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NEW DAY
New Flaw in Boeing 737 Max Jets; Shark Attack in the Bahamas; Iowa Voters React to Debate; Controversial Texas Migrant Facility; Democratic Candidates on Immigration; Debate Reality Check. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired June 27, 2019 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00] DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Downing the two flights, the Ethiopian Air crash and the Lion Air crash where you have the plane pointing in a downward position. And most importantly, according to our sources, the test pilots could not recover in a matter of seconds. A source telling us, if you can't recover in a matter of seconds, that's an unreasonable risk. The FAA has gone directly to Boeing and said, look, you've got a new problem to fix. Boeing sent out a statement, which is interesting. Boeing saying it agrees with the FAA's decision and request and is working on the required software.
Now, my sources are telling me, it's not clear if this software change is what's needed here, which would be very easy, compared to changing out all the microprocessors in the 737 Max. That, I'm told, has yet to be determined. Obviously, Boeing wants this just to be yet another software fix so they can get this plane back up in the air. But it is a further delay in the program.
Also delaying the program is a decision on whether or not pilots will have to be retrained on a simulator or not. All this adding up into more delays, John, for the 737 Max. You saw United's position. They're going to delay this. I expect more airlines will be delaying the return of this flight -- these planes even more into the fall.
John.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it's the last thing that Boeing wants.
Thank you very much for this reporting, Drew. Really appreciate it.
We're getting new information this morning about a deadly shark attack in the Bahamas. Police say Jordan Lindsey was snorkeling with her family when she was bitten by three sharks.
CNN's Rosa Flores live with the very latest for us.
Rosa, three sharks?
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Three sharks, John. Now, I should say that CNN affiliate, WPLG, is identifying the woman as Jordan Lindsey, 21 years of age, from Torrance, California. And the station is reporting that the attack happened at about 2:00 p.m. while Lindsey was snorkeling with her family and that her family actually tried to warn her about the sharks, but that Lindsey could not hear. And, John, as you said, we understand that there were three sharks involved in the -- during the attack. They bit her arms, legs and buttocks. Of course she was rushed to shore and then rushed to the hospital, but she was pronounced dead at the hospital. All of this, of course, is still under investigation and authorities in the Bahamas have issued a precautionary warning.
Alisyn.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, my gosh, Rosa, that is so shocking because, you know, I think that we all have some sort of probably false belief that while we're snorkeling on vacation with our family, we're not in shark infested waters. That is such a scary, cautionary tale. Thank you very much.
All right, so how do voters in Iowa feel after the first Democratic debate last night? CNN went to talk to some of them.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:36:52] CAMEROTA: Democratic voters in the early voting state of Iowa paying close attention to last night's debate.
CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich spoke to voters at a watch party in Council Bluffs, Iowa. She joins us now.
What were there impressions, Vanessa?
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS REPORTER: Good morning, Alisyn.
Last night was an opportunity for Iowans to hear from about half of the Democratic candidates running for president, including hearing from some of those lower polling candidates they're not familiar with. We spoke to some of those voters last night here at the Buck Snort Restaurant who said that they didn't walk away from last night with a frontrunner and said they would not be making a decision about who they're going to be voting for any time soon.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
YURKEVICH (voice over): In the Hawkeye state, all eyes were locked on the first Democratic presidential debate.
CHUCK RENSINK, IOWA VOTER: It's mindboggling right at this point in time with all these candidates.
YURKEVICH: With so many options, voters here at the Buck Snort in Council Bluffs, Iowa, listened carefully, in between sips of beer and debate bingo.
Iowa is an early voting state and will play an important role for Democrats in 2020. President Trump won Iowa and nearly 60 percent of voters here in Pottawattamie County voted for the president. SCOTT PUNTENEY, POTTAWATTAMIE COUNTY DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN: Being the
first in the nation, which is something we take very seriously, it's -- it's a crucial role to kind of show the rest of the nation where the candidates stack up.
YURKEVICH: Many voters here have seen the candidates before, in person.
LISA LIMA, IOWA VOTER: Being from Iowa, we get that opportunity, which is a fantastic thing. I hope to see more people. Kamala Harris is going to be in the area next week. So I hope to see her and just -- I would like to her from all the women candidates, honestly.
YURKEVICH: One of those female candidates was among the standouts for Lisa Lima in the first debate.
LIMA: I was really impressed and I actually teared up Elizabeth -- a little bit on Elizabeth Warren's closing remarks. And then I was really moved by what Tim Ryan and Jay Inslee had to say.
YURKEVICH: But she still hasn't settled on a frontrunner. Many felt the same, leaving undecided.
Wendy Punteney says it will come down to the issues for her.
WENDY PUNTENEY, IOWA VOTER: Well, I'm in education. So, education. The kids that I work with are immigrants, because I work with the yellow (ph) population. So the -- everything going on at the border just breaks my heart. I think it's a terrible situation. So that's important to me. Gun safety within the schools. One of the candidates mentioned the social and emotional learning. That's so important in our schools right now.
YURKEVICH: Dolores Bristol (ph) says the entire field is strong, so any Democrat would have her support.
DOLORES BRISTOL, IOWA VOTER: I thought that any one of them is so much better than -- than Donald Trump that I would vote for any one of them.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
YURKEVICH: Now, tonight is another opportunity for the top tier candidates to try to conduct with voters. But I asked the voters we spoke to last night whether or not after tonight they would be able to make a decision about who they might be voting for. And, John, it's very clear that candidates have a lot of work ahead of them because they said that even after tonight they're not going to be choosing their top picks. So candidates have a lot of work to do to try to court voters for their vote.
John.
[06:40:12] BERMAN: They've got about six months to reach those Iowa voters. They have some time. Of course, they've got to make the next debate and the one after that first. Vanessa Yurkevich, in Iowa, thank you very much for listening to what
the voters had to say.
Some of the most impassioned moments from the debate last night were over immigration and this photo, which really shocked the world and weighs on the conscience of this country. What the candidates said about that and how they will address the crisis at the border, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: All right, immigration took front and center at the first Democratic debate last night. The candidates talked about the devastating photo of the Salvadorian father Oscar Ramirez and his daughter Valeria, who drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande into Texas. This is what Julian Castro had to say about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JULIAN CASTRO (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Watching that image of Oscar and his daughter Valeria is heartbreaking. It should also piss us all off. If I were president today -- and it should spur us to action. If I were president today, I would sign an executive order that would get rid of Trump's zero tolerance policy, the remain in Mexico policy, and the metering policy. This metering policy is basically what prompted Oscar and Valeria to make that risky swim across the river.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[06:45:14] BERMAN: I want to bring in Ana Marae Salazar, former deputy assistant secretary of defense and policy adviser for President Clinton's special envoy for the Americas, and Nick Valencia, a CNN correspondent who just toured the detention facility, which has received so much attention, in Clint, Texas.
And that's where I want to start because actually that photo of Oscar and Valeria Ramirez, and the situation in Clint, Texas, is the now. It's what's happening right now, and what these candidates were asked about.
So, Nick, before I go to Ana Maria about what she heard last night, I want you to tell us what you saw when you toured that facility in Clint yesterday.
NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So we weren't allowed to bring in cameras. That was just part of the deal for us to be allowed in there. We tried to get cameras in there. They said it was pen and pad only.
This facility, John, is only meant for 106 migrants. It's at 117. And when those legal monitors visited last week, there was 250. When I walked in, it's hard to imagine trying to cram in another hundred migrants in this space. The nine cells that we saw were already overcrowded, between 20 and 24 migrants. So overcrowded that some of them had to sleep on padded mattresses that were put on the floor.
Looking in their eyes, they looked -- many of them looked disheveled. They looked tired. They looked like they had gone through some very, very hard days recently. Some of them were wearing clothes that appeared to be the same clothes that they had been processed in, even though there was new clothes in a storage facility that we saw a little while later. Some -- at least one appeared to be sick but wasn't quarantined. She had yellow eyes. Another had bloodshot red eyes.
We were taken to another area where they separated the migrant teen boys who were in the back and they were stacked on three cots in the back there. And this sally port area, it's an extension of this border patrol facility. It's not meant to house migrants, but they say because of the influx that they're dealing with right now, they had to add that extension.
It was incredibly heartbreaking to see this situation. I saw children as young as one and two years old. One of them, we were able to see -- overhear a conversation. She was on a landline calling a family member. And I overheard her say in Spanish, (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE), which translates to "I'm alive." And so she was calling family just to give them proof of life, John.
BERMAN: And that's the now. That's happening right at this moment, as is the death of people like Oscar Ramirez and Valeria at the border.
Ana Maria, so did you hear solutions in this first Democratic debate last night to the humanitarian crisis that we are seeing?
ANA MARIA SALAZAR, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I think there -- there is a solution and I think all -- I think most of the candidates would agree that there needs to be immediate resources, doctors, diapers, medicine for these young children and for the adults that are streaming into the country. So I think most of the candidates -- Democratic candidates would agree to that.
I think the problem is -- and it's going to be hard for the -- whoever becomes the Democratic candidate ultimately that's going to face Donald Trump, is how to talk about the immigration issue without not -- without -- which is what they're worried about -- is not creating incentives for more people to come to the United States and flowing in through Mexico, which is happening right now. So I think that's where the difficulty is.
I think all of them had and talked about, you know, these long-term solutions. Julian Castro talked about a marshal plan. Marshal plans usually are -- have to do with economic issues, and that don't necessarily solve the security issues. But, clearly, there's more need for resources in Central America.
BERMAN: Let me -- Ana Maria, let me ask you --
SALAZAR: The problem is how to create a humane -- yes.
BERMAN: Yes, I was just going to say, you were talking about Julian Castro, and specifically what he was proposing. One of the things he suggested, and you're talking about inventive --
SALAZAR: Right.
BERMAN: Is invoking section 1325 of the legal code which criminalizes illegal entry into the United States. He would make it only a civil violation. Listen to what he said about that.
SALAZAR: I think --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JULIAN CASTRO (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Title 18 of the U.S. code, Title 21 and Title 22 already cover human trafficking --
BETO O'ROURKE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If we apprehend a known smuggler or drug trafficker, we're going to make sure that they're deported within (INAUDIBLE).
CASTRO: I think that you should do your homework on this issue. If you did your homework on this issue, you would know that we should repeal this section.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Instead of talking about --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Again, Ana Maria, what do -- what do you think of that proposal, to make illegal entry just a civil violation?
SALAZAR: I think it needs to be done immediately. And I'll tell you why. Donald Trump the way he's portraying these migrants, he's portraying them as criminals. And these -- and the argument he used from the very beginning when he started campaigning as a candidate was that these are criminals coming into the country. So, yes, it could create some incentives. But let me tell you something, if someone is willing to cross through Mexico, to run this risk of being killed the way Oscar and Valeria died trying to cross the river, I mean being called -- this 1325 article is not going to stop them.
[06:50:09] But what has happened, it allows Donald Trump and the Republicans to call these people criminals. And they're not. There's another issue here that -- you know, these are people who are extremely desperate that need to figure out a way to get to a safe place for their children and to have some type of future.
You know, I have to -- I think we need to remind everybody, Barack Obama faced a similar situation. There was a huge surge of Central American migrant families that were able to cross -- that tried to cross into the United States, and they dealt it in a much humane way, not treating them like criminals.
BERMAN: Ana Maria Salazar, thank you very much for being with us.
Nick Valencia, terrific reporting. Thank you for being there on the ground for us. We really appreciate.
VALENCIA: Thanks, John.
BERMAN: Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: OK, John.
The numbers help tell a story of last night's first Democratic debate. So we have a CNN "Reality Check" for you, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:55:32] CAMEROTA: Summer is here and so is the heat.
CNN meteorologist Chad Myers has our forecast.
Yes, there's a lot of red there, Chad.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, the cities start to smell like summer about right now. Ninety degrees in New York City later on this afternoon. Even temperatures warmer than that just to the west of the city.
This weather is brought to you by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, packed with goodness.
So, yes, heat and humidity and poor air quality. Philadelphia, D.C., all the way down to Baltimore, and even into parts of Delaware there we're going to see just a lot of haze in the sky. Ozone in the air. The pollution because the air is not mixing around very much from the cars that are all driving around. Don't do your first marathon outside today.
The severe weather, though, will be back out toward the Midwest. We will see some cooling showers for Minneapolis today. That may be the place to be if you can run between the rain drops there. It will be the coolest area across the eastern half of the country. Hot air continues, though, all the way through the week. Finally, a cooldown for Boston and New York by Sunday. But the highs going to run around 90 to 95 all the way up and down the East Coast for the next three or four days.
Guys, back to you.
BERMAN: Chad, what does summer smell like?
CAMEROTA: Don't ask.
MYERS: Oh, you know what it does.
BERMAN: Teen spirit?
Um, all right, Chad Myers, thank you.
MYERS: I know what it smells like.
BERMAN: Thank you very much.
CAMEROTA: He's saying summer in the city.
BERMAN: I get it.
CAMEROTA: Summer outside of the city smells lovely.
BERMAN: I don't know, Chad seemed to have something in this head and I'm not quite sure what it is. We'll just leave it there.
So, last night the first Democratic debate. What trends popped out? John Avlon, our friend here with a look at the debate by the numbers.
John.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, and nothing to do with the smell of summer. No, the first Democratic debate was a stark departure from the politics of Donald Trump. It was a posy palazzo. And while there were plenty of reality based questions about how they'll pass and pay for their plans, the lies we've gotten used to fact checking didn't quite materialize.
In fact, CNN's fact checks on specific claims come back mostly true. So let's break down the debate instead by the numbers.
Eight. That's the number of direct questions Elizabeth Warren was asked by the moderators. More than any other candidate by far. And she came out of the gate strong and set the pace for the whole debate on the economy in particular.
Seven. That's the number of people Cory Booker has said have been shot in his neighborhood in the last week alone. He really owned gun reform last night with an emotional appeals like this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm tired of hearing people, all they have to offer is thoughts and prayers. In my faith, people say faith without works is dead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: Seven is also the number of candidates who mentioned Donald Trump during the debate. With Jay Inslee getting big applause for calling Trump the nation's greatest national security threat.
Five. That's the number of time Tulsi Gabbard reminded us that she served in the military. A differentiation that does contrast with the fact that she's also the biggest dove of the stage last night.
Three. That's the number of candidates who spoke in Spanish. First, Beto O'Rourke. Then Booker. And then finally the only Latino candidate in the race, Julian Castro.
Two. That's the number of candidates who raised their hand when asked if they would eliminate private insurance. Only Warren and de Blasio would go that far.
And, one. That's the number of governors who were on stage last night. Notable because we've elected eight governors president since 1900. Finally, zero. That's the number of days you're going to have to wait
until the next debate because round two takes place tonight.
And that's your "Reality Check."
BERMAN: And that's the point, we hate waiting.
AVLON: More instant gratification amidst the smell of summer, John.
BERMAN: Exactly.
CAMEROTA: Way to run with a theme. Thank you very much, John.
All right, and thanks to our international viewers for watching. For you CNN "TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, we have the biggest moments from last night's first debate. NEW DAY continues right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Who is this economy really working for? The thinner and thinner slice at the top.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She was well-satisfied to let everybody scrap with each other. She was unscathed in this.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I'm tired of thoughts and prayers. Faith without works is dead.
BETO O'ROURKE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The choice is fundamental.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Private insurance is not working for tens of millions of Americans. How can you defend a system that's not working?
JULIAN CASTRO (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If I were president today, I would sign an executive order that would get rid of Trump's zero tolerance policy.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Castro has been strong on policy this entire time, he just hasn't received the same quality of coverage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People took notice. What they saw is that I have a great vision for the future of the country and that I can beat Donald Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
BERMAN: Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY.
[06:59:52] This is a special edition of NEW DAY because new this morning, the big moments and the big surprises from the first 2020 presidential debate. We're getting in some fresh data about which candidate made the biggest splash and perhaps the biggest gains among the ten who were on that stage last night. We have three of the candidates who were part.
END
