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Families Hear MH370's Last Words; L.A. NAACP Drops Plans to Honor Donald Sterling; 75 Million Under Threat of Deadly Storms

Aired April 29, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: So David, let's go back and let's talk about this radio chatter that the Malaysian authorities released so families could hear it. And I guess you could say they were right all along. There's nothing on it that seems vaguely suspicious, is there?

DAVID SOUCIE, AUTHOR, "WHY PLANES CRASH": Well not from what we're hearing. You know we've listened to cockpit recorder tapes before in accidents I've been involved in and there is actually a lot of information you can get from them that you can't hear in this type of forum.

You can listen to engine speeds, you can listen to a lot of information about what's going on, on the aircraft. You can almost determine speeds or at least approximate speeds based on the decibels of sounds of wind against the cockpit. Things like that.

So there are some more analysis that needs to be done to really say it can give us information or not.

But the good thing I saw about it is that families are -- that Malaysia is finally taking information from the international community and saying you need to be more transparent you need to show us what's going on and tell at least the families what's going on and what you know so that they can make some -- their conclusions for themselves. And you can actually see in Wayne's face there as he was talking, a little bit of relief that the Malaysians are finally communicating with the families a little bit better.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. And Rob, a last question for you. The air search has been suspended. And the underwater search has widened. Should we still be hopeful?

ROB MCCALLUM, OCEAN SEARCH SPEACIALIST: Hopeful of finding the wreckage one day?

COSTELLO: Right.

MCCALLUM: Yes, I think we should be. I put a great deal of stock in the INMARSAT data, the hand shake data if you like. That's being verified by all of the agencies that it's been sent to and provides us with the strongest lead now in terms of broadening out the search to scan the ocean floor and I think, yes, indeed, we will find the wreckage in the future.

COSTELLO: David Soucie, Rob McCallum, thanks so much. SOUCIE: Thank you.

MCCALLUM: Thank you so much.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, racist remarks tied to NBA owner Donald Sterling not just having an impact on his basketball team. They are also affecting the Los Angeles chapter of NAACP which has long standing ties to Sterling. Now the organization is facing some tough questions of its own.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Checking our "Top Stories" this morning, President Obama's approval rating has fallen to a new low. According to a new "Washington Post"/ABC News poll, just 41 percent approve of the way he's doing his job or more than 50 percent disapprove.

Police say the suspect at a shooting incident at a FedEx facility in suburban Atlanta has killed himself. Six other people were wounded and taken to a local hospital, one in critical condition. So far no word on a motive for the shooting.

As first responders sift through piles of crashed buildings and damaged cars today, a severe storm system continues to move across the United States 75 million people are at risk. That's one-third of the country. So far storms have killed 29 people across six states.

The racial controversy swirling around NBA owner Donald Sterling has also put the spotlight on another organization. That would be the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, which was poised to honor Sterling with a lifetime achievement award, his second from the group in just a few weeks. The NAACP says it is dropping that plan in light of the racist comments tied to Sterling.

But at a news conference yesterday, here's how the chapter's president summed up the group's approach toward Sterling going forward.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEON JENKINS, PRESIDENT, L.A. CHAPTER OF NACCP: And at some point when there has been proof, I think that would be a legitimate time for the NAACP to sit down Mr. Sterling and try to work out how and why he did what he did and what is he going to do in the future.

God teaches us to forgive. And the way I look at it, after a sustained period of just proof to the African-American community that those words don't really reflect his heart, I think there's room for forgiveness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Room for forgiveness. Joining me now, CNN political commentator and host for the "Huffpost Live" Marc Lamont Hill along with CNN commentator and ESPN senior writer LZ Granderson. Welcome to both of you.

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

LZ GRANDERSON, CNN COMMENTATOR: Good morning Carol.

COSTELLO: Good morning.

LZ, I want to start with you. What's your reaction to the L.A. NAACP chapter saying it could forgive Sterling one day?

GRANDERSON: That dude needs to be fired.

COSTELLO: Wow.

GRANDERSON: That dude needs to resign or he needs to be fired because he sounds like a fool. I'm just going to come to you straight up. To even suggest that somehow a sit down with Donald Sterling now when if anyone should have known about his racist past should have been the local chapter of the NAACP. First lawsuit I believe was 2003.

To pretend that there are -- they are going to sit down with him now and see if that's really in his heart when he's already been sued by the Department of Justice, that man needs to resign or be fired.

COSTELLO: Wow Marc, do you agree?

HILL: I do. I mean it's baffling to me how committed he is to looking at Donald Sterling through this other lens. I mean this isn't a momentary slipup this isn't like where someone accidentally says the "n" word if that's possible. It's not someone who makes an inappropriate remark. This is someone with a long history not just racist remarks but racist practices in his business, in his personal life, in everyday life. I mean this is a deep thing.

And for him to suggest somehow that we don't know what's in his heart, that's absurd to me. It makes me wonder if there's some sort of connection between the NAACP of L.A., not national chapter but the local chapter and Donald Sterling, some kind of financial connections, some kind of -- I mean the whole, the whole relationship is bizarre and those comments only highlight just how bizarre.

COSTELLO: OK you talk about financial connections. Well tax records obtained by a citizen audit show that L.A. NAACP chapter has received $45,000 from Sterling. Money it says they will now return, LZ It's going to return the money.

GRANDERSON: Yes and I believe the quote said that it was an insufficient amount, insignificant amount and they're going to return it. But if it's so insignificant, why did you take it from that racist to begin with?

Listen we all for the most part somewhere in our lives sell out. You know if you're a liberal and you're driving like an SUV and you care about the environment, you're selling out. We don't want child labor laws but we buy cheap Nike understanding where they come from, we're selling out. So we all sell out to a certain degree.

But the NAACP, the advancement of color people, there is nothing that has hurt African-Americans in this country more than the inability to get proper housing and education. And what Donald Sterling did interfered with advancement of both. Not being able to get good housing, to be in school districts where our children can be educated.

How is that to be overlooked? They were bought off and once again that president needs to be fired or -- resign and then we can begin talking about where we go from there as a local chapter. And one more thing I'm not letting the national chapter off the hook either. I know they want to characterize this as a local chapter. But this is L.A. this is the second largest city in the country. This isn't some (inaudible) town that decided to do it on their own. The national office had to have been aware or should have been aware of what the second largest chapter was doing.

HILL: I suspect they were asleep at the wheel, I mean over the last three or four years, I've seen the NAACP make a shift quite honestly under the leadership of Ben Jealous before he left back toward advocacy, back toward hardcore progressive issue which is something they've abandoned for decades toward more wealth-building bourgeois middle class sort of ideals.

And so to see the NAACP in a national level moving in a good direction and to see this at a local level in such a bad direction, I thing there's a gap, I'm not letting them off the hook. But I think is that they didn't know rather than that they knew and were complicit neither is excusable but I think there is a difference. And I think that's what happened.

COSTELLO: OK so LZ, I lay this -- suspect I know what you'll say but I will lay this on you anyway. The national NAACP just announced it has requested a meeting with the NBA commissioner to discuss quote "The influence and impact of racism in the league." Yet you have the local chapter of the NAACP saying, oh you know, we're good Christians. We need to forgive Mr. Sterling and work with him in the future.

GRANDERSON: Well once again, this is not breaking news. We're just being reminded. You know I understand. You know I actually was giving a lecture last night. I teach at Northwestern University. And I was talking to my students about what was happening in 2003 and 2004 that prevented the media from really taking hold of the story in the first place. We had the Iraq war. We were still reeling from 9/11.

So you can see why we were distracted. But that doesn't give us an excuse to pretend like this is breaking news to either the public or the NAACP whose job it is, is to stay on top of things like this.

But I'm also looking at the National Basketball Players Association, their professional organization. Their union. Because their union should have been aware of this and every single time that those players were willing to sit out over their contracts and not bring up Donald Sterling, you're also culpable in that.

As you can tell, I'm very heated by this. Because people pretend like this is breaking news when actually we kind -- we let this pass for over a decade. HILL: You know what it is LZ? We only like sexy forms of racism. We like the rabid foaming at the mouth racist where someone is on the phone talking to their girlfriend about not letting black people at the game. Systematically denying black people access to housing is definitely far more damaging than the phone call he made. You know not being able to get access to quality public education is far more damaging. Even the Elgin Baylor lawsuit is evidence of a far more damaging pattern of denying people access to proper wages; that kind of stuff that we should be caring about. But we only run when racist stuff happens caught on TMZ tapes. And we should be upset.

But there's far more systemic stuff we need to be worried about. And that's why I'm challenging the players to not just slip their jerseys inside out which is the weak form of protest but to actually have a general strike. And actually stop playing to actually commit themselves to pulling out of these games until the NBA makes a definitive decision on Donald Sterling if they don't do so this afternoon at Adam Silver's press conference --

COSTELLO: But LZ doesn't that hurt the players --

GRANDERSON: I agree with you.

COSTELLO: Why should the players have to pay for these racist remarks?

GRADERSON: They're not paying for the racist remark. They are protesting these racist remarks. If so -- I heard someone actually compare turning jerseys inside out to 1968 Mexico City. And I wanted to jump in the television and strangle that person. Because there is no comparison between players turning their jersey inside out and millionaires turning their jersey inside out in 2014 when the country supports them and what those two gentleman did in 1968 and be vilified when he return back to this country.

What those players did, whether put on black socks or making tweets like oh that's messed up, that's really, really weak. And the truth of the matter is if you were that upset you would have said something in 2003 and 2004 as a union you definitely would be making sure that Adam Silver did something swiftly by not playing. Not just the Clippers but the league.

HILL: The whole league. It only works if the whole league doesn't play. If just the Clippers don't play, the only one who wins is Step Kerry and Mark Jackson in Golden State Warriors. You need the whole league to say we're going to play. We have to take profit out of white supremacy. We need to take the profit out of racist.

COSTELLO: Actually -- actually, you don't need the whole league. You need one prominent player. Let's say Lebron James refuses to play. What affect would that have on the NBA?

HILL: Here's the problem with that. Then we get into the Disney narrative, right, where Lebron becomes a hero and there's like movies about him in 20 years and he becomes a legend. And that's awesome. But we have taken no money out of owners' pockets. The owners lose money when there's no game. The Miami Heat will not play without Lebron James, they'll probably win -- at least in the second round against Toronto or Brooklyn.

What you need right now is the whole league not to play so those cable TV contracts don't have any money. So that the stands are empty, no one makes money. And when the owners don't make money and they start caring about green because they don't care about black, then you see change, then Adam Silver (inaudible).

Adam Silver isn't the boss of the owners. The owners are the boss of Adam Silver.

GRANDERSON: Right.

HILL: They're only going to -- he's going to do what they allow him to do. And the only thing we have at our disposal as people who are fighting this protest is a general strike. Everybody sit out, then they have to get rid of him.

COSTELLO: OK. So LZ, Mr. Silver is going to come out at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, right. And he's going to like deliver some sort of severe sanctions against Mr. Sterling. I don't know what that means either. But what would be enough to prevent your suggested strike?

GRANDERSON: I would say for the short-term severe sanctions and then also have a long-term plan to begin removing him from leadership. But I will say this. That he's going to be very, very careful in how he punishes Don Sterling because we have other owners in this league who are on the record saying disparaging things about other groups. And so this sets a precedent that other owners are going to be leery of. We shouldn't let like the Dan Gilberts of the world and their outrage, you know, in letters and tweets and things like that blind us in the fact that these owners also knew about Donald Sterling and worked with him any way and now they're embarrassed.

And so the first step I think needs to be some sort of sanctions on the Clippers and Donald Sterling but then we also need a long-term plan to remove him from the league either by removing all of his draft picks, stricter salary cap, somehow putting enough pressure on him that he's forced to sell the team to someone else.

HILL: Yes.

GRANDERSON: But I don't think you're going to see anything where he's automatically removed because that's a dangerous precedent for the other owners.

HILL: A very dangerous precedent.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: All right.

HILL: And I don't want to live in a world where you get fired for what you believe or even what you say in the privacy of your own home. The difference is with Dan Gilbert -- I mean not Dan Gilbert -- with Donald Sterling is that there's a connection between what he says at home and how he treats players and how he treats people and that's a bigger issue and the argument is this is bad for business.

Owners have a right to say we don't want someone in our league who's bad for business who's compromising the brand. And when all your sponsors pull out and when even Michael Jordan, the most apolitical player in the history of sports, says "I got a problem with this." Man, you know things are bad.

GRANDERSON: You must be a racist.

HILL: Yes. That's how a racist he is. Even Michael Jordan is mad.

COSTELLO: Marc Lamont-Hill, LZ Granderson -- thanks so much.

HILL: Pleasure.

GRANDERSON: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, we'll talk about the nasty weather roaring through the south and how millions may be at risk. CNN's Indra Petersons has the latest on how to protect yourself -- good morning

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning. We're talking about 75 million today. Even more people affected by the threat for severe weather especially as we go through the afternoon. We're going to have those details coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: People are combing through debris after violent storms ripped across the south. This is what it looks like this morning in Athens, Alabama about 100 miles north of Birmingham. In hard hit Mississippi, communities were torn apart by twisters, at least eight people killed.

Earlier today I talked with the mayor of Tupelo about the storm's path of destruction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR JASON SHELTON, TUPELO, MISSISSIPPI: I don't know that the state has seen anything this widespread. Three years ago almost to the day is the deadly tornado outbreak that had a line of destruction from Mississippi to Alabama. But the storm system yesterday was literally about half of the state of Mississippi.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: It's not over yet. 75 million people could get hit by severe weather over the next few days. CNN's Indra Petersons live in New York to tell us more about that. Good morning. PETERSONS: Yes. Good morning. It looks like once again, we already have a tornado warning right now. We're hearing reports of just 13 miles east of (inaudible) Florida, possibly three tornadoes in the region could be affecting that same region. Definitely right now is the time to take cover, lowest level of your hoe, the most interior section of that home. If you have a helmet, put it on to avoid head injuries. A lot of times, it is the head injury that can take most lives. Let's take a look at what we're looking at. You did mention it's more expansive. We're talking about 73 million people today under the gun for severe weather. Where you see the yellow or orange there, that is a slight risk.

That does not mean you do not have the threat for even a large tornado. That threat is still there. It's just less than more enhanced region which now is around Birmingham to just north of Mobile. Another 2.5 million of you today still in a very similar region as yesterday looking for the threat for that severe weather -- typically you see it ramp up towards the afternoon. You get that extra daylight in and it really enhances that threat for those thunderstorms.

Also still looking at the tornado watch box again in through Florida and also southern portions of Georgia today. And of course, we have that warning currently in that region as well.

Why are we still talking about this? Well, you have this huge low that's actually producing some rain into the northeast today. This guy has parked itself, it is not moving. The reason that's so important is because the system we're watching it is blocking this guy from moving forward to the east. With that that same frontal boundary is stuck in place here. We keep getting all that moisture in from the Gulf reheat during the daytime and we're producing severe thunderstorms. That is still going to be the problem today.

And unfortunately as we go in through tomorrow, very slow moving system so we're still going to be talking about this for the overnight hours and then tomorrow. Here's the severe weather threat. We're going to be looking at that from D.C. all the way back in through Florida. We're still going to be talking about that slight risk.

One of the things I want to point out -- what is so dangerous into the southeast is you have a lot of wooded areas in this region. You are already talking about heavy amounts of rain. A lot of times you are so rain wrapped these systems that they're moving so fast sometimes, you know as fast as 50, 60 miles per hour and you can't see them. But you add in that topography -- all those forested areas, very difficult to see so definitely want to be paying attention today.

Of course, they're going to be having flooding concerns as well with heavy rain into the region. So it still looks like another 48 hours or so still to go, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Indra Petersons thanks so much. With the violent storm system so vast and fearsome, it's worth noting that it could be the smallest moments that hold such power. Such is the case in this picture of resilience in the face of gut wrenching loss. According to the Associated Press, that's Justin Shaw on the left. He's helping Nick Conway raise a flag at his Arkansas home which was leveled by the tornado. Our crew in Tupelo saw a similar flag-raising; that homeowner also refuses to concede defeat.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Checking top stories at 58 minutes past the hour.

Police say the suspect in a shooting at a Georgia FedEx office this morning is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Hospital officials say they are treating six people wounded in the shooting including one in critical condition. FedEx spokesman says the company is aware of the incident and is cooperating with authorities.

Secretary of State John Kerry backing away from his recent controversial comments about Israel. In a recording obtained by "The Daily Beast" Kerry reportedly said Israel risks becoming an apartheid state if a Mideast peace deal isn't reached. Kerry released a statement affirming his support for Israel and saying he should have chosen different words.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is joining representatives from Britain and Ukraine to help Ukrainian government find and recover stolen assets. You'll remember the former Ukrainian presidential palace was opened to the public after the Ukrainian president was ousted. It was filled with expensive gifts and luxury gifts.

This international meeting now going on is to make sure the spoils of corruption are returned to the Ukrainian people.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@ THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" after a break.