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Jury Awards Erin Andrews $55 Million in Stalker Case; Super Tuesday II: What's at Stake?; Are We Any Closer to Solving the Mystery of MH370? Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired March 08, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:32:35] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: A Tennessee jury awards $55 million to sports reporter Erin Andrews. The stalker who videotaped her naked and the hotel where it took place both found liable for the high profile privacy violation. CNN's Martin Savidge has more at the CNN Center.

So, Martin, what's your take?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, privacy, again, as we've seen so often now in our society, especially as open as we are, is very key. And in this trial, that was certainly the case. Erin Andrews, 2008, she is in Nashville to be the sportscaster for a football game. Her stalker, that's Michael Barrett, he is able to get the hotel to reveal that she's a guest and also to get the room next door. He is able to alter the peephole on her door and he videotapes her naked. He later posts it on the Internet.

So all of this that he said was a horrific invasion of her privacy and that the hotel was negligent. The hotel tried to argue that, look, we were duped by Michael Barrett. We're also victims here in this. And they also tried to say, but you know, her career hasn't exactly done bad after all of this. Neither argument went over very well clearly with the jury as the jury came out with a $55 million reward. She wanted $75 million.

After that verdict, she issued this statement. "I've been honored by all of the support from victims around the world. Their outreach has helped me to be able to stand up and hold accountable those whose job it is to protect everyone's safety, security" and there's that word, "privacy."

Now, what remains to be seen is how much of the money she will actually get. Michael Barrett, who owes the most in all this, $29 million, is said to be worth almost nothing. The hotel does have the money, but they may appeal.

Back to you, Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: We'll wait to see what happens.

Martin, thank you.

Time for the five things now to know for your new day.

It is Super Tuesday, the sequel. Democrats do battle in two primary states, Michigan and Mississippi. Republicans complete in four, Mississippi, Michigan, Idaho and Hawaii.

Nine people are recovering this morning from injuries after a packed commuter train jumped the tracks, plunging into that creek overnight in northern California. The train apparently struck a tree that had fallen on the track during some tough weather there.

Overseas, the terror group al Shabaab accusing the U.S. of exaggerating the number of casualties in an air strike over the weekend in Somalia. The Pentagon maintains that 150 militants were killed.

[08:35:03] Malaysia's prime minister marking two years since the disappearance of Flight MH 370 with a message of hope. He says his country remains optimistic that the jetliner will be found before the end of the year.

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan will lie in repose Wednesday and Thursday, allowing members of the public the chance to pay their respects before she is laid to rest at the Reagan Library on Friday.

And for more on the five things, be sure to visit newdaycnn.com.

Seven families are filing a lawsuit over Flint, Michigan's water crisis. They accuse city and state officials of violating the Safe Drinking Water Act while people who lived there paid the price, including many children. The class action suit filed on behalf of tens of thousands of Flint residents targets close to 20 defendants. Among them, the city of Flint and Michigan's governor, Rick Snyder. The families say their children suffered neurological disorders, seizures and language and learning disabilities.

If you'd like to Impact Your World and support families affected by the problems in Flint, go to cnn.com/impact.

Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Michaela.

Today is a big test for Donald Trump and an equally big test for the GOP establishment hoping to stop him. What will happen? Our political prognosticator, next.

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[08:40:30] CAMEROTA: Super Tuesday II is upon us and it could be a game-changer. I like your important stance that you're taking. With 188 delegates up for grabs in Mississippi and Michigan, Hillary Clinton has a chance to build an almost insurmountable lead over Bernie Sanders. And 150 delegates at stake for the Republicans, Donald Trump has a chance to distance himself from Ted Cruz and possibly even knock Marco Rubio out of the race.

So what will happen? Only one man knows. Let's bring him in. He's CNN Politics executive editor Mark Preston.

CUOMO: The man who hates to smile.

CAMEROTA: No.

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Oh, look at that, Cuomo's smiling for you this morning.

CAMEROTA: He's smiling a lot.

CUOMO: Don't show me your hands, Preston.

CAMEROTA: Oh -

PRESTON: No gloves.

CAMEROTA: Wow.

Mark, are we overselling it? Is today make or break or does everyone really hang in until next Tuesday, the 15th?

PRESTON: Look, it's make or break in the sense that it's going to be the lead in to March 15th for Republicans. Let's take that side first. Right now you have Ted Cruz, who seems to be surging a little bit, Marco Rubio, who is ebbing a little bit, Donald Trump who is flat lining a little but, and then John Kasich, who's trying to hold on for dear life.

As we're going into tonight right now, John Kasich needs to do very well in Michigan. In many ways he says that his campaign is going to be staked on the Midwest. That, if he does well, could kick him into his home state of Ohio. Sixty-six delegates on the table, winner take all for John Kasich next week in Ohio. So he needs to do well.

Marco Rubio, right now, is getting a bit of a boost from Mitt Romney. Robo calls are going out to states that are voting today where Mitt Romney is encouraging them to vote for Marco Rubio. But the twist on this one is, is that he's also saying, you should vote for others as well. Basically, Mitt Romney is not endorsing Marco Rubio, but he's saying anyone but Trump.

As we - looking at Donald Trump right now, look, Donald Trump still has the wind at his back and he is a frontrunner in this Republican presidential nomination. But as anyone who is the frontrunner, you've got to consider that they are going to flat line at some point. And, of course, when you have forces in the Republican Party, not only from the establishment side but you have the social conservatives now in some ways that are coming out against Donald Trump, you would expect that he would be hurt a little bit.

And, of course, Marco Rubio got a bit of a bump on Sunday. Chris, you and I were laughing about this a little bit yesterday, but he won the all-important state of Puerto Rico, or territory of Puerto Rico, but that is important in the sense that he was able to pick up 23 delegates, say that he got another win.

CUOMO: Doesn't (INAUDIBLE).

PRESTON: And there are a lot of Puerto Ricans who live in Florida.

CUOMO: True.

PRESTON: And, of course, we all know he needs Florida to stay in the race.

CUOMO: I feel like Preston was filibustering there to try and keep me from asking questions.

CAMEROTA: Did he take a breath?

CUOMO: But it did not work.

CAMEROTA: I don't think he did.

CUOMO: Hey, you're supposed to be prognosticating, not like laying out every possibility. Who finishes third in Michigan?

PRESTON: Wow. Ross Perot. No, who finishes third? You know, good question. You know, we - we don't know.

CUOMO: I know what - what's the answer? What do you mean you don't know? That's what prognostication is.

PRESTON: The answer is - I know, I know, I know, but, you know, I'm like a lot of people who do this for a living. I don't go out there and give these definitive answers because, listen, most people don't know.

Look, I think it's Donald Trump's to win. I think John Kasich has a shot at coming in second place. But, look, we can't discount Ted Cruz and how he's been able to start to get support for his bid. But Michigan voters aren't necessarily on his side yet, or we'll have to see tonight.

CAMEROTA: OK, let's talk about the Democratic side.

PRESTON: All right.

CAMEROTA: Polls suggest that Hillary Clinton will win Michigan and Mississippi. What is the path forward for Bernie Sanders?

PRESTON: Well, Bernie Sanders, his whole campaign now has been based upon moving out of the south and into the Midwest. They'll say that tonight they expect to lose Mississippi. I don't know if he'll actually come out and say that publicly but they will privately. That is the south. That is going to be Hillary Clinton's to win.

But Bernie Sanders needs to do well in Michigan. There campaign is predicated on dealing with working class whites and making that appeal to them.

CUOMO: What does "well" mean? What does "well" - give us a range? PRESTON: Well - well, listen, look, if he wins, then the narrative

tomorrow is that Bernie Sanders has - has a strong will to survive. If he - if it is a close, close second, it will be Hillary Clinton has won Michigan, Bernie Sanders is hanging on for his dear life as we head into the next super, Super Tuesday on March 15th.

But, look, what Bernie Sanders right now has been saying that he can reach out to the industrial Midwest and - and to voters in the west. And, look, Hillary Clinton has done very well with African-American voters. Bernie Sanders has not. It's not that the narrative has been that, you know, African-Americans don't like Bernie Sanders. I don't think that's necessarily the case. They just really know the Clintons and they really know Hillary Clinton.

[08:44:58] CAMEROTA: You know, there's this new "Washington Post" poll that was just out last hour and it's really interesting because it shows that Donald Trump is, of course, the frontrunner, as he has been for months.

CUOMO: More compressed.

CAMEROTA: In the four person match-up, he gets 34 percent to the closest competitor, Ted Cruz, of 25 percent. But look at this trend line here, okay, Mark? This is what's interesting. You look at what's happened over the past year. And this shows the trend. And you see the other three: Cruz, Rubio and Kasich really ticking up in the last months there. They are the bottom three lines.

CUOMO: If you follow all of them, they will eventually be tied.

CAMEROTA: And they will cross at some point and then what happens at the equator?

CUOMO: And then what happens?

CAMEROTA: Mark, but you see Donald Trump ticking down there slightly in terms of the trend.

PRESTON: Well, a couple of things. One is, you know, you do have the alignment of the Republican establishment and social conservatives against Donald Trump. You also you have Donald Trump coming under a lot of criticism for not offering detailed explanations for his policy proposals and, of course, Ted Cruz is really starting to make the case that he is the alternative.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Mark, thank you. Excellent job prognosticating. I give you a thumbs up. Chris is giving you a (inaudible).

CUOMO: He's Irish. He doesn't know what that means. All right. So coming up, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished without a trace two years ago today. The mystery could be one of the biggest in aviation history. Question is obvious. Are we any closer to learning what happened? Richard Quest joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:50:05] PEREIRA: Welcome back to NEW DAY. So it was two years ago today. Hard to believe. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished without a trace. It also happens to be the deadline for filing lawsuits against the airline for the families' victims.

Here today to discuss his book, "The Vanishing of Flight MH370" and all sorts of other developments is our CNN aviation correspondent, host of "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS," conveniently name Richard Quest. Good to have you here. Hard to believe it's been two years? We --

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Two years. Absolutely. And we know really not much more.

PEREIRA: Not much more than we did before. I want to ask you something about -- The fact that, you know, the 239 souls on board. Those families still don't have answers. The prime minister of Malaysia said they remain hopeful. It's --

QUEST: They are searching 46,000 square miles of ocean that they believe is the best chance of finding the plane. They're about two thirds, three quarters of the way through, and the (inaudible), the standard phrase that they use is, we remain optimistic, we remain hopeful that they will find it. Now if you look at that cost, $130 odd million But that is less, just about, than half the cost of one Boeing 777-300. So this idea that millions have been spent on this search, you still haven't really paid the cost of one brand new plane.

PEREIRA: That's interesting.

QUEST: To put it into perspective.

CUOMO: Is that a fair analysis, though?

QUEST: Yes, I think it is --

CUOMO: Why?

QUEST: With 239 people on board, I think -- And a question over the 777 and an unanswered mystery of this nature and they really are no further in actually saying what happened at 1:19 in the morning on the 8th of March. No one knows.

CAMEROTA: But there have been a couple of clues found. So there was a piece of the plane. It has been definitively decided, hasn't it?

QUEST: The conspiracy theorists will say, no, it was planted. But let's put them to one side. They will always find a reason. Yes. The flaperon was found on Reunion Island.

PEREIRA: Right. July?

QUEST: It hasn't actually -- We don't know what it's revealed. They haven't told us in terms of the secrets of how it was (inaudible) from the --

CAMEROTA: What's taking so long? Why haven't they told us? QUEST: I think they are still examining it and coming to conclusions. If you look at the front of that end, it's very clean. You look at the back of it, it's very jagged. The more pieces of wreckage they find over time, if they do, the better idea they will have how the plane might have come out of the air.

CUOMO: How rare is it for a plane like this in modern times to go missing without ever figuring out what happened?

QUEST: There have been one or two incidents 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.

PEREIRA: That's when technology was less advanced though, right?

QUEST: This is the first major incident of its kind, period.

PEREIRA: So here's one of the things that we had talked about before and we are talking about again two years in, and I'm curious where we've gotten. A lot of conversations were had about the changes then, right, to airline safety, to how the communications were processed, even on board the aircraft, those systems. What has -- Has anything changed?

QUEST: Yes. I mean only yesterday on the anniversary (inaudible) the U.N. body announced some new rules. Planes have to be tracked every 15 minutes. If the plane is in distress or going off course or something then it has to send out a signal every minute -- once a minute. They're still looking -- There is ways in which you can have transmissions of the data on board. That hasn't been taken up by airlines so far.

PEREIRA: Why not?

QUEST: No one really knows. Some would say it's cost, some would say it's machinery, some would -- We don't really know why. But the really awful part is that all the changes that have been introduced don't come in for another two years.

CUOMO: Why?

QUEST: Just the way aviation works, Chris. It just -- Because airlines says --

CUOMO: Isn't it as easy as an app to make sure that a plane can never go missing again?

QUEST: No, it is not.

CUOMO: Why?

QUEST: Because you're -- This argument of find my phone, it works when the phone is switched on, the cellular signal, you have registered with iCloud and that is the only way it's going to work. That phone cannot be found in the middle of the desert or the middle of the ocean.

CUOMO: But if you were to equip it with a separate battery source and a transponder that puts out a GPS signal, then it could be.

QUEST: Yes --

CUOMO: It's just a phone. You can certainly do it with a plane. Why haven't you, Richard Quest?

QUEST: Well planes have the potential technology, they just need to get around to doing it. The airlines need to commit. The aviation industry needs to commit.

CAMEROTA: So quickly now, there is this second piece of a plane found off of Mozambique -- or on Mozambique. It's 1300 miles away from where the first piece of the plane --

QUEST: In the same area, though. Still moving to the west. The difficulty with this piece is, frankly, it's between Madagascar, it's in the channel between Madagascar and Mozambique. So it would have had to go around the top, around the island. But it is possible and certainly no one is writing it off yet.

PEREIRA: Well, Richard, it's important for you to have this book out. Again, it's available now. Congratulations on it.

QUEST: Thank you.

CUOMO: Is it any good, the book?

QUEST: You are quoted frequently.

CUOMO: That's all I need to know.

QUEST: It was Chris Cuomo who asked me, Richard, will they ever find the plane?

[08:55:01] PEREIRA: There it is.

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: We'll have your "Good Stuff" next while these two fight it out. Thanks, Richard.

CUOMO: That's a good -- That's a page turner right there.

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CUOMO: Today's "Good Stuff" starts with some bad stuff but do not despair. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CALEB BISBEE, HERO TEEN: That was our source of heat and it would always back up and release the smoke in the air so we didn't think anything of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CUOMO: Some in the air. That was Caleb Bisbee. When Caleb's mom opened the door to let smoke out, they realized it was more than just smoke, the home was on fire.

PEREIRA: Oh no.

CUOMO: Of course, that is not "The Good Stuff." But guess what Caleb did. That is "The Good Stuff."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BISBEE: When he got to his door, the living room of the house was already filled with smoke and he didn't know which direction he was going.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Who's he? Caleb's dad, Billy, who is blind in one eye. So when the smoke got thick, he couldn't see through it. Caleb realized that, ran back into the house, found his dad, led him out before it was too late.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BISBEE: I had a small, small chance to get him out. And I took it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Caleb...

CAMEROTA: Oh my gosh. That's very brave.

PEREIRA: Way to go. Way to go. He'll never be punished again. No more grounding.

CAMEROTA: He can do whatever he wants.

CUOMO: Brave kid. Family first.

PEREIRA: No hesitation. Incredible.

CAMEROTA: That's great. All right. Thank you for that. Time now for "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello. Hey, Carol.