Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

House Demands Trump Tax Returns; Ethiopian Crew Followed Procedures Before Crash; Democratic Politics and Polls; Teen Says He's Missing Boy. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired April 04, 2019 - 06:30   ET

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


[06:30:00] JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: And Trump Co (ph) is going to hope they get lucky with the judge.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Shall furnish.

AVLON: Shall furnish.

BERMAN: Important words here, shall furnish --

AVLON: Good verbs.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Except --

BERMAN: We -- we're going to send it to our accountants after this because while you are clairvoyant and also an accomplished accountant --

CAMEROTA: I am. I can't wait to pull the transcript.

BERMAN: I asked the question.

CAMEROTA: Everyone stay tuned.

BERMAN: All right. Thank you all.

CAMEROTA: OK. Meanwhile, we do have some breaking news right now because Ethiopian investigators have announced their initial findings from that deadly Boeing crash last month. We have all the breaking details and they're very disturbing, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: We do have some breaking news right now because Ethiopian investigators have just announced their preliminary findings in that deadly crash of the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet that killed 157 people last month. Authorities have outlined the frantic efforts by the pilots to regain control of that plane.

CNN's Tom Foreman is live in Washington with all of the breaking details.

It sounds like the pilots knew more than we were aware. [06:35:02] TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what Ethiopian

authorities are saying is that the pilots did exactly what they were supposed to do in the sequence as outlined by the FAA and by Boeing. Listen to the transport minister.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAGMAWIT MOGES, ETHIOPIA'S TRANSPORT MINISTER: The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer, but was not able to control the aircraft.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: So what they're driving at here is this idea that we've been talking about all along, that there is something inherent to the airplane, perhaps with this MCAS system, although they didn't really hone in on that, but the behavior they describe of the plane driving down is consistent with the questions about MCAS, this automatic stabilizing system. Basically they're pushing toward that, the idea that there is a fundamental flaw in the design of the plane that has to be addressed.

And this, because we know Boeing has had some knowledge about what's going on in this investigation, possibly explains why we initially thought this software fix for MCAS was going to come out right away and now Boeing is saying it could take several weeks. And may that Boeing wants to move forward with a little more thorough review and fix on this ahead of time because, very frankly, if Boeing doesn't get it right now, as they move out, it could be a big problem. Maybe that's why they put their CEO, Dennis Muilenburg up on one of these planes and released a picture yesterday showing him as they tested this out to sort of prove the point, we believe we're moving toward a solution that will really work.

But you can see what happened this morning. It continues to be a battle between people saying the pilots did everything right, there's something wrong with the plane, and people saying, things are OK with the plane, maybe the pilots didn't do everything quite right.

John.

BERMAN: Yes. Tom Foreman, thank you so much for that report.

Let's talk much more about exactly that point.

Joining me now, CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien. He's a pilot and science correspondent at PBS "News Hour."

Miles, thanks so much for being with us.

It seems that the Ethiopian investigators here are sending a clear message and it's a message really directed at Boeing, which is the pilots did everything that they were supposed to do. They did this by the book. And what Boeing has been saying, either directly or indirectly is, well, look, there were procedures in place that might have saved these people. That's not what the investigators found. MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: What they found was these pilots

learned enough from the crash which had happened about five months prior in Indonesia to do exactly what they were supposed to do, follow the procedure, disengage this automatic system which was trying to put the nose over based on some erroneous information, disengaged it and then attempted to manually realign the aircraft, but didn't have the capability. The manual systems were overruled, if you will, by the aerodynamic forces on that aero surface. They didn't have enough authority in that wheel to fix it in time. So clearly what you have here is a fundamental problem with the design of the aircraft. And you're not going to get away, in this case, with pointing the finger at the deceased crew.

BERMAN: So you say a fundamental flaw in the design of the aircraft. Is that something that a software fix -- which is what we're told Boeing is working on and we're all waiting for -- could fix?

O'BRIEN: It's a combination of software and the data that goes into the software. Remember, there is this sort of weather vane device on the outside of the aircraft called an angle of attack sensor. And there are two of them. Only one of them was feeding data into this software, which was designed to keep the nose from pitching up too high, which causes an aerodynamic stall. That is a single point of failure on a system that is critical to flight. And as we have just learned, if it fails, it's -- in certain circumstances, impossible for the pilot to recover.

So you had a single-point failure there. So introducing at least one other stream of data -- and, really, it should be triply redundant -- into that system is absolutely, fundamentally mandatory at this point.

BERMAN: Do you feel that Boeing knew there was this issue or should have known at least after the first crash, the Lion Air crash?

O'BRIEN: John, I think there was enough evidence after the first crash to ground the fleet and fix this. What they saw there, all the basics were there. They realized they had to begin a fix. That fix began before the second crash. If it was that critical and it was that difficult for pilots to recover under circumstances and these are, you know, low to the ground, fatal crashes that happened very quickly, why wasn't the aircraft grounded then so the fix could happen before the second crash?

BERMAN: Miles O'Brien, these are all very important questions. Thanks so much for being with us this morning.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

BERMAN: Alisyn.

[06:39:55] CAMEROTA: OK, John, we have some breaking 2020 news. Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg touting a big announcement. We'll tell you what it is, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: We have breaking news in the 2020 race.

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is touting a special announcement on April 14th. Whatever could that be?

Well, look, up until this point he's only had an exploratory committee. So you can bet that on April 14th he will be announcing that he is running for president.

So as we await the official announcement from Buttigieg, Democrats are also focused on the highly anticipated decision from former Vice President Joe Biden.

CAMEROTA: Biden just released a new video promising to change his ways and be more mindful about respecting personal space after numerous women have come forward to say that he made them feel uncomfortable.

Here's a bit of Biden's video.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: In the coming month I expect to be talking about a whole lot of issues and I'll always be direct with you. But today I want to talk about (INAUDIBLE) support and encouragement that I've made to women and some men that have made them uncomfortable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Now, you know --

CAMEROTA: You -- oh, no, I want to know what you're going to say.

BERMAN: I was just watching very, very closely because, in addition to the stuff about personal space, there was also a clear subtext, which was, I'm running.

[06:45:06] CAMEROTA: For sure.

BERMAN: For sure.

CAMEROTA: For sure.

BERMAN: All right, joining us now, Harry Enten, CNN senior politics writer, analyst --

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER: Whatever.

BERMAN: There's "The Forecast."

ENTEN: There it is.

BERMAN: There's so much stuff.

Tell us about Joe Biden. What do the numbers tell us about this week and all these questions, what they mean. ENTEN: Yes, I mean, first off, if you're wondering about whether or not this news is breaking through, and it's clearly done so, so, Biden's had more Google searches this week than the prior four weeks combined. So it's very clear that a lot of people are hearing this news and they're searching about it.

CAMEROTA: Well, when you say news, you mean about the women, not about his potential candidacy?

ENTEN: Ah, yes. Correct. Correct. That's exactly right. The different accusations, allegations. It's clearly breaking through. Lucy Flores is searched very much along so with Joe Biden, if you look at the detail breakdown.

But I think it's important to point out, just because people are searching this data, it's not necessarily the case that they're changing their mind about Joe Biden. It should be pointed out that at least in the limited data, I should point out, it's still very limited and sometimes these things take time in order to change the course. But so far, in the very limited data we have so far, his lead is holding in a Democratic primary poll so far. His high favorable ratings are holding. He's still around 30 percent in the Harry's average of polls. But, again, limited data. We'll see what happens. But so far no discouraging signs for him to run, at least in the polling data.

CAMEROTA: I mean I think what's interesting is, since he teased it in that video and said in the coming month we're going to have a lot of issues to talk about, what's he waiting for at this point?

BERMAN: Well, he was waiting for -- what he was waiting for were the fundraising numbers.

CAMEROTA: Were the fundraising totals. But now he's waiting for this cloud to blow over.

BERMAN: I think maybe a little bit. Or, you know, to stage a big demonstration or to get all the ducks in a row, they'll hire the staff.

But on the fundraising numbers, Harry, since that's a good segue, there is a clear leader here.

ENTEN: Yes. Bernie Sanders, so far, is the clear leader with $18.2 million. That's well ahead of Kamala Harris' $12 million, Beta O'Rourke's $9.4.

You'll notice, also underneath I've had the enter dates. And what we see with Bernie is, he entered rather late compared to Harris and he still raised a significant more chunk of change than she did. Or even Pete Buttigieg, who, you know, formed that exploratory committee. That's obviously going to change into an actual one, we believe. He formed that exploratory committee on January 23rd.

So, you know, this is clearly far and away but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the $7 million was raised right at the end of the quarter after the CNN town hall where he sort of caught fire.

BERMAN: This number here is not maybe as impressive as some people thought, but you break it down.

ENTEN: Yes. I think that this, you know, if you looked at the money that was raised on launch day, look, O'Rourke was the winner, right, he got 6.1, a 5.9 and Harris at 1.5. But look at this. Look at the average dollar raised per day since day two, that is excluding the day one totals. And what we see is, 308,000 for Bernie Sanders, very impressive. But O'Rourke is all the way down here at only $194,000. And that, you know, is much closer to Harris's total than it is to Sanders' total. So it almost seems like O'Rourke went through a lot of fundraisers on day one, people who contributed to his campaign, but it didn't really seem to extend beyond that day to the extent that we might have expected given his high total on day one.

CAMEROTA: But given all of that, I think that maybe we are downplaying Bernie Sanders's runaway frontrunner status. You know, we talk a lot about the others. Of course they're new and it's important to get to know them, but Bernie Sanders is significantly ahead.

ENTEN: He is significantly ahead. But what I should point out is, none of these people are really all that ahead, right? I mean, look, Hillary Clinton raised $46.9 million in the second quarter of 2015 when she declared. And that's basically the same -- sum total of all of these four combined. So it's not like we have a runaway person. And that kind of looks exactly like the polling, right, where we see basically Clinton was well ahead at the end of quarter two in 2015 versus here we basically have this very close together match-up.

BERMAN: All right, stay tuned. We have April 14th, Pete Buttigieg and some day soon for Joe Biden.

ENTEN: Some -- someday soon, so we believe. We'll see. That's the beauty of it all, isn't it?

CAMEROTA: It is.

BERMAN: Thank you very much.

CAMEROTA: Thank you, Harry.

ENTEN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: All right, so listen to this. Is a teenager who's been found in Kentucky the very same boy who went missing in Illinois nearly eight years. What police are saying about the possible huge break, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:52:53] BERMAN: We have breaking news from New Zealand. Police say the suspect in the attack on two mosques in Christchurch will be charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder. He is due to appear in court on Friday when he will be formally charged. A police statement says other charges are still being considered. The alleged attacker is expected to defend himself at trial.

CAMEROTA: Listen to this story. Authorities say a teenager found wandering in Kentucky identified himself to police as Timmothy Pitzen, who went missing in Illinois nearly eight years ago. He said that he had just escaped from his kidnappers.

CNN's Athena Jones has more on this possible break in this extraordinary case.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRAY KNIGHT, NEWPORT, KENTUCKY, RESIDENT: We could see the fear on him and how nervous he was and how he kept pacing and he just looked odd.

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A stunning discovery in one Kentucky town after a teenager told authorities he is this missing boy -- Timmothy Pitzen -- last seen nearly eight years ago. This age-progressed photo shows what he may look like today.

Law enforcement has not confirmed the teen's identity, but Timmothy's family says they're cautiously hopeful.

ALANA ANDERSON, TIMMOTHY PITZEN'S GRANDMOTHER: I'm very hopeful that it's him and that he's OK and he's been in a good place when he was gone, that he's going to come back to us.

JONES: An Ohio police report says that the male identified himself as now 14-year-old Pitzen, adding that he, quote, just escaped from two kidnappers holding him for seven years, running across a bridge into Kentucky from a Red Roof Inn. The boy was unsure where the inn was located.

A woman who say the boy outside her house tells CNN her neighbor called police after the boy told her he'd been running for two hours and didn't know where he was.

KNIGHT: He had bruises on his face. He looked real shaky, like he was hungry, he was unsure. I mean even a little noise, he was jumping. He was very uneasy.

JONES: Timmothy Pitzen vanished when he was only six years old after his mother, Amy Fry Pitzen, checked him out of school and took him on a three-day road trip. The child was last seen leaving this Wisconsin resort with his mother. The next day, Amy Fry Pitzen was discovered dead inside this Illinois motel from an apparent suicide. Police finding a cryptic note that read, Tim is somewhere safe with people who love him and will care for him. You will never find him.

[06:55:11] Timmothy's disappearance has puzzled law enforcement for years.

LEE CATAVU, DETECTIVE, AURORA POLICE DEPARTMENT: I have yet to meet one person who believes that she would ever harm her child. The other option is that she turned him over to someone who, as she wrote in her note, would love and care for him.

JONES: Pitzen's family relaying this message to the teen they are praying is their loved one.

ANDERSON: We have never stopped looking for him, thinking about him and that we love him and will do everything to get him back to a good life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: Now, the teen describes his alleged kidnappers as two white men with body builder type physiques. One with curly black hair and a spider web tattoo on his neck. The second, short in stature with a snake tattoo on his arms. And they may be driving a white Ford SUV with Wisconsin license plates.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, Athena, this just, obviously raises millions of questions. It strains credulity on some level. We need investigators to explain what's happening here.

Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention.

All right, some of Robert Mueller's investigators say their findings are more alarming than the attorney general has depicted. A new report also says the evidence they gathered on obstruction was significant. All of the latest, next.

END