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Benghazi Battle On Capitol Hill; Insurance Payouts Begin For MH370 Families; Report: Apple May Buy Beats For $3 Billion; HGTV Scraps Show Over "Anti-Gay" Comments
Aired May 09, 2014 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD STERLING (via telephone): But I'm talking to a girl. I'm trying to have sex with her. I'm trying to play with her.
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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, another day and another brand new recording of Donald Sterling. This time he gives a reason for his racist rant. He was flirting. You'll hear more in a minute.
Investigating the showdown at the ranch. The FBI is reportedly scrutinizing the people who rallied at Bundy's side.
Plus demanding answers. The families of missing passengers on Flight 370 write an open letter demanding the raw data so they can hire new teams to find their loved ones.
Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. We begin in Washington where a high stakes meeting is now under way on the agenda, how Democrats will respond to that special select committee established to investigate the Benghazi consulate attack.
Chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash, is on Capitol Hill. Dana, the Democrats are still meeting?
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They took a little break to vote, but they are supposed to come back. The problem that many Democratic lawmakers came out and told us that they have is that they don't know how to decide because get this? They are waiting for a phone call. It happens even here at the highest levels of power. Phone calls don't always get returned as fast as some would like and that's certainly the case if you're Nancy Pelosi right now.
She told her members behind closed doors that she is waiting to hear back from House Speaker John Boehner about some very important issues that Democrats have in order to agree to participate. Those being a decision by Republicans to allow Democrats to be involved in witness interviews in this select committee and deciding on subpoenas. Those are some key issues Democrats say they have. They're not sure whether they're going to get agreement on that and that's why they haven't decided whether to participate. COSTELLO: So they have not decided whether they're going to boycott the select committee that was voted into existence by House Republicans in large part. Dana Bash, many thanks to you. We're going to dig deeper into this topic at the bottom of the hour. Do Democrats and Republicans both face a risk with surrounding the special Benghazi committee? What about bringing the people responsible for the attack to justice? What about that part of the equation. We'll have that conversation coming up at 10:30 Eastern Time.
There are new developments in the search for missing Malaysia Air Flight 370. Some family members of passengers have written an open letter to officials in Malaysia, China and Australia demanding raw flight data be released so that an independent analysis can be done. This latest news coming as some families begin receiving insurance payouts after their loved ones are presumed dead.
Rene Marsh has more for you. Good morning, Rene.
RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION AND GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: This is a little bit out of the ordinary in that you usually need a death certificate to start getting those life insurance payouts, but Flight 370 families don't have the death certificates or even concrete information about what happened to their loved ones, but despite that, millions of dollars have already been doled out to these families and for some of them accepting the money is actually accepting the harsh reality that their loved ones are no longer alive.
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MARSH (voice-over): Even with no sign of the plane or proof of the passengers' fate, Malaysian life insurance companies are starting to pay out.
ARTHUR ROSENBERG, AVIATION ATTORNEY: I think the presumption of death under these circumstances is appropriate and allows some of these families to at least financially move forward.
MARSH: Citing extraordinary circumstances, the company shelled out $4 million to families. This is from personal life insurance policies separate from airline compensation.
ROSENBERG: The airline really should be sprinkling out and paying up the maximum amount.
MARSH: But payouts aren't enough. In a new open letter, families demanded the raw data that led search teams to the South Indian Ocean and input on what happens next. Australia, China and Malaysia are currently re-analyzing the data and planning the next search phase.
DAVID GALLO, CNN ANALYST (via telephone): The most important thing they can do is stop and think. Before you engage a dozen companies with their ships and vehicles to go out there and start mapping.
MARSH: The families called for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to lead the search. David Gallo was part of their team, which found Air France 447. That search also far from perfect highlighting why the current reanalysis is critical.
GALLO: The modeler said that we're 95 percent sure that the plane is in that box and they were 100 percent wrong.
MARSH: But in the case of Malaysia Airlines, investigators say all of the data they have points to this area. It's where the Ocean Shield and Bluefin-21 will continue searching soon and where pings believed to be from black boxes and final satellite connection from a plane were detected. Even before any wreckage is found, some governments already taking action.
India just issued new rules requiring realtime tracking of passenger planes and a new proposal for a European Air Safety Agency would require black box pingers last longer and cockpit voice recorders capture 20 hours instead of two.
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MARSH: Carol, the life insurance payouts is just the beginning for the families. Under international agreements, the airlines must pay the families a certain amount of money and beyond that these families can sue the airline for even more money. Now looking forward to Monday, we know that the United Nation's agency, ICAO, which develops international standards and recommendations for the aviation industry. They will be meeting in Montreal to consider ways to track airplanes so that we don't see this sort of thing happen again -- Carol.
COSTELLO: That's good news. Rene Marsh reporting live from Washington this morning. Let's talk about this some more. I want to bring in CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo and also CNN aviation analyst and former NTSB managing director, Peter Goelz. Welcome to you both.
PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Good morning.
COSTELLO: Mary, I want to start with you because you've represented victims of airline disasters. Do you think that enough is being done for these families?
MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: No. I think that issue is really going to heat up over the weekend. Not only have the families sent this open letter, but there's a very interesting article in "Atlantic Monthly" and they have recalculated some of the Inmarsat data saying that it would show the plane was moving while still sitting on the ground and it raises a lot of interesting questions. I think this whole issue about opening up to the public this data so that independent eyes can look at and families can go searching on their own will take on real momentum in part because of the families, but also in part because of this interesting article just released.
COSTELLO: What do you mean the plane was moving on the ground? What do you mean by that?
SCHIAVO: Well, some folks have recalculated the Inmarsat data and according to how they look at the data, the data would show that the plane moving along this arc would have been moving along this arc while it was still at the airport before it even took off so maybe it would make one think the data isn't right and that's concern of the families for calling of the opening up of the data. If that part of the data is wrong, isn't it suspect to the end point?
COSTELLO: Peter, do you agree? This will be awful if this were true.
GOELZ: Well, I think this underscores the fundamental lack of trust that the families and frankly others have with the conduct of the investigation. Because the Malaysians were not transparent from the beginning, because the factual reports that they put out in early stages ended up being not factual, there is simply a fundamental mistrust, and I think Mary is right.
The families are right. The data has to be put on the table. We don't know whether the authors of the article in "The Atlantic" have full data, but certainly the questions they raised are compelling because if the Inmarsat data has been miscalculated or is wrong, we're in the wrong location.
COSTELLO: Well, you know, the searchers and investigators in Australia are sitting down and hopefully they're reviewing everything, right? So they may come up with the same conclusion.
GOELZ: And they are reviewing it. It needs to be a more open process. They need to publish their data. This is so unusual that we have an accident with nothing found. They need to break the rules and become completely transparent.
COSTELLO: Mary Schiavo, Peter Goelz, thanks as always.
SCHIAVO: Thank you.
COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Beats by Apple? It could make rapper, Dr. Dre., an even richer man. Details next.
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COSTELLO: Could Dr. Dre become the world's first billionaire rapper? New reports say the headphone company he founded could be purchased by Apple in a deal that could top $3 billion. Chief business correspondent, Christine Romans is here with more on this story. Good morning.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Not bad for some headphones, right? That's a lot of money, Carol. I tell you that Beats and also Apple are not confirming this deal. If you look at a video posted on the Facebook page of Tyress Gibson with Dr. Dre in it last night, just look at this celebration. It looks like they are confirming a very big deal. So interesting. That sound has now played on some 70 different blogs and web sites.
It's pretty amazing to hear them talking about becoming a billionaire, going back and redoing the "Forbes" list. This is what reports are saying this morning in "Financial Times." The deal is $3.2 billion. Apple can readily afford it. They have $159 billion cash on hand. Beats last year was valued at $1 billion. Makes those headphones and has a music subscription service.
Here is where it makes sense for Apple. Apple has had all of this success with music downloads, but a lot of action and growth is in subscription services like Pandora, Spotify and Beats. Beats has a music subscription service that's 10 bucks a month. Also, Carol, really important to note here. Very different and unusual acquisition for Apple, the biggest one ever, first of all.
Second, Apple usually doesn't buy other brands. You never heard of another brand by Apple. Apple is Apple. They acquire small companies for talent and new technology. This is really out of step with what Apple usually does.
COSTELLO: And it paid so much money too.
ROMANS: At $3.2 billion, the company was valued at a little more than a billion last year in its most recent funding rounds. You know, that's a pretty good premium. It's got some good talent there. Jimmy is a big music industry and guru with close ties to Apple. Maybe he could have a role many people are saying over at Apple eventually. The big winners here, the big winners are the private equity firm, Carlyle that invested last year in this company and made a lot of money in just about seven months.
A lot of money in seven months if this goes through. Apple is notoriously discrete about what it does. If you look online today, there's a lot of indiscretion among some of Dr. Dre's cohorts about potential this deal gets done. It's pretty interesting. No official word yet from these companies.
COSTELLO: Christine Romans, many thanks. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, HGTV canceling plans for an upcoming show because of controversial comments one of the hosts made about gay people. That host and his brother spoke to CNN just hours ago about the controversy.
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COSTELLO: HGTV is scrapping plans for an upcoming show because of newly discovered anti-gay comments by one of the hosts. Twin brothers, David and Jason Benham were to host a show called "Flip It Forward," but show has been canceled after a post on the web site "Right Wing Watch" captured David Benham saying this in 2012.
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DAVID BENHAM: We don't realize that, OK, if 87 percent of Americans are Christians and yet we have abortion on demand, we have no-fault divorce, we have pornography and perversion and homosexuality and its agenda attacking the nation, we have all of the things. We have allowed demonic ideologies to take our universities, our public school system while the church sit silent and just built big churches. We are so complacent and we are hypocritical in the church. Judgment begins in the house of God. We asked God and our city to forgive us for allowing these things in the house of God.
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COSTELLO: OK. So that did not make HGTV very happy. Canceled the upcoming show. The brothers defended themselves on CNN's "NEW DAY."
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JASON BENHAM, LOST HGTV SHOW: When the firestorm came in, we had an opportunity to speak with hg and all of the folks over there and explain to them who we were as people. We sell to all people of all kinds and that we would be glad to take a homosexual couple onto our show, but I did explain to them the firestorm will kick up as long as David and I are hosts on your network, it's only going to get worse because there is an agenda that wants to silence the beliefs that we have. Our hearts go out to HGTV. They sunk a lot of money into this.
DAVID BENHAM, LOST HGTV SHOW: They're in business. We're in a free country. They can say, you know what, we don't want your show anymore and as a result I feel like they got bullied. There's an agenda that's out here. That's the real issue here is that there's an agenda that is out in America right now that demands silence especially from men and women who profess Jesus Christ and hold to his standards and those of us, we're not forcing that on culture.
But now this agenda is forcing itself on us. And you even look even in the gay community, men like Andrew Sullivan and other thinkers, they are writing and saying this latest gay intolerance should be beat back forcefully. I fully understand why the gay community, some in the gay community, can feel that statement is against them personally when I'm speaking against the agenda because the agenda is who they are some of them.
There's bullying and fear tactics and they are demanding a silence from those that profess Jesus and want to live to his standards and so what's happening is HGTV probably was not prepared for that battle. As many of faith and as the church, as Christians inside the church, it's up to us to be the conscience of the nation as Martin Luther King, Jr., said the church must be reminded it's neither master or servant of the state, but it's the conscience of the state.
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COSTELLO: Love thy neighbor as thy self. The brothers insist they're not anti-gay and welcome all people.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, jealousy is what Donald Sterling says that's what drove him.
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STERLING: I never thought the private conversation would go anywhere out to the public. I didn't want her to bring anybody to my game because I was jealous.
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COSTELLO: We'll hear more from the just released audiotape of the banned Clippers owner and we'll talk about it next.
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COSTELLO: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. New audiotape to share with you this morning. Donald Sterling's racist talk came from a jealous man who wanted to have sex with V. Stiviano. New audio released by Radaronline.com explains it all or rather Donald Sterling does. Listen.
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STERLING: I'm talking to a girl. I'm trying to have sex with her. I'm trying to play with her. What can you -- you know -- if you were trying to have sex with a girl and you're talking to her privately, you don't think anybody is there, you may say anything in the world. What difference does it make? Then if the girl tapes it and releases it, my God. It's awful. Who thinks someone is going to tape something? What the hell?
I'm talking to a girl. The girl is black. I like her. I'm jealous that she's with other black guys. I want her. What the hell can I in private tell her? You know, I don't want you to be with anybody. Am I a person? Do I have freedom of speech? I wish Magic Johnson was talking to a girl. And you're trying to play with her.
I would have said I could fly over a high rise building if I had to. And you're talking to her. You go away and next thing three months later what you said when you were trying to get at her is released. I have a girl here who has black kids. And is partly black, I think, myself. I love the girl. And so she's telling me you're wrong. I know I'm wrong.
What I said was wrong, but I never thought the private conversation would go anywhere. Out to the public. I didn't want her to bring anybody to my game because I was jealous. I mean, I'm being honest. It doesn't matter. No one's going to hear but you and me so --
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