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Trump Targets Carson in 95-Minute Rant; Trump: Carson's 'Pathological Temper' is a Big Problem; Kurds Retake Sinjar from ISIS; U.S. Drone Strike Targets 'Jihadi John.' Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 13, 2015 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:07] ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: During his tirade, Trump also attacking Hillary Clinton.

TRUMP: And she's playing the woman card up. That's all she has. Honestly, outside of the woman's card, she's got nothing going, believe me.

JONES: The one-time clear frontrunner also claiming to know more about the terrorist group ISIS than U.S. military generals, saying he would bomb areas controlled by ISIS that are rich in oil.

TRUMP: I would just bomb those suckers. And that's right, I'd blow up the pipes. I'd blow up the refineries. I'd blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left, and I'd take the oil.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: Now, in response to Trump's attack, Carson's campaign says that Trump resents Carson's rise and is lashing out.

It will also be interesting to see how Republican primary voters respond here. So far they haven't really punished Trump for any of his wild statements. We'll have to see if that changes -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right, Athena.

Well, believe it or not, Donald Trump likes Ben Carson. At least that's what he told CNN anchor Erin Burnett. Take a listen to what he told CNN about Carson's past and jockeying for distance at the top of the polls.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: You're on top nationally. In some polls, though, he is within spitting distance, the margin of error. Some of them he's been ahead. How are you going to separate yourself from him? Does he worry you?

TRUMP: Well, look, you always think about everybody. Somebody said who's your closest competitor? I mean, they're all -- you have to think about -- other than the ones on the absolute bottom tier. And then you wonder why certain people are hanging around. It's sort of hard to believe that they do this. It can't be helpful to them, or their families or their brand, frankly. But somebody said, "Who's your No. 1?"

I said, "I think you have many of them." You never know what's going to happen with the political campaign. I haven't done it on this side. I've been a politician now for about four or five months, but I haven't done it from the standpoint of running for office. I've never done this before.

I've been a businessman. I've created tremendous numbers of tens of thousands of jobs and built a great company. But I've never done this. I would say you have three or four or five people, I guess, that would have a shot.

BURNETT: And in terms of Dr. Carson, you've said some of the questions about his past are fair. There have been a lot of questions about what really happened, what his childhood was like.

You know he pushed back in the media. He said at the debate the other night, "I have a problem with being lied about." Do you believe he's being truthful now that you've heard his answers?

TRUMP: Well, I don't know. I mean, first of all, I like him. I get along with him very well. I just don't know.

And don't forget: This is in his book. I'm not bringing up anything that's not in his book. And, you know, when he says he went after his mother and wanted to hit her in the head with a hammer, that bothers me. I mean, that's pretty bad. When he says he's pathological and he says that in the book, I don't say that. And again, I'm not saying anything. I'm not saying anything other than pathological is a very serious disease. And he said he's pathological. Somebody said he has a pathological disease. Other people said he said in the book -- and I haven't seen it, I know it's in the book -- that he's got a pathological temper or temperament.

That's a big problem. Because you don't cure that. That's like -- you know, I could say -- say you don't cure -- as an example, child molester. You don't cure these people. You don't cure a child molester. There's no cure for it. Pathological, there's no cure for that.

Now, I didn't say it. He said it in his book. So when I hear somebody's pathological, when somebody says, "I went after my mother with" -- and he's saying about himself...

BURNETT: Yes.

TRUMP: ... with a hammer to hit her in the head, I say, "Whoa, I never did. You never did. I don't know anybody that ever did, personally." But that's a big statement.

When he said he hit a friend of his in the face with a lock, with a padlock, right in the face, I say, "Whoa, that's pretty bad."

And when he said he stabbed somebody with a knife, but it hit a belt buckle, I know a lot about knives and belt buckles. Belt buckles aren't going to stop, because they're going to turn. They're going to twist. They're going to -- you know, they're not solid, especially if somebody's got a couple of extra pounds on. You know, they move. There's a lot of movement.

So the chances of somebody going like that, hitting a belt buckle where it doesn't slide off and go into the...

BURNETT: So you're not satisfied yet?

TRUMP: I just don't know. When somebody said that he's pathological, you'll have to ask him that question.

Look, I hope it's fine, because I think it would be a shame. But think of it. What he's saying is these things happened. It would be nicer if he said, "No, none of these things did happen." He's saying, "These things happened, and therefore, I have credibility."

And what I'm saying is I'd rather have them if they didn't happen. I don't want somebody that hit somebody in the face really hard with a padlock. I don't want somebody who went after his mother with a hammer.

BURNETT: To be president.

TRUMP: I don't want somebody -- frankly, I didn't read his book. But according to the book, he said he's pathological. That's a very serious term.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: Trump coming heavy and often at Ben Carson, demanding a chance to respond for the Carson campaign to be sure.

So let's do that with a friend of Ben Carson, his business manager, Armstrong Williams, who joins us from London this morning.

[07:05:07] Thank you very much for taking the time to join us from there. Let me play you some of the most acerbic sound and get the official response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: "How dare the press not believe me that I went after my mother with a hammer? That I hit somebody in the face with a padlock? That I tried to stab a friend of mine, whose name was Bob but now it's changed? Whose name was Bob, he was a friend, but now he's a member of my family."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Should Dr. Carson's past, if all true, be a disqualifying factor, as Mr. Trump seems to be suggesting?

ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS, DR. BEN CARSON'S BUSINESS MANAGER: Good morning, Chris. Dr. Carson was 14 years old at the time. It was a half century ago.

Mr. Trump speaks of this as if it happened within the last year. I mean, are you kidding me?

It's so sad watching and listening to him. I mean, a man who is so accomplished, who has been so blessed but yet cannot fathom why Dr. Carson or anyone else would be doing better than he in the presidential race right now. He cannot accept leading from behind. He cannot accept being challenged. He cannot reconcile how this is happening.

Obviously, he only wants to be on the stage by himself. Crown the nominee and run against the eventual Democratic challenger. It's just, you know, it's so immature. It is so embarrassing. I feel so sorry for him.

When I spoke with Dr. Carson about this yesterday, asking how should we respond? You know, he was so sad by it. He said, "Pray for him." He feels sorry for him, because he really likes Mr. Trump. He likes what Mr. Trump brings to the campaign, what he brings to this election, his voice with the immigration. But to see him just imploding before our very eyes, it's just -- it's sad to watch.

CUOMO: So let's move on to something that isn't about half a century ago. The relationship with Al Costa and what happened with him pleading guilty to charges of fraud in 2007.

We understand that Dr. Carson says he stands by him, even though he was very outspoken, saying that people who commit this kind of fraud in health care should go to jail. Explain.

WILLIAMS: Chris, Dr. Costa and Dr. Carson are the best of friends. They've known each other for ages. Mr. Costa admitted his wrongdoing. He paid the price for it, and he has moved on to even more success.

It is something that happens. I'm sure if you look at any presidential candidate, anyone who have had relationships with someone, there are challenges that they've had. There are charges that have been alleged. Sometimes people go to jail. Sometimes people are falsely accused. Sometimes people are rightly accused.

Dr. Carson is a friend. He trusts Mr. Costa. He respects Mr. Costa. He will always be his friend. And he's just saying what any loyal friend would say. He stands by him through thick and thin, no matter what the cost is, that it's his friend.

CUOMO: I understand, and I respect the idea of being loyal to friends, of course. I think most would. But that's not all this is about, Armstrong. This is about defending a man who eventually pleaded guilty to these charges, and then saying that people who are guilty of such charges should be very harshly treated. There's an inconsistency there that I'm asking you to explain.

WILLIAMS: Life, sometimes, Chris, as human beings is a contradictory -- is contradictory. You know? We have these positions that we take and sometimes we speak in a vacuum, because often they don't personally impact us.

And then sometimes we are personally impacted by the rhetoric we have about others, and then we realize that life is not so simplistic and not so easy. When it's somebody you care about, it causes you really to rethink your position and how you felt in the past. And you think better and you become more human and you become more understanding, because you've had the opportunity to walk in somebody else's shoes. Because it's something that you care about at the time who's being impacted and who's being alleged about those very things you condemn. Because life is just the way it happens.

CUOMO: Well, you know, that's true. Life can get very messy, but the concern would be consistency and no concern about a double standard, that if a friend of Dr. Carson's is involved, he feels one way. But if it's not a friend of Dr. Carson, he feels another way. That would not be something that people would want to capture in a president, I would suspect.

WILLIAMS: Well, you know, yes, Chris, there are those that will embrace what they're saying, and sometimes we what we have to do in life is we have to face these circumstances that we can condemn.

I have been there. There are things that I've condemned and railed against as a conservative. And until somebody I cared about actually faced that, and it caused me to be more humble, less judgmental, and realizing that when people paid a price for whatever their crimes and whatever their indiscretions are, especially if it's somebody you care about, you learn, you grow, you become a better human being and you become less judgmental.

[07:10:22] CUOMO: So going forward, what do you think Dr. Carson is going to be able to do to maintain and grow his base, outside of Iowa, outside of those who are as religiously motivated and grow that tent?

WILLIAMS: Well, meWell, I think if you -- if you read some of the most recent articles in "The New York Times" and other newspapers and even research that is done by television stations, you will find -- even when I was on with you guys a week or so ago, you showed that Dr. Carson was expanding his base beyond evangelicals to independents and people otherwise who would not even consider voting for him.

Dr. Carson really has to get into the details of his policies, whether it's immigration, whether it's taxes, whether it's Medicaid, whether it's how we deal with ISIS and ISIS in our foreign policy. He really has to get into real detail. Because he has to convince people who like him, who trust him. They have to believe that he has the capacity to lead from a policy position, from a substantive position, that he can learn these issues and articulate them in a way where they find that they're willing to trust him to become their next president of the United States, not just for everyday constituency.

There are many establishment Republicans in this country who are still on the fence. They don't want to spend their money with candidates that they feel have no chance of winning. And they're not exactly happy with Mr. Trump or Dr. Carson. But they're willing to give Dr. Carson a little more of the benefit of the doubt if he's willing to show them that he can conquer and master the issues of policies that are important to them.

CUOMO: And that's -- and that's why we invite the doctor on to talk about policy. There's a lot out there to discuss. Armstrong Williams, thank you for being with us on NEW DAY, as always.

WILLIAMS: Thank you, Chris.

CUOMO: All right. Over to you...

CAMEROTA: I'll take it, Chris, thank you.

CUOMO: ... Alisyn.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: We do have breaking news for you now out of Iraq. We understand the critical city of Sinjar is back under the control of Iraq. It has been wrestled out of the grip of ISIS.

CNN's senior international correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh, is live on the ground in Sinjar with all of the breaking developments -- Nick.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Now we've just come out of the city of Sinjar, which seems to confirm what Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani is saying, that they have liberated that city. He called it an important step in the future for the liberation of the other major city here, Mosul in Iraq, also in the hands of ISIS.

But simply declaring the city behind me as liberated isn't the end of the job. We were with large numbers of Kurdish Peshmerga as they were close to the center, in old buildings, the old Sharia courts. ISIS kept a neatly-tended lawn in -- in their old district center and still, at one point, a bullet flew officer our heads. And that sparked a lot of commotion within the Peshmerga. They fired back, seemed to be deeply concerned about the possibility of ISIS snipers hiding around the buildings. And we later saw one of their own number, it seemed, being carried out injured.

So still a lot of volatility there.

A Swedish volunteer fighting with the Peshmerga we spoke to said, in fact, that he'd seen a number of barrels Laden with explosives under the ground in some tunnel networks. Potentially, this has been suggested ISIS fighters are disguising themselves as Peshmerga, hiding in the tunnels and then emerging at different moments. So a phenomenally nasty job of making that town finally safe. And it's been hammered by the airstrikes and the suicide bombings of ISIS, too.

But this declaration, the town has, quote, "been liberated" is a huge plus. Not only for the Peshmerga, whose tactics and numbers here have paid off, but also for the coalition, who brought in the air support. We even saw an A-10 attack plane in the skies over today. They brought in the air support. That has, in the words of the Canadian fighter we spoke down there, another volunteer, simply changed the equation, put the Peshmerga on top. We've seen the results down there. It's an unsteady calm, certainly.

There's definitely ISIS around, but an enormous move here in the one city, symbolic in how it fell into ISIS hands. The damage the Yazidi population had done to it. Seems now mostly to be in the hands of the Peshmerga -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: Certainly a hard-fought battle, a big development there. Nick, thank you so much for that.

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials confirm targeting the mass executioner known as Jihadi John in a U.S. drone strike in Syria. Investigators are trying to determine definitively whether Mohammed Emwazi was killed. We'll get the latest now from CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela.

It was a highly-classified operation, carried out by the military's Joint Special Operations Command, the very same organization that helped plan the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[07:15:08] STARR (voice-over): Breaking overnight, the Pentagon confirming U.S. Special Operations forces launched a drone strike targeting the masked ISIS executioner known as Jihadi John. A U.S. official says after tracking him for days, authorities are confident the drone strike killed the Kuwaiti-born British citizen identified as Mohammed Emwazi. But still, they are awaiting final confirmation.

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It certainly is a symbolic victory for the United States, the coalition and our partners. And it does bring closure to those families.

STARR: The U.S. official says authorities knew it was Emwazi when they took the shot. Another U.S. official tells CNN Emwazi was in a vehicle at the time of the strike near Raqqah, ISIS's de facto capital in Syria.

Emwazi appeared in a series of horrific ISIS beheading videos, documenting the murder of several American, Britain and Japanese hostages. He was often seen wielding a knife, only his eyes and hands exposed, taunting U.S. and British leaders.

MOHAMMED "JIHADI JOHN" EMWAZI, ISIS SPOKESMAN: We'll continue to strike the necks of our people.

STARR: This morning, the U.K. government saying Britain was working hand in glove with America over the Jihadi John drone strike.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: This was an act of self- defense. It was the right thing to do.

PLEITGEN: Emwazi, who is in his mid-20s, grew up in London and graduated with a degree in computer programming before becoming radicalized. CAMERON: Is this strike was successful -- and we still await

confirmation of that -- it will be a strike at the heart of ISIL.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STARR: How will they get confirmation this morning? The U.S. military and intelligence communities scouring social media, classified intercepts, everything and anything they can to get a sign out of Syria, some signal that Jihadi John indeed is dead -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Barbara, we await word. Thank you for staying on it for us.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is looking for a new senior military aide. He has fired his right-hand man at the Pentagon, following allegations of misconduct. That man, Army Lieutenant General Ron Lewis, removed from his post. No details yet on the exact type of alleged misconduct. But Carter says the Defense Department is investigating.

CAMEROTA: An alleged ISIS sympathizer in Ohio arrested for allegedly soliciting people to murder U.S. military members. FBI officials say 25-year-old Terrence McNeil repeatedly professed his support for the Islamic State and distributed a file online containing names, addresses and photographs of dozens of American military personnel.

PEREIRA: He was the terrifying and sinister face of ISIS to westerners. Now a U.S. airstrike may have taken out Jihadi John. What would his death mean for the larger war against ISIS? Our experts will break that down, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:21:49] CAMEROTA: The Pentagon confirms U.S. forces launched an airstrike targeting Jihadi John in Syria. No confirmation yet as to whether he was killed.

Plus, we've just had major breaking news about the battle for Sinjar.

So to talk about all this is our CNN contributor and co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," Michael Weiss; and CNN military analyst and retired U.S. Army Major General James "Spider" Marks.

Gentlemen, thanks so much for being here.

So Nick Paton Walsh, our correspondent, just gave us this breaking news. He was in Sinjar earlier today. And it sounds as though it's been liberated from ISIS. How big of a deal is this, Michael?

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It's a pretty big deal. I mean, this was one of the major towns that had been taken in 2014. It led to the siege of Sinjar Mountain, which you know, ISIS was using that as an opportunity to essentially commit genocide against the Yazidi ethnic minority.

The really crucial struggle is for Highway 47. This is the main road system that connects Syria and Iraq, or the so-called caliphate, binds it together. This is the Route 66, if you like, of ISIS. So if that can be taken -- by yesterday, it seemed as though about 35 miles of it had been interdicted -- you will disrupt the flow of weapons, men, materiel that go back and forth between Iraq and Syria.

CAMEROTA: Spider, it feels like finally good news in the fight against ISIS. Has something shifted? Is the U.S. stepping up the battle against ISIS?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It is Alisyn, very good news. The key is -- and it's already been identified -- is not only do you need to isolate Sinjar, retake Sinjar. Ostensibly, that's been done. But you have to hold it. And this is where the real heavy lifting starts.

That's been the challenge all along, Alisyn, is that we can be very successful in coordination. The coalition can be very successful in coordination going against very specific targets. But then you have to build upon that success, and that takes a lot more what I would call foundational capabilities than what we've been willing to commit to this fight so far.

If we're going to degrade, that's one thing. If we're going to defeat, that's a significant step up in terms of capabilities required.

CAMEROTA: As you both know, there have been questions and critics of the Obama administration's approach to this, saying what's the strategy? What's the strategy? Yesterday, CNN's Fareed Zakaria sat down with Secretary of State John Kerry, who talked about the strategy here. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I keep hearing people saying, "What's the strategy? What's the strategy?" The strategy is clear. President Obama at the very beginning said we're going to degrade and defeat ISIL. We're going to stabilize the countries in the region: Jordan, Lebanon, work with Turkey. And we are going to seek a political settlement.

That is exactly the strategy today. And it is working to a degree, not as fast as we would like, perhaps, but we are making gains.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So Michael, is that what we're seeing today?

WEISS: No. I mean, what we're seeing today is what you see in the course of any kind of war: a tactical success or a tactical victory, but one that is not being backed up by any kind of strategic forethought.

I mean, let's talk about the consequences of the sacking of Sinjar, as the general pointed out. What's crucial here is holding the town. The difficulty in doing that is the coalition built on the ground to take Sinjar back is mostly a Kurdish one. But even within the Kurdish coalition, there are internal divisions and rivalries.

[07:25:03] You've got the PKK, which is a Turkish-U.S.-E.U.-designated terror organization. Then you've got the Kurdish Peshmerga. They are ideologically at odds with each other. They're already competing for "We did this. No, we did this." They're trying to steal each other's thunder in terms of these military strikes.

Can they govern or hold Sinjar together without sort of devolving into a, you know, sort of a civil war unto themselves? This is the issue.

There are unintended consequences of this war, too. You know, we're all about holding these nation states, precariously cobbled together after World War I, together. The problem is, our strategy going forward or whatever you want to call it, is leading to the Balkanization of both Syria and Iraq. In norther Syria, I mean, the Kurds are carving out their own statelet, called Rojava. So the idea of this unified or integral state of Syria, the political settlement to which the secretary alluded, I think that this is a phantasm. I think that this exists only in name at this point.

CAMEROTA: Spider, I want to shift to the other big news, and that is that a U.S. airstrike may have, it appears, killed Jihadi John, the man behind those sickening beheading videos. How significant would that be if he's dead?

MARKS: Well, it's significant, because it demonstrates the ability of our coalition, led by the United States, let's be frank, in terms of getting intelligence capabilities down to the very lowest levels and making them operationalized.

And we've been perfecting that skill for years. And it is precise, and it's quite phenomenal.

It's all about persistent surveillance. And in fact, what we're seeing is the use of the word "persistent" as a matter of routine. We have to be able to keep this smothering capability of intelligence so that we can go after folks like Jihadi John.

But bear in mind, he is simply a foot soldier who happened to speak idiomatic English, and so he became the front or the face of ISIS. The fact that he is gone is no big deal, except that we send -- we, the coalition, sends a very powerful message to ISIS, which is, look, you guys cannot get away.

But the key issue is back to the point that you've already made, Alisyn. Which is we're going to be at this an extremely long time if all we're doing is containing this caliphate and going after it where it tries to protrude on the sides.

But ISIS has already demonstrated that it's very metastatic and it can expand. It's been in North Africa. It's been in Libya. We've seen that. It's already been in the Sinai. This is an -- this is an international terrorist organization with an incredible reach and capability and appeal. That's what's important.

CAMEROTA: Spider Marks, Michael Weiss, great to get your expertise. Thanks so much for being here.

Let's get over to Michaela.

MARKS: Thank you, Alisyn.

PEREIRA: All right, Alisyn.

Donald Trump is on the attack, slamming his chief rival, Ben Carson, in an epic tirade. Will these tactics catch up with him or does it help him with supporters? We'll break it down, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)