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Rubio Highlights Generational Differences; Clinton Campaign Accused Of Conflict With DNC; Lincoln Chafee Joins The Democrats' 2016 Race; Fake Weapons, Explosives Get Past TSA Screeners; Digging Deeper Into "San Andreas." Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired June 3, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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


JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": A lot of headlines lately about the Clinton Foundation so you'll ask, will that be baggage that hurts Hillary Clinton?

At the moment, Democrats would have to feel good about that, 64 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of former president Bill Clinton. So you don't see a big change in his numbers. You know, it's still going to be an issue in her campaign without a doubt.

But memories of the Clinton economy, I think, are helping hold two- thirds of Americans view him favorably in this political environment. That's pretty good.

JACKIE KUCINICH, "THE DAILY BEAST": I agree with you. I think that Bill Clinton could buoy her a little bit, but it depends, I mean, these stories are not great. It's going to be interesting to see if his numbers fall like hers have since she left as secretary of state.

OLIVIER KNOX, YAHOO! NEWS: Bill Clinton job approval and personal approval, it's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out. I think the job approval has never really moved very much.

KING: Keep an eye on that one. I want to move on to the two Floridians, who are running for president, the former governor, Jeb Bush, the freshman senator, Marco Rubio, there was a big event hosted by Rick Scott, the Republican governor of Florida yesterday.

Marco Rubio couldn't make it because of Senate business here in Washington. Jeb Bush was there. Jeb Bush was Marco Rubio's mentor. There is a little drama in the presidential campaign. How much are these two going to go at each other like this? Well, here's a little bit of a taste.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our outdated leaders continue to cling to outdated ideas. Even though our economy is now global, our outdated leaders continue to tax and regulate our businesses as if we were still just a national economy.

JEB BUSH (R), FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: It's hard to imagine my good friend, Marco, would be critical of his good friend, Jeb.

KING: Is it hard to imagine? We know he means Hillary Clinton when he says outdated. Does Marco Rubio also mean Jeb Bush?

KUCINICH: I think a little bit. Jeb Bush has an age before beauty message radar.

KING: That's a good way to put it. We'll watch this as it plays out. I want to ask you, Olivier, about this one because, look, we treat Hillary Clinton as the prohibited Democratic front runner. Many people in Washington including the White House treat her as an incumbent.

We don't expect Joe Biden to run. They treat her almost as an incumbent vice president even though she is the former secretary of state. Now there's a bit of a controversy about this, Henry Munoz III is a big former fundraiser for Barack Obama.

The president put him in the Democratic National Committee as the finance chair. The Democratic National Committee is supposed to be neutral. Hillary Clinton is running, but there are other candidates running as well.

And yet he is hosting a fundraiser for her and helping her with a big fundraiser in San Antonio. Conflict of interest, dirty politics or welcome to Washington?

KNOX: Well, I think if you're one of the rival Democratic campaigns, you have to think it's dirty politics and it's unfair. But it does speak to that sort of inevitability among Democrats in terms of that they think Hillary Clinton is basically the nominee and this is walking the walk after talking the talk.

KING: And the complaint from the other campaigns saying, wait a minute, you guys control the convention. You guys control the debates schedule. You guys are in charge of a lot of the mechanics of the primary schedule and all that. You can't be in her camp.

KUCINICH: Right, and I think that's a valid argument, but you know, you do have these -- every time one of these other candidates get in, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made a very big deal about welcoming them into the field. But you know, again, they have a very tough road to climb. This is another head wind for them.

KING: Quick thought on the newest entry who will come today, Lincoln Chafee former Republican senator from Rhode Island and moderate Republican in the Senate, then an independent governor from Rhode Island.

He is going to announce today that he wants the Democratic nomination for president. At the moment, he doesn't show up at all in the polls. Is this somebody that Hillary Clinton needs to view as a threat?

KUCINICH: I haven't seen any evidence of that yet, but it's early.

KNOX: Well, it depends on whether we get the same dynamic the Republicans had in 2012 where, you know, it seems like every week there was a Romney versus not Romney, and I wonder to some extent we are going to see so many Democratic entrance, that at some point, you know, there's a Bernie Sanders or there is a Martin O'Malley or there is a Lincoln Chafee.

And the media turns to them and says, OK, make your case. So I think she has to view this not as a threat, but she has to keep in mind.

KING: Just watch everybody and we'll see if he can rise to the level of Democratic debates. Umali, Sanders, Chafee, and now Clinton, we have a couple more Republicans including Rick Perry this week, more to come.

And Mr. Cuomo mentioned as he came to us that Mr. Trump is signaling that he's going to finally give us a decision. Have you seen this movie before and then before? Jimmy Fallon thinks so -- Alisyn.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": According to an e-mail from his staff yesterday, Donald Trump is set to make his announcement on whether or not he will run for president on June 16th. I mean, seriously, at this point, Donald Trump, announcing he's running for president is like soccer's World Cup. It happens every four years and no one in America cares.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Pretty good there, Alisyn. Here's my test. To run for president, if you run for president, you have to file one of these things called a financial the disclosure form. I think not.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: I say, do you think this is the boy who cried Trump?

KING: Yes, very well put.

CAMEROTA: All right, thanks for sending us off on that fun note, John. Great to see you. See you tomorrow.

All right, growing questions about airport security this morning after an undercover investigation found that TSA failed to catch banned, dangerous items at airports 95 percent of the time.

[07:35:08] The former head of the TSA will be here to tell us what he thinks is going on.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The acting head of the TSA is out following a report that showed a massive failure by the agency to detect fake explosives and weapons at airports 95 percent of the time. Let's discuss this with the former TSA administrator and former FBI Deputy Director John Pistole. Mr. Pistole, thanks so much for being on NEW DAY.

JOHN PISTOLE, FORMER TSA ADMINISTRATOR: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: These numbers are staggering, undercover investigators able to sneak fake weapons through security 95 percent of the time. It's almost laughable. What's the point of even having the TSA? PISTOLE: Well, there are a lot of questions that are being raised and properly so. The context for this is that both the inspector general, the Government Accountability Office in TSA's own internal red team covert testers are continually trying to get things through check points in order to assess the effectiveness of the security.

[07:40:07] These results are completely unacceptable, but the whole point is how can TSA learn from their mistakes and really looking at three different categories?

One, did the technology work as it should have? Two, were the standard operating procedures followed and appropriate given the current threats? And three, how do the officers actually deal with the threats that were identified, if they were identified?

CAMEROTA: It sounds like they failed on all three counts. Basically there was a test conducted by the Department of Homeland Security. As you know, they tried to smuggle in 70 weapons. They got 67 of them through.

By the way, these were not professionals. These were civilian members of the Department of Homeland Security. These weren't bombed explosive experts or, you know, CIA experts.

These were just regular people and they were able to get it through 95 percent of the time. It sounds like a failure on every front.

PISTOLE: It has been, it is, and that's the question that is being addressed by Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, and TSA to find out where the failures occurred.

During my tenure, again, these tests go on all the time. It's usually a combination of those three issues and not one single thing. So in this instance, I know they will be looking at the machines, the technology.

Have they been recalibrated recently? Have they been tested? Were they operating properly? And then, of course, the standard operating procedures if they failed here, if that's systemic, then they will go back and revise those. I mean, clearly, there's retraining that has to be done.

CAMEROTA: Clearly there is, I mean, Secretary Johnson removed the head of the TSA, as we reported, but the problems sound bigger than one man. I mean, having spent your years at the TSA, what do you think the biggest problem is there?

PISTOLE: Well, I think it's a combination of those three and in terms of the testing that was done, it is done somewhat. Not to minimize the terrible results, but it is done in a vacuum that if these were actual terrorists, there would be some intelligence presumably.

I have high confidence there would be, about their activities. Whether they are e-mailing, Skyping, communicating and perhaps looking for material and know how online and somebody in the U.S. intelligence or law enforcement community would pick that up. And so these tests are really somewhat mechanical, if you will, as to these specific check points doesn't look at the other layers of security.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I mean, of course, that didn't happen in 9/11 in terms of a heads up, listen, you know that the general public finds this ridiculous. I mean, the general public, the passengers feel like why are we taking off our shoes, our belts, our watches when the test is sneaking through 95 percent of weapons and it's working?

PISTOLE: And again, that's a legitimate question. I know congressional oversight is very much interested in this and looking at ways -- again, the whole purpose of these tests is how to improve. When you have disastrous results like this, you have to go back and really it's a back to basics of what failed.

CAMEROTA: I mean, Mr. Pistole, can you say this morning that the TSA is actually keeping us safer?

PISTOLE: Well, sure, because of all the things that they do find every day, every week, the thousands of guns every year. You have to remember they are screening over 650 million people in a year. So it's something that every day there are hundreds if not thousands of prohibited items.

Whether it's stun guns or grenades or actual handguns or large knives and things so they are finding all those things, but again, one of the key aspects of these layers of security is the intelligence on the front end.

Absent that it makes it a very difficult proposition. You see that dynamic of trying to balance good security with facilitating free movement of people and goods so you don't have a two-hour line to try to guarantee something that is not guaranteed recognizing these results are just unacceptable.

CAMEROTA: Well, sure, it sounds like you're passing the buck to the intelligence community rather than saying that maybe there are some screeners that need to be fired or screeners who certainly need to be better trained.

PISTOLE: Well, no, clearly it's a partnership with the intelligence community is what I'm saying. So it's something that everybody has to work together. Clearly where these failures have occurred, I know Secretary Johnson is looking very carefully.

For example, in the failures, if it was operator error, is there anything systemic there? Was it new officers just on the job six months or less or was it older officers?

Is there any pattern there that they can look at in terms of focus training? As opposed to saying, well, everybody in the country missed it and that's what they have to look at. When they get the full report, they will do just that.

[07:45:07] CAMEROTA: OK, Mr. John Pistole, thanks so much for joining us with your suggestions of what needs to change at the TSA. Let's hope that they do all of those.

PISTOLE: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: What's your take on this? You can tweet us using the #newdaycnn or post your comments on our Facebook.com/newday. I'd love to read those.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: I don't see you flushed with confidence about changes at the TSA.

CAMEROTA: I mean, when they get weapons through 95 percent of the time, that's a red flag that something systemic needs to change.

CUOMO: I think the reaction is another red flag. Obviously, Pistole is not in control anymore, but there does seem to be an acceptance of failure sometimes on the government side that takes away your confidence that they have the urgency or the desire to do better.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely, let's hope this is a wakeup call. That's the most we can hope for.

CUOMO: Ninety five percent, that's bad any way you look at it. So what's supposed to be good any way you look at it is the economy, right? Markets are at record highs. So why do you give the economy low marks and whom do you blame for it? Must-see findings for you in a new CNN/ORC poll, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:30:00]

CUOMO: It is time for CNN Money Now, chief business correspondent, Christine Romans, is here with us. Christine, what is the truth behind people's feelings about the economy?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's so interesting. The president's approval rating is slipping, 52 percent of people say they disapprove of how the president is doing his job. That's up from 47 percent in April.

And look at how they feel about how he is handling the economy, 53 percent say the president is mishandling the economy and that is still the issue Americans are concerned about, 22 percent of Americans say, the economy is the number one issue. Number two issue is education.

But people are feeling better about the economy. In these numbers it shows 50 percent say the recovery is underway, 50 percent say it's underway or here compared to only 43 percent a year ago and the president is not getting the credit for it.

It's an odd turn for these poll numbers. Gas prices are still low and job market is improving and people buying cars at the fastest pace since 2005, so what's wrong?

Wages aren't budging. People are saving move money because they don't feel super confident. That hurts the president, but also gives huge opportunities for discussion on the campaign trail.

So I think you're going to be hearing a lot about this, wages inequality over the next year and a half. Interesting though, his numbers take a little hit.

Maybe it's a second term thing. The economy is actually improving, people feeling better about the economy. They don't feel great about how he is handling the economy.

CAMEROTA: I like that you always find the teachable moment. It's great. Christine, thanks so much for that. Stick around for this.

Did you happen to catch the flick "San Andreas?" Can an earthquake of that magnitude really hit? Here is Jeanne Moos.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A tsunami baring down on the Golden Gate Bridge and skyscrapers collapsing, can't blame a blockbuster from going a little overboard, and before it falls through the cracks, CNN and the film studio are both owned by Time Warner. How does a seismologist size up "San Andreas?"

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I definitely give two thumbs up. They had me on the edge of my seat.

MOOS: Graham Kent wasn't expecting much science and the film stowing the rock and the tsunami really had scientists rolling their eyes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's way too big.

MOOS: It's all a question of magnitude, 9.6 according to the movie, but the "San Andreas" fault is not in deep long enough to generate big of a quake, two cities get hit.

(on camera): Could you lose both cities, San Francisco and L.A.?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's highly, highly, highly unlikely.

MOOS: Could the hoover dam collapse?

GRAHAM KENT, DIRECTOR, NEVADA SEISMOLOGICAL LABORATORY: No, we all laughed at that scene and said there's water behind the Hoover Dam.

MOOS (voice-over): That's a little dry humor about the drought. Seismologist, Dr. Lucy Jones, posed with the rock at the movies premier and then live tweeted scientific inaccuracies, when the rock approaches the gaping fault line, Dr. Jones tweeted, "OMG, a chasm at the fault could open up there could be no friction and with no friction there could be no earthquake."

But there is one thing that scientists love, movie repeats the duck, cover and hold on mantra experts recommend. Seismologists speak as if there is no if it's all when there is a big one.

KENT: Yes. MOOS: And if it makes people prepare, what is a little earthquake quackery. Jeanne Moos, CNN, safe in New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: Where's the love? How do you not put the clip of me from the movie in when you are doing a package about it, Jeanne?

CAMEROTA: I don't know. Strange that people are highlighting that --

CUOMO: That was my only take away from that whole piece.

CAMEROTA: Yes, you were waiting for your cameo.

CUOMO: If you were in a movie like that, you wouldn't want to at least see it? I have not seen it.

ROMANS: Get to the theater.

CAMEROTA: All right, we move back to our top story, another terror plot in Boston allegedly taken down by authorities, and that's what -- we'll tell you what we are hearing and what they say they've just broke up. Details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:58:38]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, "THE LEAD": A man fatally gunned down by Boston police.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: May have been part of an ISIS terror cell.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was making threats to police officers.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": The issue of bulk collection of phone data.

SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MAJORITY LEADER: No listening to phone calls of law abiding citizens, none of that is going on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The terrorists are not going away and America is still their target.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "AC360": A potentially development in the murder case.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Traces of blood from at least one of the murder victims were found.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blood spatter evidence on clothing, that's pretty hard to argue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Obama's brutal numbers have taken a hit. How he's dealt with ISIS and terrorism overall, some of the issues that Washington is focused on are not necessarily the top priorities of the American public.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, June 3rd, 8:00 in the east. Boston police say they stopped a terror plot after taking out a suspect they say have been radicalized by ISIS. The suspect was killed after police say he charged them with a knife.

CAMEROTA: Osama Rahim had been under surveillance for years, and now a second man identified as David Wright is due in court today in connection with that investigation. CNN's Alexandra Field is live in Boston for us this morning with the latest. What do we know, Alexandra?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. Of course the question on everyone's minds, why did police move in when they moved in? This is somebody they were watching 24 hours a day.

Law enforcement officials say that recently they had noted changes in Rahim's behavior.