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Obama to Seek Tax Increases on Wealthy, ISIS Frees Hundreds of Yazidis in Iraq; Pope Francis Celebrates Mass with Millions

Aired January 18, 2015 - 07:00   ET

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


VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Two big developing stories this morning, President Obama's new tax plan revealed. Hiking taxes on the rich and giving more tax credits to the middle class.

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: If he gets his way, we should say.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

PAUL: And you're looking at new images of ISIS freeing about 250 members of the Yazidi religious community in Iraq. Much of them children and the elderly who'd been held captive for more than six months.

(MUSIC)

PAUL: It's completely something that we would never suspect from ISIS.

BLACKWELL: No.

PAUL: Is the release of so many people.

So, we're going to dig in to that. Good morning, everyone. I'm Christi Paul.

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell. Seven o'clock here on the East Coast.

President Obama wants to make some major changes to what you -- to what at least some people pay in taxes and he's willing to fight a Republican-controlled Congress to make it happen.

PAUL: Yes, as the president gears up for Tuesday's State of the Union Address, we've learned he wants to raise the taxes on the country's top earners in order to pay for tax breaks to the middle class. That's something that likely is not going to sit well with conservatives.

CNN's Erin McPike is following the story from the White House. We're also joined by CNN politics reporter Alexandra Jaffe in Washington.

BLACKWELL: Erin, what is the specific of the president's plan? ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Victor, it is very ambitious.

And we'll go through some of these proposals now. There is a new tax credit that President Obama wants to offer for dual income families when both spouses work for $500. He also wants to triple the child tax credit to $3,000. And then in order to pay for all of that, what he wants to do is raise tax rates on capital gains. Right now, that tax rate is 20 percent. He wants to raise it to 28 percent.

Now, obviously, that's not sitting well with Republicans. We have already heard from Brendan Buck, and he's the spokesman for Paul Ryan, who is the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and he said this is not a serious proposal. And you can expect that Republicans will be very against it.

But as we talked earlier this morning, there are populous strains developing in both parties right now, both Republicans and Democrats. So, there could be a little bit of Republican support for something. But, of course, Republicans generally don't want to raise those tax rates.

Now, let's walk through some of the other proposals that he's going to be laying out in the State of the Union. In addition to these new tax credits, he also wants to offer two free years of community college, also expand high speed Internet, and offer paid sick leave to more American workers.

This is going to be an ambitious State of the Union. He's already begin to lay some of those proposals out. He's been on the road for the past week. We also will see him travel after the State of the Union so he can sell for of his agenda, Christi and Victor.

PAUL: Alexandra, Erin made a good point. There may be some Republicans who would get behind him on this. But how strong do you think that may be?

ALEXANDRA JAFFE, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: It's unlikely, especially facing some of the pressures they've been facing from the right. We've seen some conflict between the conservative and establishment wings of the Republican Party over immigration reform. So, can they cede any ground on tax cuts or tax increases on the wealthy? I doubt it, I seriously doubt it.

But going forward, again, as Erin mentioned, this is more of a messaging effort for Democrats to put them in a solid position for the 2016 elections. We're already seeing income inequality, the growing sort of distance between the classes shape up to be a defining issue of the coming political fight.

So, this puts them in a good position, Democrats in a good position to say they're on the side of the middle class. Where Republicans, you know, if they oppose this, it's going to put them in a tough spot.

BLACKWELL: And likely more than setting the stage for 2016, maybe as the president leaves the stage, this is a legacy document to say I fought for the middle class. Let me come to you, Erin. Are there any bargaining chips that

the president has? I mean, it seems like the environment is so toxic that it's unlikely anything will get done.

MCPIKE: Victor, I think that's right. And already he has threatened to veto a number of things that Republicans want to see. Chief among those is the Keystone XL pipeline. He's already said that he will likely veto that if that passes through Senate as we expect that it will. Also he's said that he will veto sanctions, more sanctions on Iran as we talked about yesterday. There are negotiations underway with Iran and he thinks more sanctions on Iran will threaten the negotiations that are under way. He's also said that he will veto a reversal on immigration action.

So as far as bargaining chips are concerned, really what we're looking at is something on tax reform, maybe not this. But also more trade packs. The president and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader have talked about how they can get somewhere on trade.

PAUL: All right. Alexandra, I want to ask you about freshman Senator Joni Ernst. She's been selected as we know to deliver the Republican response. She's a war vet, obviously a woman. She's from a very -- swing state. We're talking about Iowa, of course. She's only been in Washington 12 days.

What do you make of the decision to have her in that kind of a job?

JAFFE: You know, that's true. But she's been a rising star on the campaign trail for months. She kind of orchestrated this very impressive win in Iowa despite the fact that we were all sort of expecting the Democrat there to win. She draws big crowds in matter where she is. I saw her in a trail in Louisiana, and she was the biggest star there.

So, Republicans have looked to her and her charisma as a new fresh face as they've been sort of branded the party of older white men. This Joni Ernst is the exact opposite of that. So, I can expect that we'll see a lot more of her down the road.

PAUL: All righty. Erin McPike, Alexandra Jaffe, thank you both so much. We appreciate it.

I want to talk to you about some breaking news this morning regarding ISIS. The terror group has released, we've learned, 250 prisoners in Iraq.

BLACKWELL: And most of those released were children and the elderly, all were Yazidis. One of oldest religious communities in the world, and one of Iraq's smallest minorities.

PAUL: But think about this, they've been held captive for more than six months. We understand they're now under the care of Kurdish authorities.

Also some breaking developments on the hunt for ISIS-trained terrorists on the loose in Europe.

BLACKWELL: Let's go right to Pamela Brown live in Paris -- Pamela.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A lot we are following, Victor and Christi. Three Belgium nationals are in custody right now. Two have been released under strict conditions as troops patrol the streets of major Belgian cities. Belgium's federal prosecutor says that all five have been charged with taking part in a terrorist organization and this follows sweeping terrorist raids in Belgium, Germany and France.

And we're also learning that French authorities have released three women who were detained. Nine other people remain in custody.

All of this as American's top diplomat is rounding up fellow minister to take on ISIS. Secretary of State John Kerry will co-host an emergency meeting in London on Thursday, we have learned.

And let's get more now on the breaking news on the release of hundreds of Yazidi captives in Iraq, many of them children and elderly people by ISIS.

CNN's senior international correspondent Ivan Watson joins me from Brussels for more on this.

Ivan, hard to believe that ISIS militants would do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. Why do you think they released these people?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We got to speculate at this point. We don't have a statement from is for why Kurdish, Iraqi Kurdish officials say more than 200, mostly elderly or infant Yazidis released in the area of the Kurdish-controlled northern city of Kirkuk on Saturday.

If I was to kind of speculate, the ISIS has lost some ground to the Kurdish Peshmerga over the course of the last two months, in the north of Iraq, Kurdish Peshmerga that have been in some cases that have been armed by an international coalition of governments, including the U.S. and backed by coalition airstrikes as well. You recall that mountain, Sinjar Mountain where Yazidis were trapped last summer. That was recaptured by the Peshmerga forces. It could be that there is some pressure that has forced ISIS to give up these prisoners.

There is no mistaking, however, that since they went on the offensive in the summer in northern Iraq, that ISIS have ethically cleansed hundreds of thousands f members of Iraqi minorities, they're Christians, they're Shiite Muslims, they're also members of the Yazidi sect, and they have also taken public responsibility for the enslavement of thousands of kidnapped Yazidi women and girls.

ISIS, as recently as December, were distributing pamphlets at mosque in the northern ISIS-controlled city of Mosul, describing the rules for keeping a Yazidi woman as your slave, explaining, for example, whether or not you can have sex with a Yazidi girl or whether or not you can allow your friend to have sex with your Yazidi female slave.

So, ISIS has been very public how it considers it legal and fair to have a Yazidi slave. Presumably the release of 200 elderly and child Yazidis is because they don't see a value of keeping them as they would keeping women and girls, which they can distribute among their supporters basically as rewards, as the Kurdish government alleges they have done over the course of the past six months -- Pamela.

BROWN: Former modern day slavery right there, just so disturbing to learn about that.

You have seen firsthand, Ivan, the conditions that these Yazidis have been having to live under as ISIS continues to gain ground. So, even though these 200 people are freed, where will they go? I can imagine they still have a lot of challenges and struggles ahead of them.

WATSON: Well, as you can imagine, being a prisoner for months, your future is basically to go to a refugee camp. The Iraqi Kurds have been under immense pressure. Not only are they fighting ISIS on the front lines day to day for months now, but they're also having to host hundreds of thousands of refugees. Not on Yazidis but, again, members of other religious minorities, Christians, Muslims, opponents of ISIS that have been pushed from their homes. There has been some international assistance, the United Nations, and other organizations have helped with the construction of sprawling refugee camps for this massive humanity that have been pushed from their homes.

When it comes to the former slaves who have escaped or in some cases people have paid ransom to get them back. I've seen small shelters, informal shelters being set up. I know that the Kurdish authorities have provided some medical assistance, psychological assistance to these people who have been terribly, terribly traumatized.

But they don't get to go back to their homes for the most part. They are part of the masses of people who have been uprooted and pushed away from their homes.

And when it comes to the Yazidi community who alleged that they are basically the victims of genocide by ISIS over the course of the last six months, almost everybody you talk to says they want to get asylum in Europe, in North America because many of them feel there is no future for them among their former predominantly Muslim neighbors. In many cases, the Yazidi survivors that I've talked, the refugees I've talked to say it's their own neighbors from neighboring villages who have joined side by side along with ISIS to expel them from their homes, to capture them or in some horrific cases to execute the men of their communities summarily -- Pamela.

BROWN: Ivan Watson, thank you. Of course we will keep following that developing situation.

But right now, I'm going the send it back to Victor and Christy in Atlanta.

PAUL: All righty. Thank you so much, Pamela.

You know, Pope Francis is in the Philippines this morning. Millions of people came out to celebrate mass with him. We're taking you live to Manila to talk about that whole scenario.

BLACKWELL: Plus, 7 million copies of the latest "Charlie Hebdo" cover are being printed, 7 million. Typically, they're in a rotation of 60,000. We'll discuss what this means for the publication and protests around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Pope Francis is in the Philippines and this morning, millions -- millions celebrated mass with him in Manila. Today is the pope's final full day in the Philippines.

PAUL: Yes, he's concluding his six-day tour of Asia.

And CNN's Anna Coren is live there.

Anna, I was reading that some people were jumping over barricades and trying to run after the pope mobile when he was in it. Is that indicative of the mood that you're seeing there?

ANNA COREN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christi, the people here in the Philippines just love this pope. And that's why they want to get as close to him as possible. Obviously, security was at an all-time high. Up to 40,000 police and military were here. There were barricades, fences.

So, it was very well-orchestrated and run. But yes, people were trying to get over, trying to get to the pope in his pope mobile as he traveled throughout the path behind me, which is where mass was said. It was (INAUDIBLE). He would stop the pope mobile every, you know, 50, 100 meters. He knelt down and like hit a button and the pope mobile would stop and he would pick up a baby and kiss up. It was just remarkable scenes.

As you can imagine, the crowd erupted. But it was 19-minute mass, really the culmination of his visit here.

His message was to the poor, to society, to take care of the poor, to take care of children, nurture and protect children and to preserve the family unit. Family is very important here. This is a deeply religious country, 80 million Catholics. It's the third largest Catholic population in the world and Pope Francis obviously making this a priority as he gets his message out to the people, Christi.

BLACKWELL: Anna, I understand that the pope also visited Tacloban earlier, the area obviously destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan last year. I imagine there would be a different message there as people trying to rebuild their lives and communities. COREN: Yes, Victor. It was incredible. He had been warned not

to go because of an oncoming typhoon. So, they decided to leave early. They flew down early yesterday and they conducted another mass.

And he had notes that he was going to read. And he just set them aside and he broke into his native Spanish which is when he speaks from the heart.

And he said to the people, I don't know what to say to you. You have been through so much. But I'm with you, I walk with you with a silent heart.

And I think that was his message, one of solidarity, one of support. He's a pastor at the end of the day.

He said that from the outset. I'm a pastor on this trip to the Philippines. I want to show my love and compassion for the people, particularly this community was hit, devastated by Typhoon Haiyan back in 2013, in which more than 7,000 people were killed.

So, yes, the message of the pope in Tacloban, one of solidarity.

PAUL: All righty. Thank you so much for giving us a good sense of what's going on there.

BLACKWELL: Thank you, Anna.

Another big story we wear following, these two fugitive teenagers, 18 and 13 who led police on a multistate manhunt. Well, they've been captured. Just ahead, how police busted them and what happened during their arrest.

PAUL: And on top of that, we're talking to the mother of one of those teens. That's coming up a little later in this hour. Stay close.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Dangers of texts and driving. But one woman critical injured before it was made illegal has become of a champion of the law. Her story in today's "Human Factor".

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Being stubborn may have saved Jacy Good's life.

JACY GOOD, SAFE DRIVING ADVOCATE: My mom didn't appreciate it nearly enough. I think it's my best characteristic.

GUPTA: In 2008, on the day she graduated from college, Jacy and her parents were in a car accident caused by a teenager talking on his cell phone. Her mom and dad were killed. Jacy was given a 10 percent chance of survival. GOOD: My pelvis was shattered. I had a damaged liver. My lungs

were both partially collapsed and I had a traumatic brain injury, which put me on the edge of death.

GUPTA: Jacy fought back, refusing to give in.

GOOD: I wanted my life back. In college, I had the reputation that I was the one who was going to save the world.

GUPTA: Her call to action came after the driver who caused the accident wasn't convicted. There was no law against the use of cell phones.

GOOD: I spoke at a press conference in Pennsylvania trying to get a hand held ban and a texting ban. Finally it went into effect that texting and driving is illegal.

GUPTA: And now, the 28-year-old also speaks around the country to raise awareness about the dangers of using a phone behind a wheel.

GOOD: I am so grateful that I still have everything that I do have, in spite of having lost so much.

Part of life is getting hurt. None of us escape unscathed. I survived for a reason and with a purpose. I'm going to use my time on this planet to make some other lives a little bit better.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Twenty-four minutes after the hour now. Let's take a look at other stories developing this morning.

Two Kentucky teens who were the subject of a massive manhunt across several southern states, they've been caught. Eighteen-year- old Dalton Hayes and his 13-year-old girlfriend Cheyenne Phillips. They were found sleeping in a stolen pickup truck in Panama City, Florida. Police say the two were arrested without any incident.

PAUL: Yes, the teens were wanted on several felony charges, including stealing at least three cars, two which had guns inside. Coming up in a few minutes, we're talking to the mother of that 13- year-old.

BLACKWELL: Two people are dead, a third injured after a shooting at a Central Florida mall. Police say a man shot his wife and then another man in the mall's food court before turning the gun on himself. The woman survived. She's in good condition. The motive for the shooting is not yet known.

PAUL: Take a look at this selfie pro-golfer Robert Allenby posted after he said he was kidnapped, beaten and robbed after failing to make at the Sony Open this weekend. It was in Hawaii. Allenby said he was at a bar when we was abducted, thrown into a car and driven six and a half miles away. That's when robbers took all of his money, his cell phone and then dumped him in a park, he says. Police are reviewing surveillance video now hoping to find potential suspects.

BLACKWELL: More protests against Bill Cosby. You can hear them there chanting "no more jokes". This time it was in Denver. About 50 protesters led by famed lawyer Gloria Allred chanted among other things, "rape is not a joke", and slogans outside the theater where he performed yesterday. That was a stark contrast of what went on inside, where fans greeted the comedian with cheers and a standing ovation. Cosby did not mention anything about the allegations of sexual assault that have been made against him by more than two dozen women.

PAUL: Well, guess what, this morning the president is preparing for a fight over what some people will pay in taxes.

BLACKWELL: Mr. Obama wants to raise billions in taxes on the wealthy and use them to pay for middle class tax credits and cuts. Details just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: This morning, a heightened terror alert in Europe. The military joining police on the streets in Belgium and France to counter any potential threats.

PAUL: We want to get you right to CNN's Pamela Brown who's in Paris who is leading our coverage of the terror threat around the world.

Pamela, good morning to you. What have you learned?

BROWN: Good morning to you, Christi and Victor.

We begin with breaking news right here in Paris. This morning, we're learning three women detained in connection with the Paris terror attacks have been released, but nine people are still in custody.

Let's bring in senior international correspondent Jim Bittermann with the latest.

What are you learning, Jim?

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, these three women have not -- have shown to be any connection with the terrorists that police thought they were involved in, which is Amedy Coulibaly, who was the one who died in a shootout with police at the kosher supermarket last week. Basically, the police have picked -- they started picking up overnight Thursday about a dozen people from around the neighborhood where Coulibaly grew up, who might have had some kind of contact or might have provided some kind of logistical support for him.

They have held those people for 48 hours now. This morning under French law, they got to release them after 48 hours or charge them.