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Dems Town Hall; Obama Praises Clinton; California Jailbreak; ISIS Releases New Video. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired January 25, 2016 - 14:00   ET

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


[14:00:00] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: For our viewers in North America, "Newsroom" with Brianna Keilar and Brooke Baldwin starts right now.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And here we go, top of the hour on this Monday. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me.

We are exactly one week to go until the first votes in the presidential primary season. And, tonight, three of the candidates get their final chance to make their cases and that is where my colleague Brianna Keilar is standing by for us right now.

Hello, Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, Brooke, thank you so much.

I am live here from Des Moines, where in less than seven hours the Democrat will face Iowa caucus goers, Iowa supporters, during a CNN town hall.

Take a look now at where we stand. The current Iowa front-runners, once considered far-fetched also rans. A CNN poll of polls, which averages the four most recent Iowa polls, shows Donald Trump leading the GOP field in this state. And then for Democrats, the CNN poll of polls shows Sanders just ahead of Hillary Clinton. Sanders speaking in Iowa today, where his push to close the widening income gap is striking a deep chord with some Iowans. It got pretty emotional at one point. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can't buy presents for your children. It's really, really, really hard. And I worked - I worked three, four, five jobs sometimes, always minimum wage. I have a degree. I'm divorced and I'm - it's just - I'm waiting for disability to come through so my parents have to support me.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Let me just -

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's just hard.

SANDERS: All right, thank you. Thank you. It is not easy for people to stand up and say that. But the truth is, that until millions of people who are experiencing exactly what you guys are experiencing do say that, we don't make change. So I thank you for saying - and for telling us what's going on in your lives, because the truth is, you can't make it on $12,000. You can't live in dignity on $10,000 or less.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN political director David Chalian joining me now to talk about all of this.

That strikes me when you see that woman, David, getting so upset and emotional at that Bernie Sanders event. There seems to be I think Sanders likening his campaign a little bit or certainly his insurgency to what we saw from Barack Obama in 2008, but the mood seems to be different here, right? Rather than the hope and change, there seems to be this sort of frustration and almost desperation that we heard from a woman here in Iowa.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Right. I mean I think what Bernie Sanders just experienced there is having his core message sort of given voice through the - through the voice of a voter. And that's an important tool on the campaign trail. And you saw, he kind of handed over his campaign stop to one of the voters so that he put a real person's story into the message that he's been driving all along on income inequality and these challenging economic times for the middle class.

This is the message that's been working for him. Yet, you heard Barack Obama say this morning in an interview with Politico, Brianna, that like you can't just do one thing in this job, right? And I think that was a subtle dig to Bernie Sanders, to say sort of, you can't just be a one-trick pony, you've got to make sure your message is broader and that you're able to do the complete job of the presidency. And that, I think, is why Hillary Clinton drives her experience message.

KEILAR: And it was so notable that he sort of, you know, spoke highly of Hillary Clinton. Of course he's withholding an endorsement until there's a nominee, but that was certainly something we noticed.

This is a town hall, which means that the people asking the questions are going to be able to drive the conversation. But at the same time, these candidates are going to be tying to pivot to what they want to talk about. What does Hillary Clinton want to focus on?

CHALIAN: I think if you just look at the television ads that we all see here in Iowa now, her closing argument is, I am the experienced person that can achieve the goals we're all talking about on the campaign trail. That's a very different message than we're hearing from Bernie Sanders. But that is the Clinton campaign closing message.

What I find so fascinating is that it's not that dissimilar from the message that she was selling in 2008. It is an amazing thing to see this candidate back in a similar position in terms of finding herself in this really tight race in Iowa with this outsider candidate, and she's resorting to the very same message that she was using back then. You know, it didn't work for her then and she - clearly Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders are not the same person, but I do think it is the message she is clearly most comfortable with.

KEILAR: And maybe she's banking more on her organization working sort of over the message. But I wonder what you think about that because Bernie Sanders is selling political revolution. Hillary Clinton is saying experience. I mean one's a little more like dessert to caucus goers and one's a little more like eating your vegetables. So when Iowans think about where they are in the scope of the nominating process, what are they more likely to go for, the dessert or the vegetables?

[14:05:20] CHALIAN: You ask the question, and this will come down to, as you said, the Clinton campaign has invested heavily into an operation that identify everyone that wants their vegetables, right? They want - they have said that they are going to eat their broccoli, they're going to show up and do it. They really invested in that kind of organization. Bernie Sanders' campaign I think is a little more reliant on, well, everybody loves dessert, right, so they're going to come out for that, to use your metaphor. That, I think, is the great unknown. And, you know, we've seen two different versions of this. Howard Dean, 2004, they didn't show up and caucus. You know, Barack Obama, 2008, they did, and I think that's what we're waiting for a week from tonight.

KEILAR: Yes, which one is Bernie Sanders? We will see. All right, David Chalian, thank you so much.

CHALIAN: Yes, thank you.

KEILAR: And, Brooke, back to you in New York.

BALDWIN: Good deal. We'll see you in just a moment. Brianna, thank you.

Meantime, as they were just mentioning, President Obama has not endorsed anyone, but in this interview with Politico, he's not hiding who he favors. He oozes with admiration for Hillary Clinton as he spoke about competing against her back in 2008. And the president points out that the disadvantage Clinton faced against him then is an obstacle for her now against Sanders eight years later.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (voice-over): The sheer strength, determination, endurance, stick-to-it-ness, never give up attitude that Hillary had during those primaries. I mean, we had as competitive and lengthy and expensive and tough primary fight as there's been in modern American politics. And she had to do everything that I had to do, except, like Ginger Rogers, backwards in heels. Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

OBAMA: And just letting loose.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

OBAMA: I think Hillary came in with the - both privilege and burden of being perceived as the frontrunner. You're always looking at the bright shiny object that people don't - haven't seen before. That's a disadvantage to her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: With me now, CNN Inside Politics contributor Jonathan Martin, who is also a national political correspondent for "The New York Times."

Hello, Jonathan Martin, how are you?

JONATHAN MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR, CNN INSIDE POLITICS: Hey. Good, thank you. How are you?

BALDWIN: All right, I am well.

You know, so with this interview, I mean it was incredible how - how sort of unreserved the president was. And when you listen to people like the president, I'm always listening to not only what he says but what he's not. And so here you have this heaping praise of Hillary Clinton, and that's not surprising, but it's this - the lack of praise, almost going out of the way of praising Bernie Sanders is what really stood out to me. What about you?

MARTIN: Well, he's not comparing his '08 candidacy to Bernie Sanders campaign today.

BALDWIN: Not at all.

MARTIN: And that - that tells the story right there. I mean if Bernie Sanders wants to make the case that he has the kind of insurgency against the Democratic establishment that propelled Barack Obama here to a surprise win in '08. And the very man who is the father of that surprise insurgency a week before the caucuses says, no, not so much. That's a wet blanket on the Bernie Sanders campaign when they were really starting to move here. And Barack Obama, ostensibly, is not a Hillary Clinton surrogate. But in that chat with Glenn Thrush in the Oval Office, he sure do sound like one.

BALDWIN: He did. He did. And here he was also sort of peeling back this curtain of, you know, '07/'08, the revelations, what it was like for him in Iowa then.

MARTIN: Yes.

BALDWIN: How the media treated him versus Hillary Clinton and how he sort of admits to the fact that it seemed the media was tilted toward him and away from her.

MARTIN: Right. Yes, I was so struck by that, the fact that he conceded what every Clinton backer noticed in '07 and '08, which is that the media were putting a thumb or maybe an entire hand or arm on the scale for Barack Obama during that campaign.

BALDWIN: Yes.

MARTIN: And the fact that - that he's saying that now, to your point, it's above and beyond what he had to do at this point in the campaign for Hillary Clinton. And it comes just a few days after the White House insisted that he's totally neutral in this primary. Of course he's not. He wants to see Hillary succeed him because he believes that she would sort of carry on the work of his administration. And so I think he's gone about as far as he's going to go, at least for right now, into trying to help her out.

BALDWIN: When you look at how she was on the - when was that, the last debate and the Obama bear hug, you know, so it's sort of he's giving favor back toward her, right?

MARTIN: Oh, my gosh.

BALDWIN: So - but on the flip side, on the flip side, Jonathan, and you know politics so well, you know, he was asked about Trump and Cruz and all this sort angry rhetoric that's just everywhere.

[14:10:11] MARTIN: Yes. Right.

BALDWIN: And his point was that the gap is as wide as he's ever seen between Republicans and Democrats. What did you make of that?

MARTIN: He is basically confirming something that Ted Cruz himself said a couple weeks ago, which is that the Republican electorate has been radicalized by President Obama. And the president held up the example of John McCain's campaign eight years ago and said, John McCain was a conservative, but he was someone who accepted that the climate was in fact warming, who accepted kind of a much less, you know, doctrinaire style of conservativism. And that - the party is in a different place now. And that is in part because of the opposition to this president.

So I think he's trying to start what you'll see Secretary Clinton do more of this fall if she is the nominee to say, effectively, this is not your grandfather's GOP. They've become much more extreme. And you have to sort of support me to stop them.

Look, she's not going to have the enthusiasm that Barack Obama had in the last two campaigns. I think every Democrat would concede that. The enthusiasm they are going to have to harness -

BALDWIN: And he even mentioned that. He said, listen, she's better with small crowds.

MARTIN: Yes. So the enthusiasm that they're going to have to harness for her, Brooke _-

BALDWIN: Yes.

MARTIN: Is definitely going to be in opposition to the Republicans, rather than in support of their own nominee.

BALDWIN: It's a totally different feel. Jonathan Martin, thank you so much. It was a great interview. Great interview, Glenn Thrush, with Politico.

MARTIN: Thank you. BALDWIN: Thank you.

And, by the way, big, big night for us here on CNN. You have to tune in. The Democratic town hall is tonight starting at 9:00 Eastern right here on CNN. We will take you back to Des Moines and Brianna, but coming up next, a manhunt is underway for three inmates who managed to pull off this stunning escape. Of course, a fight, bed sheets, tunnels, all part of this whole break. We'll explain that.

Also ahead, new threats of large-scale terror attack after ISIS releases video of the Paris terrorists before that coordinated massacre.

And on this Monday afternoon, the nation's capital still shut down, even though New York, for the most part, back up and running. Other major cities, major airports also struggling to return to normal as we kick off the work week. We will take you there.

You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:16:45] BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

New information on a daring jailbreak in southern California. Police there just wrapped this news briefing and they warned that these three prisoners here, on the run since Friday, are considered armed, desperate and very, very dangerous. Police say these three broke out by cutting through half-inch thick steel bars, crawling through plumbing tunnels, rappelling down the side of this four-story building using ropes made of bed sheets and towels. The three all three suspects in violent crimes, and then just walked away.

Paul Vercammen, let me go to you. I know the briefing ended just a bit ago. What did you learn?

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, again, they talked about that they are concerned that these three extremely violent criminals may turn desperate. And they reached out to the community, warning community members to be on the alert for them. Two of these criminals, suspected Vietnamese gang members. And let's go ahead and listen to what one of the officials had to say about their concerns right now, Brooke.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. DAVE SAWYER, ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT: We feel that they may be embedded somewhere in the community. And that's why we're reaching out to the community and letting them know, we understand that you're in danger. We understand that you're fearful. We understand that you may be fearful about coming forward with information about where these individuals are located. We're telling the community, it's an obligation for you to come out and let us know. We can keep you anonymous if you want to remain anonymous, but we need the information to help us go forward to find these people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VERCAMMEN: And as a precaution, they have issued 30 search warrants and also warned victims and witnesses about these men being released. The rap sheets, just staggering. Each one of them basically a one-man crime wave.

Let's start off with Nayeri. He is accused of kidnapping, torture, using a blow torch, among other unmentionable things, aggravated mayhem, burglary. He was held without bond. At one point, he fled to Prague, Czechoslovakia, and was caught by authorities.

The youngest of the three is Tieu. He was brought in, in juvenile hall. He's only 20 years old. He's been in the system it seems like for at least five years. Murder and attempted murder among his greatest hits.

And then Bac Tien Duong, he's 43 years old, attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, avoiding arrest, selling meth, burglary and more. Again, these three men considered right now, Brooke, to be armed and, of course, extremely dangerous.

BALDWIN: Got to find them. Paul Vercammen, thank you so much.

Let's discuss further with Los Angeles-based bounty hunter Zeke Unger.

And, Zeke, let me just begin with what we just heard from the lieutenant at the Orange County Sheriff's Department, the fact that they believe that these three are embedded in his community. That was his phrase. Why stay in the community? If you're - if you're, you know, trying to get out of this maximum security prison, why not go as far as you possibly could?

ZEKE UNGER, BOUNTY HUNTER: Well, normally fugitives do stay around their local area. They need support from family. They need to be able to gain some kind of income. But in this particular matter, I believe that these defendants have fled the area. I think what we're going to see is, we're going to see something occur soon out of desperation, which will put them somewhere else in the country. I believe that you -

BALDWIN: What do you mean something?

[14:20:02] UNGER: A carjacking, a home invasion, a robbery. Some way that they can gain income in order to keep on the move.

BALDWIN: You know, we think prison breaks, obviously, most recently, we think of - we've talked so much about El Chapo. We've talked about, you know, what happened here in New York last year. I mean when you read the details, Zeke, the fact that they - they cut through steel bars, went through plumbing tunnels, tied bed sheets together, you know, to repel down from this roof. This is like, you know, apparently the first jailbreak at this facility in nearly 30 years. How does this happen?

UNGER: Well, it's almost like a small Shawshank. Basically, this is a local county jail and not a maximum security facility, which makes it a little bit easier. There's not a - they don't have to penetrate as much. Although these inmates have a long time to think about what they're doing and orchestrate. And they just happen to catch a lucky break at the same time. But it was well thought out, well planned.

BALDWIN: I thought I had read it was a maximum security jail, but I - I hear you on that it was not a full-blown prison.

UNGER: No.

BALDWIN: Also we learned that authorities believe a fight was staged to then distract, you know, jail officials, to help these three escape, believing that they had escaped after that first head count Friday morning, 5:00 a.m. Then the next head count wasn't until 9:00 at night. Why so much time in between and how smart would that distraction be?

UNGER: Well, I mean, we have to investigate. We can't assume. And I think that will come to light when they're caught and debriefed. But my thought is that these local facilities are very overcrowded and not managed properly. And I think a lot of these things that we're seeing is due to poor management and security within the facilities themselves.

BALDWIN: I like how you said that, when they are caught. Agreed. Zeke Unger, bounty hunter, thank you so much.

UNGER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, we have new ISIS video showing the Paris attackers training, giving testimonials and threatening an attack in a major western country.

Plus, Julian Castro, rising star in the Democratic Party, is in Iowa rallying support for Hillary Clinton. Might he become a potential contender for vice president? Hear what he says about that and Bernie Sanders coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:26:34] BALDWIN: ISIS has released a new video purportedly showing the Paris terror attackers. The group claimed responsibility for the November slaughter that left 130 people dead. The propaganda video, it is gruesome. It shows beheadings, along with testimonials from these alleged attackers, including the suspected ringleader. It also warns of more violent acts of terrorism to come.

Let's go straight to London now, to our CNN international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson.

Nic, what more do you know about this video?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Brooke, it looks like an effort by ISIS to show these Paris attackers in Iraq or Syria, wherever they're carrying out these bloody executions. And as a side note about those executions, they're absolutely macabre and abhorrent because these poor men who are being executed in a brutal way by these Paris attackers, individually, one at a time, these attackers give speeches and then go ahead and execute these men. We know nothing about the people that are being executed. They're some sort of macabre extras in ISIS propaganda.

One of the things you notice about these attackers is they're all wearing new battlefield uniforms. It looks like it's straight out of a box. It certainly doesn't look like these guys have been to the front line any place. But what ISIS is trying to do here is say, look, we have these guys in Iraq in Syria. We got them to Paris. They perpetrated this attack. It's a slickly produced video, propaganda ISIS-style. In the last minute, they imply that Britain could be next in line for an attack like Paris because Britain decided to bomb ISIS in Syria, to join the United States in the last few months and do that, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Frightening. Nic Robertson, thank you.

Coming up next, Julian Castro, a rising star in the Democratic Party, is in Iowa rallying support for Hillary Clinton. Could he become a potential contender for VP? Hear from him directly, next.

And DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is in Iowa as well ahead of tonight's Democratic town hall here on CNN. What she thinks about President Obama's suggestion that Bernie Sanders is a one-issue candidate. We'll take you straight to Des Moines, next.

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