Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Republicans Try to Stay on Message; Difficulties of Searching Underwater for Plane; Remembering Stuart Scott

Aired January 05, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": It's an Andy Warhol moment maybe for Louie Gohmert and the other challengers, but do they have a chance? What are we expecting? Eight, maybe a dozen, votes against John Boehner?

JACKIE KUCINICH, "THE DAILY BEAST": Precisely. I mean, it's a high bar. It's like 28 or 29 that they're going to need in order to force a second ballot. Neither of these, Yoho or Gohmert, have a natural constituency of anything of people who are going to line up behind them. So this is mainly to prove a point and frankly embarrass the speaker.

KING: You embarrass the speaker, make him fight, Jonathan, for this job when he believes, I was the guy that led you in the last election. We built it on majority. He thinks it should be (inaudible).

The question is they won't knock him off. He will still be reelected speaker, but does it have an impact as Republicans go forward? Because we've watched, you know, Speaker Boehner have a hard time, you know, herding the sheep and keeping the votes loyal.

JONATHAN MARTIN, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Yes, look, it's a reminder that he has to rely on Democrats for some of these votes, not for every vote, but some of these key votes. He will have to go over across the aisle to get votes and gets stuff done.

That's what he has done in the past two congresses. I am sure it will happen this time around. It doesn't seem like, John, in January of 2015, that there is quite this sort of pulsating energy that would propel somebody leak a Gohmert to shock the world and not Boehner.

This doesn't feel like the same moment of two years ago, where you have that Tea Party power. You saw Boehner and McCollum take hold of their caucuses in the last few months.

KUCINICH: If I can add, they have a vote for speaker behind closed doors, and Boehner was -- last year and he was unanimously elected. Most of these people come out in the party, yes. They had a chance, really to kind of exert their will. They didn't because, I guess, cameras are there.

KING: The guys out there now the cameras weren't there. The guys know there is a faction of the conservative base that might send them money if they're publicly out there. MARTIN: Exactly.

KING: A lot of fund raising, but you make a key point, McConnell will be the leader in the Senate. Boehner will be re-elected a speaker with the bigger majority in the House. They now fully control the Congress. You see the scaffolding around it.

They have the responsibility to be a part of the governing coalition right now. They want to get going and prove they can pass things. Here's a look at the early Republican agenda.

In the Senate, Mitch McConnell wants to bring up the Keystone XL pipeline. Both the House and Senate will work on jobs bills. They say Keystone is a part of that, hiring more heroes act. Some changes to Obamacare including provisions about the 40-hour workweek.

One of the big flash points early on will be they left on the table funding the Department Of Homeland Security, which is that immigration fight Louis Gohmert was just talking about.

So what are we going to see in the early weeks of this new Congress, I guess, will it be a mix? We will find a few Democrats to help us here on Keystone maybe some of the Obamacare changes and then we have the Republican civil war on immigration.

KUCINICH: I think we will see a lot of massaging of the bills in the Senate because McConnell still has to get to 60 and so we can't really pass something. Some of the things will come out of the house. They will be a little too extreme for some of the moderate Democrats.

I think they will see changes. There will be a civil war over immigration. We saw it starting last year and I have no reason to think it will continue.

MARTIN: Yes. I think in January you will see a few bills, Keystone comes to mind. Whether more consensus across party lines, once you get into February the combination of both funding DHS and also the next debt ceiling increase coming up. I think you will see some of the same challenges that Boehner and now McConnell are going to have here they've had the past few years.

KING: You had a smart piece in recent days, Jonathan, looking at the early lineup of presidential contenders and the prospects of some of the Republicans. Jeb Bush has become, if you look at our polling, the early fragile frontrunner, but a frontrunner among the Republicans.

He is in the mid-20s in the polling, everyone else sort of down in either at 6 percent or 7 percent. His brother won re-election in a campaign in which he closed every speech promising a constitutional amendment.

Listen to Jeb Bush over the week talking to the "Miami Herald" saying it ought to be a local decision, the state decided. It's been overturned by the courts, I guess, he is talking about his home state of Florida there. It's fascinating to me. That's more of the Dick Cheney or Rand Paul position that marriage shouldn't be a constitutional issue. It should be decided state by state. We already know Jeb Bush had issues with the Republican base on immigration, issues on common core, education standards. Will this hurt him in?

MARTIN: I think it will be a challenge with that group, certainly. This has sort of been his issue for a while now that, frankly, it's kind of the weigh station. It's a bridge for a lot of folks in the party. You can't call your full.

At the same time, can you begin an issue at a federal level? Let have the states decide this thing. Here's the problem with that, Jeb Bush's only state the courts have overturned it. Starting today, in Miami-Dade, tomorrow state wide, these county clerks will be issuing licenses for marriages for same sex couples.

So the challenge for Jeb Bush is for states to decide. Well, now the states are actually deciding it and they have to face the issue. It's tough.

KUCINICH: Several of those issues, Jeb Bush is not going to be to the right enough for them.

KING: Let's close as I get on this Monday early in the New Year to have my dream job, to play sports anchor, not "INSIDE POLITICS" anchor. Let's look at the football time itself over the weekend.

The winners over the weekend if you're following the playoff, the Cowboys boat the Lions, the Colts beat the Bengals. The Ravens beat the Steelers and the Panthers over the Cardinals. We head into next weekend where those Baltimore Ravens go up to New England to lose to the Patriots.

But that's not why we are talking about this. Chris Christie who is the governor of New Jersey, do you think Jets or Giants? No, he's been a lifetime cowboys fan.

Take a look at what do we want to call this? That's Jerry Jones, Chris Christie and his lucky sweater. Cowboys are winning and, yes, I'm not sure what to call this, politically, Christie loves football.

To his credit, in a loud media environment, he said, sorry, Cowboys are my team. He stands by it. Any politics here or just sports?

KUCINICH: It's sheer happiness is what that looks like. Sheer joy.

MARTIN: This is someone who loves being, not just in politic, also being a part of a national celebrity. I think being in a box with Jerry Jones for a kid from Jersey is pretty cool.

KING: Enjoying the system maybe he's a good luck charm for Cowboys so far? I guess Jerry Jones will have him at every game until and unless-- Alison.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hew want to be hug. I mean, I supposed that's the question there, how far are you willing to go to win? You have to take some of these things into account.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So was that a hug or was it like a headlock?

BERMAN: The first one was a hug and second time he goes in and it wasn't clear that Jerry Jones wanted a part of it. He says, no, I will stay of this hug.

CAMEROTA: Let me watch this part. He is very excited.

BERMAN: The first time OK. Hug me, hug me. Hug me. Then, yes, OK.

CAMEROTA: Then the head, was there a kiss on the top of the head there? There is a lot of man bromance happening as well.

KING: Not sure what to call it. A, I want to see if the sweater shows up. I think that was shot by the Berman drone.

BERMAN: It's a very busy drone. Thank you very much, John King.

CAMEROTA: John, thanks so much.

All right, stick around because we have something interesting to show you. We have a piece of the same submersible equipment the searchers are using to locate the wreckage from AirAsia Flight 8501. We'll show you how this works next.

And ESPN anchor, Stuart Scott, is being remembered for his talent and his courage during a long battle with cancer. One of his former colleagues, CNN's Rachel Nichols will be here to share her thoughts on him.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: As bad weather hampers the search for AirAsia Flight 8501, Indonesian search and rescue agency has spotted five large objects on the bottom of the Java Sea. But now one of the objects detected we learned is an old shipwreck.

Clearly searching more than 100 feet under water has difficulties, we will take a look at one of the underwater submersibles being used in the search, the Tiburon Subsea AUV 3023 or the Ivor 3.

It is capable of going to depths were AirAsia 8501 is expected to be autonomously get there on their own and finding it, finding the debris using side scan sonar.

Jim Taylor is a sea operation specialist, president of Tiburon Sub-Sea Research. He joins us right now to talk about his device. I will walk over on water here to check this out. So this is Tiburon device. It has side scan sonar, you put it under water, what does it do?

JIM TAYLOR, TIBURON SUBSEA RESEARCH: This is the future. In flight 370, you are seeing the huge systems. It does everything the huge systems do. It doesn't go as deep. We can print, six, ten of these for the cost of six big ones. You got ten times as much area to cover.

BERMAN: Are they using something like this right now on the Java Sea?

TAYLOR: I don't think they are. They are in the military now. Our company is leasing these out to operators for whatever purpose we need them for. We are like a service provider for the equipment.

In three-to-four years if a flight went down leak this you can deploy four, five, six of these at a time. Put them in with helicopters off small boats. You can cover some ground. Even in the heavier seas, you request get these operating. They're not tied to the boat.

BERMAN: And the idea is to map the ocean floor?

TAYLOR: Correct.

BERMAN: So this is autonomous, which means does it do that?

TAYLOR: This has sonar pay load here. It basically side scans sonar you have been covering for several days. It shoots out sound and brings it back. It can take long range pictures. You can find an object like that ship wreck that they found. You can get closer images, an idea exactly of what it is.

BERMAN: How much can it do in one day?

TAYLOR: I probably do eight square nautical miles with this system, 20 if you run it 24 hours a day. There is a battery pay load, when you shrink down. We have to change batteries every 8 hours.

BERMAN: This is autonomous. It does it on its own. You have a joystick?

TAYLOR: I can drive it remotely, up to the boat. Hold on.

BERMAN: It's got a glitch. It's autonomous. This morning, it's deciding not to behave on its own autonomously.

TAYLOR: It's fine the computer systems are fired up. We don't want to waste the time on TV to do that. It runs, itself, it's a preprogram. It will go down, detective, come up. What is beautiful about this, I can Wi-Fi the data off it if I have to. If it's rough, I can pull files off of it without getting in the water.

BERMAN: One of the problems in the Java Sea is the mud, everything is tossed up there. They're having a hard time with cameras. The mud, does that affect this?

TAYLOR: No, this can see through that. I mean, it can a little if it's really muddy. It sees through it. It uses sound like dolphin echo locating. This is exactly the same type --

BERMAN: There are a lot of ships in that sea, a lot of activity right there. Is this affected by the amount of activity that might be going on in the water? TAYLOR: It will map everything that's there. This is what you will have to do with this wreckage. You have to map it. Every forensic guy tells that you have to know where every part of the wreck is. This is the tool or these are the tools that will be able to map all that wreckage, you put it on one big mosaic.

BERMAN: You map it. What they're trying to do with whatever technology they have, I imagine. You map it. Then what?

TAYLOR: Well, every piece they bring out as a forensic study, they have no know where it came from. This gives you a general topographical map of where everything is. They send divers down to recover they can pluck it into that map.

BERMAN: What does the military have? We were speaking to military personnel earlier, describing their role. What equipment do they have?

TAYLOR: They have some of these. They're not on the ship that's deployed. They're specific items. They mine, countermeasure-type things. The sonar they probably have is what I seen on video is a towed array, which is very difficult it's heavy to tow. Your imagery is wavy and hard to read and this gets down underneath all that sea and does its job.

BERMAN: You say shallow, how deep can this go? Obviously, we were talking MH-370. That's miles and miles down in the ocean.

TAYLOR: In the world of oceanic research, this is a shallow vehicle, at 650 feet.

BERMAN: That provides a lot of advantages in shallow water.

TAYLOR: There are a lot of applications, Java Sea perfect example.

BERMAN: If you don't mind me asking, how much does this go for?

TAYLOR: This system is a quarter of a million dollars.

BERMAN: Which is why I'm not going to break it.

TAYLOR: The bigger systems are 3 million. I can put nine in for the cost of one big one. If two go down, you got 80 percent efficiency. If one big system goes down, operational wise, it makes sense to have a lot of drones.

BERMAN: Are you surprised that one of the large objects they found and were hopeful it was the fuselage turned out to be no ship wreck?

TAYLOR: No, not surprised at all. There is a lot of things have been dumped, people have been traveling for thousands of years and World War II is such a major campaign area out there.

BERMAN: There is a lot going on out there. We will say goodbye to our $250,000 device I have not broken yet. Jim Taylor, thanks so much for being with us -- Alisyn. CAMEROTA: All right, from the sports world to the White House, tributes pouring in for ESPN anchor Stuart Scott who lost his long time battle with cancer at the age of 49. CNN's Rachel Nichols will share her remembrances with us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STUART SCOTT, ESPN ANCHOR: When you die, it does not mean you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: We lost a good one folks. It's not often a sportscaster can move so many people and touch so many lives the way ESPN Stuart Scott did. My friend Stuart Scott died Sunday at age of 49 after a lengthy and fierce battle with cancer.

He revolutionized sports broadcasting with unique catch phrases. Any of you that knew him know there's so much more to the man. Helping us look back on his life is one of his former colleagues and our colleague, CNN sports anchor, Rachel Nichols.

Rachel, I'm glad to have you here to talk about this great guy that we have for too short of a time, there's many conversations among us of those of us that knew him. I've been lucky to know the guy you knew, the same guy we saw on TV.

RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: It's hard to say you're shocked at death of someone we all knew how sick he was. It seems impossible he's not here anymore. This is a guy diagnosed with cancer in 2007, seemed to beat it, spent four years healthy.

Just heart breaking in 2011 when the cancer came back. He seemed to beat it again. It came back again in 2013. We all felt Stuart was invincible. It was the kind of thing that hit everyone so hard since he touch sod many of our lives in so many ways.

Every single athlete, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, has released statements saying how important he was to them. President Obama is saying how important he was. I want to read you what Obama said.

He said, "I'll miss Stuart Scott. Twenty years ago, he issued in a new way to usher in talking about our favorite teams. I loved Obama said for much of 20 years public service campaigns kept me from my family.

Wherever I went, I could flip on the TV and Stuart and his colleagues were there. He offered thoughts and prayers from Michelle and his family. The entire generation felt they knew him. It's such a loss for all of us.

BERMAN: What he did was different. When he started doing it 20 years ago now, other people weren't doing it. He revolutionized the way the game is talked about.

NICHOLS: You had the old model. We saw the anchorman, goofy sports caster. Then you have the old man kind of David Letterman take. Stuart came in with the voice of change, voice for the new generation. Catch phrases he had, conversation people under the age of 30 were having. It was tough at first.

There was a lot of criticism. A lot of people wanted him off the air. ESPN got a lot of pressure to have him tone it down. Stuart was adamant, knew who he was and who he wanted to be. That became the standard. That's the power of Stuart Scott.

CAMEROTA: In addition to how he sportscasted, he came to be known for how he publicly dealt with cancer.

NICHOLS: And with two girls who we know and love. He brought them to games all the time. I feel I saw them grow up from the time they were five to six years on the line. He loved them so much. He said over and over he was fighting for them.

Man did he fight hard and well. Seven years battling cancer. That's longer than anyone thought he had, but it was his force of will kept him alive.

PEREIRA: Inside our world of journalist, he was generous. I'm part of the Black Journalist Association. He would go annually to our convention. Always had a kind word for the young kid coming up and wanted to be like him. Would make time to mentor and give a word to somebody looking at the field, very generous in spirit.

NICHOLS: Yes, it takes a special person who didn't get that from colleagues when he came in to turn around and share being generous.

PEREIRA: Can I share your tweet? The loudest laugh, the kindest words, the best kind of friend, missing you already, Stu. We all do.

NICHOLS: Can't believe he's gone.

PEREIRA: No, too soon. Thanks, Rachel.

CAMEROTA: Back to one of our top stories. Obstacles growing by the day in the search for the Flight 8501, bad weather changing search zones and still no sign of those pings or the black boxes, of course there's a ticking clock here. We'll go live to Indonesia for the latest developments.

BERMAN: Jury selection is about to begin in the trial of the Boston bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. We'll look at the question. Can an impartial jury be seated in Boston?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)