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White House Reconsiders Israel Policy; Poll: Obama Tops Bush, But Not Clinton; Growing Calls To Change The Greek System; NCAA Round Of 64 Gets Started Today. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired March 19, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Three terrorists are still on the loose after killing 23 people in Tunisia's national museum. The U.S. is offering whatever help is needed to find them. Seventeen of the dead are tourists.

[07:30:00] Two other gunmen were killed by Tunisian security forces. So far no one has claimed responsibility for that massacre, but a government spokesman in Tunis calls the attackers Islamist extremists. At least one of the gunmen is known to security services there.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: More accusations of police brutality, this time at the University of Virginia after a student's bloody arrest was caught on video. Hundreds of students rallied on campus after the arrest of Martese Johnson. Police say he was drunk and resisted arrest. At the rally, Johnson urged the crowd to stay calm and to respect each other. The governor is ordering an investigation into the police sector.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So could an NFL touchdown soon be worth nine points? This is one possible rule change the Competition Committee will consider when it meets next week. This one is proposed by the Indianapolis Colts, it would allow teams to attempt to kick from midfield for a bonus point following a touchdown and a successful two- point conversion.

If you're doing the math at home that equals nine points. Again, this proposed by the Indianapolis Colts, but I've done the math here and this would not have helped them, you know, overcome the 76-point deficit to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship.

PEREIRA: It was the thought.

CAMEROTA: But what's the point of changing it?

BERMAN: I don't understand it myself -- just a math quiz.

PEREIRA: All right, let's turn to "Inside Politics," busy day as always, Mr. John King, good morning to you.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": What a segue way there, good morning, Michaela. Mr. Berman, with the over/under has played the football when they kicked it from the middle of the field. Never mind. Thank you, guys.

Let's go "Inside Politics" this morning, a very busy day, with me to share their reporting and their insights, Julie Pace of the "Associated Press" and Ron Fournier of the "National Journal."

Let's start with the fall out and talk privately of some retribution, payback, or at least a significant change in U.S./Israeli relations. Now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu it appears will form the new government, clearly his party came out ahead in the election.

The president doesn't like that, can't say it publicly, but there was no question he wanted somebody else to win in Israel. What's going to happen now especially the White House is mad about two things?

Number one, they were mad he came and spoke to Congress about the Iran deal so they are mad about three things. Number two, they were mad on the eve of the election, he flip-flopped on whether he would support a two-state solution, the Palestinian State.

And number three, on the morning of the election, to drive out turn- out, Prime Minister Netanyahu suggesting essentially going out, this are my words, not his exactly.

But paraphrasing that his base needed to get out and vote because Arabs were going to get out and vote and shape Israel. Those Arabs voting happen to be perfectly legal, legitimate voters.

JULIE PACE, "ASSOCIATED PRESS": Yes, I mean, if you thought the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu couldn't get any worse, it now has. The issue that has really gotten to the White House is this flip-flop on Palestinian Statehood because that has been something Netanyahu has backed previously.

It's something that Republican and Democratic U.S. presidents have made a central tenet of their Middle East peace plans and what White House officials are saying is that Netanyahu has made this his policy of record and there will be ramifications for doing that.

One of the things that we started hearing yesterday is these hints that the U.S. may ease up on the opposition to the Palestinians going to the United Nations. The U.S. has vowed to use its veto power at the Security Council, vowed to block any efforts there.

But now they're saying, you know, it is possible we could ease up and try to let them get statehood that way, which would be a huge shift.

RON FOURNIER, "NATIONAL JOURNAL": You know, the problem is Israel's enemies, whatever you want to say about Bibi, they're playing for keeps and the U.S. can be playing with fire if they're going to play these kinds of games in the U.N. I am not a big fan of Bibi. I think the administration has every reason to be upset with him.

Somebody has got to be the adult in the room in this relationship. Somebody has to reach out and say how do we put these this back together and have peace talks again, and have a decent relationship? We can't have our White House acting just as petulant as Bibi. PACE: Well, one of the things to remember about the U.N. is actually U.S. and Israel are quite isolated. When you go to the U.N., you have these votes. It tends to be a small handful of countries --

KING: For years. The United States tends to use its veto to essentially stop --

FOURNIER: So what happens if Barack Obama takes the football and goes home and leaves Israel completely isolated in the U.N. We can't do that --

KING: I guess that's the big question. There's no question this personal animus between these two guys. Now there are more policy disagreements between these two guys.

The question is can they lift their heads and look at the strategic -- set their names aside and personalities aside, set their pride aside, which is hard for a politician, and focus on this is the United States and Israel. Not Barack Obama and Bibi Netanyahu.

FOURNIER: Well put and that's what big boys do. That's what leaders do. Barack Obama's got to do it.

PACE: I think you're not going to see a change in the security relationship certainly. The money will keep flowing. The military assistance will keep flowing. Peace talks, I think the chances were slim to begin with. I think that's going to be very difficult over the next couple of years, but the big question is what happens with Iran.

KING: An the question I think part of the question is, you know, who goes first in the sense of can you be big boys, can you turn the page, try to get to a place where can you do better business together.

Some of the reaction, here's the Press Secretary Josh Earnest, talking about what the prime minister said about the Arab voters on Election Day, "Rhetoric that seeks to marginalize one segment of their population is deeply concerning and it is divisive. I can tell you that these are views the administration intends to communicate directly to the Israelis."

It's pretty clear they are mad. The question is when will they communicate? Secretary Kerry had a very brief conversation. The White House says the president will get around to it eventually. They're going to let him form the new government.

[07:35:11] Hang on, just before you jump in, listen to Eliot Engel here talking to Wolf yesterday, a Democratic member of Congress from New York, involved in this relationship, a member of the foreign affairs committee. He said he's hoping that Bibi will step forward once he forms a new government and change again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPRESENTATIVE ELIOT ENGEL (D), NEW YORK: I assume he was saying to his supporters, the other who is are not going to be voting so you've got to come out to vote and to counterbalance that perhaps it wasn't the right choice of words, it probably wasn't, but I think it was again campaign rhetoric and I wouldn't read too much into it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I mean, I hope I guess sort of hope he's right except you can't read too much into it. This is part of your population, the prime minister is essentially warning Israelis that some of their fellow voters, legal voters, these are not people sneaking into the country from somewhere else.

It's not Chicago -- these are legal voters doing things that the prime minister was suggesting, he was marginalizing them, some people voting said, it was racist.

FOURNIER: It's reprehensible, if not racist. What if the Republicans had said in 2012, white people, come out and vote because the Democrats just want African-Americans and Hispanics to vote against you that would be terrible and would be reprehensible.

What the White House has to think is OK, that's terrible and we can call it terrible. But the point isn't to be the side that looks the best, right? The point is to get back on track in relations with an important ally that's really important to our security and very important to a big part of our population. That's the issue, not who can win this argument.

KING: The White House clearly thinks that the burden is on Netanyahu to go first, to prove that he's going to have that new relationship --

FOURNIER: That sounds like kindergarten, who goes first, just fix it.

KING: We've seen that before, it's a back and forth. He says a lot of these things with legitimate reasons to talk about the other guy's tactics.

FOURNIER: But we're not on the playground, we're in the global world right now.

KING: Are you sure of that? Let's move forward. The president to be part of the conversations, let's look at his political standing right now, we have our new poll this week, approval of his job as president, the president is at 46 percent, this is pretty consistent.

He's been here, moved from the low to mid 40s, up to above the mid- point in the 40s right before the election, 46 percent, this is pretty steady, 51 percent disapprove. For a little context, George W. Bush at this point, was at a miserable 37 percent.

Bill Clinton, much better economy had come through some other drama in his administration, was up to 77 percent, again the president at 46, 51, adding to the context of this. We work in the town where he's dealing with the Republican Congress.

Speaker Boehner, Mitch McConnell, this is not a good number. How do American people view the Republican leadership in Congress? That's pretty damning. They won the election. They said they were going to prove they could govern. A few months in, that's a pretty damning number, 23 percent approve and 74 percent disapprove.

PACE: It's pretty grim and I think that, you know, the number for Democrats in Congress is not significantly higher, either, and it just shows the frustration that people have with Congress as a whole. There's nothing getting done whether it's Democrats or Republicans running the show.

Obama's numbers are holding steady or in some cases ticking upward. I think that's a reflection of the economy more than what's happening in Washington. People just feel better in their lives.

FOURNIER: Your numbers show that the public by a pretty significant gain feel better about the future of the country. Things are on the right track it, which really does bode well for the president and his party in 2016, directionally that's how he wanted going.

But the problem is, that's good if all you're worried about and all you care about is who is going to win the election. When you look underneath these numbers, only about 43 percent of people think the president has done anything to change the culture of Washington and change politics, and make it less dysfunctional.

That's the real problem. That and the fact we haven't made the big transition economically.

KING: Ron and Julie, thank you. Ron makes a good point, as we get to the next election, the question is can either nominee -- can they be more optimistic? Convince people that you can actually feel better about this town, not just the rest of your country? Mark me down as a skeptic.

CAMEROTA: That's a tall order. You're so right, John. We will be watching, of course, thanks so much. It's nice to see you.

Well, it has been a bad few weeks for Greek fraternity, some being investigated for racism and sexual assault. Can the Greek system be fixed and how?

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[07:43:25]

BERMAN: More fraternities under fire this morning for bad behavior. The Sigma Ki chapter of the University of Houston suspended over hazing allegations and a fraternity has been kicked off the University of Wisconsin Madison campus for dangerous hazing rituals.

So what needs to be done to fix college fraternities? Want to bring in Ryan Calsbeek, he is the chair of the committee on Student Life at Dartmouth College. He voted to abolish Greek system on campus.

And also joining us is Andrew Lohse, a former Dartmouth college fraternity brother, who wrote the book "Confessions of An Ivy League Frat Boy, A Memoir." Andrew, let me start with you. You are a former SAE member at Dartmouth. You have said that you're not surprised by what's been going on over the last several weeks around the country at fraternities including those racist chants at the University of Oklahoma.

Let me cut right to the chase here, you don't think this is a case of a few bad apples, a few bad fraternities. You think there's something so systemic here, something in the DNA of the Greek system that it needs to be done away with all together?

ANDREW LOHSE, AUTHOR, "CONFESSIONS OF AN IVY LEAGUE FRAT BOY: A MEMOIR": I think we're having a national conversation about this structural problem of fraternities and how history is encoded into discrimination is encoded into the DNA of fraternities.

These are organizations that have transmitted values from the 19th Century to the 21st Century in terms of attitudes towards women, towards minority and even violence towards their own members. I don't really know why we're so surprised by all these stories that keep popping up.

BERMAN: But do away with it, Professor? Look I was not in a fraternity so I have no real skin in this game. But people at your college argue look, at Dartmouth, we need fraternities, it's cold up here, it's isolating. We need something to do to get together.

There are some fraternities that do a great deal of community service, brotherhood, sisterhood. It's a good way to network. What do you say to that, Professor?

[07:45:12] RYAN CALSBEEK, CHAIRMAIN OF THE COMMITTEE ON STUDENT LIFE, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE: Right, well, I don't think that anybody disagrees that there are some positive attributes to membership in fraternities. Our stance on this is simply that and by our, I mean, other faculty in addition to myself is that there are alternatives to the Greek system that provide those same opportunities and those same benefits.

BERMAN: Why can't you just get rid of the bad frats, Professor?

CALSBEEK: That's a great question. I think that it's hard to peg down exactly where the problem originates. I don't think that the Greek system is necessarily the root cause of the problem. I think that much of the bad stuff that happens is correlated with you know membership in the Greek system.

And as Andrew just pointed out, you know, it goes to hazing, it goes to the hierarchical nature of the system and so on that just sort of exacerbates the problem over time.

I sort of disagree. I do think it's really more likely to be a few bad apples than a systemic problem of everybody who is a member of the Greek system. But I think that, you know, the social pressures of membership and so on lead to sort of a snowball effect.

So I don't know, getting rid of one bad organization, I think is a good start and maybe that is the way to go. I think only time will tell.

BERMAN: Andrew, why can't the system be fixed?

CALSBEEK: Well, you know I think reducing it just to a few bad apples or an isolated incident here and there is just so reductive that it doesn't really push the discussion forward. We've seen more than a century of the few bad apples defense or the isolated incident defense.

I think it's about time that we call that what it is, which is a pattern, and that pattern is forming a pathology, and you know, the idea that this is purely an individual problem, you know just simply false.

Like I talk about in the book, I saw you know my former fraternity at Dartmouth. You know, that culture, that collective psychology, the group-think, the institutional pathology of it would motivate people to do things they would never, do find reprehensible in an individual context.

And then it can protect them and privilege them with secrecy, with financial resources, legal resources that then perpetuate the cycle. So I think we need to get the problem at the root.

Now the professor is right, I mean, you know, the fraternities are not the cause of these problems socially, but on our campuses there are places where rapists are harbored, rapists are created, where hazing happens, where in fact people die.

We've seen that SAE is considered the deadliest frat in America, the most hazing deaths and alcohol deaths have happened in those fraternities.

BERMAN: I'm not defending any of the things you just stated, but fraternities do not have a monopoly on stupidity in college campuses, you can binge drink, without being in a fraternity.

You could do dump offensive things, haze without being in a fraternity. There's a lot of hazing that goes on football teams. Do you want to do away with all football teams at universities, too, Andrew?

LOHSE: Well, I think we need to take a look at how all these things are connected. I mean, I think that, you know, the new documentary "The Hunting Ground" that deals with sexual assault on campus talks a great deal about fraternities and it also talks about college athletics.

I think we need to put college athletics at large in the business of that. You know, and the attitudes, you know, that under the microscope too. But I mean, right now the conversation is about fraternities and I think that's where it should be, and that's where we should focus for the time being.

BERMAN: Andrew Lohse, Ryan Calsbeek, thanks so much for being with us. I appreciate it. Look, it's an important discussion to have. I think people should get together and look at this seriously going forward. So thank you, Gentlemen.

Let us know what you think about this. Tweet us at "NEW DAY" or go to facebook.com/newday -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: There will be lots of opinions there. Thanks so much, John. Three suspects linked to the deadly terrorist attack at the museum in Tunisia are now on the run. We'll have the very latest for you on the manhunt and the death toll.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Let the madness begin, the NCAA tournament round of 64, whatever that means, kicks off later today. Only hours left to finish filling out your brackets.

PEREIRA: Do you know what that is, a bracket?

CAMEROTA: Sort of. I had some team help with this. CNN's Andy Scholes joins us with the "Bleacher Report." Hi, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Alisyn, whether you believe it or not, the next 48 hours really are the best two days in all of sports. You got 16 games today, 16 games tomorrow. Nothing really comes close to the excitement.

You get all day long from March Madness, but before we got to today's action, there were two more play-in games last night, Dayton and Boise State were playing for an 11 seed.

Dayton, the first team since 1987 to play a tournament game on their home floor. Daishon Pierre goes up for a rebound and his teammate pulls his shorts down. He held onto the ball and pulled his shorts back up at the same time. That takes skill.

Under 40 seconds to go, Jordan Cyber hits a 3 for the flyers. That capped off a 10-2 run. Boise State would get one last shot at it, but they miss the game winner. Dayton wins this, 56-55.

Robert Morris taking on North Florida, Steven Putnam, North Florida's baritone player and internet sensation doing his thing to the song "Turn Down For What." That was all North Florida fans had to cheer about in this one.

A big second half comeback to get the win, 81-77. They will play one seed, Duke, tomorrow. The round of 64 tips off later today 12:15 Eastern. The action will continue throughout the day on CBS, TBS and TNT.

Greg Hardy has found a new NFL team. The Dallas Cowboys signing the all pro defensive end to a one year deal yesterday that could be worth as much as $13.1 million. Hardy is facing a potential suspension for violating the league's domestic violence policy.

He was convicted of domestic violence, but appealed requesting a trial by jury. Hardy's accuser would not cooperate so the case was dismissed. [07:55:06] Guys, you have four hours left to make sure you fill out those brackets and make sure you get them in. If you want to play with us at CNN go to CNN.com/brackets. If you win the pool I'm told John Berman will tweet you a congratulations and send you an "EARLY START" mug.

BERMAN: Andy Scholes, thank you so much. Alisyn Camerota does sports phonetically.

CAMEROTA: I do.

BERMAN: All right, the search is on for three suspects linked to the deadly terrorist attack at a museum in Tunisia. What we know about those responsible? What we are now learning, new information about some of the victims.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:59:31]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just heard gunshots.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The attack started outside the National Parliament Building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's been no official claim of responsibility yet from ISIS.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm running (inaudible).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: His face could literally be bashed in by concrete.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're all part of one community.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The secret service may have erased video surveillance footage.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": Agents drove into a White House barrier while returning from a party.