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New CNN Poll: The ISIS Impact; Mitt Romney Says Obama Busy Doing Other Things; Interview with John Kirby on ISIS in Syria; U.S. Marine Remains Jailed in Mexico

Aired September 30, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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


JULIE PACE, ASSOCIATED PRESSI think one of the challenges for the president, though, over the next couple of weeks, is going to be what does he talk about? You know, as we get deeper into the poll, there's going to be questions about national security, about the Islamic State group. But for a lot of Americans, it's still the economy and what kind of message can he send on the economy over the next couple of weeks I think could be key to whether the Democrats pull this out or not.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": So let's look a little deeper. Forgive me, but let's look a little deeper before we get into. Because of the shift, Democrats now with a slight edge in what we call the generic ballot for Congress, is all because of men.

The gender gap is about the same. Women are still voting for Democrats, but if you look now, look at this choice among men, Democrats doing much better, still losing among men, but they are doing much better than they were a little bit ago.

Ron, I'm going to connect it to this, how is Congress handling ISIS, 33 percent approve of how the Congress is handling the ISIS debate, 60 percent disapprove.

And to Julie's point, let's get this last number in, we did ask voters, what's most important to your vote when you decide to vote for Congress? The economy still trumps, but 29 percent that is moving up as an issue, ISIS. How much is that becoming a campaign?

RON FOURNIER, "NATIONAL JOURNAL": I don't know at the end of the day how much it is. We need to be real careful with this poll. It's an incredible poll that you caught at an interesting point. I think it reflects how good of a week or ten days that President Obama has had with ISIS.

He went to the U.N., gave a very strong speech after a very clear speech with the plan about what four or five days before that. So especially the men who thought the president was at least looking weak and being indecisive and not taking ISIS seriously.

He showed all of those things at least for a short time being were wrong, that he is looking presidential. The question is, does he revert back to form? I think we saw a little bit of it Sunday night, when he threw James Clapper under the bus. That's the kind of thing that could make these poll numbers go back down. KING: By blaming the director of National Intelligence for underestimating ISIS there. When you look at the congressional numbers, 60 percent disapprove of how Congress is handling ISIS. Remember there was a big debate and Mr. Chris Cuomo of this program driving it a lot of saying the Congress is being a coward, not giving the president an up or down vote.

Listen to John McCain, he was on the program yesterday and said yes, the Congress should have acted differently.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I have said repeatedly, it's an act of cowardice on the part of Congress. They didn't want to vote before the elections.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: You do suddenly have John Boehner saying to George Stephanopoulos this weekend, if the president would put a proposal forward, we'll come back. They rushed out of town to get to recess to campaign for re-election. Do you think that the speaker is looking at numbers thinking maybe people think they blew this?

FOURNIER: I don't know what the speaker is doing. The Constitution doesn't say the Congress has a right to declare war if the president gives them permission. There's no mother may I clause, the Congress can do this and the president should be asking for authority.

So you have both sides trying to argue who is least wrong. It's just another example of a dysfunctional political system, a dysfunctional relationship between these two parties and it's cowardly on Congress. It is the right word.

KING: Is there any indication at the White House that the president before the election. Remember, the Senate is still run by Democrats, not just Republicans, nobody, there's some people wanted to vote. But the people who are vulnerable in this election say, can we wait until after? Any indication the president is going to say, come on back in and let's vote.

PACE: Definitely not before the election. I mean, John Boehner can say what he wants to say. Nancy Pelosi has said that maybe we should just have a vote. She knows that her members don't want to take a vote before the election. Particularly the Senate candidates that are in tough races. Nobody wants to take this vote before the election.

FOURNIER: The leaders think they're pulling one over on the voters. The voters know what's going on here.

KING: One of the most interesting Senate races in the country is in North Carolina, probably the ultimate swing state right now as the state changes demographically. Tom Tillis is the Republican. He is running against Democratic incumbent, Kay Hagen. She is the chairwomman of a subcommittee that could hold hearings on ISIS. Here's his new campaign ad. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: Hagen has missed half the Armed Services Committee hearings this year. While ISIS grew, Obama kept waiting and Kay Hagen kept quiet. The price for their failure is danger. To change direction we have to change our senator.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: ISIS, a game-changer?

FOURNIER: Again it depends, this ad was cut when the president's poll numbers were down, before he went to the U.N., before he had a strong plan. If he starts looking weak again, starts looking to vacillating again, that will be effective.

KING: And that's the North Carolina race. I want you to listen to a guy who might seem familiar. He was the president's opponent in the last election. Here he is campaigning for the Senate candidate in Colorado.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: For the president to say gee we underestimated ISIS suggests that he wasn't looking at the kinds of ideas that were being brought to him. I know people were saying as early as January, we need to put in place a plan to combat ISIS. Yet I guess he was busy doing other things, vacations, golf, fundraising.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Mitt Romney back on the trail, campaigning at the governor's race and Senate race in Colorado. This is sort of the mocking thing that the president, you know, he's on vacation, ignoring your point, he threw the intelligence director under the bus. I guess the question is A, ISIS on the trail, but B, I'm more intrigued by Romney on the trail.

PACE: It's fascinating. I mean, I think it's still hard to see a scenario in which Mitt Romney really runs for president, but you get fundraising appeals from Mitt Romney from Republicans all the time. He's on the trail in these competitive races, I think in some way says as much about the state of the Republican Party as it does about Mitt Romney's eye on 2016.

There's no clear leader to this party so they're looking to a guy who had been a leader at one point and who is ideas frankly from 2012 are not look so outlandish.

KING: I'm holding in my hand, a "New York Times" magazine piece about is Mitt ready to call it quits? Romney can simply just say no, absolutely not. Under no circumstances will I run. No, he doesn't. He says no, probably not going to happen. No, very unlikely to happen. He said if it happens, if I have to do that -- FOURNIER: That's a great piece. What's the old joke about the only

cure for the presidential bug? Embalming fluid? He's going to get in. He's in now. It's just a matter of -- he desperately wants to run.

KING: I don't see it happening, but he certainly does want to be in the conversation. Let's close with this, there's been a lot of talk about this, egregious, I covered the White House for nine years.

I tip my hat all the time to the men and women of the Secret Service, but they've got some issues to fix. This suspect got much deeper into the White House and Conan O'Brien finds it funny.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONAN O'BRIEN, HOST, CONAN: It was revealed today that the White House fence jumper got deeper inside the building than previously reported. Unbelievable. Yes, in fact for 20 minutes he was acting secretary of commerce. When asked for comment, Joe Biden said, he made it much further than I've ever gotten so --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Mr. Cuomo, Mr. Cuomo, I can't help but have a laugh about these things. But I'll tell you again, I covered the building for nine years and I tip my hat to those guys. I remember so many dicey moments where they acted with bravery. But they've got some I's to dot and T's to cross to figure out what the heck happened here.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, that is putting it as someone who is giving the due deference to the Secret Service because change is coming, that's for sure. And I think it's going to go way beyond the handwriting. John King, thank you very much. I'll see you again tomorrow.

KING: See you tomorrow.

CUOMO: ISIS terrorists are on a bloody march through Syria, they have their sights set on a key Kurdish area. The question is it really a key area? And how unstable is the situation? We're going to get answers from the Pentagon about what's going on. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: So, the news from the front in the war against ISIS is that Syrian Kurds are pleading for help as ISIS bears down on a town on the border between Turkey and Syria called Kobani. There's fear that ISIS wants to make the town its home base.

Meanwhile, have the airstrikes in the rest of the country done enough to slow the march of the terror group or are we looking at the inevitable? Boots on the ground, American or otherwise, being necessary to achieve the goals that we have in mind there? What we're hearing from the administration and the coalition.

Let's bring in Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary joins us now right now. Admiral, thank you very much for joining us.

REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Thanks for having me, Chris. Always good to be with you.

CUOMO: The pleasure is mine. What is the general proposition from you in terms of how goes it on the front?

KIRBY: Well, we continue to put pressure on ISIL. We're doing a lot of that from the air as you know. But they're also getting pressure on the ground, from Iraqi security force and Kurdish forces as well inside Iraq. But make no mistake, Chris, we've been real honest about this.

Airstrikes alone are not going to be enough. They do put pressure on them. They do force them to change their tactics and communication a little bit. But we're not fooling ourselves, we know that airstrikes alone are not going to be enough to completely eliminate this threat.

CUOMO: Please, sir, address some of the concerns specific to Kobani first of all that you could be bombing more there to help the guys on the ground. They say you're not doing it not only are they not getting the weapons that they need, the Kurds say, but you're not booming there and you could be, is that true?

KIRBY: Well, I certainly understand the frustrations that they feel and the pressure they're under by ISIL. What I can tell you is we continue to put more and more effort from the air in and around Kobani.

Last night, Chris, there were 19 strikes, both in Iraq and Syria. The majority of those strikes were in Syria, the majority of the Syrian strikes were in and around Kobani.

The majority of the ten strikes that we conducted inside Syria. So we are putting a lot of pressure on there. There is a lot of attention going on. We also need to be careful. We need to be discreet. We have to be, we have to discriminate the targets.

We don't want to cause any collateral damage or any civilian casualties as well. So hitting these guys from the air is a risky business and it's something we want to take due care and caution as we do it.

CUOMO: The key to surgical precision from the air, as I understand it, is coordination from the ground. The obvious thing missing here right now is the full network of coordination on the ground. We're hearing it from ground fighters that there's not good coordination. They don't know when the strikes are going to come. They're worried about it. How incomplete is that connection of communication?

KIRBY: There isn't a lot of coordination and communication right now with opposition fighters on the ground. That is true, but that is also a function of the fact that the opposition groups are not monolithic, they don't have a command and control structure.

It's not like a foreign army that you can kind of just kind of plug into. One of the reasons why we want to start this train and equip program and hopefully get that up and started soon here and in Saudi Arabia is to get the moderate opposition a little bit better organized and better led.

Help introduce the military skills, basic communication and military skills that they need that will help us coordinate with them a little bit better. We are just not there yet. It's a very immature process.

And that's another reason why the airstrikes that we're conducting inside Syria have to be very, very carefully vetted and chosen. So that we're hitting what we're aiming at and we're aiming at bad guys, and only bad guys.

CUOMO: How big a deal is Kobani? Am I exaggerating the significance when I say they want to make it their home base, this is huge. If they take Kobani, this is a big problem.

KIRBY: Well, it's a big problem because it's a town right on the border with Turkey and it's a problem because we know how they treat innocent civilians wherever they are. So again, we're taking it seriously and preponderance of strikes last night were in and around that town.

I don't know that I have specific information that this is what they want their headquarters to be. They are feeling the pressure in Raqqa. There have been strikes not last night, but recent strikes obviously in Raqqa.

They know, they know we know that they've been using Raqqa as sort of a headquarters element for them. So I think they are trying to move. They're trying to disburse, but it's unclear right now if Kobani is sort of the next hub that they're going after.

CUOMO: Turkey as a partner, what does it mean to you that on John and Michaela's show at 11 in the morning yesterday, they spent a lot many time watching a ground fight go on where you had a lot of Turkish forces well within shooting range, just watching ISIS advance?

KIRBY: Well, we know Turkey is going to be a partner in this and President Erdogan has said that they will join the coalition and contribute. It's up to them to decide how they do that. We understand it.

When we were in Turkey just a couple of weeks ago, every Turkish leader that Secretary Hagel met with reinforced the notion and the belief that they will be in this fight somehow, some way. They have to, they share border with both countries that are going through this unrest with ISIL right now.

So they will join. It's just a matter of time and I think they have to decide for themselves. We certainly welcome their participation in any way that they see fit.

CUOMO: Few things were as certain at the beginning of this war as the fact that American boots would not be on the ground. That is becoming less and less certain by any measure. You have Speaker Boehner, his latest quote, "We have no choice, these are barbarians, they intend to kill us and if we don't destroy them first, we're going to pay the price."

That is a response to our friend, George Stephanopoulos, saying would you recommend putting American boots on the ground if no one else steps up. Got the Turks watching them fight, not a good sign. Do you believe American boots are inevitable?

KIRBY: No, I do not, Chris. The commander-in-chief couldn't have been more clear, that he's not going to reintroduce U.S. combat troops on the ground in a mission in Iraq. Now we are in combat, obviously, we're flying air strikes, that's certainly combat.

There's no question about that. But the guidance has been very clear, we're not going to reintroduce ground troops. Now the ground troops that we need, the ground troops that are the most valuable are indigenous ground forces.

That's why we're doing what we can to support Iraqi security forces, not just from the air, but through an advisory capacity. We are flowing more advisers in. We are going to put them in brigade headquarters around the country to help them get a little bit better.

And then of course, we need ground forces in Syria and that's why we're so eager to get the train and equip program up and running. The ground forces you need and you do need them on the ground.

They have to be indigenous, they have to be local. Those who know the ground, know the terrain, know the culture, know the politics and know the enemy, quite frankly.

CUOMO: But then you look a little bit to the side in Afghanistan, and we see what we believe is the most workable model right now, right? Which is 10,000 at least, U.S. troops staying on the ground.

So that if anything happens, and is rapidly destabilizing, not only can they help marshal the local forces, but take care of whatever heavy lifting needs to be done by a superior force. Why isn't that happening where it matters most?

KIRBY: Well, that's not exactly the way the mission is going to evolve inside Afghanistan. As you know, we're coming to the end of the combat mission at the end of this year. Early next year we're going to be down to less than 10,000 or so and those guys are going to be advising and assisting.

There will be a counterterrorism aspect to it, no question about that. But the whole purpose of the resolute support mission, the NATO mission going forward in Afghanistan is to help enable and continue to sustain the competence and confidence of the Afghan national security forces, who have done a good job of securing not just one, but two elections.

So it's not a perfect model, but the idea is moving forward in Afghanistan it's going to be more of an advice and assist mission. CUOMO: A lot of this, Admiral, is obviously as this process goes on, it's hard to know what's going on the ground. For you as well as for us, in the media, so obviously any opportunities to get on the ground and tell the story of what's going on, we're happy to take them. Thank you for joining us on NEW DAY.

KIRBY: Thanks, Chris. Good to be with you again.

CUOMO: All right, thank you, sir.

Now talking about American troops in harm's way, remember, Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi. He is a Marine veteran, jailed in Mexico for more than six months. There is a lot of talk he's suffering from PTS. Why is he still there?

What has happened with these appeals for his release? There's something going on tomorrow in Congress about it, his mental health already a concern as I told you. So, we're going to hear from his mother joining us live with an appeal to you coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Marine Sergeant Andrew Tahmooressi has spent the last six months in prison in Mexico. He was detained after making what he claims was a wrong turn. Now his lawyers hope his mental health will help get him release. He was set to begin treatment for PTS before his arrest. A hearing in Washington is set for tomorrow.

So much to discuss with Sergeant Tahmooressi's mother, Jill, she joins us this morning from Florida. Jill, it has been a while since we've spoken to you. Let's get an update and then I want to find out how everybody is doing. A fourth hearing before a Mexican judge yesterday. What was the outcome of that hearing?

JILL TAHMOORESSI, MOTHER OF MARINE JAILED IN MEXICO: The final psychiatric evaluation was conducted last night by a psychiatrist that the prosecutor had selected.

PEREIRA: OK, and what did the psychiatrist is looking to determine whether the claim of Andrew suffering from PTS was true. Do we know the findings yet?

TAHMOORESSI: They worked on through the night. Mr. Benitez, Andrew's lawyer said they worked through the night to prepare the --

(VIDEO ENDS IN PROGRESS)

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