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Rancher Defends Racist Comments To CNN; Malaysia's Prime Minister: My Government Will Release Preliminary Report On Disappearance; Pediatrician Among Three Killed By Afghan Guard

Aired April 25, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM --

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RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Are you prepared to say that the plane and its passengers are lost?

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COSTELLO: A CNN exclusive, Richard Quest grills the Malaysian prime minister.

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NAJIB RAZAK, MALAYSIAN PRIME MINISTER: The things we did well. The things that we didn't do too well.

QUEST: I think the praise used in many cases is Malaysia bungled it.

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COSTELLO: The radar pings, the slow response and why Malaysian authorities have not turned over their findings so far.

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RAZAK: There's a likelihood that next week we could release the report.

QUEST: Why not release it now?

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COSTELLO: Also, he burst on the scene as a conservative folk hero.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would take a bullet for that man if need be.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO: Standing up to the federal government but now --

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CLIVEN BUNDY, RANCHER: I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro. They abort their young children. They put their young men in jail because they never learned how to pick cotton.

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COSTELLO: Cliven Bundy on CNN defending his remarks.

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BUNDY: If I'm wrong, OK. But I don't think I'm wrong. I think I'm right.

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COSTELLO: Plus, Russia's credit rating slashed thanks to U.S. sanctions, but violence still reigns in Ukraine.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was a scene of a confrontation between the Ukrainian military and the pro-Russian forces.

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COSTELLO: You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. His comments have united the left and right in disgust. I'm talking about Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher, who became a conservative darling in recent weeks during a high-profile standoff with the federal government. The issue, his cattle have been grazing on public land for 20 years while he paid no fees, no taxes, no nothing. Some on the right rally to his side after he claimed he was taking a stand against government overreach.

Bundy says the land in question has been in his family for generations and he has every right to graze his cattle there, but now his supporters are backing away after Bundy went on a rant about Negroes, slavery and more.

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BUNDY: I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro. They abort young children and put young men in jail because they never learned how to pick cotton. Are they better off as slaves picking cotton and having family life and doing things or are they better off in a government subsidy?

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COSTELLO: Those remarks first reported by "The New York Times" set up a firestorm and sparked this reaction from top Republicans among them Rand Paul who originally supported Bundy's case, but now says his comments were offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him. For his part, Bundy has defended his position. He spoke this morning with Chris Cuomo.

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CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": What's the point of complaint about you, Mr. Bundy, is that you don't do what other ranchers do. You haven't done it for 20 years. You're supposed to pay for the use of the land. Your state constitution says that you should pay for it. The constitution in your pocket that you have inside of your jacket says that the government, the federal government, can own land. You know all of this, but you're resisting the rules.

BUNDY: OK. How much land does it say they can own? How much land does it say they own? You tell me how much land it says they own. That's a very good question. In 5 minutes you can figure out how many land they can own so you tell me.

CUOMO: The Constitution in Article 1 Section 8 and in the Fifth Amendment gives the federal government the right to appropriate and purchase land. Your state constitution recognizes --

BUNDY: For what purpose?

CUOMO: For purposes that it deems appropriate.

BUNDY: What purpose can they do it?

CUOMO: Specifically --

BUNDY: Don't say that.

CUOMO: Absolutely it does. You should read the book instead of holding it in your pocket maybe. When you look at your state constitution, it says that it respects the federal law and that's why your ranchers, your brother and sister ranchers, pay the fees that you refuse to. You come on the show. You hold up a dead calf and that makes everybody upset. You should look at yourself for why the calf is dead. If you paid the fees, this wouldn't have happened. Isn't that a fair point?

BUNDY: No, it's not.

CUOMO: Because?

BUNDY: It's not a fair point at all. This is the United States of America. I live in a sovereign state of the state of Nevada and I abide by all of their state laws. I'll be damned if this is property of the United States. They have no business here. Reverend Martin Luther King wanted us to get over that type of stuff and I said it yesterday and I said it's time for a discussion about this. We need to get over this. I don't care what your race is. We need to get over this prejudice so words are not offensive. They're not offensive to me. You can say them to me and I wouldn't be offended. (END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right, let's talk about this. Chris Cuomo, anchor of CNN's "NEW DAY" so is Brian Stelter, CNN's senior media correspondent and Dan Simon, our correspondent in Nevada. Good morning to all of you. Chris, in listening to your interview, I don't think Mr. Bundy really understood how he offended people.

CUOMO: Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes an explanation is an excuse. I think that it's important to hold him out as accountable for these words because he's become a legitimate symbol of something else that deserves discussion. I think that other than using it as an opportunity to once again make very clear what we think is acceptable and not acceptable when it comes to race is the value in it.

I think examination beyond it winds up becoming counterproductive. His misunderstanding of the law and of the politics in his state vis- a-vis ranchers are just as important because that's what his main issue is. This is a no-brainer, Carol. What he said was just wrong.

COSTELLO: And Brian, I think that some people have said that the issues are separate. What Mr. Bundy said about race is one thing. What he said about Nevada owning too much public land is another matter. But can you separate the two at this point?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: I was struck by how many commentators on the Fox News Channel, which was the channel this month covering this story the most aggressively before the racist remarks surfaced. How many of the commentators yesterday said you can't separate the two. Even though some of them, you know, were championing his cause earlier, they walked away from him very quickly yesterday once these comments were published and said you can't just condemn the comments. You have to condemn the man as well.

COSTELLO: Dan Simon, you have a very interesting perspective on this story. You interviewed Mr. Bundy's bodyguard, right, that's how he describes himself? He's an African-American man and he said he would take a bullet for Mr. Bundy. Tell us about that.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: First of all, Carol, you know, Mr. Bundy said a lot of things over the past 24 hours. One thing he hasn't said is I'm sorry. That's because he isn't. We have seen all of these supporters now abandoning him, but he does have one guy on his side. You talked about this bodyguard. Take a look at what he had to say.

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JASON BULLOCK, CLIVEN BUNDY'S BODYGUARD: I would take a bullet for that man if need be. I look up to him like I do my own grandfather. I believe in his cause and after having met Mr. Bundy a few times, I have a really good feel about him and I'm a good judge of character. He's shown me nothing but hospitality and treats me as his own family.

(END VIDEO CLIP) SIMON: Well, instead of a bodyguard, Carol, he could probably use -- Mr. Bundy could use a public relations consultant, but I'm not sure at this point it would make any difference.

COSTELLO: I'll direct this to Chris because I just want to discuss this more. Crystal Wright, blackchick.com, a Republican. She is African-American. She was terribly hurt by these comments. She said that Mr. Bundy's comments will have a lingering effect on the Republican Party and that there's no two ways around it.

CUOMO: One, I thought it was a very moving interview you had with her, Carol. I thought there was real candor there and gets to the fact that at a certain point it's not just rhetoric. It's real and it hurts. I think there is something that harkens back to more ugly time in our culture. I can only imagine how that feels for her and a lot of other members of the audience in terms of how this resonates.

What does it mean politically, Brian has made some really smart points about a guilt by association. I do think that while it's very difficult to extend his racist comments to anyone else, even though he didn't just say them just now. He has said them for at least a week. I think this is what happens when politics plays with the extremes.

When you attach yourself to extreme individuals and ride them, you often get extreme and outrageous outcomes. I think that this is about getting burned by a political play here. Everybody jumped on him because he represented the angry American in the face of big government because it's so bad. Now he says this. Where are they left? There's a lesson in this. Brian is spot on about it.

COSTELLO: Brian, do you think the lesson is learned, Brian, really?

STELTER: What he said is reprehensible because of how far he took it. Within what he said there is a conservative critique of the American welfare state that we have heard from the right for years and that we will continue to hear. He took it many steps too far. Within what he said, there is something we've heard from others and maybe we'll hear it less as a result. Maybe we'll hear it more.

Certainly on the right wing blogs in the last couple days we've seen some people condemn some of the exact words Bundy used, but agree with him on other things. It will stoke that conversation. We may see politicians use this in different ways. Not to distance themselves from Bundy, but get a conversation continuing. Not about slavery but about what he was saying about the welfare state.

COSTELLO: Dan, I was wondering, are there still armed militia members on Mr. Bundy's ranch?

SIMON: There definitely are. You know, he still has legions of followers. We'll see what happens in the wake of all this, but my sense is that nothing will change. They believe in this guy's broader message in terms of being anti-government. You know, Carol, there's been expression not too far away from here in Las Vegas, playing with the house's money. In this case, it fits perfectly with Mr. Bundy. He could have been a winner in all this. The Feds backed down in the wake of the show of force by him and his supporters. But he decided to take a victory lap and started talking about other things and for whatever reason, he decided to talk about race and that's why he's in this predicament.

COSTELLO: All right, Dan Simon, Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter, thanks to all of you. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Malaysia's prime minister vowing to continue the search for Flight 370.

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RAZAK: We owe it to the families. We'll search and spend as much as we can, as much as we can afford, to find the missing plane.

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COSTELLO: The search, the investigation and the avalanche of criticism against his government. His exclusive interview with CNN's Richard Quest next.

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COSTELLO: The search for Flight 370 now wrapping up its seventh week and we're approaching a milestone for that underwater drone. The Bluefin-21 almost finished scanning the initial search zone. The ten- kilometer radius around the last detected ping that could have come from those black boxes. Now if no plane wreckage is found, no black boxes found in the coming hours, Australian authorities say the drone will then move into the surrounding area.

In the meantime, in Beijing, families are still demanding answers staging a protest in front of the Malaysian Embassy. About 100 relatives of those aboard the flight accuse Malaysia's government of promising transparency in the investigation, but failing to deliver and Malaysia's prime minister shows signs of bending saying his government will now volunteer more information.

But he will not concede his government has mishandled the tragedy. Here's some of the prime minister's comments in an exclusive interview with CNN's Richard Quest.

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QUEST: The country has had a real kicking over the perspective and perception of the way it handled those early days. The phrase used in many cases is Malaysia bungled it.

RAZAK: I have to be quite frank with you. I think first of all start from the premise is was unprecedented. We will agree it was unprecedented. It was the most technically challenging and complex issue that Malaysia or any country for that matter and I believe even an advanced country would have great difficulty handling such an issue. Some of the things we did well. We were very focused on searching for the plane.

We didn't get our communications right, absolutely right to begin with. I think that we got our act together. So I'm prepared to say that there are things we did well. There are things we didn't do too well. But we are prepared to look into it and we're prepared for this investigation team to do its objective assessment.

QUEST: In the last 24 hours you had the good example of what the critics say. The preliminary report. Now, not only did Malaysia not announce that it submitted the preliminary report, it still deciding whether or not to tell us we have it and to release it. Even though it's got a safety recommendation within it. I have covered enough air crashes to know almost always this is the preliminary report published. So what we have here, Prime Minister, is an investigation or minister who speaks the language of transparency, but the practicalities of seeming to do the opposite.

RAZAK: I hear the voices out there, Richard. So I have directed an internal investigation team of experts to look at the report and there's a likelihood that next week we could release the report.

QUEST: Why not release it now, Prime Minister? Is there something in it that's embarrassing to Malaysia?

RAZAK: No, I don't think so. But I just wanted to be, you know, this team to go through it. In the name of transparency, we'll release the report next week.

QUEST: You will?

RAZAK: We will release it.

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COSTELLO: The prime minister says he knows that the families of missing passengers are undergoing an ordeal that is, quote, "excruciatingly painful," but he maintains his government has done its best and given out as much information as possible. With me now, Jeff Wise, CNN aviation analyst and Rob McCallum, CNN analyst and ocean search expert. Welcome, Gentlemen.

Jeff, Malaysia's prime minister also told "The Wall Street Journal" he's extremely grateful to the United States and Australia for their generosity and Herculean efforts in the search for Flight 370. I just wanted to point that out. Pretty nice, right?

JEFF WISE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Sure. I mean, there definitely is an international effort and that's one thing he's got going for him is that there's a lot of partners in this.

COSTELLO: He said, you know, Malaysia managed to get 26 countries together working supposedly in harmony to find this missing flight.

WISE: I mean, it's not always clear how harmoniously they're working together. When we had the issue of Chinese ship finding pings and releasing information through its own channels. Bottom line is that this whole thing is a big mess. He made noises as if there were small discrepancies at the beginning but it's ironed out since. I mean, I think that narrative is really incorrect. It's a hot mess. It isn't getting better.

I think if anything, the voices of indignation are getting louder. The more that this plane doesn't turn up where it's been promised to turn up, I think we'll hear more voices demanding some answers. It was extraordinary to see Richard put his feet to the fire and essentially extract a promise to release this information.

COSTELLO: And supposedly this information will be released, this preliminary report. But Rob, that preliminary report probably won't say much.

ROB MCCALLUM, CNN ANALYST: Well, we don't know yet, but it will all be information that is in the past. What we need to do now from an operational perspective is focus on what we've learned so far in the ocean, which is not a great deal. So it looks like we're going to have to head back to using the data and start following that aircraft down along its flight path and to expand the search area to include that.

COSTELLO: So when the Bluefin finishes its mission, which is you know, it's 95 percent done so by tomorrow or the next day the Bluefin will be done, will they pause in the investigation, Rob, review data and then decide how much larger that search area should be?

MCCALLUM: Yes, I think they will pause briefly. I don't think it will be a long pause. We have gone through a shift over the last week or so where in any search there's the initial rush to try to find survivors and then there's the ongoing urgency to capture the pinger acoustics before batteries fade but once we're past that phase, which is now, it's more important to slow down, take your time and get it right than it is to be fast and miss something.

COSTELLO: And Jeff, along those lines, Reuters talked to a U.S. official who said this search will now go on for years. I hope he's wrong. Is he?

WISE: We've heard talks about maybe this would cost a quarter of a billion dollars. The way forward is really unclear at this point. One of the remarkable things that came out in Richard Quest interview with the Malaysian prime minister was the idea that he himself was incredulous at the idea that the plane had gone south halfway to Antarctica in his words. He didn't believe it. He asked Inmarsat officials and experts that have been convened, are they sure. Are you really, really sure?

Only then did he go forward and tell the world and families of the missing passengers that they were in the ocean and there was no hope. He didn't say they were lost, but he strongly implied they were lost. He didn't understand the map. No one has seen this map. It will be crucial if we'll spend all these years and fractions of billions of dollars to look for this plane, we need to understand why we're looking in this particular area. That needs to be cleared up. COSTELLO: But the only way we can figure that out at this point, Rob, is above the water, right, because we can't find anything below the water.

MCCALLUM: Well, you know, to be honest, I think this is being overcomplicated. You know, the Inmarsat data is recently compelling. The people that studied it and many agencies have now, all agree that it's conclusive. And so to search the last 300 or 400 miles of the flight's aircraft and do well outside of that area with sonar will not cost anything like the figures that are being talked about. You can accomplish that in around 60 days for the cost of less than 20 million. Much, much smaller time figures and money figures being discussed.

COSTELLO: Rob McCallum and Jeff Wise, thank you for your insight. I appreciate it.

Still to come on the NEWSROOM, remembering Dr. Jerry Umanos. I'll talk with a friend and colleague of the pediatrician who was killed in Afghanistan while taking care of the smallest Afghans, children. We'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: Dr. Jerry Umanos once said he felt called to work in Afghanistan treating children and training other doctors. The Chicago pediatrician was one of three Americans killed Thursday by a gunman who had been assigned to protect them. An Afghan security guard fired on Umanos and four others at their hospital. Now Umanos' wife says her family still loves the people of Afghanistan and holds no grudge against the alleged shooter.

For more on Dr. Jerry Umanos and his legacy, I want to bring in Dr. Chawn Watkins, a friend of Dr. Umanos. The two worked together for seven years at the Chicago hospital. Welcome.

DR. CHAWN WATKINS, FRIEND OF DOCTOR KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN: Good morning.

COSTELLO: Good morning. Tell us about Dr. Umanos and why he felt compelled to volunteer his time in a dangerous place to help the children of another country.

WATKINS: Well, Jerry wanted to serve people. He was a servant at heart. Wherever there was a need and he felt like he could be a part of it and be a part of the solution, he wanted to do it. At our health center on the west side of Chicago, he came there to help serve a need there and he helped to train myself and other young doctors.

I started working with him right out of residency and he helped to make me into the pediatrician that I am today. So wherever there's a need, he wanted to be there to train other people to do the work and then he saw Afghanistan as another opportunity to do that.

COSTELLO: His wife came out with such touching comments. She said, you know, we've suffered a great loss but we still love the people of Afghanistan. We don't regret that Jerry was over there doing the good work. It might surprise a lot of people.

WATKINS: It might but when you have a servant's heart as Jerry did, it's not surprising at all to any of us.