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Obama Gearing up for Key Address Tonight; Obama Teams Up with Social Media Tonight; Sister of Alleged "New Jihadi John" Talks; Terror Attack in Istanbul. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired January 12, 2016 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:29:50] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We're now hearing from the victim of the alleged gang rape in Brooklyn last week. Here's what the 18-year-old told WABC.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Put a gun in my face, told me to run. All of them had their way with her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you hope this video gets these guys?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When your dad left you, what were you thinking?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was just real scared. I didn't know what to do. I was in a panic mode.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She just felt --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Her father said five people pulled a gun on him, told him to leave a Brooklyn playground, and then they took turns raping his daughter. Four teenagers have been charged as adults with rape. Police still looking for a fifth suspect.
Attorneys for Bill Cosby are asking a Pennsylvania judge to dismiss sexual assault charges against the comedian. The charges stem from accusations made back in 2004 by a woman claiming to have been assaulted by Cosby. Cosby's lawyers claim the district attorney promised more than a decade ago to never charge the comedian on those particular allegations.
An overabundance of oil has already resulted in gas prices plummeting. But they might go even lower, at least, according to Morgan Stanley. Analysts there believe the strengthening of the U.S. dollar could cause the price oil to drop as low as $20 a barrel. That's compared to the $31 price per barrel right now. If that happens, you could fill up your car for as little as $1 a gallon. That's amazing.
And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.
Tonight President Obama delivers what will be in many ways a farewell speech. Hours from now Mr. Obama speaks directly to the American people during his last State of the Union. Instead of tasking congress with a laundry list of to-dos, he'll urge the country to approach future problems with a sense of optimism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's no doubt that politics in Washington are so much more divided than the American people are and part of what I want to do in this last address is to remind people, you know what, we got a lot of good things going for us. And if we can get our politics right, it turns out that we're not as divided on the ideological spectrum as people make us out to be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Optimism. I'm trying to remember what that is -- Michelle Kosinski.
MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's what they're going for. You know, because this is his last State of the Union, because this is the one night a year where he gets this huge audience, so many eyes watching.
You know that they want this to be something maybe a little different, something very memorable. That said, you know, when the White House first was talking a few days ago about this maybe being something nontraditional -- was the word they used -- that immediately raised questions.
What does that mean? I mean are we talking -- is it not really going to be a speech? But now senior administration officials are saying maybe that's not exactly the word that they would use. This is going to be a speech in the way we think of it, so I guess we can't expect a laser light show or anything like that, but we've seen the White House already surrounding the speech, use some kind of, maybe you could say, nontraditional or new methods of getting their points across.
They've already enlisted Amazon. They're going to have the speech and other speeches available immediately after for free that people can download and look at. Google, we're talking YouTube, Genius and now Snapchat. And the White House also tweeted out this preview. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: I want us to be able when we walk out this door to say, we couldn't think of anything else that we didn't try. That we didn't shy away from the challenge because it was hard. That we weren't timid or got tired or somehow we're thinking about the next thing, because there is no next thing. This is it. And never in our lives again will we have the chance to do as much good as we do right now. I want to make sure that we maximize it. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KOSINSKI: I'm guessing that music is not going to be playing throughout the entirety of the speech. That was something a little different there, though. But we do know that this speech is expected to be not longer than usual even though this is his last one. But it's expected to be shorter.
Officials are telling us that he didn't want to have pages and pages of kind of going through his accomplishments over the years, even though he is going to talk about that but he wanted to look ahead, maybe well into the future and focus on what he called the big things that are affecting Americans.
Things like how a changing economy is affecting American workers. We know that's going to be a pretty big focus there. Also we know that "optimism", "passion" are the words that we're hearing from the White House in terms of what the tone is going to be. We heard the President say in the last couple of weeks that he's all fired up. So, we could see a lot of energy coming through in this -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Ok. We'll just have to see. Michelle Kosinski reporting live from the White House this morning.
[10:34:57] So, President Obama actually is a game-changer when it comes to social media. He'll break ground again in that arena during his State of the Union using the platform Genius to amplify his words online.
Don't know what Genius is? Well, that's exactly my point. He's breaking ground with new media, too, just as he broke ground with new ways to communicate his message.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: The deadline for signing up for -- the deadline for signing up for health insurance is February --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not like any other Wednesday.
OBAMA: That's not right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wednesday.
OBAMA: Man -- February 15th. February 15th. In many cases you can get health insurance for less than $100 a month. Just go to --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Remember that? Well, with me now to talk about that and more CNN presidential historian Doug Brinkley. He's also a history professor at Rice. Welcome.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Thank you.
COSTELLO: I don't know. Remember when Barack Obama was running the first time and his opponents called him Britney Spears. He was only like a Hollywood movie star. Well, they're all acting like that today.
BRINKLEY: He's a pioneer in all this. Remember the Blackberry presidents early on. Blackberry seemed so remote now, but he was kind of bringing new technology into politics the way that he used his database to define voters when he ran in 2008 and he's continued to do that all along, which is what any good president should be.
I mean the history of the American presidency is how you use the communication opportunities of the moment, whether it's FDR using radio or John F. Kennedy using televised (ph) speeches. I think Barack Obama will be remembered for all this kind of new social media gadgeting that he did.
COSTELLO: Yes. And even the way he raised money during the first go-round -- his first campaign. Most of his money came from small donors. Bernie Sanders is doing that. Of course Donald Trump is using his own money. So times have changed.
BRINKLEY: And there's a downside. The downside is sometimes we want -- when a president addresses the nation on a big issue, we want it to be like, oh, my gosh, the President is talking to us about the war on terror but he uses the -- communicates daily in so many ways, you do lose a little bit of the big event kind of things. Like, oh, the President is doing a media event yet again. So that's the downside of being overexposed in a media culture.
COSTELLO: So I guess I want to center a little bit -- I want to center on Obama's legacy -- right. So, of course, he's the first African-American president. He was supposed to be this transformative figure. Was he?
BRINKLEY: Look, any time you're a two-termer, you win twice, you're a big deal. You've got eight years to evaluate. The fact of the matter is well, he inherited the great recession. Our country was in the doldrums in 2008 and by 2009 started digging us out of that hole.
If I were going to be an organizer of the Obama library, I would say if the economy holds up by his last second in office, that you can tell a story of the great recession and how the President's economic policies helped dig us out of that.
Other than that you've got Obamacare and it's so controversial. It's a hot potato still. But if somebody like Hillary Clinton became president, Obamacare gets deeper roots, it would become like a Medicaid and Medicare, a kind of birthright in America. And I think he'll get very high marks for having the chutzpah to go at Congress with that early in his first term.
COSTELLO: And just the last question because I am curious. You know, everybody is looking -- it's Obama's last State of the Union. This will shape his legacy. Do last speeches shape legacies?
BRINKLEY: They do but they're usually the farewell address. Most famously Eisenhower's farewell address when he warned of a military industrial complex.
What's happening tonight as Barack Obama is delivering his farewell address as a State of the Union instead of doing it days before you're leaving the White House because he's got two key policy issues he thinks he has to really keep platforming upwards -- climate change and the gun violence issue. Those are two that are going to take, as he said at his CNN town hall, decades to kind of get at but he wants to use his last year to be the spokesperson really on these two issues, to start further galvanizing grass roots activists around these causes.
COSTELLO: All right. Thanks for stopping by. I appreciate it.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, hear from the sister of a man believed to be an ISIS terrorist who may be the mass killer in the terror group's latest propaganda videos.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:43:35] COSTELLO: The hunt continues for an ISIS killer dubbed the new Jihadi John. The masked murderer's identity remains unknown but security agencies are reportedly focusing on a Londoner who calls himself Abu Rumaysah.
Clarissa Ward has more for us this morning. Good morning.
CLARISSA WARD, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning -- Carol. Well, we sat down with 29-year-old Konika Dhar. She is the sister of Abu Rumaysah, who was born with the Siddhartha Dhar.
He is currently inside Syria, fighting with ISIS. He left the U.K. about a year and a half ago and there is now speculation that he may be the new so-called Jihadi John. And Konika Dhar told us that she desperate to believe her brother is not the man in the video but that he has changed enormously from the boy she grew up with. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KONIKA DHAR, SISTER OF SIDDHARTA DHAR: I'll be honest with you. One thing I sort of noticed is that he has stripped his identity completely. And this is what's sad, because he had the most colorful, creative personality, and I don't know where it's gone and where we've gone wrong. It's been lost.
WARD: Most people would say that anyone who joins ISIS on some level is evil, a psychopath. Do you believe that to be true about your brother?
DHAR: I can only speak in regards to my brother, and I can definitely say that I don't agree with that. I see him as a compassionate sort of family person, caring individual. Somebody sort of who doesn't really engage in activities, like --
[10:45:10] WARD: Even after he's joined ISIS?
DHAR: Maybe I don't want to believe it. I don't know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WARD: Konika Dhar told us that she has spoken to her brother several times since he joined ISIS about a year and a half ago and that so far, Carol, he has shown no signs of remorse and says that he is quite happy where he is.
COSTELLO: How did he become radicalized?
WARD: Well, it was a long process. But essentially some time after he converted, he became a follower of a man who was very well known here in the U.K. by the name of Anjem Choudary, a British lawyer turned radical Islamist preacher who has been known to have a heavy influence on several young men who have committed crimes in the name of radical Islam. And he himself Choudary, is now facing charges of supporting ISIS online -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Clarissa Ward, thanks.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, an alleged ISIS terror attack in the heart of Istanbul leaves nine tourists dead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:50:26] COSTELLO: Word is ISIS was responsible for this morning's terror attack at one of Istanbul, Turkey's busiest tourist sites -- that's according to Turkish officials who say the unidentified suicide bomber who carried out the deadly bombing was a member of the terror group from Syria. He was born in 1988.
We're also learning that all of those who lost their lives in this blast are foreigners -- at least nine of them German.
Henri Barkey joins me now. He's the Middle East program director at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Welcome -- sir.
HENRI BARKEY, WOODROW WILSON CENTER: Thank you.
COSTELLO: This attack happened in the middle of a popular tourist center where many Americans go for vacation, Istanbul. What do you make of this?
BARKEY: Well, this is clearly an ISIS attack and the idea, of course, is to hit foreigners and kill Europeans and Americans. And in the process also create havoc in Turkey, which already is in the midst of a lot of unrest and there is also a very large ISIS network in Turkey.
So, this is part of ISIS' strategy to make itself heard and make itself harmful to the rest of the world.
COSTELLO: We initially had word that German tourists were being targeted. Does that make sense to you?
BARKEY: I'm not sure that they distinguish between Germans and Americans and Frenchmen. I think any foreigner is fair game for ISIS because this way they're hitting two targets at the same time. They're hitting at Europeans and Westerners and at the same time hitting at Turkey as well.
Because when you have a major terrorist event like this in a very busy tourist area, it's going to affect Turkish tourism because people will start thinking that Turkey is not safe and, therefore, Turkey, which relies on tourism a great deal, it has 35 million tourists come every year, so it is harmful.
It's a one-off event, people will forget, but we don't know if this is the beginning of a concerted attack.
COSTELLO: Well, let's talk about that. Because Turkey has at times been loathe to help in the war on ISIS. Might this attack change things?
BARKEY: Well, Turkey had started to change. For a very long time the Turks did very little in terms of fighting ISIS. In fact, in Turkey itself there is this infrastructure that supports ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria. In fact, we've seen other attacks by ISIS in the past.
Last year, for example, there were three bomb attacks targeted at Turkish Kurds in three different cities and the last one killed 102 people. And so ISIS -- this is not the first time ISIS is doing something in Turkey except that in Turkey they targeted Kurds until now. This is the first time they're targeting non-Turks and non- Kurds, i.e., Europeans and Americans. So, ISIS is an existing problem.
Look, Turkey is next to Syria. There's a huge -- the civil war in Syria is affecting Turkey. You have sympathizers of ISIS who are based in Turkey who run through the border, you know, provide arms and money to ISIS. And these people are well ensconced now in Turkey and they can move easily within Turkey and do these things.
And the Turks have started to target ISIS cells in Turkey. In fact, this week there were a number of raids in different parts of the country where they arrested ISIS sympathizers.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. I mean this is a really, really huge problem for Turkey. And I'm not sure that Turkey intelligence and security services have been as focused on ISIS as they have on Kurdish insurgents and the problem they have with the Kurdish group -- the PKK.
COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there. Henri Barkey -- thanks so much for joining me. I'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:58:34] COSTELLO: Checking some top stories for you at 58 minutes past.
This is brand new video of Tonya Couch leaving jail. The so- called affluenza teen's mom was released moments ago after posting a $75,000 bond. Couch will now wear an ankle monitor and be confined to her home. She'll also undergo a mental evaluation. Of course, she's charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon, her son Ethan Couch. He remains in Mexico pending deportation.
New images this morning of wanted Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam. The surveillance photos were taken at a French gas station just one day after the deadly attacks. He's traveling with two associates and he appears calm. The 26-year-old is believed to have played a role in coordinating the terror attacks that killed 130 people.
Pope Francis is out with a new book called "The Name of God is Mercy". In the book, the Vatican says Pope Francis reveals his vision of God's mercy based on a series of interviews with a Vatican reporter. The book goes on sale today in 86 countries.
All right. So, who wants to be a billionaire? The Powerball lottery jackpot is now $1.4 billion and will keep rising until the next drawing tomorrow night -- the lump sum payout, at least $868 million. In the meantime, Powerball fever has turned into a community event. In Plain View, New York, more than a thousand long islanders lining up to pool their money, $10 each. Any winnings will be split evenly. So far they've collected $10,000 to buy tickets. Good luck.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.
"AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan starts now.
