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NEW DAY

CNN/ORC Poll: Democrats Gaining Ground; ISIS May Join Forces with an al Qaeda Group; Omar Gonzalez Got Deep Into the White House

Aired September 30, 2014 - 06:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of news going on as you start your NEW DAY.

So, let's take them to John Berman, who I would say is in for Michaela, except --

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Michaela is here.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: This makes it easier. My other TV husband.

CUOMO: Ah! Very nice.

BERMAN: That's how we roll here at CNN.

CUOMO: It's all very good.

BERMAN: Thanks so much, husband and wife.

The armed intruder who jumped the White House fence this month and ran straight into the executive mansion made it a lot deeper into the White House than the Secret Service admitted. It turns out that Iraq war vet Omar Gonzales overpowered a guard and made it into the East Room before he was subdued. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson will be grilled about the breach at a house hearing this morning. This was already going to be a tough hearing, much, much tougher now.

An American Airlines flight making an emergency landing at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport after circling over northern Texas for two hours. Flight 1654 departed from DFW bound for Maryland on Monday, but it had to turn back because of a landing gear issue. The plane landed safely after burning off fuel. Passengers were put on later flights to the Washington, D.C. area.

The Oklahoma man that police beheaded a co-worker is expected to be charged today. Alton Nolen is facing murder and other charges. Now, word has emerged of another beheading threat in Oklahoma. Thirty- year-old Jacob Muriithi is now being held on terrorism charges after police say he threatened to behead a co-worker. Muriithi allegedly said he represented ISIS and told the woman he would cut off her head and post photos to Facebook. He later told police that he was joking.

An interesting endorsement for a little-used but widely effective method of birth control. The nation's leading group of pediatricians recommends that teen girls, if they're going to use contraceptives, use IUDs or hormonal implants over any other form of contraceptive. The American Academy of Pediatrics say that oral contraceptives are the least effective because most teens fail to use them properly or consistently.

But as you can imagine, the fact that these recommendations are being made at all highly, highly emotional.

CUOMO: (INAUDIBLE) went up on the back of my neck, the controversy alert.

BERMAN: You know the doctors are saying doctors should have these conversations with teenaged girls about if they're going to be sexually active. And if they are, the doctors should recommend --

PEREIRA: Use the right method, right.

CUOMO: Who says that the doctors should have the conversations?

BERMAN: The American Academy of Pediatrics.

CUOMO: But you have all of these parents out there who feel that if you talk to them about these things, you encourage the behavior.

PEREIRA: You can't bury your head in the sand, that's the problem.

CUOMO: That's true, because life is life and it is what it is, but boy, that's going to be controversial.

PEREIRA: A lot of conversations happening around the dinner table.

CUOMO: Right now, around the breakfast table.

PEREIRA: Well, yes --

CUOMO: Good thing Berman said it.

PEREIRA: And not you, right?

(LAUGHTER)

CUOMO: I'm kidding.

PEREIRA: All right. We know the Democrats appear to be gaining ground on the GOP just weeks before mid-term elections. We have a new CNN/ORC poll revealing its potentially significant swing since the start of the war on ISIS.

But is there a more pressing issue for voters that's going to decide the race?

CUOMO: And after a year as bitter enemies, it looks like an al Qaeda group and ISIS are joining up. What does it mean for U.S. to destroy them? We'll tell you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Put another X on the box of your calendar, if you even have them anymore, marking the midterm elections are just five weeks away. And a new CNN/ORC poll shows Democrats are gaining some momentum.

Here's why we say that -- the poll shows 47 percent of likely voters would vote Democrat if they had to cast their ballots right now. That's up 2 percent from earlier this month, while Republicans fell four percentage points. But control of the Senate is still very much up for grabs no matter what the polls say.

Let's bring in CNN political analyst, John Avalon, also editor-in- chief of "The Daily Beast", and CNN political commentator and Republican consultant, Margaret Hoover.

I will give you first chance, Margaret Hoover. Why do you pooh-pooh this poll?

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's not so much the poll I pooh-poohed. That's great alteration for 6:30 in the morning. The issue is that a generic ballot poll is really incredibly irrelevant when you're talking about 10 specific Senate races that are key toss- ups.

Great, people think they're going to vote for Democrats, but if you ask people in Michigan if they're going to vote for Terri Lynn Land or not --

JOHN AVLON, THE DAILY BEAST: They're going to say no.

(LAUGHTER)

HOOVER: I can't even make the joke I would make at 6:30 in the morning.

But that's the issue. I mean, people say they don't like Congress but they like their personal congressman -- fine. They may say they're going to vote in the general poll for Democrats, but in their race, Joni Ernst is beating the Democrat in Iowa. Terri Lynn Land is beating the Democrat in Michigan. Cory Gardner is beating Mark Udall.

So, it's all about what's happening in specific states, not generic ballots.

CUOMO: All right. So, what Margaret is say is, she doesn't like the poll because it's against her, she says I don't have to like the poll because the key races are what matters. That's what's going to determine certainly the Senate, and that's where the problem is for Democrats. Fair?

AVLON: Yes, that's exactly the argument I would make if I were a Republican. But I'm independent, so it's not true.

HOOVER: But it's true.

AVLON: But, of course, the Senate race is ultimately about individual races, it does indicate some underlying momentum. And it's good news for Democrats at a time that state polls have been running away from him. What's really significant here for me is first of all, independents giving an edge to Democrats by two points, that's really significant, because independents have been tough critics of President Obama and tough for Democrats to crack.

CUOMO: Why the momentum shift?

AVLON: That I think is one of the reasons you got to go deeper on. I think the strongest argument Democrats have with independents, is that Republican unified control of Congress would institutionalize the gridlock they hate so much. Remember, this is the least-productive, least popular Congress in recent memory.

And what a lot of independents really hate about Washington is the fact that they can't reason together. So, that's powerful argument for Democrats among independents. That's what happened.

CUOMO: Well, Margaret, it is the least popular Congress since the last one. So, you were given a little bit of this stink eye during that. Do you think there's a momentum shift at all?

HOOVER: Here's the biggest factor going into these races, the president's approval rate something hovering around 42 percent, it gets down to 40 percent, that is like watershed numbers in terms of him being able to carry the party across the finish line.

CUOMO: So, you're saying there is no momentum shift?

HOOVER: There -- I don't -- you don't see it, if you look at the ballot tracking polls, the president has hovered around 42 percent, 43 percent for as long as --

CUOMO: But that's him. But why are these Democratic numbers up?

HOOVER: That set the tone. That's the temperature in the water. That's the direction the country is going in. And, by the way, haven't gotten any better with ISIS.

I mean, with the things happening with foreign policy, the president's foreign policy approval ratings are less than his --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: Let's get numbers on that, OK? Because in the CNN/ORC poll, it says how Congress is handling ISIS. Approve, 33, disapprove, 60.

Same question with the president. Put up his numbers. There's Congress, now put up the president, I'll let you read the numbers. Saying we don't have the numbers, his numbers are better.

Approve, disapprove. Better.

So could this be the reason for the shift, they believe that the ISIS plan has come together better. He's getting some kind of coalition. And they like it, so they give him the nod to his party. AVLON: Look, the president is the commander-in-chief. He's always going to do better in foreign policy and ultimately all elections and all polls are sort of compared to what propositions.

However, unpopular President Obama is, however underwater he is in some polls, the least popular cohort in Washington is the Republican Congress. There's one other really significant thing in the poll, when you look at the shift in the economy, that's interesting.

But moderate voters, centrists are two times as likely to be leaning Democrat in this election, 2-1, 60 to 30. That is a significant underlying factor when it comes to the battle for swing voters who ultimately decide all elections.

CUOMO: Margaret, I think the biggest thing in the poll is for you, the vote in Congress, what is it based on? The economy, 65 percent. ISIS, 29 percent. I was surprised by that.

But, probably, in a good way, that people think of pocketbook issues because there's so much going on here back home. How does it work to be in favor of a Republican vote?

HOOVER: I mean, obviously, what we would say is, you know, people are voting their pocketbooks, the economy hasn't fully recovered. So, there's still, you know, historic numbers of people who have dropped out of the workforce, aren't even looking for work. The economy hasn't recovered.

This is the great recession. I mean, its beginning to in small bits, but there are still a lot of people that don't have jobs.

CUOMO: But why aren't you guys bashing those issues, instead of playing the ISIS game?

HOOVER: But we are, and- - but you know what? Here's the thing. You go to Iowa and you think, they're going to care about pocketbook issues, they're not going to care about foreign policy. Wrong.

You would be shocked at how much these states across the country, actually in the center of the country, not around the coast, you wouldn't think, care so much about what's going on in foreign policy. Care a lot about --

CUOMO: Well, they should.

HOOVER: As they should. You know why? It's because, you know, it's their sons and daughters who are going to Iraq, they're going to Afghanistan.

CUOMO: That's exactly right. Strong point.

AVLON: Absolutely, but let me just add one thing. Why aren't they hammering away at the economy? Its because neither party, especially the Republicans, are putting forward a plan that can credibly help the middle class. This is a Seinfeld election so far, its an election about nothing.

Both parties have basically said there are no national issues here, because they're afraid. They basically want the other guy to lose the election, rather than them put forward a positive plan to win.

CUOMO: Also a strong point. Let me ask you this, ISIS should be looming large. What's going on in that region of the world has been greatly oversimplified, probably to the peril of all those who are getting involved in it .

Do you think that Congress will come back and vote, or will there be any semblance of a vote on the plan for the war against ISIS, which is already going on?

AVLON: Not before the election.

CUOMO: You say no. Do you think there'll be one?

HOOVER: Not before the election.

CUOMO: At all?

HOOVER: I mean, eventually, but it probably won't be until you have a new term, not in a lame duck. I highly doubt you'll- - Unless there's some kind of complete urgency. But we don't have a constitutional crisis. I mean, there is constitutional authority to go to war right now --

CUOMO: There's a constitutional crisis.

HOOVER: It's called the 2002 authorization of military force, which President Obama actually won his election because he never supported.

CUOMO: That's right.

HOOVER: So the great irony here is that we actually do have constitutional authority to go to war.

CUOMO: Statutory authority is for military actions, not war. This is a war, I think there's a clear constitutional breach and Congress is going shhh, because they don't want to take responsibility.

AVLON: That's right. This is about cowardice in Congress, because no one wants to take a tough vote before the elections. And the White House is arguing oh, its not a war. It is a military incursion because they're trying to walk that line.

CUOMO: One of the things we'll cover today is that Pelosi is urging the other side to have a vote. Let's see what happens, we have a couple different lawmakers on today, and we'll see if there's going to be any momentum for that, because the people need that action as much as anything else right now.

John Avlon.

HOOVER: Thank you. AVLON: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: Margaret Hoover.

I like these two. They're good people, they're good people.

Alright, so there is a troubling development in the war against ISIS and here's what it is. The terror organization appears to be joining forces with a dangerous al Qaeda group they used to hate. We're going to take a look at this certainly unholy alliance and what it means to the war. Coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Welcome back to NEW DAY, everybody. ISIS advancing this morning on two key strategic fronts.

In Northern Syria, where the terror group is inching toward the town of Kobani, that's near the Turkish border, and also near Baghdad. ISIS is said to be fighting this morning just a few miles south of the capital.

That's happening while there are reports that after a year of vicious fighting between ISIS and al Qaeda, the al Qaeda-linked group al- Nusra, that perhaps they might consider joining forces. At least fighting a common enemy.

So the question, can the coalition air strikes move fast enough to push back these threats? We're joined now this morning by CNN's global affairs analyst, Bobby Ghosh. He's also the managing editor for "Quartz." Bobby, thanks so much for being with us.

I want to take you on a walk right now. This right here is the town of Kobani in Syria near the Turkish border. 500 miles away, south of Baghdad, also where these ISIS forces are battling right now. So you have there and here, a two-front war at least. This does not look like ISIS is being rolled back to me.

BOBBY GHOSH, MANAGING EDITOR, "QUARTZ":: Well, we see here where some of these bombings have been taking place. But it's clear that the group, because of its very nature, it doesn't function like a regular army. It's capable of fighting in different places at the same time.

And that is something that you can't really stop with air attacks. That is why over and over again, everybody who's looked at this has said, there have to be some boots on the ground. If not ours, other people's, but there have to be boots on the ground to take on these fighters.

It's your classic whack-a-mole, if you simply bomb them from the air, they can move. And they will move quietly, they will move in a sort of distributed fashion. It's not one column of tanks, or one column of SUVs taking soldiers from point a to point b. They can just sort of scatter and regather wherever they want to, and that's not something you can tackle from the air. BERMANL No, they're big and they're mobile. I want to walk you over

to a second area right now. This is north of Aleppo. This is where on the very first day of attacks in Syria, the U.S. alone shot tomahawk missiles at the Khorasan group, this is this al Qaeda splinter group also affiliated with al Nusra. Now, what that may have done is upset the al Nusra people enough to drive them closer perhaps to ISIS. Because now there are reports that maybe these groups might be willing to bury the hatchet and work together. Any credence in that do you think?

GHOSH: Well, this is a relationship that has existed in one fashion or the other for ten years. ISIS came out of what was originally al Qaeda in Iraq, and some of those elements are here. These fighters know each other, the commanders know each other. They disagree on their world view and there have been several occasions in this ten-year period where they've split and then come back again.

What we're seeing now I think is sort of on the ground, low-level commanders making the decision that, in this particular fight, we'll fight together. At a higher level, the commanders, well that's a different story.

BERMAN: Right.

GHOSH: Because the commander of al Nusra, which is the al Qaeda- affiliate, yesterday released - - his name is Abu Mohammad al- Joulani, he released a statement yesterday saying to all the other anti-Assad groups, come and join with us. But quite noticeably, he left ISIS out.

So, at a sort of leadership level, they're still quite far apart. But as we've seen with Iraq and with Syria, the circumstances on the ground are changing all the time. The battles are taking place, in a place like Aleppo, street to street. And so individual fighters will make decisions based on what guns are pointed at them at any time.

BERMAN: And al Nusra has to consider that with the success that ISIS is having throughout this large region, you know, conducting war on at least two fronts, that perhaps ISIS might recruit some of al Nusra's members.

GHOSH: It will, and if al Nusra finally submits to ISIS, that will be a huge propaganda deal. It means that al Qaeda, essentially, is acknowledging that ISIS is now the biggest game in town and that al Baghdadi, the leader, the self-appointed caliph, is the commander of all of it.

BERMAN: Let me ask you something about propaganda, because there's a new video out today of this British hostage, its the third one, where he's talking about the situation in Iraq and Syria. Its a propaganda video. This man is obviously under a great deal of duress. I don't want to put, you know, too much weight on anything he says.

But what is interesting to me is he's referring almost in real-time to the operations that are going on right now. Criticizing the president for the strategy that has been developing over the last several weeks. This is very different than we've seen over the last decade or so. We're used to seeing Osama bin Laden in an unmarked cave, ranting, and not knowing when the video was taken. This is, you know, ISIS sending out these videos almost in real-time, criticizing the administration.

GHOSH: A much more sophisticated propaganda operation than al Qaeda ever was. What it tells us is that it talks to the impunity with which ISIS is able to operate across this territory. It also tells us that individual cells or individual groups within ISIS are aware of what's going on.

So, there's a lot of command and communication between the sort of widely disbursed groups of people. From the point of view of the family of the captive, the most important thing is he's still alive, and that leaves some hope. As long as he's alive, there's hope.

BERMAN: Alright, Bobby Ghosh, great to have you here with us, appreciate it.

GHOSH: Any time.

BERMAN: Chris?

CUOMO: John, major development there. We're all thinking about the coalition to fight ISIS now. Is there a coalition building to fight back with them? Important to do that. One of many stories that we're following this morning, so let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Omar Gonzalez made it much farther inside the White House than previously acknowledged by the Secret Service.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a failure in leadership somewhere in that hierarchy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got deep concerns that the president is not as safe as we want and need him to be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Residents of the Syrian city of Kobani are terrified as ISIS closes in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They'll surround them and put them under siege.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Evidence that could link the suspect at the center of Hannah Graham's disappearance to another missing female college student.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a suspect and possibility of a link to Morgan's murder.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: Good morning, welcome back to NEW DAY. It looks like the Secret Service really did fail to tell us the whole truth about a stunning breach of security at the White House earlier this month.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

CUOMO (voice-over): 42-year-old Iraq War vet, Omar Gonzalez, was stopped near the front door of the executive mansion after he scaled a fence and raced across the front lawn. Right? Wrong. We're now finding out that was far from the whole story. Julia

Pearson, the director of the Secret Service, is the person tasked with cleaning up the image of the agency. She's been there for about a year and a half. She obviously has a lot of work to do and a lot of explaining to do when she gets before a House committee later this morning. Let's go to Michelle Kosinski for more.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

CUOMO (on camera): Michelle, what have we learned about how far Gonzalez got inside the White House, and who is to blame?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Chris. Right. Well, you know, there are a couple of layers here. I mean, there's what actually happened and how on earth that was able to happen. Then there's what the Secret Service said happened, and how that hasn't exactly been gelling with the truth.

And remember, early on the Secret Service made a big deal about the fence-jumper not being armed. Then it turned out a day later he actually had a three-inch knife, and the Secret Service said that he was caught just inside the White House doors.

But now these new details are coming out, and they're coming from whistle-blowers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOSINSKI (voice-over): It was the 70-yard dash seen around the world. And now we know Omar Gonzalez, an Iraq War veteran with PTSD and armed with a knife, didn't just make it over the White House fence, all the way across the North lawn, up the stairs, and through the front doors, but according to sources familiar with the incident, Gonzalez overpowered the guard inside those doors, ran past the stairway leading just up to the first family's residence. They were not at home. Through the first floor and East room, finally being tackled by an officer at the doors to the green room.

None of this revealed publicly by the Secret Service, but by whistle- blowers, to Congressman Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee.

REP. JASON CHAFFETZ, (R) UTAH: I've got deep concerns that the president is not as safe as we want and need him to be. I've got questions about leadership, about protocol, and about the training at the Secret Service.

KOSINSKI: No one was able to tackle Omar Gonzalez during his run, no dog was released, and Chaffetz says the alarm inside the front door that is there to signal a breach apparently never sounded, silenced allegedly at the behest of the White House ushers who didn't like it making too much noise.