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CNN NEWSROOM

Trump Leads, Carson Slips in Newest Poll; Fear Across U.S.; "Washington Post's" Jason Rezaian Sentenced to Prison in Iran; Bataclan Theater Band Speak Out About the Paris Attack. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired November 23, 2015 - 09:30   ET

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


KATHIE FAZEKAS, CDC SPECIALIST: These guys, every one I mentioned, put their lived on the line for me that day.

[09:30:02] And I so appreciate that. And there is a group of people who didn't make it out. And my heart goes out to their families. But I believe they were here doing what they love and what they're committed to. And if that day were to come for me, somebody would be saying that about me as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: She's deeply thankful, Carol, to the Malian special forces who came in here quickly, managed to save many lives, and the American security teams who were in constant contact with her, giving her instructions. But she said her training, the way that she locked the door behind her, put some kind of barricade around her and didn't go when people tried to knock on the door until that secret came -- code came. She said that really is why she's alive today.

Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, David McKenzie reporting live for us this morning.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me.

Senator Marco Rubio will be hosting a town hall this hour in Carol, Iowa. New poll showing the Republican presidential candidate has had one of the best months in the GOP field in the terms of points gained. You see him. He's tied for third with Ted Cruz after jumping five percentage points since October. But he's going to have a lot more to catch up with Donald Trump, who's holding on to a double digit lead in new polls by Fox News and "The Washington Post" and ABC News. Trump's strong numbers comes as the millionaire rackets up his rhetoric about American Muslims, saying there's precedent for monitoring some mosques amid the recent terror wave. CNN's Athena Jones live in Washington with more on the polls.

Good morning.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. It looks like his heated rhetoric, Trump's heated rhetoric is serving

him well so far. There were a lot of questions after the Paris attacks about how those attacks might reshape the Republican race. Would Republican primary voters give -- begin to give these candidates a closer look, begin to gravitate more towards someone with experience, political experience or foreign policy experience, to be more specific. But it looks like right now the case is -- it's not the -- that's not the case. Trump is still on top. Carson's still in second.

And this comes as this new "Washington Post"/ABC poll shows that 83 percent of registered voters say they fear another terrorist attack. So that is the background against which Trump is performing so well. This poll also found that Republican primary voters feel that Trump would do best when it comes to handling the threat of terrorism. And so it's possible that some of his tough talk may be part of the reason that he's doing so well.

Take a listen to what he had to say on ABC's "This Week" about surveilling mosques. He was talking about there being a precedent in the city of New York that was changed after Mayor Bill de Blasio came into office. But go ahead and take a listen there.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I don't want to close mosques, I want to surveil mosques. I want mosques surveilled. And let me tell you, the people that aren't involved in those mosques, they know who the bad ones are and they know who the good ones are, but they don't talk. And we have to surveil the mosques. And we were doing it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: And so there you hear him arguing for surveilling mosques. He's also talked -- I've seen him before with large crowds say, you know, if I become president, we'll kick out any of the Syrian refugees who have been admitted. And the crowds where I've seen him speak really seem to respond to that. So I don't think this tough talk is going to change any time soon.

Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Athena Jones reporting live from Washington, thank you.

Mr. Trump's popularity stems in part from that tough talk on Muslim Americans. He's in favor of surveillance on certain mosques as a way to combat terrorism. Of course, after 9/11, New York City police did surveillance on mosques. So, what did they find? According to a 2007 report on nyc.gov called "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat," these are some of the findings. Quote, "certain mosques can be incubators for radicalization, but so can cafes, the Internet and prisons. Basically any meeting place can breed terrorism, even butcher shops and bookstores."

Now, keep in mind, the city has reportedly reached a settlement with Muslim groups who said they suffered discrimination when the NYPD spy -- when the NYPD spies targeted them based on their religions.

So, what should authorities do? Let's talk about that. Joining me now, Mayor Karen Majewski. She represents the city in Hamtramck in Michigan. The first majority Muslim city in the United States. I'm also joined by CNN political commentator and former NYPD intelligence specialist Buck Sexton. He actually worked for the unit that produced that report that I referred to.

So thank you very much for being here this morning.

MAYOR KAREN MAJEWSKI, HAMTRAMCK, MICHIGAN: Yes. Can I please make one correction?

COSTELLO: Yes.

MAJEWSKI: The -- my last name is pronounced Majewski.

COSTELLO: Thank you so much and I so apologize -- I apologize for that.

[08:35:02] So, mayor, I will start with you. You govern a majority Muslim American city. Are you afraid?

MAJEWSKI: No, I'm not afraid. And actually I'd like to make another correction. We have, as of our last election, which was a couple of weeks ago, we elected a Muslim majority council. Whether the demographics of the city would say that we're a Muslim majority city, I think we're -- I don't think that we're there yet. I think we're probably somewhere in the 40 percent Muslim for the city overall. But our city council that will take office in January will be a majority Muslim council.

COSTELLO: So does that concern some of your citizens?

MAJEWSKI: You know, the issues for -- we're a small city. We're 23,000, 24,000 people. We're 2.2 square miles. The issues for most of our residents are, can we -- can we fix the streets? You know, will the street lights -- the street light that's out in front of my house, can we get that fixed? They're local issues. And the -- the -- there's not a kind of level of fear that we hear when we talk about this on a national level. Really, our city council and our residents are most concerned with the day to day issues that affect their life when they walk out their front door.

COSTELLO: OK, so that is small town America. And stick around, Ms. Mayor. I'm going to turn my attention to Buck now because last year the NYPD disbanded the unit tasked with carrying out surveillance on Muslim communities. So was that a good idea, a bad idea?

BUCK SEXTON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it's a very difficult balancing act. The NYPD intelligence division and counter terrorism division have to act within established legal frameworks, legal guidelines. In New York City they're called the Handshu (ph) guidelines that try to balance out First Amendment rights and protections with the need to protect the city. And when we talk about mosque surveillance, by the way, it's really a

misnomer. You're looking at radicalized individuals who, as you pointed out in your introduction, could be gathering at any number of places. But if they are gathering at a mosque, and this has happened numerous times in recent years in New York City where there have been radicalized individuals who have plotted terrorist acts in New York City, who did spend a fair amount of time at a mosque, obviously law enforcement is not going to be barred from the premise because they happen to be in a place where religious services take place.

The NYPD has absolutely no interest in the vast, vast majority of the Muslims who are going to pray and peacefully go about their business at a mosque. But if there is a criminal predicate, if there's reason to believe that there's some sort of jihadist plotting underfoot, which actually has happened in recent years, then they will have to surveil, they'll have to follow, they'll have to use informants or any number of tactics they have to deploy. But it's always within a legal framework.

Now, that's not always the easiest thing to determine, where does that stops and where does infringement and the First Amendment begin. But overwhelmingly, the NYPD has done an excellent job of doing this and they have disrupted a number of plots that would have been mass casualty attacks in New York City had they not been stopped in progress. So this is -- I mean it's very serious business that they're dealing with all the time and they have to always get right on the edge of, well, where do we decide that we're going to actually pull back because we don't want to offend people? You can't let political correctness dictate these things.

COSTELLO: So when you -- when you -- well, help us understand, when you talk about surveillance on certain -- what does surveillance mean? What does that mean?

SEXTON: Well, surveillance is -- it's the same if you're looking at a terrorist investigation as you would if you're dealing with drug dealers or any other number of possible criminal conspiracies. You'll have members of law enforcement, in this case the NYPD, who are, in fact, watching the individual, perhaps there is somebody who's an informant, who's talking to individuals that believe -- that are believed to have been radicalized or are in the process of radicalizing. And if somebody is saying, hey, where do I get a machine gun because I want to go and shoot up a synagogue, for example, or blow up a synagogue, which was a plot that the NYPD disrupted, that then becomes a very obvious criminal issue. And then you have to have FBI and NYPD working together to try to disrupt that sort of a plot.

So, again, there is this balancing act. I think the NYPD has done a particularly good job of trying to reach out to the Muslim community and say, look, we're trying to keep you safe, we're trying to keep the whole city safe. So, you know, this has to be a collaborative effort. And I think the NYPD has done a good job with that, hence their willingness, in a case where it seems like maybe they were being more aggressive -- but, again, it's aggression in the defense of New York City trying to prevent terrorist attacks.

COSTELLO: Right.

SEXTON: Not because they have any animosity against Muslims. By the way, there are many Muslim Americans in the NYPD intelligence unit, it should be said. There are many fellow Muslims who are involved in this process who hate the fact that they believe their religion has been hijacked and want to prevent that very small minority from doing these things.

COSTELLO: (INAUDIBLE).

SEXTON: So the NYPD is willing to work with people on this but I think they've done a good job.

COSTELLO: OK, that was very impassioned. I got it. I got it.

So I'm going back -- I'm going back to you, Karen, because -- Karen's still with me. There you are. OK.

So --

MAJEWSKI: Yes.

COSTELLO: When the Muslims in your community hear talk of surveilling mosques in the city of New York, what goes through their mind?

[09:40:03] MAJEWSKI: Well, I haven't discussed this -- the issue of surveilling the mosques with Muslim residents in my community, but I would imagine that they would be concerned. They would be concerned simply from the issue of their own civil liberties and religious liberties. But they, I can tell you, that they are as concerned as the rest of the nation about any potential terrorism attack. So, of course, they cooperate -- as far as I know they cooperate fully with the police and with the FBI. In the case of any kinds of investigations. But I don't know that -- that there's any -- anything of that sort going on in Hamtramck and I would be very surprised to hear it if there were.

COSTELLO: Some of the rhetoric in our political world, how is that affecting your town, if at all?

MAJEWSKI: Well, you know, of course, the people are aware of it. People are sensitive to it. And people are -- are -- people -- Muslim and Christian and Buddhist and Hindu and atheist and everyone else we've got in Hamtramck is the most internationally diverse city in the -- in the state of Michigan. Of course we all hear that rhetoric. Some of us are quite shocked by it.

But it's not -- and we're sensitive to the fact that folks like to look at Hamtramck as a kind of microcosm of the nation as a whole. And if that's so, because we, as I say, we're 2.2 square miles, we've got multitudes of languages, folks from all over the world, more than half our residents speak a language other than English at home, this is the face of America kind of in this hat house of this -- just this one little corner of Michigan. So, of course, we're aware of the scrutiny that gets put on our city as a kind of metaphor for the United States as a whole. And so we're very sensitive to the way our diversity and the interaction of our different communities is -- plays out on a national stage. But as far as the kinds of fears, I think, that the -- and the kind of fear mongering that goes on in the U.S. as a whole, that really has no place in the kind of daily conversation in Hamtramck.

COSTELLO: Mayor Majewski, thanks so much.

And, Buck, I just want you to get in a last word about the political rhetoric and if that's really a help to the authorities or a hindrance or it doesn't matter?

SEXTON: Well, it depends whose political rhetoric we're talking about. I mean some people obviously go further than they should. But I think right now the focus should be much more on making sure that we are secure across the border in this country and making sure that we prevent the next attack and a little bit less on who's saying what at any given time. That would be my sense of it. But, again, it depends on whose rhetoric we're talking about.

I assume you're referring to Donald Trump. And, obviously, Donald Trump doesn't have much of a -- a governor on his rhetoric. He likes to go -- he likes to take it to 11, as they say.

COSTELLO: All right, Buck, thanks so much for stopping by. Mayor Majewski, I thank you for stopping by, too. And I'm sorry that I messed up your name at the beginning. I feel really bad about that.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a break in the case of a pastor's wife killed in Indiana. Who police have placed under arrest, next.

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[09:48:03]

COSTELLO: Checking our -- some top stories for you at 47 minutes past. Indianapolis police making an arrest in the murder of Amanda Blackburn, a pregnant mother who was shot and killed during a home invasion. Officials naming an 18-year-old suspect in her death. For now, that suspect is facing a preliminary charge of murder. Blackburn was 12 weeks pregnant when she was killed. Her husband is a pastor at a local church.

An Iranian court has sentenced "Washington Post" journalist Jason Rezaian for spying. Ian Lee has been following the case. He has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: "Washington Post" bureau chief Jason Rezaian has been sentenced to prison according to Iran's judicial spokesman. Rezaian was tried on espionage charges. The Iranian- American has been detained in a prison for almost 500 days.

What we don't know are the details of the charges or verdict against Rezaian, or the length of his sentence. This comes amid ongoing domestic tensions between moderates around Iranian President Rouhani and hardliners in the government.

There was also hope that following the Iran nuclear deal, that tensions would thaw between Washington and Tehran, leading to Rezaian's release. Iranian leaders have also suggested a possible prisoner swap in the past. And "The Washington Post" says they're aware of this development and added, "Every day that Jason is in prison is an injustice. He has done nothing wrong. Even after keeping Jason in prison 487 days, so far, Iran produced no evidence of wrong doing. His trial and sentence are a sham and he should be released immediately."

Rezaian's sentencing comes amid a crackdown on other journalists in Iran. United Nations human rights investigators have called on Iran to cease arresting, harassing, and prosecuting journalists. They've also urged Iran to release all journalists, including Jason.

Ian Lee, CNN, Cairo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[09:50:00] COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, smiling faces at the Bataclan moments before the terrorist attack. Now for the first time, we're hearing from the band that was on stage.

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COSTELLO: The California band Eagles of Death Metal are forever changed by the horrible ordeal in Paris. They were on stage at the Bataclan Theater when gunmen began shooting members of the audience. Now the band is speaking about that terrible experience. CNN's Fredericka Whitfield has more for you.

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JESSE HUGHES, EAGLES OF DEATH METAL: Several people hid in our dressing room.

[09:55:00] FREDERICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eagles of Death Metal lead singer Jesse Hughes speaking out for the first time, remembering that terrible night.

HUGHES: The killers were able to get in and killed every one of them, except for a kid who was hiding under my leather jacket.

WHITFIELD: The band at the Bataclan Theater, the deadliest site of the Paris attacks. This photo, a snapshot in time, just moments before the first shots rang out, senselessly cutting short the lives of 89 people.

SHANE SMITH, VICE FOUNDER: The killer got in your dressing room?

JOSH HOMME, EAGLES OF DEATH METAL: Yes. People were playing dead, and they were so scared.

HUGHES: A great reason why so many were killed is because so many people wouldn't leave their friends. So and -- so many people put themselves in front of people.

WHITFIELD: The band clearly traumatized and frozen with disbelief, putting out this statement: "While the band is now home safe, we are horrified and still trying to come to terms with what happened in France."

Among the 89 killed in the attack, the band's merchandise manager, Nick Alexander, and three people from their record label, Thomas Ayad, Marie Mosser, and Manu Perez.

Fredericka Whitfield, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.

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