Protest Greet President Trump In Pittsburgh; U.S. President Calls For Ending Birthright Citizenship; Divers Hearing "Ping" Locator From Lion Air Plane; Divers Hear "Ping" Locator From Lion Air Plane; Pakistan's Supreme Court Acquits Woman On Death Row
JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: After a terrible tragedy, a city divided as Pittsburgh mourns the deadly massacre at a synagogue, the U.S. President is not getting the warm welcome he expected. Plus, freedom of Aasia Bibi, Pakistan's Supreme Court acquits the mother of five after she spent years facing death row charged with blasphemy. And beat the world's tallest statue, but not everyone is celebrating him in India. Hello and welcome to our viewers all around the world, I'm John Vause, you're watching CNN NEWSROOM. In the coming hours, there will be more funerals, more tears more heartbreak in Pittsburgh when more victims of Saturday's massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue are laid to rest. On Tuesday, there are long lines of mourners waiting to pay their respects to three of the eleven victims. Cecil and David Rosenthal, and Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz. Despite calls to stay away President Trump and the First Lady visited the site of the mass shooting. They were greeted by the Synagogue's rabbi. He was leading Saturday service when the shooting started. Just a block away though, large crowds protested Trump's visit. Many say his words and policies have embolden a growing white nationalist movement. The four most senior leaders in Congress both Republican and Democratic all declined an invitation to travel to Pittsburgh with Donald Trump. CNN's Miguel Marquez has more now reporting from Pittsburgh.</s>MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I want to show you sort of how this day went. There was you know the president showed up here and just blocks at one point about a block from where he was thousands of protesters gathered this is just sort of the end of it. People are now breaking up here but it was -- it was prayers, it was singing, it was a neighborhood and a city coming together basically to say we don't want the President here and that they will get beyond this. This neighborhood of Squirrel Hill, everyone just in tears today walking around here. No matter where you went you just saw people crying and emotional. It turned to anger at certain points during the protest. There was at least one person who was arrested. I spoke to a young woman, she's a first generation Indian-American who came here. Here's why she was so upset about the President's visit.</s>SUGANYA SCHMURA, RESIDENT CARNEGIE, PENNSYLVANIA: I think everyone should feel terrified of what's coming for our country if this is becoming a normal thing in our society and it has been normalized. Shootings have kind of been -- you almost expect like what next, where's the next place, and it's sad to feel scared living in America because this is supposed to be a land where you feel free. Free to practice your religion, free to be who you are, and it doesn't feel that way anymore.</s>MARQUEZ: And what was most remarkable about this protest is that it wasn't planned 24 hours before the President arrived here. We weren't even sure that anybody was going to show up but there were 20 and then there were 50 and before long within an hour there are over a thousand people and by the end of it there were several thousand people in the streets of Squirrel Hill singing and protesting so that the President himself could hear them as he was paying his respects. The city, this neighborhood, the city, this area just torn by this in entire episode and that the -- we've only seen the first funerals, the rust will continue through this week.</s>VAUSE: Now, thanks to Miguel Marquez for that report. CNN's Jim Acosta has more now on the President's trip and what lies ahead for Donald Trump with the critical Midterm Elections now just a week away.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, any message for the people of Pittsburgh?</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: With the First Lady at his side, President Trump traveled to Pittsburgh, a city in mourning after the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue. The city of Pittsburgh is split over Mr. Trump's presence with some community leaders wishing he would stay home.</s>RICH FITZGERALD, ALLEGHENY COUNTY EXECUTIVE: We're trying to heal right now and I think a later time would be better.</s>ACOSTA: While the Synagogue's rabbi left his door open.</s>JEFFREY MYERS, RABBI, TREE OF LIFE SYNAGOGUE: This is not about any one person, this is about hate and that good must win. Mr. Trump is igniting passionate reactions to nearly every move he makes in part because he's enflaming an already bitterly divided country. Just one week before the Midterms, the President is resurrecting a controversial proposal he's made before to end birthright citizenship in the U.S., something he claims he can do with an executive order.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what, you don't.</s>ACOSTA: But he's wrong. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees citizenship to people born in the U.S. Presidential Scholars and members of Congress from both parties agree Mr. Trump would have to amend the Constitution.</s>REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: Well, you obviously cannot do that. You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.</s>ACOSTA: The citizenship issue is straight out of the President's Midterm playbook to energize his base with racially loaded rhetoric like his claim that the convoy of migrants many of them women and children heading for the border is an invasion requiring a military response when it doesn't.</s>REP. RYAN COSTELLO (R), PENNSYLVANIA: I don't know how much political calculus he's putting into this. I think he thinks maybe there is but my point is I don't like it. I don't think it's effective. It's not good for our country.</s>ACOSTA: The President is also using questionable language and describing Florida's Democratic candidate for governor Andrew Gillum.</s>TRUMP: Look, here's a guy that in my opinion is a stone-cold thief. He's a disaster.</s>ACOSTA: That followed the tweet for Mr. Trump that described Gillum's opponent as a Harvard, Yale-educated man. Gillum fired back in a tweet of his own saying I heard Trump ran home to Fox News to lie about me but as my grandmother told me, never wrestled with a pig, you both get dirty but the pig likes it. The White House is scrambling to clean up after the President's remarks even Vice President Mike Pence tried to maintain that Mr. Trump respects the American press despite dubbing some news outlets the enemy of the people.</s>MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES: This is a president who believes in the freedom of the press. But the president's complain and it's often mischaracterized not by you either but it's -- the president says fake news is the problem, not news.</s>ACOSTA: The question is whether any of this will have an impact on the Midterms as Democrats are hopeful voters have grown weary of the President's rhetoric.</s>JOE BIDEN, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am sick and tired of this administration. I'm sick and tired of what's going on. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I hope you are too.</s>ACOSTA: And Mr. Trump's attacks on the press are also right out of the President's Midterm playbook. A source close to the White House says outside and inside advisors are urging the President to keep on slamming the media despite the pipe bombs that were mailed to CNN over the last week. Jim Acosta, CNN the White House.</s>VAUSE: Mark Hetfield is the President and CEO of HIAS, what was formerly known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. He joins me now from Pittsburgh. Mark, thank you for being with us. You know --</s>MARK HETFIELD, PRESIDENT AND CEO, HIAS: Thank you, John.</s>VAUSE: You know, normally at moments like this, a presidential visit to the scene of a national tragedy is like the entire country stopping by and paying their respects but I don't think I've ever seen a president so unwelcome as Donald Trump was on Tuesday. Is that because of what he said in the past, was it just to be bad timing? How do you explain it?</s>HETFIELD: Well, what Pittsburgh needs -- what the whole country needs right now is healing. We need to address this epidemic of hate speech which is leading to hateful actions around the country. And I mean, we -- maybe the President's not responsible for all of it but certainly he has not helped it and he's been a bit of an irritant when it comes to hate speech in this country. And also it's not just that he said hateful things in the past, he said hateful things this morning. He woke up and immediately declared that he was going to try to abolish birthright citizenship which again is authorizing people who are born outside of the United States.</s>VAUSE: Yes. The alleged shooter, he ranted online quite a bit. HIAS was not spared the hate. He hates your group of helping murderous invaders reached the U.S. but facts matter and the reality really is quite the opposite to the garbage this guy was posting online.</s>HETFIELD: Absolutely.</s>VAUSE: You've helped over 4.5 million people escape persecution over the years.</s>HETFIELD: We are are the oldest refugee organization on earth and so yes, since our founding we've helped about 4.5 million people but we were established in the 19th century in New York City to help refugees and that's what we're still doing today. What we describe our history as going from an organization that helped refugees because they were Jewish to one that helps refugees because we are Jewish. But yes, that's why we've been able to help so many people.</s>VAUSE: In language which was strikingly similar to the accused shooter, the President described the immigrants in a caravan heading for the U.S. border as an invasion and a threat, he's also pushed this idea that somehow there's something criminal for immigrants to try and want to come to the to the United States but isn't that the American dream?</s>HETFIELD: And it's not just the American dream. I mean, HIAS is motivated to protect refugees because of our experience during the 20th century especially during the 1930 and the 1940s when Jews were literally trapped inside of a genocide in Europe and it was out of the ashes of the Holocaust that the right to seek and enjoy asylum was declared as an -- as an international human rights by the international -- by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and then by the Refugee Convention of 1951. So, if somebody comes to our borders and those people are fleeing persecution as some of the people from central America certainly are, they have a right to make an asylum claim and get protection if they need it. That's a -- that's a right under international law.</s>VAUSE: Your motto is welcome the stranger, protect the refugee and this is from your Web site. We understand better than nerve that hatred, bigotry, and xenophobia must be expressly prohibited in domestic and international law because the right to refuge is a universal human right. HIAS is now dedicated to providing welcome, safety and freedom to refugees of all faiths and ethnicities. So how much harder is it now to carry out that miision statement in the era of Donald Trump?</s>HETFIELD: Well, there's a real imbalance here because on the one hand, we actually feel we more supporters than we've had ever and this has been the case not just Saturday but since our community and much the world woke up to the global refugee crisis in September of 2015. So we have a lot of support. But on the other hand, our partner in this, our most important partner perhaps in this is the United States government. And the U.S. government is no longer a reliable partner because of this hateful rhetoric against Muslims, against refugees, against immigrants. And what we really have to remember this attack that occurred at the Tree of Life Synagogue is this was -- this was attack against Jews. This was anti-Semitic attack but people that are anti-Semitic aren't just anti-Jewish. They hate other groups as well. And this particular attack was motivated by an anti-Semitic, anti- Jewish impetus but also by a hatred of refugees and immigrants.</s>VAUSE: What I think a lot of people have realized is how the Jewish community and the Muslim community were unified just side by side not just at this moment but in other difficult moments in you know, in the last couple of years. You spoke about Trump's Muslim ban. You called his words hateful. When his administration slashed the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. from 100,000 in 2017 to 30,000. Trump has betrayed the commitment the U.S. made after World War II and to ensure that the world never again turn its back on innocent people seeking safety. You know, piece by piece it seems, this President is chipping away at the U.S. leadership role in so many issues be it refugees, be it immigrant asylum regardless of what it is. And regardless of what people say, he just keeps doing it.</s>HETFIELD: The one thing that we're experiencing now in the wake of this horrible tragedy here in Pittsburgh is that we at HIAS feel that there's more support out there among Jews and non-Jews for our mission than ever before and for the mission of other organizations that protect refugees. So you know, yes, our elected leader is not with us on this but we have so much support and so much love for refugees. What we had here, what HIAS organized last week was this refugee Shabbat where over 300 congregations in 32 states in the District of Columbia celebrated refugees and made it clear that the Jewish people welcome refugees to this country. And that's what motivated this murderer to come into this synagogue on that day to commit this unspeakable atrocity. But what we have going for us is the fact that so many people, so many Americans stand behind us to welcome refugees. What we have to address now is the unfounded fee that others feel toward refugees confusing people who are fleeing terror with a terror from which the flee.</s>VAUSE: We're out of time, Mark. But I just kind of feel we're at a moment where even the darkest night comes to an end. Maybe that's where we're at right now. Thanks for being with us.</s>HETFIELD: I hope so. I hope so.</s>VAUSE: Well, this just in, to CNN. Officials in Indonesia say pings have been detected possibly from the flight data recorder at the cockpit voice recorder, the two so-called black boxes from the Lion Air Flight which crashed on Monday, shortly after takeoff. Ivan Watson is live for us in Jakarta. He joins us now. So, Ivan, they've heard pings but they still seem to be a little bit of distance here to go before they actually know for certain if they have the two recorders. It seems that they don't know exactly the location right now.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, that's the message that we've gotten from the National Transport Safety Commission, John. Which is that they have detected the beacon, what they suspect are sonar pings coming from the underwater locator beacon that would be affixed to the flight data recorders which is a positive development. Because then from that, they can try to triangulate and locate that beacon itself. And hopefully the flight data recorder and hopefully some of the main body of that doomed Lion Air Flight 610, itself. Because, you know, as of Tuesday, they still hadn't even picked up that beacon which is supposed to help in these disasters to locate the body of the plane and that vital information that can lead to some kind of explanation for why a brand-new Boeing 737 would have crashed just some 13 minutes after takeoff. We've been looking at, and we've had experts looking at some of the flight data, John, that has come from flight resources like flight radar 24 that indicate that the altitude that the plane was flying at in its first 13 minutes was highly erratic. And that at one point, there was a 726-foot drop in just over 21 seconds. Which suggests there may have been some real problems taking place that could have occurs resulted in this terrible disaster that has resulted in what we believe of the deaths of 189 passengers and crew on board this doomed flight. But yes, the top officials involved in this operation, reporting that they've heard a sonar pings from what they believe are the underwater locator beacon, and that should help with what has already been an effort to recover debris, floating debris, and human remains from this doomed airliner. John.</s>VAUSE: Ivan, we appreciate the update. Clearly, this is a slower the details are still developing. We'll check back in with you as soon as we have some more information on the search for that missing plane. But there's obviously some encouraging news at this point with the pings from the locator beacons from the two so-called black boxes. Ivan Watson there, senior international correspondent in Jakarta. And from Jakarta, we now go to Pakistan. Another story just in, to CNN with the Supreme Court has decided to spare the life of a Christian woman. Asia Bibi has been on death row since 2010. That's when she was found guilty of blasphemy. But she just won an appeal against the conviction and the sentence. Bibi was charged with making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad during an argument with three Muslim women. Her case had gained international attention. CNN's Sophia Saifi joins us now from Islamabad with more on this. OK. So, what are the legal grounds here? How does she get off the charge?</s>SOPHIA SAIFI, CNN PRODUCER: Well, John, we're still waiting for the long order. There's just been a short order announced by the Supreme Court of Pakistan and that is, is that Asia Bibi has been acquitted, and she is free to go. She's been acquitted of all charges of blasphemy. This is a groundbreaking judgment, actually, considering the fact how controversial blasphemy laws are here in Pakistan. So now, you know, there's a lot of celebration amongst human rights activists and very liberal Pakistanis in the country. Considering the fact that -- you know, there have been -- that she's been on death row for around eight years. She -- the incident occurred back in 2009. So, it's been almost a decade that this has been ongoing. So, we're just waiting to see what happens next. There has been some fair off riots across the country. There are some firebrand clerics who've announced that -- you know if she is acquitted, which she has been now, that they're going to take to the streets and cause chaos. We're getting some small reports of skirmishes in the city of Karachi which is the largest city of Pakistan. But nothing as of right now in the capital of Islamabad. Now, it's just going to be something that we are going to have to continue to monitor. But this is some very good news coming out of the Supreme Court today. John?</s>VAUSE: OK. Very, very quickly because there's obviously big domestic pressure here. This is a very highly charged case, so there's the domestic pressure. But there is also international pressure as well. In the scheme of things, where was the balance here, which -- if anything played a bigger role, it may be her acquittal during no or was this just simply she was acquitted on the other question of war?</s>SAIFI: It's a bit of all things altogether. I mean, there had been considerable pressure from the European Union. The Pope had spoken out against it. There had been a lot of international pressure as you said. They've been -- you know, consequences as well. Pakistan had been -- you know, threatened with economic consequences by the European Union with regards to the continued detention of Asia Bibi. So, there is an element of that. In considering the fact, you know, we're hearing reports which have not been confirmed that -- you know, some of these countries in Europe, we don't know which one yet has offered asylum to Asia Bibi because her life is still under threat here in Pakistan. Considering that there are quite a few people who do not want her alive. And so, it's just one of those things where it is the case of -- you know, the law coming through. But also there has been a lot of continuous international pressure on Pakistan with regards to this case.</s>VAUSE: And again, Sophia, we appreciate the update. Let us know as soon we gets some more details on this, and we find exactly what the acquittal has been based on. We appreciate the updates for now. And we will take a short break. When we come back, the tallest statue in the world with the price tags match for this depiction of one of India's beloved freedom fighters and unifiers is getting a very mix response.