. Babbitt, thank you so much for being here. We're looking forward to getting your expertise on this. Should the FAA have been more vigorous in its oversight of Boeing?

RANDY BABBITT, FORMER FAA ADMINISTRATOR: Well, I think in retrospect, you know, there's a lot of second guessing going on. I think the big failure was recognizing or failing to recognize the training that would be required to transition to a different safety system.

How they get to -- you know, into manuals and so forth is going to be scrutinized. And I think there were some bad assumptions made, which I'm certain a lot of people regret now.

CAMEROTA: When you talk about there being a lack of training. I mean, let me just put a finer point on that for everyone, because this comes from "The Washington Post" having looked at the flight manual.

Here's what it says: "Despite substantial changes to the plane's engine size and placement and the addition of the MCAS flight control system, training for the 737 Max had consisted primarily of a roughly hour-long computer-based course."

Mr. Babbitt, how is that possible that pilots would only have had an hour on a computer after all of these substantial changes to that aircraft?

BABBITT: Yes. And that's -- that's going to come under scrutiny. The -- the differences between, you know, if you bought a car, you know, one year newer than your last year, it might have a few things different. They might just have to explain those to you.

And that's the assumption made here, was that -- decisions were made that this airplane is not substantially different than the previous models; and, therefore, all you needed to understand was the differences.

I think the failure here, the failure to recognize that this one particular system was substantially different. You basically had a single source of data that was allowed to have control input to the aircraft, and I don't think that was made clear to a lot of people.

[07:20:16] CAMEROTA: Apparently not. And so I mean, I think the big question is what's going wrong at the FAA?

BABBITT: Well, I think the assumption -- the aircraft, I think the fix that will come out, it will be a safe fix. I think the failure was to not alert pilots that this system was kicking in. In other words, there should have been warning light.

Common sense would tell me that any, any device, any data input that's given control authority to the airplane should at least have another comparison of another data source. A good example the two compasses in the airplane.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BABBITT: Every aircraft, every major airplane that flies an airline service has a comparative. It says these two compasses don't agree. And a light comes on.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I mean -- yes.

BABBIE: I understand it's going to be put in now.

CAMEROTA: Yes, right? Woefully late. So yes, it sounds like they have figured out that there was a problem with the technology on this plane, and they're going to fix it. But that's specific to the 737 Max. I'm talking about the larger issue of it sounds like the FAA was letting Boeing police itself on some level.

Is that true?

BABBITT: Yes, and I mean we do that in a lot of places. I mean, think about it. The banking industry, the securities, lots of these places, you audit. And people come in and inspect to see that you are doing these audits correctly. And that's -- it would take -- the FAA would have to tire tens of thousands of inspectors to actually, you know, do all of the work that we entrust to Boeing.

And it's been, you know, truly when you think about the hundreds of millions of hours that have been flown safely -- we haven't had a major accident in this country in almost a decade. So the system works.

Can it be improved? Yes. And I think that's going to be the focus of what can we do to make this system better so that we don't have -- you know, this is an industry that cannot suffer a hairline crack of oversight; and we need to make certain that that oversight is there, it's effective, and it's doing what we want it to do.

CAMEROTA: So you think that it's a manpower problem. And should the FAA have more, I guess, it should have a bigger budget and more people to be able to do this. Is that the solution?

BABBITT: Well, I think the -- part of it. If you're going to have -- I mean, we do a lot of oversight where we depend -- airlines themselves, for example, the pilots are checked by pilots who work for that airline. How are they checked? They occasionally get inspected by federal flight inspectors. They ride or they watch them give them check rides and so forth. The FAA certainly couldn't hire enough pilots to check all of the airline pilots in this country. We entrust the airlines to do that.

And so finding the balance, what is the right amount of balance that we need to find? Do we need more people to audit the work that Boeing is doing and confirm that Boeing, when Boeing says, "This system works perfectly and we put it through rigorous testing," how far do we go with that? What do we need to do? Do we need more manpower? Do we need a better system?

And let's face it. We're in an age of new technology. These aircraft are becoming, you know, far more digital, all glass cockpits.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BABBITT: It's a different environment today, and you train differently. And I think we need to recognize that and train pilots to better understand some of the changes that have been made in these aircraft.

CAMEROTA: For sure. Very quickly, you're a pilot. Would you today fly the 737 Max 8 plane?

BABBITT: Absolutely. The sad part of this, every -- every pilot who has Boeing experience, there's a very large trim wheel in that aircraft. And if that trim wheel is moving and you're hand flying the aircraft, the answer is turn it off. Every pilot -- every pilot who has a rating in this aircraft has had a runaway trim situation. It's part of your training, part of your testing. That trim wheel begins to move, and you're flying the airplane, and you're not commanding that input, you turn the switches off. They're right there, right in front of you. So it's not like they have to dramatically redesign the airplane. They simply have to let people know that you're getting a control input that you may not want, and your option here is to understand it and turn it off, if it's -- if it's putting a bad control input in for you.

CAMEROTA: All right. Randy Babbitt, former FAA administrator, thank you very much for being on NEW DAY.

BABBITT: Well, thank you very much, Alisyn. Good morning.

CAMEROTA: John.

BERMAN: A huge controversy surrounding the Trump administration after it moves to slash funding from the Special Olympics. Congressman Joe Kennedy joins us to discuss next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:28:51] CAMEROTA: President Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, is coming under fire for her plan to cut all federal funding to the Special Olympics. DeVos is defending the decision, insisting the charity can get a lot of money from private donors.

CNN's Stephanie Elam is live in Los Angeles with more. What's this about, Stephanie?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Overall, when you take a look at the proposed budget for the Department of Education, they're looking to cut some 29 programs to save about $6.7 billion. But there's one program in particular that has people up in arms, and that is Special Olympics.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELAM (voice-over): Dustin Plunkett faced some hard times as a child. At home --

DUSTIN PLUNKETT, SPECIAL OLYMPICS ATHLETE & OUTREACH MANAGER: Nobody in my family really knew how to support me because of my cleft palate and my intellectual disability.

ELAM: -- and at school, where he was bullied until he discovered Special Olympics. Some 20 years later, not only is he an athlete, he's also an outreach manager and inspirational speaker for Special Olympics, Southern California.

PLUNKETT: Ninety-seven percent of seniors on high school campuses say that Special Olympics made an impact in their life, and that's why the funding is so important to us.

ELAM: The funding that Plunkett is worried about is federal. The Department of Education's proposed budget for 2020 would eliminate all grant money for the nonprofit, dropping it from more than $17.5 million to zero.