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Obama News Conference at Any Moment

Aired April 30, 2013 - 10:30   ET

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


WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I assume he'll open up with a little brief statement -- we're not exactly sure what subject. But Gloria there are so many questions. If I or you were in that room, I'm sure we would love to ask the President on Boston for example were there clues that were missed that could have prevented the Boston Marathon bombing? Were the Miranda Rights administered too early to the 19- year-old suspect who -- who answered questions for about 16 hours and all of a sudden he got -- he got lawyered up as they say to stop answering FBI questions. I assume there will be some questions Jessica on Boston.

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: On Boston, absolutely. I can tell you Wolf I have never seen this room quite so packed. And I can only imagine that is because I don't know if you have a very wide picture of this room, but it is over -- I'll tell you the whole room -- it is filled to the gills and I think that that is because so many reporters expect him to take as many questions on Boston, on every aspect of what led up to it, intelligence gathering, the mirandizing, the subsequent response, and everybody is here I suspect in part to just hear how the President responds to those questions -- Wolf.

BLITZER: I'm sure there will be other questions Gloria as well assuming this news conference goes on for half an hour or 45 minutes or an hour or whatever it's going to be. I suspect Syria will come up Gloria.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right.

BLITZER: The so-called red line. Syrians if they use chemical weapons, is that a game changer and what will the U.S., what will the Obama administration now do? I think those kinds of questions will come up.

BORGER: Right.

BLITZER: And -- and North Korea, Gloria that's probably not far from the President's mind as well. What happened, why hasn't -- why haven't the North Koreans fired that missile that they were threatening to fire over these past several weeks. What's going on? I wouldn't be surprised to get some questions on that Gloria.

BORGER: I think you'll get -- I think you'll get foreign policy obviously the question of WMD. Have we crossed the red line? But I also think Wolf that this is kind of a pivot point in terms of what the President is going to be able to achieve domestically in the second term. As you know he's setting, he's just finished his first 100 days of his second term and he's got a lot that he would like to get done. And as you know the window closes pretty quickly on a second term. Aside from progress on immigration reform, we haven't seen a lot of progress in a lot of other areas.

He lost gun control. There's questions about whether Republicans are going to revolt over the -- over the debt ceiling. He does tax reform, he even have a shot of getting -- of getting passed. And I think as the President we've seen on his so-called charm offensive, I'm not sure there have been a lot of second dates on that, Wolf.

So I think the President is also going to try and goose his domestic policy agenda here and tell Congress to start moving on it. So a lot of questions on domestic policy, as well as foreign policy and, of course, the big questions out there about terror and the Boston marathon.

BLITZER: And there are economic issues always very high on the President.

BORGER: Yes.

BLITZER: Christine Romans is standing by as well. Christine you know the stock market is doing great right now. Record numbers -- you've got to take a look at that. There were some modest growth in the first quarter, as you know a lot better, than the quarter before that but there's still a long way to go. And there is this debt ceiling deadline looming at the end of July when the nation's debt ceiling has to be raised. Otherwise there could be some huge -- it would make the forced budget cuts that we're going through right now seem like small potatoes if they can't resolve that issue.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You're absolutely right. You know I'll tell you that some people on Wall Street like to joke that the stock market has done quite well under the socialist President. I mean, look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500. It is a joke after all.

I mean the President gets too much credit and too much blame for what happens in stocks and the economy overall. But you have an S&P very close to record highs it's pulling off a bit today and really the concerns about the debt fights with Republicans in the backseat as the Fed has been pumping money into the system while Washington thrashes around trying to figure out it's budget priorities.

I'll tell you the housing market is recovering a little bit here. We had good housing numbers already this morning as well so a lot of people who said that an Obama economy was going to be devastated for the -- a lot of opponents of this President said Obama economy was going to be devastating in the second term have been just wrong.

You still do though have 7.6 percent unemployment and one of the talking points of Republicans, Wolf, as you know is that food stamp enrollment has grown at a faster rate under this President than jobs growth has. And that's something the President has again and again had to kind of come out and attack saying that my policies overall are going to try -- are going to helped the jobs situation. That's going to be a slow healing and we're going to be patient.

But it is something that Republicans and many economist say growth has been just too slow Wolf and until that improves the President can't get any credit on those other things.

BLITZER: Let me bring Chris Cuomo into this conversation as we await the President to walk in to the briefing room. You see reporters standing there, they are sitting, they're getting ready to ask their questions of the President. We're told he'll open with a brief statement and then answer some questions. Maybe he'll just go right to the questions.

Chris you and I were in Boston and the shock was obviously enormous to everyone in the area, indeed everyone in the country. Would it be wise based on the experience you as a New Yorker went through after 9/11, for the President at some point to create some sort of commission of inquiry to look back and see if there are important lessons that should have been learned to make sure we don't repeat any mistakes that may have occurred in the lead up to the -- to the Boston bombings?

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: I think it's an excellent question, Wolf and why? Because in the aftermath of these things what happens is there's a rush for accountability. Finger pointing, what was done wrong as we're seeing now with politicians about the Mirandizing of the suspect which is very largely misplaced with the communication between the FBI and Russia; And what happens with this wave of basically cynicism is you lose sight of how to get better.

And one of the things about the 9/11 Commission was that they looked at the systems that were in place with a very strong eye on how do you improve. And so many of the improvements that came out of that from the JTTF, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the combining of assets in Homeland Security made us, put us in a position where attacks like the Boston bombings were very rare.

And as you know from your coverage in the Middle East it could be a much more frequent occurrence here. And that said Wolf, I don't the President should really need a reason to hold a press conference. You know I think there's so many issues that are going on right now, there's such a need for leadership that I think this is a good sign if he's just holding a press conference just because. You know I think we probably need more of this.

BLITZER: Yes I agree completely. I love it when the President comes out and answers reporters' questions. As a former White House correspondent we always get frustrated when the President, any president Democratic president, Republican president sort of ignores the White House Press Corps. I'm glad to see him going into the briefing room. Not just making an opening statement in there walking out but actually answering reporters' questions. That's always really important.

Jessica Yellin is one of those White House correspondents. She's there. She's getting ready right now for this news conference. Jessica, you know there was some criticism that 90 percent of the American people -- 80 percent to 90 percent they wanted more robust background checks for gun purchases in the United States. It failed in the Senate. It's basically off the table at least according to Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader right now. And there's been some criticism some of the pundits saying, why can't this President really twist arms the way an LBJ for example used to do it and get that kind of legislation passed especially when the overwhelming majority of the American people want it according to all of the public opinion polls?

I don't know if this question will come up today but I know that something the White House officials have been concerned about, the criticism that he's not tough enough with members of Congress.

YELLIN: Well his second term agenda is very much up in the air and depends to a great extent on his relationships with members of Congress. He is not the arm twisting, up late at night talking on the phone, cajoling individual members kind of president. We all know that very well now.

I would point out that as Gloria mentioned if you do the math from the 20th of January, today does mark the 100th day of his second term. So we could say that he's having this press conference because it's the 100 days, first hundred days. But I would dismiss that instantly because this White House says they never look at those kinds of symbolic markers, those are things only the media focuses on. So of course they wouldn't do anything like that right Wolf.

BLITZER: And of course not. They would never do anything like that.

YELLIN: Never.

BLITZER: Gloria a hundred days, that's a good point. Maybe the President will mention the first 100 days of his second term in his opening remarks. That would not be all that unusual. You know -- do you think this criticism Gloria that the President has been getting, that he's not tough enough, that he's not showing that kind of you know aggressiveness in whipping up these members of Congress to vote --

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Well that's what -- he would say his charm offensive is about, Wolf. But if you look at the vote on guns, it is very instructive. I mean he lost four Democrats. One of them, Max Baucus of Montana just announced he's not even running for reelections. There are some Democrats I talk who say look, if the President had better relationships for years going into this, he may have been able to twist some of those arms.

And so he is now reaching out, meeting with members of congress; we'll see how far it gets him. I think today, he's going to try, as I said before, he's going to try and goose members of Congress and say ok, we have to get this stuff done. We don't have a lot of time to do it. I don't have a lot of time to do it.

You know, Wolf, everybody starts thinking about the midterm elections pretty quickly. After those, the President becomes more or less a lame duck so he doesn't have an awful lot of time. He's got a large agenda. He's been stymied on gun control. I think they'll come back at it.

Tax reform -- is anything going to happen on that? The budget as Christine points out -- debt ceiling a problem. So aside from immigration, he wants to get a bunch of things done and he needs to remind the American public by the way, I'm trying to reach out to Republicans in congress and by the way, where's that getting me? So I think this is about sending a message to the American people that he's working on things but also sending a message directly to Republicans and saying, you know, I'm going to keep pushing you on things before he goes to Mexico.

And as Jess pointed out earlier, he doesn't like to get asked a lot of domestic policy questions when you're on foreign turf. So maybe he's trying to get it out of the way today particularly as it pertains to the question of WMD in Syria and the Boston Marathon bombing.

BLITZER: All right. Hold on everyone for a minute. We're waiting for the two-minute warning from the White House staff. That means the President will be walking out in two minutes. We haven't received that yet. We'll take a quick break, resume our coverage. We're awaiting the President in the briefing room. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Welcome back to this special edition of "NEWSROOM". Welcome to our viewers on the East Coast and those on the West Coast. I'm Chris Cuomo, we're waiting on the President to start his news conference. You look right there. You see the briefing room. He's not in it, but we're tracking it.

And while we do we're going to bring you up to date on today's biggest stories. Good news for American homeowners. We're learning this morning that annual home prices surged 9.3 percent as of February. That's the best gain since mid-2006 before the housing bubble burst.

Accused murderer George Zimmerman back in court right now in Florida; this is his last scheduled hearing before the start of his trial in just six weeks for the shooting death of 17-year old Trayvon Martin. There are some critical things that could happen today. One -- Zimmerman might speak, probably not. Two -- the future of his controversial "Stand Your Ground" defense could be in play.

We have a developing story in Libya where 20 to 30 armed men have occupied the Justice Ministry in Tripoli, forced the staff to leave. It comes as the country's foreign ministry is also under siege for a third straight day. Militants say their goal is to get a law passed that would ban officials from the era of Muammar Gadhafi from holding government posts. That's what they want.

A Philadelphia jury will now decide if a doctor is guilty of murder. Prosecutors say Dr. Kermit Gosnell killed four babies and a mother during illegal abortions. The defense suggests their client is being prosecuted because he's black. But prosecutors say the doctor preyed on low income minority women. If found guilty, Gosnell could face the death penalty.

Another sign, things are starting to get back to normal in Boston, overnight crews repainted the Boston Marathon finish line. Traditionally the finish line is fixed up within hours after runners finish the race. This year for obvious reasons, the process was delayed by two weeks.

Ok. Again, in just a few minutes, President Obama will hold a news conference and take questions from reporters. We're not sure why but as we've been saying he really doesn't need a reason. There's plenty to talk about in the country right now.

So let's bring in our team captain, Wolf Blitzer, anchor of course of CNN's "THE SITUATION ROOM" -- Wolf.

BLITZER: The President will be walking out, Chris, momentarily.

I just want to congratulate you. I understand there's a new date -- a start date for your new morning show here on CNN and it's called "NEW DAY", June 10th. Is that right?

CUOMO: It's "A BRAND NEW DAY" Wolf. Thank you for the congratulations. As you know, you're former co-anchor Kate Bolduan has taken on this mercy mission of helping me in the morning, there she is. And on the other side Michaela Pereira -- and here's the President.

BLITZER: Here's the President. Here's the President.

(BEGIN LIVE FEED)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good morning, everybody.

I am here to answer questions in honor of Ed Henry, as he wraps up his tenure as president of the White House Correspondents association.

Ed, because of that, you get the first question. Congratulations.

ED HENRY, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: Thank you, sir. I really appreciate that. And I hope we can go business (inaudible) at each other in a little bit.

(LAUGHTER)

A couple of questions on national security. On Syria, you - you said that the red line was not just about chemical weapons being used, but being spread. And it was a game-changer. It seemed cut and dry. And now your administration seems to be suggesting that line is not clear. Do you risk U.S. credibility if you don't take military action?

And then on Benghazi, there are some survivors of that terrorist act who say they want to come forward and testify -- some in your State Department. And they say they've been blocked. Will you allow them to testify?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, on Syria, I think it's important to understand that for several years now what we've been seeing is a slowly unfolding disaster for the Syrian people. And this is not a situation in which we've been simply bystanders to what's been happening. My policy from the beginning has been that President Assad has lost credibility; that he attacked his own people; has killed his own people; unleashed a military against innocent civilians.

And that the only way to bring stability and peace to Syria is going to be for Assad to step down and to move forward on a political transition.

In pursuit of that strategy we've organized the international community. We are the largest humanitarian donor. We have worked to strengthen the opposition. We have provided nonlethal assistance to the opposition. We have applied sanctions on Syria.

So there are a whole host of steps that we've been taking precisely because even separate from the chemical weapons issue what's happening in Syria is a blemish on the international community generally, and we've gotta make sure that we're doing everything we can to protect the Syrian people.

In that context, what I've also said is that the use of chemical weapons would be a game changer, not simply for the United States but for the international community.

And the reason for that is that we have established international law and international norms that say when you use these kinds of weapons, you have the potential of killing massive numbers of people in the most inhumane way possible. And the proliferation risks are so significant that we don't want that genie out of the box.

So when I said that the use of chemical weapons would be a game changer, that wasn't unique to -- that wasn't a position a position unique to the United States, and it shouldn't have been a surprise.

And what we now have is evidence that chemical weapons have been used inside of Syria, but we don't know how they were used, when they were used, who used them. We don't have a chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened.

And when I am making decisions about America's national security and the potential for taking additional action in response to chemical weapon use, I've gotta make sure I've got the facts. That's what the American people would expect.

And if we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, then we can find ourselves in the position where we can't mobilize the international community to support what we do. There may be objections even among some people in the region who are sympathetic with the opposition if we take action.

So, you know, it's important for us to do this in a prudent way. And what I've said to my team is, we've gotta do everything we can to investigate and establish with some certainty what exactly has happened in Syria, what is happening in Syria. We will use all the assets and resources that we have at our disposal. We'll work with the neighboring countries to see whether we can establish a clear baseline of facts. And, we've also called on the United Nations to investigate.

But, the important point I want to make here is that we already are deeply engaged in trying to bring about a solution in Syria. It is a difficult problem, but even if chemical weapons were not being used in Syria we'd still be thinking about tens of thousands of people, innocent civilians, women, children who've been killed by a regime that's more concerned about staying in power than it is about the well being of its people.

And so -- so we are already deeply invested in trying to find a solution here. What is true, though, is, is that if I can establish in a way that not only the United States, but also the international community, feel confident is the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime.

That -- that is a game changer because what that portends is potentially even more devastating attacks on civilians and it - it raises the strong possibility that those chemical weapons can fall into the wrong hands and get disseminated in ways that would threaten U.S. security or the security of our allies.

HENRY: By game changer, you mean U.S. military action?

OBAMA: By game changer, I mean that we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us. Now we're already, as I said, invested in trying to bring back a -- a solution inside of Syria. Obviously, there are options that are available to me that are on the shelf right now, that we have not deployed. And, you know, that's a spectrum of options.

You know, as -- as early as last year I asked the Pentagon, our military, our intelligence officials to prepare for me what options might be available. And I won't go into the details of what those options might be, but, you know, clearly that would be an escalation, in our view, of the threat to the security of the international community, our allies, and the United States. And that means that there's some options that we might not other -- otherwise exercise that we would -- that we would strongly consider.

HENRY: And on the Benghazi question, I know pieces of the story have been litigated, and you've been asked about it. But there are people in your own State Department saying they've been blocked from coming -- forward. If they survive the terror attack and they want to tell their story, will you help them Come forward and just say it once and for all?

OBAMA: Ed, I'm not familiar with this notion that anybody's been blocked from testifying. So what I'll do is I will find out what exactly you're referring to.

What I've been very clear about from the start is that our job with respect to Benghazi has been to find out exactly what happened, to make sure that U.S. embassies, not just in the Middle East, but around the world, are safe and secure, and to bring those who carried it out to justice.

But I'll find out what exactly you're referring to.

HENRY: They've hired an attorney, because they're saying that they've been blocked from coming forward.

OBAMA: I'm not familiar with it.

HENRY: OK.

OBAMA: Justa (ph)?

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President.

There's a report that your director of national of intelligence has a letter ordered a broad review -- this is regards to the Boston bomb -- Marathon bombing -- that you're DNI has ordered a broad review of all the intelligence gathering prior to the attack. There's also a series of senators -- Susan Collins, Saxby Chambliss, Lindsey Graham -- who allege that all these years after 9/11 there still wasn't enough intelligence shared prior to the attack.

And now Lindsey Graham, who is a senior member of the Armed Service Committee, has said that Benghazi and Boston are both examples of the U.S. going backward on national security. Is he right? And did our intelligence miss something?

OBAMA: No, Mr. Graham is not right on this issue, although I'm sure it generated some headlines. You know, I think that what we saw in Boston was state, local, federal officials, every agency rallying around a city that had been attacked, identifying the perpetrators just hours after the scene had been examined. We now have one individual deceased; one in custody. Charges have been brought.

I think that all our law enforcement officials performed in an exemplary fashion after the bombing had taken place, and we should be very proud of their work, as obviously we're proud of the people in Boston, all the first responders and the medical personnel that helped save lives.

What we also know is that the Russian intelligence services had alerted U.S. intelligence about the older brother, as well as the mother, indicating that they might be sympathizers to extremists. The FBI investigated that older brother. It's not as if the FBI did nothing. They not only investigated the older brother, they interviewed the older brother.

They concluded that there were no signs that he was engaging in extremist activity. So that much we know.

And the question, then, is was there something that happened that triggered radicalization and actual -- an actual decision by the brother to engage in the attack -- the tragic attack that we actually saw in Boston, and are there things -- additional things that could have been done in that interim that might have prevented it.

Now, what Director Clapper is doing is standard procedure around here, which is when an event like this happens, we want to go back and we want to review every step that was taken. We want to leave no stone unturned. We want to see is there in fact additional protocols and procedures that could be put in place that would further improve and enhance our ability to detect a potential attack.

And we won't know that until that review is completed. We won't know that until the investigation of the actual crime is fully completed, and that's still ongoing. But what I can say is that based on what I've seen so far, the FBI performed its duties. Department of Homeland Security did what it was supposed to be doing.

But this is hard stuff. And -- and I've said from -- for quite some time that because of the pressure that we put on Al Qaida core, because the pressure we put on these networks that are well financed, more sophisticated and can engage in and project transnational threats against the United States, one of the dangers that we now face are self-radicalized individuals who are already here in the United States, in some cases may not be part of any kind of network, but because of whatever warped twisted ideas they may have may decide to carry out an attack.

And those are, in some ways, more difficult to prevent. And so what I've done for months now is to indicate to our entire counter- terrorism team what more can we do on that threat that is looming on the horizon. Are there more things that we can do whether it's engaging in community -- engaging with communities where there's a potential for self-radicalization at this -- of this sort? Is there work that can be done in terms of detection?

But, all of this has to be done in the context of our laws, due process and -- and so part of what Director Clapper's doing then is to -- to see if we can determine any lessons learned from -- from what happened.

REPORTER: Are you getting all the intelligence and information you need from the Russians?

And, should Americans be worried when they go to big public events now?

OBAMA: The Russians have been very cooperative with us since the -- since the Boston bombings.