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New Day

Search Resumes at French Alps Crash Site; GOP Senator Opposing Obamacare Signs Up for It. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired March 25, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00] MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Are they just as safe as other carriers?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Helicopters in the air this hour, helping in the recovery of the Germanwings Flight 9525 that crashed into the French Alps. Investigators studying the damaged voice cockpit recorder for clues, all 150 people on board are presumed dead. Search teams spotting human remains scattered among the debris. It's unclear why the jet descended 32,000 feet in eight minutes with no distress call from the cockpit.

PEREIRA: U.S. officials reportedly are negotiating with Syria to secure the release of McClatchy journalist Austin Tice, who was abducted back in 2012. Reports of talks coming from the French newspaper "Le Figaro", discussions between the U.S. and Damascus began before Secretary of State John Kerry talked about the need to have dialogue with Syria last week. Those talks reportedly being mediated by a Czech diplomat.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The long legal saga of Amanda Knox could end as soon as today. It is Italy's Supreme Court getting ready to decide if her murder conviction will be upheld.

[06:35:01] Now, if it is, Italy could ask that she be extradited back to Italy. Knox was convicted the first time you'll remember and then acquitted in a retrial. That verdict was thrown out. Knox is in Washington state vowing never to return to Italy.

CAMEROTA: Such a fascinating case. Still years later.

PEREIRA: And the fact that you wonder will Italy press the U.S. government to extradite her? What does that do for Italian American relations?

CAMEROTA: And would the U.S. turn her over?

CUOMO: Well, these are all interesting legal questions. They don't have to press, because they have an extradition agreement. However, that agreement has been violated in the past by both sides, when it suited what was seen as national government interests. So, would Amanda Knox fall into that category? There's a big carve-

out, we'll discuss it late anywhere the show with experts who have been following the case. But not to be forgotten is there's a huge amount of people in this country who say this was a bogus trial. There are a huge number of people in Italy and elsewhere who disagree.

PEREIRA: And in Britain where there's a young woman being mourned, still.

CUOMO: Where Amanda Kirchner was from. So, there are really two sides. >

CAMEROTA: We talk about later in the show.

PEREIRA: Yes, coming up later.

Right now, though it is CNN Money now, chief business correspondent Christine Romans in our money center.

A huge merger this morning. Wow.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's a mac and cheese and ketchup merger. Heinz is buying Kraft to create the world's third largest food and beverage company. The deal worth, we're told, $40 billion.

You know, packaged food companies have been struggling, food tastes are changing very quickly. People are seeking out healthier options, causing big challenges for these food companies, and opportunity for somebody buying those food companies.

All right. A lot of concerns, a lot of talk about these low-cost airlines and their safety records. Now, budget airlines, they do cut corners on conveniences like leg room and free bags. But experts tell us they do not cut corners on safety. In fact, safety for the budget airlines, same requirements, same rules as for the big major carriers.

Where the differences are, on the low-cost carriers, their pilots may be paid a little bit less, sometimes their airplanes are a little bit older, but they have the same, same requirements for safety as the big airlines, guys.

CAMEROTA: OK. Thanks for all of that, Christine. Nice to see you.

Well, there are still more questions than answers in the crash of Germanwings, the passenger jet. What causes a plane to descend 32,000 feet in an eight-minute span without a word from the pilot?

CUOMO: All right. And I know you think you know Ted Cruz, but when you hear what he said that he's going to do now, after everything that this man has said about Obamacare, you will not believe a position he has just taken. We'll tell you about it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:41:44] PEREIRA: So many questions being asked right now. What caused Flight 9525 to steadily fall from the sky mid flight? And why didn't the pilots send a distress call? Hopefully clues will be revealed as investigators analyze the flight's voice recorder recovered from the crash site.

Here to talk us through the big questions are CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector, David Soucie. He's made his way to New York.

We're so glad you're here so you can walk through this.

First of all, we know the voice recorder has been found. This is a flight recorder.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Right.

PEREIRA: This is not the same thing. But they do have the voice recorder. It's been damaged, David. Good news, but bad news, right?

SOUCIE: Right, the good news is again the voice recorder we look to that to find out why it happened. The flight data recorder will tell us what happened.

PEREIRA: And how.

SOUCIE: But the why part is always what's happening in the cockpit just before the accident.

PEREIRA: It's the sounds of the voices inside the cockpit, the transmissions.

SOUCIE: Communication, what's going on, because they're going to tell the story of what happens in that cockpit.

PEREIRA: They said it's damaged. But they're going to reconstruct it, what does that entail?

SOUCIE: That's very concerning. Understand that the box is usually damaged at every accident scene. There's some kind of damage do it, because it took a really heavy impact. They're designed for that. That information is stored in EPROM chips, chips that they store information, regardless of whether they have power or not, they store that information.

So, the fact is that this was damaged, the box was damaged, that's by design. So, I don't think it will -- hopefully, the data inside hasn't been damaged. And that's what they're going to be looking at today.

PEREIRA: The data recorder is still vital. That's something they want to get their hands on.

SOUCIE: Right.

PEREIRA: All right. Let's talk about this. We know that this flight, the accident occurred in the cruising altitude which is kind of rare. SOUCIE: It is.

PEREIRA: Why is that?

SOUCIE: Well, during the cruise, the reason it's rare is because you think about all the millions of different things that are going on in this airplane all the time. So when it's taking off, you have a lot of really complex things going on. Plus, you're taking off power, you're pushing those engines as hard as they can go, the wings are under stress, everything is going on at this point and there's lot of activity. The activity dwindles off. When you're in climb, everything is stable. You stabilize climb.

PEREIRA: And cruise is --

(CROSSTALK)

SOUCIE: Yes, the cruise is set, auto pilot is on. This is the point at which the pilots might be able to get a cup of coffee or something like that during this time. Typically nothing much happens during that time. It's events versus probability of occurrence.

PEREIRA: And then, again, during landing, and we've seen incidents of -- several, and sometimes weather-related, otherwise, mechanical, this is a another big cause of accidents.

SOUCIE: It is and another big factor that goes into this, the auto pilot, at this point, the pilot has full control of the airplane. At this point, it's mostly in the auto pilot mode. And landing, you're back in control, it's a human error has a lot to do with that.

PEREIRA: Speaking of that, you know, there's been a lot of questions about this, the altitude drop off. We know that at 10:31 the plane descended without authorization. At 10:35, air traffic control sent a warning. The plane disappeared from radar.

We saw this steady drop off of altitude. I'll let you draw it. I know you want to tell me something here.

SOUCIE: Great. This is steady. But it's fairly extreme. This is about 3,400 to 4,000 feet per minute. Now, a normal descent as you're coming into land would be about there.

PEREIRA: OK.

[06:45:02] SOUCIE: OK, so it's not like they were lining up to land at some airport and got distracted. That's not what happened. Something took control of the aircraft, something changed the direction.

PEREIRA: You speak of control. Because there's a thought some people have wondered, were the pilots incapacitated. Were they not aware that the altitude was dropping so much? Does this speak to them being in control or perhaps on auto pilot?

SOUCIE: Not necessarily. There's two or three things that could have caused this to happen without the pilot's input. One is that if the aircraft is trimmed to do this.

PEREIRA: Meaning?

SOUCIE: Well, as the aircraft is flying, the fuel center of gravity changes in the airplane. As that happens, the fuel burns, this sort of thing, the aircraft tilts forward and aft. As it burns the fuel, it adjusts to that, you have trim indicator and trim controls, that you can trim the aircraft to make sure it's flying straight and level even without auto pilot.

PEREIRA: OK, let's look at the debris field quickly, because we know this is last point of contract. We know this is the debris field here.

SOUCIE: Right.

PEREIRA: The plane essentially disintegrated. What does this tell you about speed, about ha happened? What does it indicate?

SOUCIE: Extremely high impact, extremely high-speed impact. But even at cruise speed, if this was at 500 knots or so, and it hits straight, flat ground, whether it's at a peak or whether it's in the ground this way, this is what you might find this is what happens in this type of accident is that when it hits the ground, there's what we call splash back.

I know this is hard for people to hear and please excuse that for me. But accident victims have told me in the past, they like knowing what happened. It's difficult but we need to do it.

So, when you hit the ground, some of the aircraft starts coming back at it there's a splash-back effect. As that happens, other part of the aircraft is coming this way. So, you have huge collisions of debris that are both coming and going and hitting each other and collapsing. So, that's the bad news. The good news is there was no suffering in this accident.

PEREIRA: This is the best news.

SOUCIE: Instantaneous, instantaneous. Less than a second this all happened. It's amazing to think of that, but in less than a second.

PEREIRA: Little comfort, but it is comfort for the families that are grieving, the nations that are mourning, and there are so many of them.

David Soucie, we're so glad you're here with us to walk us through this.

SOUCIE: Thank you.

PEREIRA: Chris?

CUOMO: All right. Mick, thank you very much.

So, Ted Cruz is in the news, he wants to kill Obamacare and that's a huge understatement, all right? But if he is elected president, he said that's what he's going to do, is get rid of Obamacare. So why did he just sign up for it and say there are good things about it?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, you will be getting Obamacare effectively?

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It is one of the good things about Obamacare is that the statute provided that members of Congress would be on the exchange without subsidies, just like millions of Americans, so there wouldn't be a double standard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: This is the point in the conversation where you hear the needle drag across the record. And you come to a full stop -- the nice thing about Obamacare?

Ted Cruz hates Obamacare, doesn't he? Compared it to the Nazis, what green eggs and ham was like is nothing compared to how bad this is. That it needs a tsunami and he was going to bring it?

What's going on here?

Let's bring in CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Tara Setmeyer, and CNN political commentator, Democratic strategist, senior adviser of the super PAC, Priorities USA PAC, Paul Begala.

All right. Good, I got it all in there.

Tara, what's going on with your man Ted Cruz? He hates Obamacare. He's the tsunami, baby. How is he getting there?

TARA SETMAYER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: First of all -- wait, wait, Ted Cruz is not my guy.

CUOMO: Oh, he's your guy.

SETMAYER: No, he's not. He's on our side of the fence. You know, I accept him as a principled conservative.

CUOMO: Where's the principle now?

SETMAYER: No, the principle now is that he is -- because his wife has taken a leave of absence from her private-sector job which provided health care for the family.

CUOMO: Goldman Sachs.

SETMAYER: That's correct. Now, the family because of the law has to get health care. So, one of the options is because they put in -- Senator Grassley put it in the legislation that, yeah, Congress should not have any exemptions, they should have to follow the law just like everybody else.

CUOMO: Could he get it any other way?

SETMAYER: He could. He hasn't made the decision if he's going to do it or not. It's one of the options. But you have to understand that because of Obamacare, the barriers to private health insurance are so high and costly, he may cost-effectively have to go onto the exchange, but because it's the law.

Now, I think it's ironic that people are flipping out over this, yes, because he doesn't like the law.

CUOMO: He says it's illegal. He says it's unconstitutional.

SETMAYER: It is. But as of right now, it's the law on the books, that's why it's in the courts. And that's why it's being fought. But why are we arguing over someone who is a lawmaker actually following the law.

CUOMO: Because he didn't need to do it.

SETMAYER: I think that's amazing.

CUOMO: Because he didn't need to do it. It's not amazing at all. It's very obvious.

SETMAYER: He hasn't done it.

CUOMO: It sounded like he was going to do it. That's all.

SETMAYER: They have not decided whether they're going to do it or not.

CUOMO: He said he was going to do it.

SETMAYER: But if he does take it, he will not be taking the subsidy either, which I think is principled, still.

CAMEROTA: It's true, that in fact after Dana Bash's interview with him, where she asked him about the subsidy, and he said, "I will follow the law", that was his answer, "I will follow the law." And the staff said he will not be taking the subsidy that is provided to lawmakers.

So, Paul, how about that? Senator Cruz says this is the law of the law. He doesn't like Obamacare, but he will follow the law.

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I have to say it, clear, in his famous 21-hour filibuster, trying to kill Obamacare, Senator Cruz read the Dr. Seuss book "Green Eggs and Ham", to his little girls. It's actually even for Democrats, a very charming moment, and it's what we remember most about that filibuster.

Well, guess what, I read it 1,000 times to my kids. At the end, the guy tries green eggs and ham, and decides he likes them. Ted Cruz, I want you to try Obamacare. I signed up for Obamacare, not

for political statement, just because it was a better deal for my family. And I love it.

I think if Ted Cruz follows through with this, he might end up like the guy in green eggs and ham. Obamacare is actually a very good deal for people like Senator Cruz and his family. I'm glad that it's available for him.

SETMAYER: Not necessarily, it's amazing to me that people are sitting here and saying this is a bad thing that a lawmaker is going to follow the law. We don't like the IRS law and tax law, we have to follow that. You don't get to pick and choose unless you're the president of the United States, I guess, pick and choose what laws he wants enforced.

[06:55:09] CAMEROTA: And Senator Cruz did make that point. However, he does have other options. There are other health care options. He could have gone to COBRA through his wife's employer.

SETMAYER: That's temporary.

CAMEROTA: Sure, of course. But the point is there were other options, for him to choose the one that's most odious to him.

SETMAYER: He's not chosen it yet.

CAMEROTA: Yesterday -- he hasn't --

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: But yesterday, it did sound to Dana Bash that he was going to sign up for it.

SETMAYER: It's an option.

The other thing about this is, from a political standpoint. First of all, people, they only read six in ten Americans only read headlines, how the headlines read is going to try to dictate the narrative.

But if you think about it for him politically, now, if he does join Obamacare, he can say as a real person I understand what a nightmare this is, how difficult it's been, how expensive it's been. I mean, this has not exactly been roses, that's why there's been 49 changes, 30 unilaterally by the president, there's been multiple delays.

Senate Democrats just sent a letter for another delay with the employer mandate. Obamacare isn't all peaches and cream that people make it sound like, Paul Begala here. Just ask all the people who lost their health care as a result of Obamacare, and how many people are forced into part-time work, but we're not here to discuss Obamacare.

CUOMO: Oh, yes we are.

CAMEROTA: I've never seen Chris more quiet waiting for his turn. SETMAYER: Go for it.

CUOMO: You are earning your keep this morning. I want you to know that.

SETMAYER: The fact, about the truth about Obamacare? Love it.

CUOMO: Here are the facts: this man who is brilliant by anybody's estimation -- those who taught him, those who work with him -- he has said without any qualification that this is the worst thing that's probably ever happened in American history, Obamacare, OK? He compares it to the worst things. For him to even consider and by the way, think you're going way too short on his commitment to joining Obamacare.

If you watch the interview, he brought it up, he said that's what he's going to do, he said like millions of others. Since when does he acknowledge that millions of people are on Obamacare? I thought it was like six and the White House was lying about it.

He said, I'm going to follow the law, since when is this the law? It is illegal, it's unconstitutional.

Was it a mistake that he made yesterday? Or is he just showing that he was a little too political when he was so against it and now he's going to back off a little bit?

SETMAYER: No, I don't see it that way. I mean, everyone -- is there irony in this? Yes, because of the optics. But again, the choice for him is you have to get health insurance because they put --

CUOMO: His wife is partner at Goldman Sachs. They can buy it on the private market, I promise you.

SETMAYER: If they choose to do that, let them do that.

CUOMO: Why didn't he bring it up first?

SETMAYER: Oh, I don't know. Ask him, I'm not a spokesman for --

CUOMO: No, no, you were saying, he said it's just an option. He said to Dana Bash, he didn't say it's an option. He said, like millions of others.

(CROSSTALK)

SETMAYER: If he decides to do that, if that's the best interests of his family for now, and that's what the law requires, then that's on him and that's what a campaign is for. He will have to explain himself throughout that. And good luck to Ted Cruz, I think he'll be capable of explaining the reason behind that.

CUOMO: He should hire you, immediately.

CAMEROTA: Paul Begala, we owe you one. Sorry, we will give you some air time tomorrow next time we see you. I know you don't mind, you're enjoying the view down there.

BEGALA: I'm loving it. You're doing a wonderful job with an impossible mission, so good for you.

SETMAYER: Not necessarily.

CAMEROTA: Tara, Paul, great to see you guys, thanks so much for coming in to talk about this.

CUOMO: He hit it out of the park with this is how "Green Eggs and Ham" ends. Begala is great.

CAMEROTA: He was done after that.

CUOMO: He's been reading that book recently.

CAMEROTA: That's right.

CUOMO: All right. This is one big story this morning, but a lot of news, so let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: The horrible reality in the French Alps.

SOUCIE: The passengers on board would have had no idea, no clue what was coming.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Such a terrible and sudden loss.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did Israel spy on its allies' negotiations with Iran?

JEN PSAKI, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESWOMAN: That's absurd and absurd notion that Congress would have to rely on any foreign government to gain insight into the nuclear negotiations with Iran.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I'm not sure what the information was. But I'm baffled by it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's video the Secret Service did not want to share.

REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), MARYLAND: This is bigger than the Secret Service. This is about the security of the most powerful person in the world.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Angelina Jolie has undergone another major preventive surgery.

UNIDENTIFEID FEMALE: It could be the most important thing that a woman ever does in her entire life, in order to preserve her life.

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to your NEW DAY.

Up first, search crews in the air at this hour, investigators analyzing the cockpit voice recorder from the Germanwings jetliner that went down in the French Alps yesterday. They're trying to figure out what caused the plane to descend 32,000 feet in just eight minutes before slamming into a mountainside with no distress call from the cockpit.

CUOMO: One hundred fifty souls onboard, all presumed dead. Recovery teams are in the air now, looking for victims and wreckage across hundreds of yards of very, very rugged terrain. This disaster has impacted families for more than half a dozen nations.