Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Politics of the Iran Talks; Indiana Governor Defends Religious Freedom Law; Airline Knew About Co-Pilot's Depression; Sports World Reacts to Controversial Law. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired April 01, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: A day after introducing him, Comedy Central is now defending their choice for new host of "The Daily Show", Trevor Noah, coming under fire for some jokes that he tweeted about in the past about Jews and overweight women.

[07:30:00] OK, here's one of the biggest offenders. I feel a little weird actually reading one of the jokes that he's getting lambasted for.

Quote, "Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn't look before crossing, but I still would have felt so bad in my German car."

Many "Daily Show" fans are complaining to the Comedy Central.

Now the embattled new host is answering his critics. He sent out this tweet, "To reduce my views to a handful of jokes that didn't land is not a true reflection of my character nor my evolution as a comedian."

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: I mean, jokes aren't supposed to all be benign, right? Can't you offend people with jokes?

PEREIRA: Yes.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: He is in a different world now.

PEREIRA: No, for real.

CUOMO: It's a huge pressure point on what he's going to be dealing with especially the audience for that show where what you say is very important and who he offends is going to be measured in a different way.

PEREIRA: He and the pc police.

CUOMO: I don't think he should get into the business of defending himself, either because you just invite more criticism.

CAMEROTA: Apparently, if you just make fun of Chris Cuomo on the show, it's fine. Maybe he should just use that rule.

CUOMO: That is fine because there's no artificial degree of you know, offense involved. I'm just actually going to find you and give awe beat-down.

A lot of political news going on, let's get to "Inside Politics" on NEW DAY with Mr. John King. What's up, John?

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": Chris, good morning to you, Alisyn and Michaela as well. You're right. A lot that talk about, we begin with the Iran negotiations, and with me to share their reporting and their insights, Julia Pace of the "Associated Press" and Peter Hamby of CNN.

Give us a sense, do they think you just heard the Iranian member of the Iranian delegation saying no deal today. The president agreed to let Secretary Kerry and the rest of the team stay for an extra day trying to get a framework.

We should be clear. No one expects a final deal today. They're trying to get a framework, a political document that says this is what will be in the final deal. And then spend a couple of more months negotiating. What is the sense at the White House, yes or no?

JULIE PACE, "ASSOCIATED PRESS": The White House is in a really tricky spot right now both with the negotiations happening in Switzerland and then the political fallout back here in Washington.

People continue to say that this is a 50/50 prospect at best. The big question right now is that they are making small incremental progress on some of the toughest issues. But does another day, another two days, another week actually get you to the decisions that have eluded these negotiators for 18 months now?

The longer that this drags on and what we're hearing is that if anything that would be finalized would be far short of the real framework that we had thought. Even if this drags on and they can come up with a deal, can Obama sell this to Congress? It's looking very difficult right now.

KING: One of the questions is can he even sell continuing to talk? They've had these deadlines over the last couple of years. These negotiations have been going on for a long time. They've had these deadlines where you get so far to keep talking.

The competing pressures are fascinating. In Jerusalem this morning, Prime Minister Netanyahu came out and again criticized this deal. With him in Jerusalem, but not in the picture significantly, he did meet with House Speaker John Boehner.

Earlier today, Speaker Boehner did not come out when the prime minister made a press statement about the Iran deal there. The speaker being careful not to criticize the president I think while he's overseas.

The president last night as I noted, checked in by video conference with his team and Peter, listen to this, this Ed Royce, a leading Republican voice on foreign policy in the Congress saying, look, what Congress needs to do if the talks collapse.

And he doesn't think the president is going to get a good deal, Ed Royce's advice is walk away and he says strengthen the sanctions and force Iran back to the table. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPRESENTATIVE ED ROYCE (R), CALIFORNIA: Let's shut down their economy and leave it shut down until they agree to allow the inspectors in anywhere, any time to see if they're cheating. And I think it goes back to that fundamental bottom line. You've got to be prepared to do that and cut off their hard currency and collapse the economic system.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's a Republican voice, but a lot of Democrats also think the best approach here if Iran doesn't say, we're ready, is to just walk away and strengthen the sanctions.

PETER HAMBY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes, to play hardball and Republicans say either strengthen sanctions or walk away or be prepared to walk away. Obviously they don't think we should be talking to Iran in the first place and that President Obama you know, violated something by agreeing to do that in the first place.

But Republicans have said that Obama has you know, crossed red lines before, like Syria is a good example they say and so that, just by he has too much invested in this. That he's going to keep going and going, and going. They're going to give away too much.

That this isn't a practical hardball negotiation and President Obama is being too soft. That's the Republican line, which, you know, is in keeping with their line on his foreign policy anyway.

KING: If they can get a loose framework, I don't think anyone thinks they're going to get what they sought at the beginning the idea was a pretty tight framework right now and then finish the talks. Sometimes walking away gets people back to the table. We'll see what happens.

HAMBY: It does, but again, Obama has so much invested in just opening a relationship and a dialogue with Iran. So like it just seems, it's tough for him to back away from that.

[07:35:01] KING: Another big political story that we're watching, all of it here at home, is the Indiana Governor Mike Pence says now he wants a legislator to fix a religious freedom law that he says was never meant to discriminate.

Even though some of the folks behind him immediately put on their web site, this would allow business to deny service to a gay couple if they didn't want to say, a florist for a gay wedding or a restaurant, didn't want to serve a gay couple.

Even though the governor says, that was never the intent. A lot of the supporters say it was part of their intent. The question is how does it play off the Republican Party? We'll see what happens in Indiana. We'll see what the language is when they try to fix this.

The Arkansas governor has a big choice to make. Walmart, just like in Indiana, Peter, corporate interests saying please don't do this. That to me tells you how far the conversation has changed.

Thirty-plus states now recognize same-sex marriage. The Chamber of Commerce in Indiana, the Walmart in Arkansas telling these socially conservative Republican governors, don't do this so why do they do it?

HAMBY: That's exactly why Mike Pence came out yesterday and said that he's going to seek a fix to the law to clarify the language in what it can and cannot do. Not because of the politics, it's because of business. Republicans, especially Republican governors and Democratic governors, they all call themselves the CEOs of their state.

Jobs is the bottom line, economic development, the minute this became an international story and companies like Apple and Sales Force started saying we're not going to do business in Indiana or we're going to re-evaluate our contracts or travel to the state.

That's when Mike Pence started getting a ton of pressure here. That's the big deal. That's why Pence sort of had to back away.

PACE: And yet, you know, business, Chamber of Commerce crowd at the Republican Party is hugely influential in this party. We've seen them break with Republicans on immigration. This is another moment where we're seeing this possible rift.

For someone like a Jeb Bush in particular who is pitching himself in a primary as someone who is going to be reasonable, going to be moderate, going to try to pull the party away from these divisive social issues, I think for him this could be particularly troubling because he's aligning himself with Pence right now.

KING: Let's listen to Jeb Bush from two days ago. Jeb Bush will be in San Francisco today raising money. We'll see if some protests come up there. Listen to Jeb Bush saying Mike Pence was doing nothing wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEB BUSH (R), FORMER GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA: I think Governor Pence has done the right thing. Florida has a law like this. Bill Clinton signed a law like this at the federal level. This is simply allowing people of faith, space to be able to express their beliefs, to have, to be able to be people of conscience. I just, I think once the facts are established, people aren't going to see this as discriminatory at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: There's nothing wrong with giving people of faith their space, and we have to respect disagreements and differences of opinion. But when BILL CLINTON signed the law in the 1990s, number one the Indiana law has tougher language. It's not exactly the federal law.

But number two, our conversation in the country, our practices in the country are handling of these issues in the country has changed dramatically and the Republican Party in presidential elections whether it's on immigration issues, the Republican Party has an image with some voters as being intolerant.

PACE: They continue to say that they want to avoid talking about these issues. The problem is you can't avoid them completely. They haven't figured out how to talk about them when something like this does come up. Gay marriage, gay rights in particular.

The speed at which this country has moved is really incredible. When you look at young people in particular, new voters, there is just overwhelming support for gay marriage expansion of gay rights.

And the Republicans are going to run into a real problem over and over again I think in this campaign unless they can figure out how to talk about this.

HAMBY: Two things worth noting about what Jeb Bush said. He said it before Mike Pence came out and said we need to fix this law, so did Marco Rubio and a variety of other Republicans.

Secondly and Jeb Bush knows this we all know this, people that work sort of in the political ecosystem know, these laws, in Arkansas and Indiana and elsewhere came about last fall and we're starting to be pushed after a cascade of rulings in states allowing same-sex marriage.

So they didn't come out of nowhere. When Jeb Bush is saying that, he's talking directly to conservatives who understand that. So -- to say that this is similar to your point, to the Clinton law in '93 is not true.

KING: The conversation has changed, I'm sure President Clinton would probably say he wouldn't sign that bill today. Alisyn, as we get back to you guys in New York, we'll keep an eye on that one. We'll watch Governor Bush and the 2016ers on the trail.

But the new soft cover image of Hillary Clinton's new book is coming out, a color photo of "Hard Choices" in the paperback version.

CAMEROTA: OK, we'll do. Thank you for our ongoing book club, John. I appreciate that. All right, see you later.

Meanwhile investigators are responding to reports that cell phone video was recovered showing the final moments of doomed Flight 9525. Are those reports real? We'll explain.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:43:51]

PEREIRA: Welcome back. Officials deny reports this morning that cell phone video has been recovered capturing those final moments on board Flight 9525 before it crashed in the French Alps.

As Lufthansa now acknowledges that the co-pilot who downed the plane reportedly suffered severe depressive episode back in 2009, he disclosed that to the company. With us this morning, Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, and David Soucie, CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector. Good morning to you both.

I want to start with playing that clip from the CEO of Lufthansa. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARSTEN SPOHR, LUFTHANSA CEO: The pilot has passed all of these tests, all his medical exams, we have at Lufthansa, a reporting system where crew can report without being punished, their own problems or they can report problems of others without any kind of punishment. That hasn't been used either in this case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Well, that's a change now, Mary, because we do know that the pilot did indeed suffer from a severe depressive episode. He was not 100% fit to fly. What does that about-face say to you? And is it odd to think that at this stage in the game, a company of this size would take them as long to dig through their medical records?

[07:45:10] MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, I think what it says is actually that. They have gone back and after the investigators and after a crash, the investigators swoop in, and they pretty much take all the documents and they have a right to and they should and this has come to light that they, he reported it.

For them to say well he reported it and we want reporting without repercussions, that's utter nonsense, we've reached the day and age in mental illness treatment that it's like other treatments and you have to report what drugs you're taking, there has to be a period of assessment at least six-month period where it's assessed if you can tolerate the drugs.

The airline has the responsibility to report on that and to check on that through their medical office, at least every three months. For them to say it's reporting and there's no repercussion, it's utter nonsense. And if they didn't follow up and admit the guy was not fit to fly, it's pretty clear.

PEREIRA: David, is it reasonable and manageable to have a standard set for mental health in this industry? I mean, this is a global industry. I can imagine how unwieldy that would be.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, there is a standard and that standard is set by the person himself and that's the problem. The person is left to determine am I fit or am I not? Well, honestly they may not be qualified to assess themselves in that way especially if the mental illness influences that that decision to report that. So yes, we need to move forward with something better than what we have right now.

PEREIRA: Let's talk about the video, the cell phone video, the clip that was found apparently seen by German tabloid. If this video exists, Mary, in your estimation, is it helpful to investigators or is it more hurtful to the families?

SCHIAVO: Well, it's both. But you know, it's interesting about families, it's interesting to the investigation. This is a crime scene. This is a murder scene. They need every piece of evidence they can get. Families, we had a situation like in in the United Airlines Flight 93, from 2001, they had a cockpit voice recorder.

The families' voices were on it because if you recall they battered down the door, the passengers did, with a cart to get in the cockpit and the families wanted to hear it because it was their last chance to be with and empathize and know what their loved ones went through. I would imagine that some family members will opt to see this. Some will not.

PEREIRA: That's a powerful thing to imagine. David, it's interesting because you know, French prosecutors saying that they want to have every piece of video, if it exists, they want to see it. They're trying to compel whoever has the video to come forward.

What does it say about the investigation, Mary mentions it's a crime scene, what does it say about the investigation that something like this would be leaked?

SOUCIE: It's just preposterous that someone would let this get out and the investigation team. There's a trust, it's built together in this trust. So it's just, it lacks professionalism.

The problem is if the chain of custody was broken on that particular piece of evidence what about the rest of the evidence? This is where we get into trying to prove something. The chain of custody in an accident investigation is paramount.

It has to be done properly and documented where everything went and who touched it and where it came from. The fact that this leaked is going to put a lot of question on a lot of answers that we think we have down the road.

PEREIRA: David and Mary, I have to leave it there. Thank you so much as always. We appreciate it -- Chris, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Michaela, well, the man who founded Bikram or Hot Yoga as it's called is now in the hot seat himself over sexual assault allegations. Bikram Choudhury spoke exclusively to CNN about those accusations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIKRAM CHOUDHURY: And this is the reward? I'm a rapist? Shame of your culture, western culture.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:53:07]

CUOMO: The sports world continuing to speak out against Indiana's controversial Religious Freedom law. Now some high profile figures are canceling their final four plans in Indianapolis.

Let's get the story from Andy Scholes. He has it in this morning's "Bleacher Report." We've never seen anything like this I don't think, have we, Andy?

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Certainly have not, Chris. A lot of people speaking out about it, a lot of sports figures, the latest is Pat Hayden. He is the athletics director at USC and a member of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee, and Hayden says, you know, the committee, they had a meeting scheduled this week in Indianapolis, but he tweeted he's not going to be attending.

His tweet read, "I'm the proud father of a gay son and in his honor I will not be attending the CFP Committee meeting in Indy this week, #embracediversity."

Defending champion UConn Huskies meanwhile announced that Coach Kevin Ollie and his staff will also not be going to Indianapolis because of the new law. They are honoring the travel ban to Indiana that was put in place by Connecticut's governor.

All right, with the Master's tournament just a week away, the big question still in everyone's mind, will Tiger Woods play? Tiger ramped up the speculation yesterday when he showed up at Augusta National and played an 18-hole practice round.

The four-time Masters champion hasn't played in a tournament since February 5th after taking a hiatus to work on his game. Tiger recently dropped out of the top 100 in the world golf rankings for the first time since 1996. He's currently 104th in the world.

Final four tips off on Saturday night. On the "Tonight Show" last night Jimmy Fallon enlisted some puppies to help predict who is going to win. And, check this out, they went with a huge upset picking Michigan State to win it all.

Now this goes against our CNN bracket guru, Alisyn Camerota, who has picked Kentucky to win it all. She's leading in the CNN bracket challenge. I don't know who to go here.

CAMEROTA: I used kittens to choose mine -- whichever you prefer.

[07:55:08] PEREIRA: I'll be watching the games with my girls. One of them is from Kentucky. I'll force you to watch the game and see if this changes her luck.

CAMEROTA: Are there nachos?

PEREIRA: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I'll be there.

CUOMO: She won't be there.

CAMEROTA: I will be there.

PEREIRA: Force her to watch this game. She needs to know what basketball is about.

CUOMO: She just asked if it was over yet. You see what I'm saying?

CAMEROTA: I want to know if I had won.

PEREIRA: Well, you guys discuss this in the break. Coming up, the deadline we know has come and gone. Can a nuclear dealing with Iran happen if three top negotiators are no longer at the table? We are going to take you live from Switzerland for the very latest.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)