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Awaiting Obama Press Statement; Game Changer in Israel/Hamas Conflict; Obama Talks with Putin about Ukrainian Conflict; Obama Press Conference on Economy, Congress, Ukraine Conflict, Middle East Conflict.

Aired August 01, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back to our continuing coverage of the end of the cease-fire in Gaza and Israel.

We are expecting a statement by President Obama, at 2:35, five minutes from now. There you see a number of reporters talking to their various networks, just minutes ahead of the president's arrival. We'll obviously bring you the president's comments live.

There is a lot to get to over the next -- over the next hours and days. An Israeli soldier, according to the IDF, an Israeli soldier has been captured. They have named this soldier a young soldier about 23 years old. They say he was captured after a suicide attack through one of the tunnels that they say Hamas has been carving underground over the last several years. That has been the focus of one -- one of the focuses of Israel's effort in the region.

I do want to bring in Michelle Kosinski, live in the White House Briefing Room.

Michelle, word that President Obama should be out in about a few minutes. Do we know what he's talking about?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No, they never really tell us ahead of time, of course. But we expect him to reiterate the sentiments they put out yesterday before the cease-fire ended. But also in the very strongly worded statement by Secretary of State John Kerry today. I mean, he used the word "outrageous" twice. So we expect the president to say virtually the same thing in the statement he makes. But now we've also been hearing he will take some questions. So we expect to hear some more detail on what exactly is the U.S.'s take on what happened there. What led up to the break in the cease-fire, and also, of course, everybody wants to know what happens now from the U.S. perspective.

And we talked to a senior administration official last night who said that the president has been engaged throughout the process that led up to this cease-fire, even into the final moments, advising Secretary of State Kerry, talking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And we know that Secretary Kerry spoke to Netanyahu this morning. We expect the president to shed more light on what the process is, what is expected on the U.S.'s side in things and what we do moving forward -- Anderson?

COOPER: I want to bring in Wolf Blitzer, live in Jerusalem; and chief Washington correspondent and anchor of "The Lead," Jake Tapper.

Jake, as we await for the president from Israel's standpoint, the capture of one of their soldiers certainly seems to be a game-changer.

Jake, can you hear me? It's Anderson.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, THE LEAD & CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I thought that was for Wolf.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Yeah, I mean, if you look back at recent history in that region, when a Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was abducted through one of these tunnels in 2006, that really prompted even more tension in the region that existed already. You may recall, I think he was in custody in the Palestinian territory for about five years. Ultimately traded for about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. So, yes, the capture of a soldier can have huge ramifications, far beyond what you might think one individual could create in such a situation, especially since so many Israeli soldiers have been dying in this conflict at last count over 50. Of course, with more than 1,400 Palestinians having been killed. What's interesting right now, of course, Anderson, as you have noted in your coverage earlier, is the fact that Hamas is denying they know anything about this. There could be several reasons for that. They could be lying. There could be a different faction of Hamas or a different Islamic extremist group that was responsible that was kind of the situation with the killing of those three Israeli teenagers with that Hamas affiliate had he been roan, not necessarily taking any orders from the main Hamas headquarters. And then as I heard an Israeli military intelligence effort hypothesize, it's possible this operation in the tunnel started before the cease-fire was declared and the people did not know about it. But it's anybody's guess as to now. But what we're told, those of us with sources close to the Israeli government, is that Netanyahu, the prime minister, is livid about this situation. It really does risk escalating the crisis, even more than it has been escalated -- Anderson?

COOPER: And, Wolf, from Israeli officials you've been talking to, they don't know whether or not this soldier is alive or not, is wounded or not, was wounded in the initial attack that actually led to his capture, correct? And in the past, I know a group like Hezbollah will often use the status of a capture as a bargaining tool, not saying whether the person they have taken is alive or dead, and use that information as a way to negotiate and get -- and basically get prisoners out.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, THE SITUATION ROOM: You're absolutely right. And I've heard several times in the course of today already from Israelis that the Hamas may be looking at that Hezbollah example, captured an Israeli soldier in Lebanon, wouldn't even say anything. They would try to get -- win some sort of concessions, win some sort of prisoners, win something from the Israelis, even to say, yes, we have this prisoner, this Israeli soldier, who is a prisoner. We have this or that. We have the remains. And the Israelis have even gone so far as to trade prisoners for a dead -- for the remains of an Israeli soldier, two or three, that happened with Hezbollah in Lebanon on a few occasions. You know, when I went to one of those tunnels the other day in southern Israel, right near the Gaza border, an Israeli lieutenant colonel took me in there and gave me a tour of what was going on.

One of the things he said to me sticks out in my mind. He said what is so outraged, the top echelon and regular folks in the Israeli military is in those tunnels, they have discovered a lot of tranquilizers. And I said, what were they for. And he said the tranquilizers were for Hamas militants to go through that tunnel, come up in Israel, see an Israeli soldier, not necessarily kill that Israeli soldier, but tranquilize that Israeli soldier and then take that Israeli soldier through the tunnel into Gaza. Apparently, that's what they did with Gilad Shalit back in 2006. He was held for five years. And so this has really angered the Israelis, explains why Israel has gone after these tunnels in such a big way over these past four weeks. They want to end these tunnels and they're really worried about the potential for kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

COOPER: And, Wolf, in a standard procedure after a soldier has been taken like this, basically, the onus for Israel is to try to cut off any routes that the Hamas or Hezbollah, whichever group -- in this case, would be Hamas or Islamic jihad -- has actually taken that soldier to cut off any escape routes they may be able to use to bring that soldier farther away from the point of capture, correct?

BLITZER: Yeah. The Israelis have probably 50, 60, 70 -- I have no idea how many exactly. So many troops in Gaza right now. We don't have cameras around that Rafah area in the southern part of Gaza where this tunnel was, where the two Israeli soldiers were killed in the suicide bombing, where this Israeli soldier was captured. But I'm told the operation under way right now, House to House, basement to basement, underground this or underground that, they are going around. They are looking desperately. They think the best chance of capturing an Israeli soldier in the hours initially after the capture, if you wait too long, it's going to be another situation like Gilad Shalit five years in captivity. So they are moving massively right now. We're not seeing it, we're not really hearing a lot about it. But I'm told it's very, very intense.

COOPER: And, Jake, as we await for the president, it's highly unlikely that Israel would be willing to continue any kind of direct talks in Egypt or elsewhere, at least in the immediate future, correct?

TAPPER: I think so. And I think a big question right now is whether or not anyone who speaks for the Palestinians, and obviously that is a big diverse group, and they're already this week, we've seen Palestinian authorities in the West Bank offer a cease-fire proposal that Hamas ultimately rejected. So it's tough to get everyone in the Palestinian Authority in that group on the same page.

The big question is whether the Israelis would ever agree to anything that required they stop bombing the tunnels. Because they have said explicitly that that is going to continue with or without a cease- fire. That's one of the reasons why people at the United Nations say that Hamas had to have understood that the Israelis were going to continue trying to destroy the tunnels, even through the cease-fire. That that explanation doesn't make any sense. The idea that Hamas started to violent the cease-fire only after they learned that the Israelis were continuing to destroy the tunnels. Because that was already known. I think -- an idea of any brokered piece any time in the immediate future is very rare, very -- the odds are very, very long.

I can't imagine how this conflict necessarily is going to end without an agreement to go to a place like Egypt, but already we have seen Hamas reject the Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire, which was considered by many in Gaza to have been too weighted too heavily in favor of the Israeli point of view.

COOPER: We have to take a short break. Obviously, we'll bring President Obama's comments live. We'll be back in 60 minutes.

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COOPER: We're told President Obama should be coming out in a minute or so.

I want to go quickly to our Nick Paton Walsh. We've also learned today that President Obama talked with Vladimir Putin for the first time since the downing of flight 17.

Nick, what have you learned? You're joining us from Donetsk. What have you learned?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: According to a readout from the Kremlin, they both agreed hostilities should end as quickly as possible. The White House saying they stressed the need for a diplomatic solution. Frankly, both seem unlikely here. It's interesting, the timing of this phone call, the investigators got in full force to the site of the crash of MH-17 today in a large number and began their work in earnest. I think you can almost put that chapter to one side to a degree. Their access probably OK for the days ahead. A lot of violence still circulating around. The key issue, for what Ukraine's civil war? Ukrainian tanks around the city moving in very quickly, indeed. It is deathly quiet in the middle of Donetsk right now. And it could well be this phone call was aimed to put American pressure to try and get the Russians to step back and certainly not resupply those separatist militants in here. That's the beef here. This war won't stop if Russia keeps sending supplies to keep the force going -- Anderson?

COOPER: And, Nick, I'm going to ask another question and may have to interrupt for the president. But let's talk about what's happening in the crash site, because that really is significant. For the first time, large numbers of investigators are onsite and they actually have the capabilities -- we're seeing the president come out. Let's listen.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good afternoon, everybody. Happy Friday.

I thought I would take some questions, but first, let me say a few words about the economy.

This morning, we learned that our economy created over 200,000 new jobs in July. That's on top of about 300,000 new jobs in June. So we are now in a six-month streak with at least 200,000 new jobs each month. That's the first time that has happened since 1997. Over the past year, we've added more jobs than any year since 2006. In all, totaled, our businesses have created 9.9 million new jobs over the past 53 months. That's the longest streak of private sector job creation in our history. And as we saw on Wednesday, the economy grew at a strong pace in the spring. Companies are investing. Consumers are spending. American manufacturing, energy, technology, autos, all are booming. And thanks to the decisions that we have made and the grit and resilience of the American people, we have recovered faster and come farther from the recession than almost any other advanced country on earth.

So the good news is the economy clearly is getting stronger. Things are getting better. Our engines are revving a little bit louder. And the decisions we make right now can sustain and keep that growth and momentum going. Unfortunately, there are a series of steps that we could be taking to maintain momentum, and perhaps even accelerate it. There are steps we could be taking that would result in more job growth, higher wages, higher incomes, more relief for middle class families. And so far, at least, in Congress, we have not seen them willing or able to take those steps. I've been pushing for common- sense ideas, like rebuilding our infrastructure in ways that are sustained over many years and support millions of good jobs and help businesses compete. I've been advocating on behalf of raising the minimum wage, making it easier for working folks to pay off their student loans, fair pay, paid leave. All these policies have two things in common. All of them would help working families feel more stable and secure. And all of them, so far, have been blocked or ignored by Republicans in Congress. That's why my administration keeps taking whatever actions we can take on our own to help working families.

Now it's good that Congress was able to pass legislation to strengthen the V.A.

And I want to thank the chairman and ranking members who were involved in that.

It's good that Congress was able to at least fund transportation projects for a few more months before leaving town. Although it falls far short of the kind of infrastructure effort that we need that would actually accelerate the economy. But for the most part, the big ticket items, the things that would really make a difference in the lives of middle class families, those things are just not getting done.

Let's just take a recent example, immigration. We all agree that there's a problem that needs to be solved in a portion of our southern border. And we even agree on most of the solutions. But instead of working together, instead of focusing on the 80 percent where there is agreement between Democrats and Republicans, between the administration and Congress, House Republicans, as we speak, are trying to pass the most extreme and unworkable versions of a bill that they already know is going nowhere. They can't pass the Senate. And that if it were to pass the Senate, I would veto. They know it. They're not even trying to actually solve the problem. This is a message bill that they couldn't quite pull off yesterday, so they made it a little more extreme so maybe they can pass it today. Just so they can check a box before they're leaving town for a month. And this is on an issue they all insisted had to be a top priority.

Now, our efforts administratively so far have helped to slow the tide of child migrants trying to come to our country. But without additional resources and help from Congress, we're just not going to have the resources we need to fully solve the problem. That means while they're out on vacation, I'm going to have to make some tough choices to meet the challenge, with or without Congress. And yesterday, even though they have been sitting on a bipartisan immigration bill for over a year, House Republicans suggested that since they don't expect to actually pass a bill that I can sign, that I actually should go ahead and act on my own to solve the problem. Keep in mind that just a few days earlier, they voted to sue me for acting on my own, and then when they couldn't pass a bill yesterday, they put out a statement suggesting I should act on my own, because they couldn't pass a bill. So immigration has not gotten done.

A student loan bill that would help folks who have student loan debt consolidate and refinance at lower rates, that didn't pass. The transportation bill that they did pass just gets us through the spring, when we should actually be planning years in advance. States and businesses are raising minimum wage for their workers, because this Congress is failing to do so. Even basic things like approving career diplomats for critical ambassadorial posts aren't getting done. Last night, for purely political reasons, Senate Republicans, for a certain period of time, blocked our new ambassador to Russia. It raised such an uproar that finally they went ahead and let our Russian ambassador pass at a time when we are dealing every day with the crisis in Ukraine. They're still blocking our ambassador to Sierra Leone, where there's currently an Ebola outbreak. They're blocking our ambassador to Guatemala as we do more to stop the flow of unaccompanied children from Guatemala. There are a lot of things that we could be arguing about on policy. That's what we should be doing as a democracy. But we shouldn't be having an argument about placing career diplomats with bipartisan support in countries around the world where we have to have a presence.

The bottom line is this. We have come a long way over the last five and a half years. Our challenges are nowhere near as daunting as they were when I first came into office. But the American people demand and deserve a strong and focused effort on the part of all of us to keep moving the country forward and to focus on their concerns. And the fact is, we could be much further along, and we could be doing even better and the economy could be even stronger and more jobs could be created if Congress would do the job that the people sent them here to do. And I will not stop trying to work with both parties to get things

moving faster for middle class families and those trying to get into the middle class. When Congress returns next month, my hope is that instead of simply trying to pass partisan message bills on party lines that don't actually solve problems, they're going to be willing to come together to at least focus on some key areas where there's broad agreement. After all that we've had to overcome, our Congress should stop standing in the way of our country's success.

So with that, let me take a couple questions.

And I will start with Roberta Rampton, of Reuters.

ROBERTA RAMPTON, REPORTER, REUTERS: Thanks. I want to ask about the situation in the Middle East. And why do you think Israel should embrace a cease-fire in Gaza when one of its soldiers appears to have been abducted and when Hamas continues to use its network of tunnels to lodge attacks? And also, have you seen Israel act at all on your call to do more to protect civilians?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think it's important to note that we have and I have unequivocally condemned Hamas and the Palestinian factions that were responsible for killing two Israeli soldiers, and abducting a third almost minutes after a cease-fire had been announced. And the U.N. has condemned them as well. And you know, I want to make sure that they are listening, if they are serious about trying to resolve this situation that soldier needs to be unconditionally released, as soon as possible.

I have been very clear throughout this crisis that Israel has a right to defend itself. No country can tolerate missiles raining down on its cities and people having to rush to bomb shelters every 20 minutes or half hour. No country can or would tolerate tunnels being dug under their land that can be used to launch terrorist attacks. And so, you know, not only have we been supportive of Israel in its right to defend itself, but in very concrete terms. For example, in support for the Iron Dome program that has intercepted rockets that are firing down on Israeli cities. We have been, you know, trying to cooperate as much as we can to make sure that Israel is able to protect its citizens.

Now, at the same time, we have also been clear that innocent civilians in Gaza caught in the crossfire have to weigh on our conscience and we have to do more to protect them. A cease-fire was one way in which we could stop the killing, to step back and to try to resolve some of the underlying issues that have been building up over quite some time. Israel committed to that 72-hour cease-fire, and it was violated. And trying to put that back together is going to be challenging, but we will continue to make those efforts.

And let me take this opportunity, by the way, to give Secretary John Kerry credit. He has been persistent. He has worked very hard. He has endured on many occasions really unfair criticism. Simply to try to get to the point where the killing stops and the underlying issues about Israel's security, but also the concerns of Palestinians in Gaza can be addressed. We're going to keep working towards that. It's going to take some time. I think it's going to be very hard to put a cease-fire back together again if Israelis and the international community can't feel confident that Hamas can follow through on a cease-fire commitment. And it's not particularly relevant whether a particular leader in Hamas ordered this abduction. The point is, when they sign on to a cease-fire, they're claiming to speak for all the Palestinian factions. And if they don't have control of them, and just moments after a cease-fire is signed you have Israeli soldiers being killed and captured, then it's hard for the Israelis to feel confident that a cease-fire can actually be -- be honored.

I'm in constant consultation with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Our national security team is in constant communication with the Israeli military. I want to see everything possible done to make sure that Palestinian civilians are not being killed. And it is heartbreaking to see what's happening there. And I think many of us recognize the dilemma we have. On the one hand, Israel has a right to defend itself, and it's got to be able to get at those rockets and those tunnel networks. On the other hand, because of the incredible irresponsible actions on the part of Hamas to oftentimes house these rocket launches right in the middle of civilian neighborhoods, we end up seeing people who have nothing to do with these rockets ending up being hurt. Part of the reason why we have been pushing so hard for a cease-fire is precisely because it's hard to reconcile Israel's legitimate need to defend itself with our concern with those civilians. And if we can pause the fighting, then it's possible that we may be able to arrive at a formula that spares lives and also ensures Israel's security. But it's difficult. And I don't think we should pretend otherwise.

Bill Plante?

BILL PLANTE, CORRESPONDENT, CBS NEWS: Mr. President, like that cease- fire, you've called for diplomatic solutions, not only in Israel and Gaza, but also in Ukraine, in Iraq, to very little effect so far. Has the United States of America lost its influence in the world? Have you lost yours?

OBAMA: Look, this is a common theme that folks bring up.