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LEGAL VIEW WITH ASHLEIGH BANFIELD

Trump on Muslim Comments; FBI Looking at Connection Between Shooter, Terrorist; Bergdahl Tells All. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired December 10, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:00:09] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

All the condemnation, the outrange uniting the likes of Dick Cheney and Bernie Sanders, yes, I said them in the same sentence, the comparisons to Joseph McCarthy or worse, arising from Donald Trump's call to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Trump himself, he says, we can forget all of that because the Muslims themselves, and I'm going to quote him, "are happy with what I'm doing. Furthermore, everybody knows it's right." Those are his words. You're going to hear for yourself when I play you an eye-opening chuck of Donald Trump's conversation with my good friend and colleague Don Lemon.

But first, a couple of headlines that you need to know about. Donald Trump has reclaimed a commanding lead in the latest nationwide poll from CBS News and "The New York Times." In October, he had slipped to second place in this poll, behind Ben Carson. But now Donald Trump has surged. And Carson has lost half of his support, falling from 26 percent, down to 13 percent. Carson now is virtually tied with Ted Cruz, whose support has quadrupled in less than just two months.

And you may have heard that Trump was all set to visit Israel right after Christmas and have a big, important meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That's not happening, folks. A day after Netanyahu's office joined the chorus of opposition to Trump's Muslim ban, Trump says he is, quote, "postponing" his trip until after he is elected president.

Now, back to that interview, that big interview. Trump says many Muslims are phenomenal, but politicians are incompetent and mosques need to be, quote, "surveilled." Have a listen for yourself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON LEMON, CNN: You're ahead by far.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Right.

LEMON: And then you release this controversial statement. Why not just sit on your big lead and just let it ride?

TRUMP: Because, Don, I have to do what's right. We need a dialogue in this country and throughout the world. We have a big problem. And as you know, I have many friends who are Muslims that are phenomenal people. They are so happy at what I'm doing. I was called by three people today, very big, they said, you are doing a tremendous service because unless people are going to be talking about it, it's never going to be solved.

LEMON: You adjusted it slightly so that it would say that you would let American Muslims who are traveling overseas return to the country. This doesn't apply to U.S. citizens?

TRUMP: It never did. From day one, it never did. I don't know why people thought it did. This applies to people coming into the country. And all it is, is a break until our politicians, who are grossly incompetent by the way, can get their act together.

LEMON: So you have been saying that until we figure out what's going on. What exactly does that mean? Figure out what? What is there to figure out?

TRUMP: Why is there such hatred and such viciousness? Why is somebody willing to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and go after it even prior to that? They failed, although they did tremendous damage by any normal standard. And then after they failed, they went and they actually took airplanes into the World Trade Center. Where does this hatred come from? Why does it come? We have to figure it out because we have problems.

So, when you surveil the mosques, I took - you know, I took a lot of heat for the surveillance of the mosques. Well now other people are saying, well, we have to surveil the mosques. I took heat for, we have to study things. Nobody's taking the heat like me. I don't care. I don't care because what I'm saying is right. And you know what, you know it's right and everybody knows it's right. And you know who really knows it's right, it is the public. The public knows it's right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: The public knows it's right. Here to talk about that public, our senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny, he's joining me live now from Washington, D.C.

Hi, Jeff.

And also our senior political correspondent Nia-Malika Henderson.

Hello, Nia-Malika.

All right, I'm going to start with you, Jeff. I often don't know what to say because this - well, it's a broken record story. It defies logic. You say something outrageous and offensive, you stick by it, you double down on it, you go after the critics who come after you and you surge, you go up to 35. We've been talking about ceilings that couldn't possibly go past 35 percent. He's broaching those ceilings.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Ashleigh, he is broaching those ceilings and I think you can add something else to that list. You do all those things and you sort of keep winning. I mean he's been on an unstoppable role here. So you have to ask yourself, why is the Republican establishment, why are these Republican leaders so concerned about this? Well, I talked to the Ohio Republican chairman yesterday. And Ohio has an interesting place in our history because no Republican has ever won the White House without winning Ohio. And he said, point blank, that this is impossible with this type of divisive tone for Donald Trump to expand into the margins he would need to win over those independent voters and win the White House. So he can definitely win a primary campaign with this. And, in fact, if he keeps going, he might be on his way to doing that, unless Republicans consolidate against him.

[12:05:14] I mean there's still 65 percent of his party, you know, that is not in favor of him in all this. But the challenge here is, with so many candidates in the race, that's split up so much here. So unless the others - some people would drop out. Unless someone emerges as his sort of plan b or alternative to him, Donald Trump is going to just keep going. A lot of what he's saying may sound outrageous and out there to some people, but it is resonating with at least a third of this Republican Party electorate.

BANFIELD: Yes, it's interesting, I'm going to get to that dropout piece in a minute because that has been a case that's being made. The more Republicans next to him who decide to drop out of the race may consolidate bigger numbers for someone else and other people say it won't matter at all.

Nia-Malika Henderson, I recall a famous line that if you lose Cronkite, you've lost completely. I'm paraphrasing it but you know what I'm talking about. And the other day Tom Brokaw went on TV and effectively Donald Trump really lost Tom Brokaw, the Cronkite of our time, and that doesn't matter. Will anything matter?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, the problem with this is that people have no sort of patience and belief in these big government institutions, in big institutions in general. And Brokaw, of course, there representing the press and the media. And so to Donald Trump's fans, which he represents a pretty broad swath of the party at this point, not only downscale white voters but also college-educated voters as well, chamber of commerce Republicans, he's not doing that poorly among them either, they don't necessarily have any faith in government, they don't have any faith in these big institutions. So all of the people that used to be gatekeepers really don't have a lot of credibility. And even you saw all of those people from Dick Cheney, Paul Ryan, to company out and condemn Donald Trump. The base doesn't care. They have seen the party and these big institutions fail in their eyes. So when it comes to them being referees, they just don't have a lot of credibility.

BANFIELD: So, Jeff Zeleny, button this up for me, this notion that even if the other Republican nominees were to drop out and there were a consolidation of numbers somewhere else, what if Donald Trump ran as an independent? Could he win? Could he be the guy, the first time ever, where it would be an independent could win an election?

ZELENY: Ashleigh, an independent run is very challenging. One, it's very expensive to get on the ballot in a lot of states. Yes, he could write the check. Up until now he's not spent much of his own money at all. It would cost, estimates believe, around like $50 million to $100 million to run a third party campaign, just the mechanics. So we know he could afford that if he wanted to.

But the practical matter of this is, it is very difficult for a third party candidate to win an election. The social conservative base of the Republican Party almost certainly wouldn't vote for him. you know, liberal Democrats definitely wouldn't vote for him. So you're left with that slice of people. And right now Donald Trump appeals to non- college educated white men basically.

BANFIELD: Yes. Yes.

ZELENY: And there are definitely a lot in the country, but not enough to win an election.

BANFIELD: Jeff, very, very difficult under the normal rules and I think we're seeing there are no normal rules this time around. Jeff Zeleny, Nia-Malika Henderson, I have to leave it there. Thank you to both of you.

ZELENY: Thanks, Ashleigh.

HENDERSON: Thank you.

BANFIELD: OK. Don't miss the Republican presidential debate, folks. It's coming up right here on CNN. There is so much hot material on the board right now. Tuesday night is going to be electric, 6:00 and 8:30 Eastern Time. Make sure you tune in, folks.

The other big story we're following, the couple who shot and killed - let's just call it what it is - brutally murdered 14 people in San Bernardino, California, they sure did seem to understand one another real well. We got a digital trail on these two and it reveals a common interest they shared for years, building love out of a putrid hate and a love of jihad. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:13:12] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BANFIELD: And our breaking news comes to us out of San Bernardino. We have been desperately trying to figure out how a husband and wife could drop off a baby and shoot up 14 people at an office party. Who were they? How did they get that way? Who did they talk to? And why didn't we know about them? Because to everybody, up until now, it seemed that they really didn't have red flags. And now it turns out there may have been a big red flag.

Our Evan Perez is live in Washington, D.C., right now.

You've been working your sources, particularly what the FBI are now doing to link him - and when I say him, Syed Farook, the male part of that husband and wife killer duo, to another group of terrorists or at least terrorist plotters who were arrested. There's actually a link and we didn't know about Syed Farook?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: That's right, Ashleigh. And, you know, that's a question now the FBI is urgently trying to answer. Like, why didn't they see perhaps a link between this earlier group that was arrested in Riverside, California, in 2012, and Farook? I'm told that the links were essentially a social circle for the recruiter in that Riverside group.

These were four men. Actually there were five initially that were investigated. Four of them were arrested in 2012 with planning to travel to Afghanistan to join al Qaeda. And the FBI rolled up that plot and said, you know, it was over or thought they had - at least they had arrested everybody associated with it. But now they're taking a second look at that case and, in particular, this recruiter, whose name is Soyoul Caber (ph), he was sentenced earlier this year to 25 years in prison for his role as the recruiter, helping to radicalize a group of people who were trying to travel to join al Qaeda. And now the FBI wants to know a little bit more about what Caber's relationship was with Farook. We're told that they were part of the same social circle and that is one reason why the FBI is taking a closer look.

[12:15:10] They also want to know - they want to go back and interview people who were associated with that case to see if there were other parts of this that make sense now. Perhaps an indication of a network that Farouk could have been a part of. Again, we should emphasize that this is still an early part of this investigation. And one of the things that they have not - they've been looking for but haven't really found is any indication that ISIS or any other terrorist group overseas, either directly - directed this attack, this San Bernardino attack, or in any way was in direct contact with these - with these two attackers, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: So, Evan, what I'm confused about is that clearly the tentacles are going out a long and deep way out of these two killers.

PEREZ: Right.

BANFIELD: And they're landing upon these other people, right?

PEREZ: Right.

BANFIELD: So in 2012, were the tentacles just not as aggressive? I mean if you had these four guys and you had identified there interest and their desire to go to Afghanistan -

PEREZ: Right.

BANFIELD: To train with al Qaeda, where were the tentacles back then? Were we just not as vigilant? Did it take Paris? Did it take San Bernardino for us to finally say, we've really got to go deep and long into everybody connected to these killers?

PEREZ: Right. And that's a question I asked today. I said, you know, were the people doing this investigation just not digging hard enough? And what I was told, Ashleigh, is that, you know, it is, you know, the game of six degrees of separation. I mean if you - every one of these suspects, you can name 50, 100 people that they were in touch with and so you look for the ones that mean the most at the time of the investigation. They don't believe that this relationship with Farook would have maybe raised flags at that point because, again, he was on the process to radicalization, Farook was already at that time. But, you know, again, there was not enough there to merit deeper inspection of him. And so, obviously, now, though, they're going back. They're going to re-interview people associated with this case to see if there were connections missed.

BANFIELD: Wow.

PEREZ: I'm told that that is one of the things that's happening.

BANFIELD: Well, 2012 seemed to be a very busy time for Syed Farook.

PEREZ: Very busy.

BANFIELD: A very busy time. Not only connecting with Enrique Marquez, plotting the ideas of some kind of domestic attack.

PEREZ: Right. And one - and one - one -

BANFIELD: Looking for a nice girl to help him out.

PEREZ: Right.

BANFIELD: Go ahead.

PEREZ: And one quick - one quick thing I wanted to add. And this might explain also again for investigators why there was this 2012 plot that Marquez - that Enrique Marquez, the friend of Farook, has now told investigators that he and Farook had cooked up and they abandoned it. It really does explain why they got spooked and why they decided not to go through with it because they had seen -

BANFIELD: Do we have any pictures - let me interrupt you, do we have any pictures of that Enrique Marquez handy? I know I'm asking and that's not always something we can just grab up at a minute. But when you see the photographs of Enrique Marquez, he just seems the most unlikely guy. I mean he's - he's at one hand a complete goofball in all of his pictures -

PEREZ: Right.

BANFIELD: Smiling foolishly for the camera.

PEREZ: Right.

BANFIELD: He just doesn't seem like the type that would raise red flags because there was -

PEREZ: A lot of the guys - a lot of these guys never do, you know, and that's one of the things that the - that happens here when you do investigations. You know, you can't go on that. You have to go do much more deeper dive. And one of the things you can't tell is what's in people's minds.

BANFIELD: Right.

PEREZ: You know, you can't do that. So -

BANFIELD: But you sure can go into their e-mail.

PEREZ: Yes.

BANFIELD: You know, you sure can if there's a -

PEREZ: (INAUDIBLE).

BANFIELD: If you can get a warrant, a FISA warrant, you sure as hell can go into the e-mails between these two and figure out what they were chatting about back in 2012.

Will you do me a favor? I know you're working your sources and it's awfully inconvenient to come and tell all this to me at that moment, but work your sources and, Evan, come back to us when you're able to find out a little bit more about this. Shocking.

PEREZ: Thanks, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Thank you. Even Perez doing amazing work, alongside our Pamela Brown as well in our Washington bureau on these terror investigations.

And then there's this, the U.S. Army sergeant, Bowe Bergdahl, who is now opening up in his own voice about his time in captivity. How he was kept in the dark for five years and why he wanted to emulate the movie character Jason Bourne. But is this such a good idea to be talking and talking and talking before you even face a jury? We'll discuss.

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[12:23:29] BANFIELD: It's now been more than a year and a half, hard to believe, since U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was brought home after five years of Taliban captivity. Amazing pictures. Remember this, the big swap out for five Taliban fighters who had been held at Guantanamo Bay. A swap that led Republican-led House committee members just yesterday to allege it was illegal since Congress wasn't give adequate notice about this remarkable mid desert pickup. I still can't believe it when I see these pictures.

Bergdahl had slipped away from his post far prior to that set of pictures. His post was in Afghanistan. And he's still awaiting a military decision as to whether or not he's going to be put on trial for desertion, among other things. Though through this all, he's made no public comments. And now he's talking. And, boy, is he talking. The most downloaded podcast of all time, "Serial," is devoting its second season to a series of interviews that Bergdahl himself did with the Hollywood screenwriter Mark Bowl (ph). Episode one is now available, including Bergdahl's description of his capture, and his years of unceasing darkness. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SGT. BOWE BERGDAHL, FORMER PRISONER OF THE TALIBAN (voice-over): There was a road probably, I don't know, far off, 100 meters maybe. And a line of motorcycles, probably about five motorcycles, might have been a couple guys on the back of a couple of the motorcycles. There was probably at least six or seven guys with their AK-47s.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

[12:25:08] BERGDAHL: One guy had a - it was a bigger one. It was - it had - it didn't shot the 7.62x30. It shot the 7.62x41.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Uh-huh.

BERGDAHL: But he had one of those. And they were driving along the road. And I had - I can't tell you what set him off. I can't tell you how they spotted me. I don't - I don't know. They just - they deviated. They turned off the road, came towards me and maybe they were just - maybe they just saw somebody walking through the desert and they wanted to see who he was or they were seeing if they needed help or I don't know what it was. But there I was in the open - open desert and I'm not about to outrun a bunch of motorcycles.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BERGDAHL: And so there - you know, I couldn't do anything against, you know, six or seven guys with AK-47s and they just - they pulled up and that was it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But they said you fought like crazy.

BERGDAHL: No, I didn't. I'm - I'm not stupid enough to try and fight off, you know, all's I had was a knife. I'm not stupid enough to try and knife off a bunch of guys with AK-47s.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So did they basically just tie your hands and toss you on the back of one of the bikes or something or what?

BERGDAHL: Pretty much.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At one point they told me that they kind of had you in a really dark room, almost sounded like a basement, like where there was no light.

BERGDAHL: There was a few rooms like that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BERGDAHL: It's like how do I explain to a person that just standing in an empty, dark room hurts. It's like, well, you know, someone asks you, well, why does it hurt? Does your body hurt? Yes, your body hurts. But it's more than that. It's like this mental, like, you're almost confused, you know? There's times when I'd wake up and it's just so dark. Like, I would wake up not even remembering, like, what I was. You know how you get that feeling when that word is on the tip of your tongue?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BERGDAHL: That happened to me, only it was like, what am I? Like, I couldn't - I couldn't see my hands. I couldn't do anything. The only thing I could do was, like, touch my face. And even that wasn't like, you know, registering right, you know?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

BERGDAHL: To the point where you just want to scream. And you can't - like, I can't scream. I can't risk that. So it's like you're standing there screaming in your mind in this room. You're standing like in this black and dirt room and it's tiny. And just on the other side of that flimsy little door - wooden door that you could probably easily rip off the hinges is the entire world out there. It is everything that you're missing. It is everybody. Everyone is out there. You know, that breath that you're trying to breathe. That release that you're trying to get. Everything is beyond that door. And, I mean, I hate doors now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Absolutely riveting stuff.

I want to bring in CNN military analyst and retired Army Major General James "Spider" Marks.

OK, Spider, I don't even know where to begin here. There are just so many things that are so wrong with what I'm seeing and hearing. First and foremost, what you didn't hear in that clip was the reason that Bowe Bergdahl says on tape why he left his base, admitting he left his base for starters, before he's even dealing with a jury and a military courtroom. He says that he wanted to report his seniors, what he thought was mismanagement, what he thought was putting his fellow soldiers in danger. He wanted to get off that base and somehow walk in Afghanistan to another base to report what was going on. What's wrong with this picture, Spider?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, clearly the young man is acting irrationally. Some psychologist would determine if he's delusional or not. But all of this, his description of his years in captivity and this one incident that he described, that's just kind of a voyeuristic view of somebody who's in a box. You could talk to Senator John McCain about living in a box. So we've seen this description before. But, Ashleigh, none of this is relevant, none of this would have happened if he had done his duty and stayed where he was on that forward operating base in Afghanistan.

[12:29:35] BANFIELD: OK. So I've talked to a couple of professionals in the biz who say he may not have a case, period. And his defense attorney, who has signed off on doing these interviews and basically laying out the narrative of everything before there's any chance to give him some guidance or at least cross exam or at least suppress evidence, they say that he's probably trying to do the hail Mary here, and that is, sweeten up a jury pool that's ultimately going to stand in judgment of him. And to that end, I want you to hear this piece that he talks about wanting to be a little like Jason Bourne. He lists off the whole thing he carried out with him out into the Afghan