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Honoring Six Americans Killed in Afghanistan; Cruz Speaks on Cartoon Showing His Kids as Monkeys; Donald Trump's Tax Plan; Police Department Offers Help, Not Arrests. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired December 23, 2015 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:29:44] JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Major Adrianna Vorderbruggen was also killed. She was 36 years old. She was the first openly gay female active-duty service member in the U.S. military and the first openly gay air force officer to die in combat.

She fought for years to get "don't ask, don't tell" -- the policy repealed and later married her partner. They have a son. His name is Jacob.

Adding to the list of fallen heroes as well, 28-year-old Michael Cinco who was a resident of Mercedes, Texas. And Chester McBride, a former football hero from Georgia, he was described as a quiet young man who was a class act.

They are all class acts. You know, last night very briefly, I spoke with Louis Bonacasa's mother. And she just talked very quickly about how proud she was of her son, how she really wanted him remembered as a hero. They will all be remembered as heroes.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Jason Carroll -- thanks for that.

The Taliban gaining ground in one Afghanistan province, local officials say the Sangin district is completely overrun with the exception of a police chief's office. And that the help needed just isn't coming.

With me now is former CIA counterterrorism analyst Aki Peritz. Good morning.

AKI PERITZ, FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Good morning.

COSTELLO: So what is happening in Afghanistan? How much territory does the Taliban control?

PERITZ: Well, remember that Afghanistan's about the size of Texas. And a lot of these places are mountainous. There are a lot of mountains, a lot of valleys. So there's a lot of fighting going on in each valley depending on where -- how strong the Taliban is.

Remember, it's also wintertime. And so you've got snow passes are impassable. It's much more difficult to move organizations and troops and men and material around. So it's actually quite difficult. But it's actually -- we're moving into the spring season for fighting. And the fact that we only have about 9,800 troops plus about 4,000 -- 3,000 to 4,000 additional NATO troops to patrol and fight and kind of hold back the Taliban, it's something that's actually quite difficult.

And the fact that those six U.S. troops were killed near Bagram Air Force Base shows that the Taliban is willing to project power throughout the country even on the steps of where we have our military forces.

COSTELLO: I was just going to bring that up because that supposedly is one of the safer areas in Afghanistan for U.S. troops.

PERITZ: Generally it is. Obviously, on the base itself, it's relatively safe because it's heavily patrolled, heavily -- everybody is pretty well-guarded. However, it seems to me that the six Americans were killed were killed outside the base. And so that's actually quite a difficult part.

And that's one of the things that Americans sort of have forgotten about what's going on in Afghanistan is that we do still have 9,800 Americans serving abroad in that country even though technically combat operations has really sort of come to an end.

And the things that happen to American soldiers over there oftentimes don't actually make it into the media, but it affects a lot of Americans here. So, for example, Staff Sergeant Peter Taub who you showed just now, his family runs a very popular sandwich shop here in Washington, D.C. So the things that these people are sacrificing for this country is very, very much.

COSTELLO: And, you know, one of the more frustrating aspects of this is that you just can't get a good leader. I mean, a good president in Afghanistan, you know, Hamid Karzai left, but he was replaced by a guy who has so far been just as ineffectual.

PERITZ: Well, that's one of the problems. Is that if you look at Afghanistan, if you look at the budget of the country, they cannot actually maintain a competent Afghan security forces on the money that they generate, the tax revenue that they generate here.

And so it's going to rely on the United States and other partners to actually help the country pay for its troops, pay for their guns, logistics, pay for their air force, all these sort of things.

You also have to remember that Afghanistan is one of those countries which has a very, very low education -- low levels of education. So your average Afghan cop cannot read at a first grade level. How can that person actually give a ticket or maintain control without using excessive force?

And the Taliban really understands this. And so the Taliban is making some very impressive pushes into places that used to be safe and now are not.

COSTELLO: Aki Peritz -- thanks for your insight.

PERITZ: Thank you very much. COSTELLO: You're welcome.

Coming up in the NEWSROOM -- Ted Cruz just commenting on that controversial cartoon involving his children. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:37:45] COSTELLO: A political cartoon sparking controversy on the campaign trail. Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz, on the stump in Oklahoma right now speaking out about this cartoon.

This appeared in the "Washington Post". You see it depicts Ted Cruz as Santa Claus. And on the leash there, two little monkeylike figures that supposedly are meant to portray his young daughters who are five years old and seven years old.

Now, the cartoonist says she created this cartoon because Ted Cruz uses his children on the campaign trail often. And if you take a look at what she was talking about, he made this parody comedy ad -- if we could put that up. There it is. So you can see Ted Cruz, and it was quite funny. It got 1.5 million hits on social media. This political ad ran during "Saturday Night Live" in Iowa. And that's what sparked that political cartoon.

Needless to say, Senator Ted Cruz is not happy about that, saying that his kids should be off limits.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's not complicated. Don't make fun of a five-year-old girl and a seven-year- old girl.

Listen, everyone expects the mainstream media to be liberal, to be bias. If folks want to attack me, knock yourself out. That's part of the process. I signed up for that, that's fine. But my girls didn't sign up for that.

And I have to say, you know, when people ask me what's the hardest part of the campaign, the single hardest part of the campaign is being away from my daughters, is getting up and getting on an airplane and leaving and not being able to kiss my daughters good night, not being able to read them a bedtime story.

And so it used to be for a long time the rules across the board, the kids are off limits, that should be the rules. Don't mess with our kids. Don't mess with my kids. Don't mess with Marco's kids. Don't mess with Hillary's kids. Don't mess with anybody's kids. Leave kids alone.

And if the media wants to attack and ridicule every Republican, well, that's what they're going to do, but leave our kids alone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. So the woman who drew that cartoon stands by her editorial judgment, but the "Washington Post" itself said it was a mistake to publish the cartoon. It's pulled it off the Web site. It's pulled it out of the paper.

And just an aside for you, Ted Cruz is now raising money off the snafu. His goal and he put this on the Internet out to his supporters, is to raise $1 million for his campaign.

[10:40:08] All right. Let's talk about Donald Trump now.

Donald Trump says as president he would cut everyone's taxes but without increasing the deficit. If that sounds too good to be true, well, you know how the saying goes, it probably is.

CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans has the bottom line on the Trump tax plan.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's a whole category of impossible math when you look at tax plans of candidates because Carol, it's totally aspirational. This is candidates saying what they would like to do if everything were perfect but they can't do it because this just couldn't happen.

The Tax Policy Center, that is from the Urban Institute and Brookings Institutions -- the middle-of-the-road non partisan tax scorer found that Donald Trump's plan, reality check he says no deficit; the Tax Policy Center says it would add $10 trillion in deficits in the first ten years, another $15 trillion in the next decade after that. So it would explode the deficit in the national debt most likely.

He would have to cut so much defense spending and so much spending out of the budget. He has said Medicare and Social Security are off limits. It just isn't quite possible to be able to balance that.

So here's what he's promising and this is what is the populist appeal of his plan. He's promising tax cuts for everyone Carol. He's promising millions of American families who are poor would pay no taxes. He's saying the middle class would have a 5 percent savings on their tax bill. The top 0.1 percent would have 19 percent savings on their tax bill. Everyone would pay lower taxes, but somehow you have to pay for it.

So this is clearly, clearly a starting point for this candidate. You also have to go through a little thing called Congress when you want to try to change the tax structure and all that, when you have cuts you'd like to push through. This was a four-page plan, it came out in September. The scores have been kind of going over it -- trying to figure out how to make it work.

COSTELLO: Yes. But couldn't he just say well, there's a lot of government waste in the government programs that we don't need and start cutting out federal departments? ROMANS: I mean government waste alone can't get you to those

kinds of numbers. There is some government waste. There are programs that you can take the moral, you know, and policy prerogative and say this is what I would get rid of.

He doesn't do this in this four-page document. He doesn't say exactly how he would make that happen. But this is familiar territory. We've seen these kinds of plans before from candidates that don't quite work out. Again they're trying to tell you what they would like to do and what their aspiration is.

The Tax Policy Center saying it is impossible. Everyone would get a tax cut. Rich people would get the biggest tax cut, and you'd have to figure out how to pay for it.

I will say almost all of the candidates' tax plans result in more red ink, you know, they all do. And there's not a lot of details in some of these plans. You know, you've got to wait until you get further into the -- that's why the meat around policy is so incredibly important.

And on taxes, everyone talks about making taxes simpler. Donald Trump wants to have just three tax brackets. That sounds good. You know, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and others want to have a much more simpler taxes, be able to file their taxes on a 3 x 5 card. Wouldn't that be nice? Ok, how are we going to do that? The how is always where the devil's in the details.

COSTELLO: Everybody says that. Every election campaign and it never happens.

ROMANS: It doesn't. The tax code is complicated. Everyone's got their own lobby and their own special interests in the tax code. Is there some hope that maybe corporate taxes could be lowered? Loopholes could be, you know, jettisoned? There's always hope.

COSTELLO: Yes, there is. And it is Christmas time.

Christine Romans -- thank you.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Dr. Sanjay Gupta shows us what one New England town is doing to try to stop heroin addiction.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:46:44] COSTELLO: A recent poll shows the number one concern among New Hampshire voters isn't ISIS or the economy or education -- it's heroin. Narcotic addiction has reached epidemic levels across New England.

In this series, "Primary Concern: Heroin", CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on one small town's radically different approach to the problem.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is a mystery. Why exactly in this tiny fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts has heroin addiction become an epidemic? It could be the long and lonely winters. It could be the stigma of addiction and lack of resources for treatment. Whatever the exact cause is unclear. But one thing Gloucester has is pills, lots and lots of pain pills.

CHIEF LEONARD CAMPANELLO, GLOUCESTER POLICE DEPARTMENT: A lot of this addiction came from a very legal and very accepted way to deal with pain. And that's a big problem.

GUPTA: Now, chief of police Leonard Campanello tells me we could leave the station, walk anywhere, up the North Shore, and come back with heroin in just ten minutes.

CAMPANELLO: We're finding it in teenagers, we're finding it all the way up to legislators, judges, police officers, sons, daughters, you know, family members. This has no boundary.

GUPTA: So the chief decided on a radical approach, probably best described as the opposite of a war on drugs. He used Facebook to make an offer to the citizens of Gloucester.

CAMPANELLO: If you're a user of heroin or opiates, let us help you. We know you do not want this addiction. We have resources here in the city that can and will make a difference in your life. Do not become a statistic.

GUPTA: We won't arrest you. We will help you. He had no idea if it would work. He had no idea if anyone would listen. He didn't even know if it was legal.

Did you hesitate? I mean, did you have any concerns about this sort of strategy or putting it out there? So boldly?

CAMPANELLO: No, I think the worst thing they could do was fire me.

GUPTA: Did you talk to your wife about it or anybody else before you hit send?

CAMPANELLO: No, this was, you know, plausible deniability for everybody is a good thing sometimes.

GUPTA: I want to give you an idea of how this remarkable program works. We're here at the Gloucester Police Department. If you're someone who's addicted to heroin, you would walk through these doors over here. And right away, you notice that something's a little different.

First of all, you pick up the phone and tell them that you're here because you're a heroin addict. And that would start this whole process in motion of getting an angel assigned to you. But also take a look over here. Your needles, you have sharps container over here, your paraphernalia, your drugs, they go over here. When you start to walk through these doors now, you're not going

into the police station to get arrested but to get help.

CAMPANELLO: When we first started this program, it was an end of the war on drugs. And as we started thinking about it, was it really ever a war on drugs, or was it a war on addiction? And I think that we made a statement, at least for our Gloucester residents, that seems to have resonated in a lot of different places that we are back to working for people who need help. So they'll come in here.

GUPTA: And the people are showing up. So far this year, almost 300 people have come through the doors and are now in treatment. And the patients aren't just from Gloucester.

[10:50:03] Unable to get the help he needed in California, Stephen Lesnikoski (ph) got on a plane and came knocking on the chief's door.

STEPHEN LESNIKOSKI: I showed up here at 3:30 in the morning and the officers they treated me with respect and dignity like I was a normal human being, not any kind of stigma that society has attached to the addicts. And I got the help that I need.

GUPTA: The story that led Stephen here was all too familiar. Pills.

Did you break your ankle?

LESNIKOSKI: No, I tore my Achilles heel.

GUPTA: Pretty painful, I imagine.

LESNIKOSKI: Yes, it was very painful. I couldn't walk for a couple weeks. I didn't have a cast, but, you know, I had to prop my leg up. And that just kind of persistently got worse. I was prescribed Vicodin, painkillers for that.

GUPTA: How long after you first got that prescription for Vicodin you hurt your ankle before you were taking heroin?

LESNIKOSKI: 18 months.

GUPTA: 18 months.

LESNIKOSKI: Give or take a month or two. Less than two years.

GUPTA: Reporter: I want to make a really important point. These are FDA-approved doctor-prescribed pills. This is heroin. They both virtually have the same effect on the brain. The most typical course is someone starts with pills like this, they get cut off, they turn to heroin which is an illegal drug, but it works fast. It gets you high. And it is very, very cheap.

We now know that 80 percent of heroin users started off with pills like these. The question always arises, I think, with these sorts of am

programs, does it enable people to keep doing heroin? Because they think, look, I'm not going to be criminalized. I've got a safety net. I can keep doing this.

DAVID ROSENBLOOM, BOSTON UNIVERSITY: Nobody wants to keep doing it. They want to get better. They haven't had the help to get better. This is a chronic relapsing condition. People need help lots of times.

We have, as a society, told them that if they relapse, they fail. We've sent all the wrong messages. so people don't want to continue to suffer.

GUPTA: The chief knows this because he lives this.

You were a plainclothes narcotics detective for some time. You saw these people. I mean you still see these people, but you really saw them up close, people who were addicted to heroin, who were living that life.

CAMPANELLO: we had a mom that was a heroin addict for years. She had a two-year-old son in her care. We would routinely do search warrants if we knew that she was selling out of the house. And we came in one night, and in the corner was a crib. And there was the two-year-old and walked over just to check if that kid was all right.

And he immediately put his arms up, and he grabbed me around the neck, and he would not let go. And he stayed like that for three hours.

And so here's this guy coming in, you know, back in the day when, you know, armed to the teeth, you know, ready to go, ready to sniff out drugs with a team of law enforcement who spent the night, you know, cradling a child.

And that stuck with me for a very long time in terms of, you know, where is that child now, you know? The atmosphere that they grow up in, can something be done to stop this next generation? And where do we start?

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Gloucester, Massachusetts.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And the next part of the heroin series focuses on rehab and the difficult road to recovery. You could catch it tonight on "AC360" 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a bright ball of fire in the sky over California and Nevada It turns out -- well, what exactly was this?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:57:05] if you live in Nevada or California, you might have seen this overnight -- a streaking fireball illuminating the night sky. According to the U.S. Strategic Command, it was a UFO -- I'm just kidding. It was a Russian space debris from a rocket that was re-entering the atmosphere after being launched on Monday.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I knew we had something next. What's coming next oh, producers? Oh, we have a Sara Sidner package with politicians poking fun at themselves. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: For political candidates being parodied on "Saturday Night Live" is almost a rite of passage.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Look at this guy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Great, great, great, great, great. Isn't he doing fantastic?

SIDNER: But former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is turning the tables.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's a TV writer who left a small town for the big city.

SIDNER: Yes, that is Palin, spoofing her TV look-alike Tina Fey. Instead of Liz Lemon, Sarah is Lynn Melon. Instead of the hit show "30 Rock", this is Palin's version, "31 Rock".

SARAH PALIN, FORMER GOVERNOR, ALASKA: Nerds.

SIDNER: Tackling all-important subjects like the missing snowflakes on Starbucks cups.

PALIN: No snowflakes?

SIDNER: And bashing political correctness.

PALIN: The only PC I need is right here.

SIDNER: Clinton and Palin have been fodder for years.

AMY POEHLER, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE": I believe that diplomacy should be the cornerstone of any foreign policy.

TINA FEY, "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE": And I can see Russia from my house.

SIDNER: And the two are still favorite targets of the show.

FEY: Oh, God, that was a real fun election. I was paired up with that cute little John McCain fellow -- may he rest in peace, I'm guessing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's alive.

SIDNER: But Palin isn't the only one enjoying the last laugh. SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Melon, ok. Here's what you do.

SIDNER: Senator John McCain tweeting, "I think I like Sarah's impression of Tina better."

Senator Ted Cruz is also getting in on political satire. Remember that time when he read "Dr. Seuss" to stall a vote on Obama's health care bill?

CRUZ: I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam, I am.

SIDNER: Now he has an "SNL" style commercial about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Imagine the greatest Christmas stories told by the senator who once read "Green Eggs and Ham" from the senate floor.

CRUZ: 'Twas the night before the shutdown and all through the house --

SIDNER: Looks like politicians are taking the old saying to heart. If you can't beat them --

FEY: Oh, geez, looks like I went through time and space again.

SIDNER: -- join them.

PALIN: Nerds.

SIDNER: Sara Sidner CNN, New York.

PALIN: "Star Wars" didn't actually change cinema.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: See? That was worth getting in.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan starts now. And happy holidays and Merry Christmas.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Hello everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. John Berman is getting a much-deserved day off.