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Democrats May Obstruct Obama War Request; U.S. Closing Yemen Embassy; TransAsia Suspends Pilots; Parking Dispute Behind NC Shooting?; CA School District Supports Ending Personal-Beliefs Exemption for Vaccinated Children; Stewart's "Daily Show" Departure; Leaders Seek Peace in Ukraine

Aired February 11, 2015 - 11:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR: At last, a call to vote for war against ISIS, the president seeks new authority. Why some Democrats, members of his own party, are now standing in his way.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR: Funny man Jon Stewart, newsman Brian Williams, TV giants whose careers are changing course for very different reasons. Could it change TV viewing habits as well?

BERMAN: And high drama at the murder trial of Aaron Hernandez, the ex- NFL star's fiancee granted immunity and will testify for the prosecution. Is this the bombshell that could sink him? You might be surprised.

Hello, everyone. Great to see you. I'm John Berman.

BOLDUAN: Hey, guys, I'm Kate Bolduan.

This morning after much lead up and much anticipation, President Obama is asking Congress for formal authority to take on ISIS. The White House has now sent the Authorization for Use of Military Force -- a lot of words on Capitol Hill, they sum up as AUMF -- they sent that over to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

BERMAN: That's coming about six months after the mission against ISIS actually began, and there are critics who say it's long overdue. It's the details within, though, that are sure to stoke controversy. Let's look.

It would limit the operation to three years. It limits the use of ground troops, saying there will be no enduring, offensive ground combat operations. What does that mean? It would not restrict the battlefield to Iraq and Syria, but it would repeal the 2002 military authorization for the war in Iraq.

BOLDUAN: Let's get to it. Let's bring in White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski and chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash who are working both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue on this one.

Michelle, let's start with you. This was anticipated, but what are you learning from the White House today? MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Kate. Right. It

has been a long time in coming. And you can really see the balance that the president was trying to strike here -- tailor something to fit the ISIS fit specifically but still leave some flexibility because you don't know how the mission will change going forward.

First place you see that balance, you mentioned repealing the 2002 authorization pertaining to the war in Iraq but leaving in place the one from 2001 related to al Qaeda and its associates. That's the one that the White House has been operating under to fight ISIS, so it's interesting that they left that one stand. However, we all know that al Qaeda and its associates remain a threat, AQAP being the main one.

Other areas of balance allowing the president and Pentagon to fight ISIS wherever it is, doesn't put geographic limits on the fight, and also includes ISIS associates, groups fighting alongside ISIS.

Now where this AUMF does set the limit, as you mentioned, the ground troops. That language in the actual request "enduring, offensive ground combat operations" does not authorize the president to use that. And in his letter to Congress, he said it wouldn't authorize long-term large-scale ground combat like those our nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So there's a limit that not everybody agrees with, but you can see that it does leave a window open for shorter-term, smaller-scale ground combat operations.

All of these things are open to interpretation, and you can say that's why we've been using a 2001 authorization in the first place.

Back to you guys.

BERMAN: If course, the president is going to make his case to the public today at 3:30. He'll give a little bit of an announcement in his speech about this plan at the White House.

Meanwhile, let's go to Capitol Hill. Dana Bash, those words, no enduring offensive ground combat operations, I see a congressional battle brewing perhaps from both sides of the aisle over that.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. You remember -- it's sort of Goldilocks? They are trying to find one that's just right.

It's not easy. And it's for reasons you wouldn't think along traditional party lines, because the Democrats are saying that they believe that it is too broad, that they want to narrow the president's authority.

The Republicans are saying that it is too narrow, that the president himself asked to tie his own hands too much.

Let's listen to what House Speaker John Boehner said on that note this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: I'm not sure that the strategy that's been outlined will accomplish the mission the president says he wants to accomplish.

And his point, the president's point, is that he wants to dismantle and destroy ISIS. I haven't seen a strategy yet that I think will accomplish that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Basically the gist of what we're hearing from a lot of Republicans is that what the authority that the president asked for limits the president's ability as a commander in chief. They don't care that it is a Democratic president. They just think it's a bad precedent.

The flip side you're hearing from Democrats that they're very worried. They've been down this road before, they say, about giving the president too broad of authority. Listen to what the Democratic leader in the house, Nancy Pelosi, said about that issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI (D), MINORITY LEADER: We hope to have bipartisan support for something that would limit the power of the president but nonetheless protect the American people in a very strong way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So just to sum this all up, what does this all mean? That even though members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have been demanding that Congress debate this, and they believe many illegal or unconstitutional for the person to have been waging this action already against ISIS without Congress acting, it is definitely no sure thing that Congress is going to be able to find a compromise to actually act. thread that needle on the difference between how much power or how little power the president should have.

BERMAN: You know, but it's an important debate to have.

Dana Bash, Michelle Kosinski, thanks so much for this. And as Dana was mentioning, some of the greatest skepticism here is coming from Democrats, members of the president's own party.

Later we'll speak to Senator Chris Murphy who's basically indicated that he would vote against this measure as it's currently written. We'll ask him to explain his view on that.

BOLDUAN: This very likely will be on of the toughest votes that many of these members of this Congress are going to take, one of the toughest votes they're going to have to take in more than a decade at this point.

Let's move to Yemen at this moment. The U.S., the U.K,. and France have announced that they will pull their remaining embassy staffs out of Yemen in the face of possible threats of attack.

And we've just learned that rebels seized U.S. embassy vehicles parked at the airport and even stopped U.S. Marines leaving the country from taking their weapons with them.

BERMAN: Yemen has been a nation in chaos for weeks and months since rebels placed the president there under house arrest. The State Department warns now of ongoing risk of kidnapping to foreigners, including Americans.

Let's bring in chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto. Jim, shutting down the embassy, American vehicles seized, this seems like a dangerous and volatile situation to say the least.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It's dangerous. You might even say ignominious. A difficult departure from this very key diplomatic post in a very key region at a very key and difficult time

We're told that because the Houthies, the rebels who have taken over the central part of the country and the capital, control the airport, it is they who require the Marines to give up their weapons at the airport, taking over now the vehicles at the embassy.

And we're told by Yemeni officials that they expect the Houthies to go into the complex, so prepare yourself for some pretty difficult images of someone taking over what is effectively U.S. property abroad.

Now, I'm told by senior U.S. military official that the U.S. embassy personnel, they took all the necessary steps as they left that embassy. That would include destroying documents and computer disks and also disabling any weapons they left behind.

But also keep in mind it's not just visas that an embassy puts out. This is about political contacts on the ground, intel gathering, military cooperation with the Yemenis, which is very key because they're a partner in fighting AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

This is a real loss. You understand why they did it. It's a volatile situation, but you do lose something not having that diplomatic post on the ground.

BOLDUAN: Jim, exactly to that point, I mean, this seems like it could be seen as quite a blow to the Obama administration. It's definitely going to be used by Republicans to criticize his foreign policy stance because this, Yemen and the cooperation with the Yemeni government, was something that the president has held up in terms of kind of successful partnership in taking on terror.

SCIUTTO: That's exactly right. And, look, this is region-wide now. So you have no diplomatic presence, no embassy in Yemen; none in Syria for a number of years now through the civil war; post-Benghazi, nothing in Libya; and also nothing in Somalia for a number of years -- all of these places hotbeds of terrorism.

You've got al Shabaab here. You have, increasingly, ISIS in Yemen as well. Sorry, in Libya, I should say, as well. ISIS certainly in Syria. AQAP in Yemen. Some talk of some ISIS fighters there. No diplomatic presence.

I'm told by U.S. military officials that the counterterror operations will continue. That's drone strikes, et cetera, down here in the south. But, you know, you do lose something when you don't have those key diplomatic relationships, when you're not sharing information with the local government who was in a partner.

And now we're seeing this is four of the countries, four failed states, that are real threats to U.S. security. It's a problem. It's a real loss.

BOLDUAN: A really important context you are putting it in, Jim, thank you so much.

BERMAN: Surprising consequences from last week's deadly plane crash in Taiwan, more than half of the pilots that trained to fly that same model of aircraft for TransAsia have been suspended.

Several of them failed to pass tests on how to handle the plane during engine failure. The others who were suspended were not able to take the test because they were out of the country or apparently sick. The pilots will be able to take the test again after retraining.

Investigators looking into last week's crash say the pilots may have accidentally cut off the wrong engine when they sensed trouble.

BOLDUAN: And new developments in the shooting deaths of three Muslim students in North Carolina, police now say an ongoing dispute just -- get this -- an ongoing dispute among neighbors over parking may have pushed the alleged gunman to carry out the attack. Three people were killed here.

Forty-six-year-old Craig Stephen Hicks has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder now. Now he's being held without bond and is said to be cooperating with investigators

Authorities, they do say they're going to continue to investigate, though, whether the victims' religion had any part in this attack.

BERMAN: Yeah, a lot of questions about this case. This has a lot of people very disturbed.

Moving words from a six-year-old in the fight against measles, Rhett Krawitt's California school district last night voted to support a proposed state law that would stop letting parents cite personal beliefs to exempt their children from getting vaccines before entering school.

Rhett has been in remission from leukemia for a year and a half, but his immune system is to weak for him to get shots.

His father says he relies on immunity of other kids to protect him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RHETT KRAWITT, FOUGHT TO END VACCINE EXEMPTIONS: Thank you, Reed Union school board, for teaching science and making everybody get vaccinated unless they are doing chemo like I did.

Soon we will say gone with the measles.

My name is Rhett, and I give a damn.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That's a damn cute kid right there.

BOLDUAN: Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? He's so cute.

BERMAN: Nearly eight percent of the kids in his county are not vaccinated. That's among the highest number in the state of California.

BOLDUAN: I'm going to watch that over again a little bit later.

We have new information, though, important information to tell you now about Kayla Mueller, the American aid worker and ISIS hostage whose death was just confirmed, intelligence officials telling CNN that Mueller might have been given to an ISIS fighter during her 18-month captivity as some kind of bribe. What's not clear at this point is if she was forced or sold into this pairing.

The circumstances around Mueller's death are still very much unclear. ISIS claims that she died last week in a Jordanian air strike. That's been disputed in the U.S. and beyond. That's clearly part of the investigation now.

BERMAN: Troubling.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely.

Coming up for us, two big names on TV are going off the air, Jon Stewart leaving "The Daily Show" on a very high note.

BERMAN: And then a bombshell moment in the news business, the highest- rated evening news anchor suspended, the controversy surrounding Brian Williams, we have new information about his future, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: So the world of fake news is losing a pioneer. Jon Stewart --

BOLDUAN: Oh, you're leaving?

BERMAN: Most of what I do is real here.

BOLDUAN: Kidding.

BERMAN: Jon Stewart says he'll step down as host of "The Daily Show" later this year. BOLDUAN: Stewart has been at the helm of the Comedy Central program --

This surprised me. This was really surprising -- for the last 16 years. His announcement hit the airwaves last night and shocked everyone, but also offered only a bit of a hint about why he may be leaving.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": I'm not going to be here and try and sum up what this place has meant to me over the years. I couldn't do that. We have plenty of time and I've got a myriad of people to thank and we'll get to that over time. I'm not going anywhere tomorrow. But this show doesn't deserve an even slightly restless host and neither do you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Want to bring in Robert Thompson. He is the director of the Center for Media Studies at Syracuse University. Professor, thank you so much for being with us. You know, we joked about Jon Stewart being a fake news anchor. He does this comedy show on Comedy Central. But he's become much more than that.

ROBERT THOMPSON, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR MEDIA STUDIES, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY: He has. I mean, he starts in January of '99, takes over from Craig Kilborn, and is doing the typical "Daily Show" Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, kind of fraternity jokes. Then the 2000 elections come along, he really finds his own voice, and that show, since then, has been an important part -- not only of American television, but of our civic conversation when most of the rest of the news operations have dropped the ball on stories like weapons of mass destruction and the rest of it, that comedy show has been plugging away, sometimes in ways that are much more insightful than we see in the more legitimate news operations.

BOLDUAN: Robert, on one point, didn't he also downplay the Anthony Wiener scandal at one point? I mean, he's not infallible. Right?

THOMPSON: Absolutely. He always kind of hides behind -- His old line used to be "Why does anybody take me seriously? My lead-in is a puppet show." Well, his lead-in isn't puppets anymore, but he always had that sort of downplayed, the fact that this was just a comedy show. But he knew and we knew that what was going on in that program was considerably more important. Now, I never thought it was good, people that only get their news from Jon Stewart. That's not a good thing. But people who have Jon Stewart as part of their diversified portfolio of information, I think, it's a fine thing to put in that.

BERMAN: So how much of a void is there and how do you suspect it will be filled? I mean, look, he's not just a hero to some millennials, but also to liberals. Let's face it, it's not like he's right down the middle here in terms of his criticism.

THOMPSON: Unlike Colbert, which when Colbert left they scrapped the show and they put a new show in there, I think the "The Daily Show" will continue its format. I think it will continue its title. I think if they're smart, they'll recruit from within because they have a very faithful fan base, and whoever is already part of that family they love. They loved John Oliver when he took over, and by the way, he did a perfectly good job doing that. They loved Colbert when he went to his show. If I were on Comedy Central running the place, I would immediately, right now, offer the job to one of their internal candidates. Jessica Williams. She's funny. She's smart. She's a great actor. She's prettier than Jon Stewart, and I think she would give a little different voice to that show, which is maybe what we need now. John Oliver, in many ways, when he took over while Stewart was making his movie, was almost doing a Jon Stewart impersonation in a British dialect, and that was fine as a placeholder, but after all these years, maybe we need a slightly different shtick than what Jon Stewart did so brilliantly. I'm going to miss him terribly. I think someone like Jessica Williams, who has been on that show a lot, who is part of the family, could do some really fascinating things.

BERMAN: It should be said, John Oliver really did nail the British accent when he was doing it.

BOLDUAN: He really, really did.

BERMAN: Professor, thank you so much. Appreciate you being with us. All right. The crisis in Ukraine. There's a war raging in eastern Ukraine right now. Hundreds of people dying every month there. There is a potential peace meeting happening right now. Leaders from key nations meeting. What will be the outcome? We'll take you there next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: A crucial moment in the deepening war in eastern Ukraine. Leaders from Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany are set to meet in Belarus moments from now to try to work out a peace deal between Kiev and the Russian-backed separatists.

BOLDUAN: The summit comes as the crisis there is really spiraling out of control, described as "dire" by U.S. officials, with dozens of people being killed every day.

CNN's Nic Robertson is live in Minsk waiting for this meeting to get underway. They're waiting for the Russian president to arrive, as we hear it, Nic. But the stakes really couldn't be higher for the people of Ukraine.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They couldn't be. And they're witnessing that every day in the south and east of Ukraine at the moment. The President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, who was the first to arrive here at the Independence Palace in Minsk just a few minutes ago. He was met by the Belarusian President. Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian President, had been today to Kramatorsk, one of those areas in Ukraine where civilians are being killed -- Some were killed in shelling just yesterday - So he does come here with the moral authority to say my people are suffering and we have to put an end to this. But he has also said that if there isn't a political agreement here, he will implement martial law across the whole country and the implications there are that the military confrontation and conflict would ratchet up. Just in the last two or three minutes, we've seen the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Francois Hollande arrive here. They came together, drove together from the airport. But right now, we understand the Russian president en route from the airport to these talks. That's when they can really get under way. But some contentious issues there at the moment. One of them for -- one of those contentious issues for the Russians is who would control the border between Russia and any separatist region of Ukraine? The Ukrainian government has said that they want that to be done by international monitors. That and many other thorny issues here to be debated late into the night here. John? Kate?

BOLDUAN: Nic Robertson, thank you so much. All eyes on that, especially as the last one, as we were talking about - is the last peace proposal that came out of Minsk clearly fell away and fell away very, very quickly.

Coming up, President Obama lays out his war proposal to Congress. But what does Congress think about the plan? That's clearly the most important question. Some of the president's own party may be his biggest challenge on this one. We're going to ask a member of Congress to weigh in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)