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Black Boxes of MH-17 Coming to U.K.; EU Officials Meeting in Brussels for Tougher Russia Sanctions; Court Strikes Down Key Part of Obamacare; The Taboo Talk: Mideast Conflict

Aired July 22, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

A bit of breaking news to pass along to you -- we've been wondering where those black boxes would go for their final investigation. Now we know.

As you know, pro Russian rebels in Ukraine handed over the black boxes of Flight 17 to Malaysian officials. Malaysian officials handed them over to Dutch officials. Well, we now know that they'll end up in Britain.

I'm going to read a tweet from the Prime Minister, David Cameron. He just tweeted the following. "We've agreed a Dutch request for air accident investigators in Farnborough to retrieve data from MH-17 black boxes for international analysis." So those black boxes will be analyzed in Great Britain. When we find out more information, of course, we'll pass it along.

Also today in Brussels, the downing of Malaysia Flight 17 will be in focus for Europe's top foreign officials as they debate tougher sanctions against Russia.

CNN chief business correspondent, Christine Romans joins me now.

Christine, how far do you think Europe will go?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, they're really under a lot of pressure to put on the screws after the last week in what we've seen here. But it's a very interconnected region -- right. and when you look at the flows of money, of direct investment around the world, you can see Russia right there at the center.

This is a great new info graphic on CNN money. You can see Europe, $292 billion of business with Russia and $169 billion in the other direction. That's really an important step. And when you look at energy, another chart really shows how important the energy situation is for Europe with Russia.

So they have been loath to really put the screws on too hard here because they would hurt themselves. But now things are changing. You have these finance ministers who are really aggressively discussing at this hour what exactly they are going to do.

We're talking about travel bans on certain people, bans on investment from certain companies. You could see all kinds of different personal things directed at people who are major players in the Putin administration. We just have to wait and see what comes out.

You know, there's -- the United States already has a bunch of different cascading set of these sanctions and some have said so far they have only emboldened Putin and stirred more nationalism in Russia.

COSTELLO: Yes, just made him more aggressive -- didn't work the other way.

ROMANS: Yes.

COSTELLO: But we'll see. Christine Romans -- many thanks to you.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: I want to bring in -- I want to bring in Republican Congressman Mack Thornberry of Texas, he's the vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee. Good morning, sir.

REP. MACK THORNBERRY (R), TEXAS: Good morning.

COSTELLO: In a statement after the crash of Flight 17, you said the United States needs to quote, "demonstrate decisive leadership." What does that leadership -- that decisive leadership look like to you?

THORNBERRY: Well, the analogy I made was the way President Reagan dealt with the downing of the Korean Airliner in 1983. He was very clear in his language. He called it a crime against humanity. He called it a massacre. He called the Soviet Union out for spinning or distorting the truth. And then he laid out a series of steps that he was taking immediately to isolate the Soviet Union in the international community.

I think that sort of decisive leadership to isolate Russia, of course, leading the Europeans on sanctions, as you were just talking about is a part of that.

COSTELLO: Well the United States did invoke sanctions against Russia and President Obama yesterday did call out Russia and said it was up to them to work out this problem. Isn't it really up to Europe now because Europe really holds the major cards when it comes to Russia?

THORNBERRY: Yes, except Europe always looks to the United States for leadership. And so just saying it is your problem, you go solve it is not really going to take us very far.

COSTELLO: Well, what should the United States do? What should the President do? Should he come down hard on Europe? What should he do to force them to act?

THORNBERRY: Yes. I think he should have stronger sanctions against Putin and his regime. You've said they have been slowly escalating.

COSTELLO: But how would the President convince Europe to come down harder on Russia?

THORNBERRY: If you'll let me finish. My point is U.S. has to lead and we may go further than Europe, but they are not going to go very far if we don't lead in front. In addition, we can immediately send liquefied natural gas exports to Europe to help alleviate their concerns about energy. We can provide the Ukrainians some of the weapons and equipment they have been asking for and the Obama administration has denied them.

So there are several steps that can be taken to show that this is not just a run of the mill diplomatic encounter. This is serious and we treat it that way.

COSTELLO: It might be a great idea to send energy to Europe, but that's going to take some time. It can't happen immediately, can it?

THORNBERRY: No. A ship does not arrive immediately, but the longer you wait, the longer it takes. And a lot of what we're talking about as your last report just indicated is reassurance. They are worried about what will happen in the future so immediate aggressive action for L & G exports as one example can help reassure them that they are not going to be left alone, cold and starving, in the winter to come. In addition to that, of course, we can help them develop their shale oil and shale gas, which we've done here at home and have produced the biggest explosion of energy production that we've seen in modern times, but it doesn't happen automatically.

COSTELLO: But again that will take -- that's right. It will take time.

(CROSSTALK)

THORNBERRY: No. But it's about reassurance. It's about reassurance. It's helping -- it's leading and helping them feel more confident that they can stand up for what's right. You know there are --

COSTELLO: You know that what the E.U. is worried about is if you impose too many sanctions on Russia, it's going to come back and bite you and they are going to be suffering for a long time. It also might force Putin to, you know, say to these rebels in eastern Ukraine, you know, don't cooperate with authorities anymore.

THORNBERRY: Well, look, Putin is a bully, raised in the KGB, so there's basic rules that apply here and one of them is he will continue to get away with whatever you let him get away with. Another basic rule here is that sometimes you have to make some short term sacrifice for your long term good.

So I think we can hold hands with the Europeans. We can reassure them. We can take steps toward alleviating their concerns, but ultimately nobody can take the place of the United States and we cannot abdicate leadership to the Europeans or anybody else. We have to take leadership and establish that shooting down innocent people like you were just describing is unacceptable and there will be consequences to that sort of behavior.

COSTELLO: Congressman Mack Thornberry, thanks so much for being with me. I appreciate it.

All right. We have more break news. This time it concerns Obamacare and a dramatic blow by a federal appeals court aimed at health care tax credits.

Joe Johns joins us now. So explain this to us.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, this could be a huge blow to the administration and to Obamacare. In a 2-to-1 ruling, a divided court just ruled that federal tax subsidies under the Affordable Care Act cannot be used by individual consumers who are trying to get health insurance on federally run exchanges and the subsidies can only be used in state-run exchanges.

So if you got your insurance under Obamacare and you didn't get it through the state exchange, this could potentially affect your life in a big way. The question was whether the tax credits could be given to people who got their insurance under the Affordable Care Act on federally run exchanges. Tax credits are there to make the insurance more affordable. The law was set up to give help to people who get their insurance through state exchanges but nobody thought there'd be as much resistance to Obamacare as we know we've all seen.

34 states decided not to set up their own market places, leaving it up to the feds. The twist now is that the law doesn't expressly say people who get their insurance through federal exchanges also get those tax credits. So this is what we can call a big problem.

COSTELLO: Ok. So what might happen to those people who already have insurance through the federal exchanges? Will their premiums shoot up?

JOHNS: The court has said that this is potentially a big blow for those individuals. But before anybody starts hyperventilating, it was always assumed that an adverse ruling would be appealed and it's certainly going to happen in this case.

They have been talking, the White House, they knew there was potential for this, and first step here is this is a three-judge ruling, so it gets kicked up to a full appeals court. That would have to be decided, and then there's a potential for the Supreme Court down the road. So a lot more litigation yet and nothing changes, I'm told, until this case gets decided. Nothing would change in the law until there actually is a final decision on the case.

COSTELLO: All right. Joe Johns thanks for that quick report. Because I know these things are complicated -- great job. Thank you so much.

JOHNS: Yes. Thank you Carol.

COSTELLO: I'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: All right. I told you a few minutes ago that the black boxes from that downed flight in eastern Ukraine would end up in Britain with British investigators. Richard Quest is live for us right now to explain how that all transpired. Good morning.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Yes, this is the sort of box, it's a slightly different model to the one we're talking about, but it is the same basic principle. And the gist of the idea is that the box has to be opened extremely carefully. The solid-state hardware inside has to be removed quite delicately and most crucially once it is connected to computers to download the information, it has to be done in exactly the right sequence.

There are thousands, and I mean thousands of parameters that have been recorded on these machines, both on the cockpit voice recorder and on particularly on the data recorder. Now, Carol, what this means is the Malaysians, the prime minister of Malaysia being quite open and transparent said they would hand the box over to the Dutch, who are clearly going to be the lead investigators.

Now, for whatever reason, the Netherlands says it doesn't have the technology or the expertise, so the Netherlands will give the boxes to the British and the British will send them to the Air Accident Investigation Board or branch at Farnborough. And that, of course, is one of the world's leading investigative branches. Think of it as the British version of the NTSB. They will open the box, extract the data, and, of course, make the data available, make it immediately available to the investigative authority.

COSTELLO: I was just going to ask you how fast we might hear something.

QUEST: Well, that's a good question. I think in terms of the cockpit voice recorder, you are never going to get the track. You're never going to get the audio. Let's get that straight out of the way now. Cockpit voice audio from the black box is never released. Let's get that clear.

You may get a transcript with the final version, in terms of the data, that's much more complicated -- its graphs. It shows limitations on engines. It shows exactly what happened and how the plane responded at the various key seconds. So you'll get that in the final report.

COSTELLO: All right, Richard Quest, many thanks.

Still to come in the newsroom, death and devastation rages on as violence between Israel and Hamas intensifies. Now, some in Hollywood are weighing in. Up next why celebrities like Selena Gomez and Rihanna are getting slammed for their take on the conflict.

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COSTELLO: It is a rather macabre headline but it certainly caught my eye. It appears in "New York Magazine". Take a look. "Telegenically dead Palestinians: why Israel is losing the American media war". That is a bold headline.

The latest Israel hit, a Palestinian hospital full of patients and doctors. In all, 604 Palestinians have been killed -- that's according to Gaza health officials. The United Nations estimates about 70 percent of them are civilians, including four little boys playing on a beach.

Hollywood took notice. Selena Gomez was hit with an Internet backlash after posting this to Instagram. It reads "It's about humanity, pray for Gaza." Well, some followers praised Gomez. Others slammed her for taking a side in the conflict.

And Gomez isn't alone. Sympathetic tweets from Rihanna and basketball player Dwight Howard were quickly erased after major league backlash. Israeli supporters quickly shamed these normally non-political celebrities to back down and let's be honest, it is kind of a taboo conversation. If you don't believe me watch Jon Stewart.

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JON STEWART, TALK SHOW HOST: We'll start tonight in the Middle East where Israel --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What -- Israel isn't supposed to defend itself?

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: That was weird. Any way, what I was -- what I was saying was last Thursday saw the start of a new ground offensive launched by Israel --

(CROSSTALK)

(EXPLETIVE DELETED)

STEWART: Holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Look, obviously there are many strong opinions on this issue but just merely mentioning Israel or questioning in any way the effectiveness or humanity of Israel's policies is not the same thing as being pro Hamas.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you are against murdered children?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Free Gaza, free Gaza.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Zionist pig.

STEWART: You know what, (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Why don't we just talk about something lighter -- like Ukraine?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. Let's talk about this. With me now, Benjamin Wallace-Wells who wrote that article in "New York Magazine"; Arsalan Iftikhar, the founder of TheMuslimGuy.com and a commentator for National Public Radio; and Frank Sesno, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. Welcome, gentlemen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi Carol.

COSTELLO: So Arsalan I want to start with you, can we have a reasoned conversation about Israel and Hamas?

ARSALAN IFTIKHAR, THEMUSLIMGUY.COM: No, we cannot. There is certainly a double standard today, especially on the social media landscape when it comes to anything dealing with Israel and Palestine. As we saw with Selena Gomez, NBA star Dwight Howard, Amar'e Stoudemire of the New York Knicks, who happens to be Jewish himself. All who tweeted things like "Free Palestine" or "Pray for Gaza" and who were summarily lynched, you know, virtually by online trolls until they were able to delete those messages.

And had they said something like "Free Tibet" or you know, free any other country in the world, I think there would have been no backlash at all. And so I think that there is really no conflict on earth today that has more intellectual dishonesty than the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

COSTELLO: But maybe things are changing. And Benjamin, I'm going to read your headline again, "Telegenically Dead Palestinians", where exactly did that come from?

BENJAMIN WALLACE-WELLS, "NEW YORK MAGAZINE": That came from Bibi Netanyahu. It came from the mouth of the Israeli on Sunday. He was complaining to reporters about the propaganda use that Hamas had been able to make out of all of those dead civilians -- you know, several hundred now.

You know, the following day, Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister of Israel said that his country was going to push to ban Al Jazeera from operating within Israel. And so I think what we're seeing in Israel, among the senior Israeli political leadership is a sensitivity to how this conflict is being portrayed. Those are the statements and actions not of leaders who think they are winning the argument but of leaders who are very much on the defensive.

COSTELLO: So Frank, has there been a shift in the way the media covers this conflict? Because we've been down this road many times before.

FRANK SESNO, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: There's been a huge shift because it's not just the media covering the conflict now. It's every human being who has the capacity to cover the conflict. Because they can tweet something if they are there on the beach and they actually see something terrible happen or they can retweet it if they receive a feed. And so this stuff goes out to millions of people. "The New York Times" and CNN with all due respect don't stand a chance against something like that. That's one thing. The second thing is, the images and ideas and propaganda of war have always been a tool that traditionally governments own. And now citizens own them -- citizens on all sides. And so that's what we've seen and that is a very big difference.

COSTELLO: But Arsalan, there may be a little tiny shift but a CNN/ORC poll shows Americans clearly still support Israel by a large margin. Take a look 57 percent thinks Israel's action in Gaza is justified; 34 percent say it's unjustified. Do you agree with Frank?

IFTIKHAR: Well, yes. I think what's interesting, you know, that Frank pointed out is the disconnect between the mainstream media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and social medias coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I mean if you look at, you know, the #Gazaunderattack, it has over 4 million tweets. Israel under fire I believe has something close to 170,000.

And so if you look at international media outlets and their coverage of the conflict as opposed to our own American coverage I think that you are going to see a night and day difference between how these issues are covered. And so I think a lot of people, a lot of social media activists are really showing their displeasure in our mainstream media's coverage of these issues in terms of taking, you know, the narratives back into their own hands via Twitter and Facebook.

SESNO: You know Carol --

COSTELLO: And Benjamin I think -- go ahead.

SESNO: -- if I may, mainstream media, whatever you think of them, have always had certain standards about what a picture can contain, for example. CNN is not going to show horribly graphic mangled bodies. There are no similar constraints on people who get those pictures from wherever to put it out on their own so those gain a certain traction.

Winston Churchill said a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. Well, now a picture gets all the around the world before an official version gets its iPhone on. And so it's the pace and it's the dimension of these images that are going out and it's really changed the psychology.

COSTELLO: I wish I could continue this conversation but I got to go.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells, Arsalan Iftikhar, Frank Sesno -- thanks to all of you. I really appreciate it because I think it's an important conversation.

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

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

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