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Trump Campaign Defends Controversial Deleted Tweet; Obama to Stump for Hillary Clinton in North Carolina; Deadly Week of Terror Around the World. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 05, 2016 - 07:00   ET

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

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Donald Trump firing back at critics who say the star shape in his Twitter campaign posted anti-Semitic imagery, calling the attacks "false and ridiculous." Trump singling out Hillary Clinton's campaign, which called his tweet "blatantly anti-Semitic and part of a pattern."

[07:00:13] In a statement Trump says, "The former secretary of state is trying to divert attention from dishonest behavior of herself and her husband."

But the Clinton campaign is not alone in condemning the image.

JONATHAN GREENBLATT, DIRECTOR, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE: The Trump campaign has invoked bigotry and anti-Semitism, racism; and now it's hard to call it anything other than a pattern.

CARROLL: Daniel Scavino, Trump's former New York golf course caddy turned social media director for the campaign, now says he selected the star, not the Jewish Star of David, but as he called it a "sheriff's badge," explaining he found it "under Microsoft's shapes." Scavino said in a statement the image was lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear and not sourced from an anti-Semitic site.

But CNN, through use of an Internet archiving site, found that the same graphic tweeted by Trump appeared ten days earlier on a message board filled with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and neo-Nazi ideology.

GREENBLATT: It's an interesting question to ask: Why is your fact- finding department focusing on fiction and how a major presidential campaign can be looking at racist websites or anti-Semitic sections of other online sources and using it to find content to share with the American public?

CARROLL: Trump deleting the tweet on Saturday, reposting the graphic, replacing the star in question with a circle.

ED BROOKOVER, SENIOR ADVISOR, DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN: These memes float around the Internet. Not every six-sided star is a Star of David. There's no anti-Semitism in Mr. Trump's body, not one ounce, not one cell.

(END VIDEOTAPE) CARROLL: And Trump's supporters point out that Trump's son-in-law is Jewish and that his daughter, Ivanka, converted.

Trump's critics say there should have been more checks and balances. They say someone in the campaign should have known that a six-pointed star posted with money evokes anti-Semitic imagery -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Jason. Much more on that coming up.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton will have her first joint appearance on the campaign trail with President Obama of this 2016 race. The two will travel to North Carolina aboard Air Force One, which has Donald Trump asking who's paying for this ride?

CNN White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski is live in Charlotte with more. Big day for the Clinton campaign, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: On the one hand, you have Hillary Clinton, who's been campaigning for a long. On the other, you have President Obama, who virtually every time he speaks now makes some reference, veiled or otherwise, slamming Donald Trump. I mean, we're curious to know if he will actually mention him by name here today.

But he will fly with Hillary Clinton on Air Force One here. I mean, so that the campaign will have that image of her stepping off the plane with him. What could be a more ringing endorsement?

And then later on today, Donald Trump will also be making an appearance in North Carolina in Raleigh. So that tells you how important this battleground state is to both of them.

And Donald Trump raised that question, which has been raised many times whenever a president travels for a campaign: who is picking up the Bill? The answer is they both will. Because, you know, Air Force One is very expensive to operate. It costs more than $200,000 an hour.

So the way this has been done for decades is the White House, which means you, the taxpayer, will pay for what amounts to most of it, but the campaign will pay for a chunk of it, roughly what it would cost for the campaign to rent out a plane for that size for that amount of time; and they will reimburse the White House for that.

But the president will be, you know -- it's his first time on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton. He'll want to energize the Democratic base, which has been growing here, but this is a state, you'll remember, where he won in 2008 but lost in 2012 -- Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Michelle, thank you for that preview. We'll talk about all of that and more now with CNN political commentator and former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski; and former New York City council speaker and Clinton supporter, Christine Quinn. She is the vice chair of the New York state Democratic Party. Great to have both of you here.

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Morning.

CAMEROTA: Let's start first with this Star of David tweet. Corey, can you explain inside the campaign how this works with social media? Because this isn't the first time that there was a controversial tweet. How did it work that this graphic that had appeared on a neo- Nazi message board would make its way to Donald Trump's Twitter feed?

LEWANDOWSKI: Well, let me first say that the director of social media for the Trump campaign is a good friend of mine. His name is Dan Scavino. And he basically does this job by himself. And if you look at Mr. Trump's Twitter feed, he has put out over 30,000 tweets since he's started on Twitter.

And what Dan did and what he said he did is he went to an anti-Hillary Twitter site and found this image of the star and copied that image and used it on a graphic which he designed wholly on his own.

CAMEROTA: But that's not possible, Corey.

CHRISTINE QUINN, VICE CHAIR, NEW YORK STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: That's what he did?

LEWANDOWSKI: That's what he said he did.

[07:05:00] CAMEROTA: I know that's what he said he did, but it's not possible. And the reason it's not possible is because that very same image first appeared on June 15, so weeks ago, on this -- from this Twitter user, @fishbonehead1, who frequently posted Islamophobic and racist memes. He had the original image before his account was deleted. Then it appeared on this message board that's a white supremacist neo-Nazi website. So he didn't create the image.

LEWANDOWSKI: No, no. He didn't say he created it. He said he took it off of a...

CAMEROTA: Off of Twitter.

LEWANDOWSKI: No, he said he took it off a Twitter site which is an anti-Hillary Twitter site, and he took that image. Look, that very well could have happened.

I know Dan very well. He's a good man. He's got two young children. He is not anti-Semitic in any way, shape or form. He's been a very loyal person. And for a firestorm to be created over an image which Dan took off of someone else's site, I think is a little egregious, I have to tell you. Let's talk about what the real issue is. That Hillary Clinton spent three and a half hours being investigated and having an interview with the FBI. Now the image...

CAMEROTA: I understand that's what you want to talk about. But it's been eclipsed by some of this. I understand that that's what you want to talk about, and we will get to Hillary Clinton. But we just have to -- we have to finalize that -- how it happened.

Because you know, Michael Caputo, who you used to work with on the... LEWANDOWSKI: Let me just talk about Michael Caputo. Michael Caputo never worked for the campaign. He was fired from a -- from a job as a volunteer. So Michael Caputo has nothing...

CAMEROTA: Over a tweet.

LEWANDOWSKI: Over a tweet.

CAMEROTA: Should Dan Scavino lose his job?

LEWANDOWSKI: Absolutely not. There's no malice intent of what Dan Scavino did. What he did is he took an image that he saw on the web, and he put it on a tweet and put it out.

And look, if Dan thought that this would be anti-Semitic in any way, shape or form, it never would have been approved. This isn't a 20- person social media team is the difference. Unlike the Hillary Clinton campaign, which had 10 or 15 people, you have one person who looked at it, made a good decision in the best of their ability and put out, because it was so -- so not so nonsensical that he didn't think anything to it.

CAMEROTA: OK.

QUINN: Let me say a couple things. First of all, it defies logic that an intelligent person who would be running social media for a presumptive nominee to be president of the United States would have no sense, when you took that shaped star and put it on a pile of money and put the word "corrupt" and other words in it, it defies logic.

CAMEROTA: He didn't know the connotation. He didn't know that connotation.

QUINN: Let me...

CAMEROTA: He says he didn't know the anti-Semitic connotation.

QUINN: Well, I just want to say, first of all, I find that hard to believe.

But second, let's say that's the truth. You got the image off an anti-Hillary website and then no vetting, no double checking, no running it by anybody. That speaks to me of shooting -- at best shooting from the hip and sloppy, which is not what you want in an operation that could transition to White House.

And let's also be clear, this is not the first outrageous tweet by a long shot. After the Supreme Court decision around the Texas anti- choice laws...

CAMEROTA: Yes.

QUINN: ... and this didn't get much attention -- but Donald Trump tweeted that the female members of the Supreme Court should have had to recuse themselves. So is he saying if a prostate case goes to the Supreme Court, all the

men have to recuse themselves? It's going to be pretty hard to come up with cases if that's how we're going to run it.

LEWANDOWSKI: The story this weekend is Hillary Clinton spent three and a half hours being investigated by the FBI. The story this weekend is that Bill Clinton sat down and met with the attorney general, which is completely inappropriate. The mainstream media doesn't want to cover this, unfortunately.

CAMEROTA: Well, we have covered that.

QUINN: That's not true.

LEWANDOWSKI: You're spending more time about a star which is created by an individual who has Jewish friends, who is close friends with Ivanka Trump, who's close friends with Jared Kushner, who are both Jewish, who have been part of the Trump family organization for over ten years; and all of a sudden, he's being accused of something which didn't happen. Why don't you give him some credit to say that he simply took an image and put it on there, and there's no anti- sentiment...

CAMEROTA: Do you know how Ivanka felt about? Has Jared weighed in on that.

LEWANDOWSKI: I don't know. But I can tell you this. Donald Trump has been a person...

QUINN: No, because apparently no one did.

LEWANDOWSKI: Donald Trump has been a person, going back 30 years, that in his corporation, he has hired senior executives that are Jewish to be part of his organization. If you look at his CFO, you look at his chief legal counsel. You look at all those individuals.

CAMEROTA: Sure. You're saying there's nothing anti-Semitic about that...

(CROSSTALK)

LEWANDOWSKI: Go back and look at what he did when he started the Mar- a-Lago Club in Florida. He was the first club in Palm Beach to allow Jewish members to be part of it, because the bath and tennis club wouldn't allow them at the time. And he went and said, "This is discriminatory, and we have to let people in of all races and..."

CAMEROTA: And that is laudatory. Hold on one second, Christine.

LEWANDOWSKI: I don't understand why, all of a sudden, an image is put out and all of a sudden, he's anti-Semitic and egregious.

CAMEROTA: Hold on.

LEWANDOWSKI: Because 30 years of history have proven that he isn't. CAMEROTA: Fine. So is there a sloppiness, then? Is there a

sloppiness and a lack of sort of sensitivity in the campaign that would allow this?

LEWANDOWSKI: Did a staff person take an image off of someone else's Twitter feed?

QUINN: He's the director of social media. Director.

LEWANDOWSKI: Did Donald Trump have anything to do with it? Absolutely not. And if you think that every single tweet that goes off of Hillary Clinton's account she personally approves, that's egregious.

QUINN: Of course not. Of course she does not. That would be an absurd level of micromanagement.

LEWANDOWSKI: Well, that's what you're saying. You're saying...

[07:10:03] QUINN: You have to be quiet.

(CROSSTALK)

LEWANDOWSKI: No, that is sloppiness in his staff that wouldn't know there's that there's that connection.

QUINN: Wait a minute, Corey, you're bringing up every positive thing, and he deserves credit for all of it. That's fine. That's irrelevant to what happened with this tweet.

And the point here is that Hillary review every tweet? No. You know hers because they say a certain "H.C." or whatever on the bottom.

The point here is that Donald Trump has a campaign, has a campaign that repeatedly sends out offensive tweets and then tries to write them off in some Monday morning quarterbacking with these creative stories around them.

And it speaks to sloppiness. It speaks to not taking the job he's seeking seriously. And it speaks -- really, it stretches credibility that this happens over and over again, group after group after group.

CAMEROTA: OK.

QUINN: And the fact someone has Jewish friends does not erase the possibility they could be anti-Semitic.

CAMEROTA: No, but if he has a history of having done things that are...

QUINN: No, I'm talking about the social media person.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead.

LEWANDOWSKI: I don't think we can impugn Dan Scavino. I don't think there's any malice there whatsoever. And you don't know him, so I'd be very careful about that.

QUINN: I'm just saying your defense is not...

LEWANDOWSKI: You don't know him. But look at the history of Donald Trump with -- whether it's a parade that he has led, whether it is putting a club together to make sure that Jewish people in Palm Beach have a place to go, whether it's the senior executives of his private corporation, whether it's his CFO or his CTO or his chief legal counsel, he has a long and storied history. Last year he received the Algemeiner Award for his support of the Jewish state. He has a 30- year history of supporting the people of Israel.

And this story about a meme or a picture which was placed on a tweet has been so blown up out of...

CAMEROTA: Very quickly, should someone have apologized? Should Dan Scavino or Donald Trump?

LEWANDOWSKI: Dan did apologize. He said he didn't do -- that's what happened.

QUINN: No. That's not an apology.

LEWANDOWSKI: He said what happened. He said, "I took it from here and I put it up." And because the guy didn't even think about it, he just did it without thinking.

QUINN: Let me just say a quick thing, though. This list of qualified individuals who happen to be Jewish that Donald Trump hired -- excuse me, hired, we also have a long list of qualified women who Donald Trump hired to work in the company who have had terrible stories of being treated badly. So the hiring record and how the company treats people is not the same.

And let's not forget his pledge to make all Americans safe, merry Christmas. Not a particularly embracing statement. And he said it repeatedly about our Jewish brothers and sisters in the United States.

CAMEROTA: OK. That's a little bit different, because he's saying that "happy holidays" is actually unfair to people who celebrate Christmas. But we're getting off the path.

QUINN: But it speaks to whether you're embracing diversity or using it against.

CAMEROTA: Let's move on to Hillary Clinton. She will be -- for the first time, Barack Obama will be on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton. What can President Obama do in terms of helping how Hillary Clinton is seen as trustworthy? What does he plan to do about that?

QUINN: Look, I think President Obama is a president who's done a terrific job, has a 50 percent approval rating right now, which is a very high number if you think about a president in -- coming to the end of his second term. He's someone who has obviously historic -- is a historic president, has electrified and energized the base of the Democratic Party and independent voters. And I think we're going to see that kind of enthusiasm and energy in

psyching up the crowds come in this rally today.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Corey.

LEWANDOWSKI: This is going to be the third term of the Obama administration if Hillary Clinton is elected. Everyone knows that. Her husband is now damaged goods by simply meeting with Loretta Lynch, so she doesn't want to campaign with him on the trail right now. She's using Air Force as a prop to go down there. She should be paying the full freight of the $200,000 an hour to use Air Force One.

CAMEROTA: I think they said that the DNC is going to pay...

LEWANDOWSKI: They're going to pay a portion of it. But they're also going...

QUINN: Their portion.

LEWANDOWSKI: They're going to pay a portion. They should pay the whole freight is the bottom line. The taxpayers shouldn't be stuck with this.

Moreover, Hillary Clinton is going to extend the same bad policies that the Obama administration has, which is no tax cuts for the working families, increased national deficit, and you know, this president, unfortunately, has done a terrible job of helping inner- city youth find jobs.

QUINN: You know what she won't do?

CAMEROTA: What?

QUINN: She won't do what Donald Trump is proposing...

LEWANDOWSKI: Which is create jobs. Which is create jobs. She will not create jobs. She's never created a job in the private sector.

QUINN: ... and Barack Obama would never -- you and Barack Obama wouldn't have done it.

LEWANDOWSKI: He's hypocritical.

QUINN: You need to be quiet. You tell everyone to everyone else to be quiet. Be quiet.

LEWANDOWSKI: Ever. Ever.

QUINN: So while I'm speaking I'm going to do this.

CAMEROTA: No touching the guests. No touching each other.

QUINN: My point is she wouldn't cut trillions of dollars for the super-rich ever. And that is what we'll see Donald Trump do.

CAMEROTA: There will -- there will be a group hug. But Christine, what about that? Isn't there a danger of it becoming

the third -- being seen as the third Obama term for people who want a change and we know voters do?

QUINN: Look, I think Hillary Clinton as the first woman president of the United States, is also going to be an historic president. And will she do things differently than Barack Obama? Of course she will. She's a different person.

[07:15:05] But let's be clear. I think Secretary Clinton and I and many -- most Democrats and most independents in America are incredibly proud of what Barack Obama has done for this country.

And she will not bring anti-immigrant, discriminatory policies to the White House. She will not cut trillions of dollars of taxes...

CAMEROTA: OK.

QUINN: ... for the ultra-rich in this country, which is what Donald Trump has proposed. And she will not put -- embrace international decisions like Brexit, because they help her golf club make more money.

CAMEROTA: OK.

QUINN: You won't see any of that.

LEWANDOWSKI: What Hillary Clinton will do is go to Wall Street and raise tens of millions of dollars which she has done and continues to do and be bought and paid for by those executives on Wall Street. She's raised over $40 million from Wall Street alone. And then she goes and says...

CAMEROTA: Donald Trump won't ever take -- won't be...

LEWANDOWSKI: He has self-funded his own campaign.

CAMEROTA: What would his relationship be with Wall Street?

LEWANDOWSKI: What he's already said is, if you look at his tax plan, he's going to get rid of that carried dividend loophole which Wall Street takes advantage of. It's a big differentiator.

Hillary Clinton doesn't want to put any reforms on Wall Street.

QUINN: That's not true.

LEWANDOWSKI: The only reason -- the only reason she's even talking about it is...

QUINN: That is not true.

LEWANDOWSKI: ... is because Bernie Sanders and now Elizabeth Warren are pushing her to stay away from Wall Street.

QUINN: That is not true. LEWANDOWSKI: Excuse me, it's my turn.

QUINN: You're right. You're right.

LEWANDOWSKI: So the difference is the third term of the Obama administration would be one where the country is again in peril.

CAMEROTA: OK. I want to talk about what's happened with Hillary Clinton's e-mail probe. You said -- you talked about the meeting on the tarmac between former president Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch. She has said, as a result, she will take whatever the recommendations are of the career prosecutors in the Justice Department. So what more...

LEWANDOWSKI: But what she also said was she reserves the right -- she reserves the right, as the attorney general, to overrule that. So she's tried to play it both ways. She said -- what she has always done, and she's been very fair and very equitable as a prosecutor. What she has said was, "I will take the advice of career prosecutors. I will take that counsel."

However, she always reserved the right, whether she was here in New York or as the attorney general, to overrule rule that.

CAMEROTA: But she's changed that. After the tarmac meeting, she said, "I will accept what they come up with."

LEWANDOWSKI: Because the optics have been so bad on this that she never should have taken this meeting. The meeting should have...

CAMEROTA: She said it was her fault. She said it was a mistake.

LEWANDOWSKI: Hillary Clinton said it was a mistake with her e-mail server, as well. Right? You can't go back and undo what you've done. She should have known better. The fact that Bill Clinton asked for a private meeting next to his private jet. You park your private jet next to my private jet, and we'll have a cozy meeting inside with nobody there except the Secret Service detail, is egregious. Like, if that was the average person...

CAMEROTA: What are you calling for? What do you want to see happen?

LEWANDOWSKI: She should absolutely recuse herself right now unequivocally.

CAMEROTA: She did that.

LEWANDOWSKI: And say, regardless -- regardless of whatever the director of the FBI says, the Justice Department will prosecute if that recommendation comes from Director Comey.

QUINN: I think the attorney general was very clear that having former President Clinton come onto her government -- not private plane, government -- plane was a mistake. She said it very clearly at the Aspen Institute meeting. She also said very clearly that she was not going to follow the

traditional protocol which Corey speaks of, but that she was going to be briefed and accept the recommendation of career prosecutors...

CAMEROTA: Yes.

QUINN: ... because of the mistake with the meeting. She has recused herself.

And the statement Corey just made is just another example of the Trump campaign changing the facts to fit the narrative they want.

CAMEROTA: OK.

QUINN: And a few minutes ago, we were -- Corey was giving all of the deference in the world to a staff member whom he says made a mistake. Here the attorney general said she made a mistake, but she is given no deference or no (UNINTELLIGIBLE) at all.

CAMEROTA: It's funny how that works out. Each side is willing to allow their own mistakes on the Democratic or the Republican side.

LEWANDOWSKI: The difference is -- the difference is...

CAMEROTA: Last seconds.

LEWANDOWSKI: The attorney general of the United States meeting with the former president to discuss, potentially, a case in which she is directly involved with. Send a letter right now that says, "I absolutely recuse myself. I want nothing to do with this," and everyone will be happy. Put it in writing.

QUINN: She made that -- she made that statement. And Corey just forgot it. Corey, she is saying that's not what they spoke about. She has made that statement.

LEWANDOWSKI: They talked about golf and grandchildren for 30 minutes? Give me a break.

CAMEROTA: We have therapists standing by in the green room, standing by and coffee in the green room. Thank you very much.

QUINN: Decaf, I hope.

CAMEROTA: You'll be back tomorrow. If you leave, we'll see you guys tomorrow -- John.

BERMAN: Hi, Alisyn. All right.

Nineteen minutes after the hour, Baghdad reeling from the deadliest attack it has endured in years, and it took place as Ramadan comes to a close. Is the U.S. strategy against ISIS working? We're going to speak to a former ambassador to both Turkey and Iraq. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [07:23:26] BERMAN: Baghdad rocked by the deadliest terror attack in Iraq in more than a decade. More than 200 people dead, according to Iraqi official, just one in a violent string of bombings and attacks by ISIS around the world.

Want to bring in former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq, and visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, Ambassador James Jeffrey.

Ambassador, thank you so much for being with us.

When you look at the map, sir, of the attacks that have taken place in just the last month, from Orlando, to Bangladesh, to Baghdad, Saudi Arabia just yesterday, staggering in their scope and their breadth. Just moments ago we had deputy secretary of state Tony Blinken on. And he said in some ways this is a result of the success that he believes the U.S. is having, battling ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY BLINKEN, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE: I think what we're seeing is a product, to some great extent, of the success we're having against ISIS, because we're putting intense pressure on ISIS at its core in Iraq and Syria. And what we're seeing is it lashing out in other places.

They're reverting back to a different model of terrorism, which are these indiscriminate terror attacks, suicide bombers, IEDs in cars, et cetera. And it does terrific damage. And it terrorizes people.

But the more you take this territory away from them, the more you take their story away from them, the less attractive they become to people around the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Ambassador, do you agree with that assessment? Is this what success looks like?

JAMES JEFFREY, VISITING FELLOW, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE: Not entirely. ISIS still has the core of its territory and its forces. And it still is able to launch these awful attacks, which is not something new. It's been able to do this for years, and we've known it. We haven't moved fast enough against this terrible force.

[07:25:04] BERMAN: You look what happened in Iraq over the weekend, the attack in the Karrada district in Baghdad. And I know, I'm sure, you've been to Karrada. It's a busy, bustling street, an area where so much activity takes place. And you see the devastation, and we're getting just these pictures, these aerial pictures right now of how much was damaged in that attack, more than 200 people killed, according to the Iraqi officials.

How does that make you feel when you see that type of attack all these years after the invasion there?

JEFFREY: Well, obviously, terrible. I feel horrible about the deaths of the people. The same thing with Istanbul. I know that airport well.

But I worry, as well, aside from the horrific number of casualties, the impact this has on the Turkish and the Iraqi governments. ISIS is doing this deliberately to, if not knock them out of the fight, divert them from the offensive operations that the U.S. government is putting so much stock in.

And this is not a bad ISIS strategy. It is having some success. And we need to up our game.

BERMAN: We need to up our game. So you're saying the United States not doing enough right now in the battle against ISIS in Iraq specifically?

JEFFREY: We have 1 percent of our active duty Army and Marine forces in this fight. A slightly higher percent of our aircraft, of course, but still, they're under certain limitations on their rules of engagement. We usually don't put troops close to the front line. We've been very, very cautious on launching Special Forces attacks so that we've done a few, and they're very effective. But we -- the president should not turn this problem over to the next administration.

BERMAN: Is that what you think he's doing right now?

JEFFREY: I don't think he wants to do that. I think he's going to do that.

BERMAN: You think he's going to do that. In other words, you just do not think the United -- the administration right now is stepping up in this battle the way it needs to right now?

JEFFREY: That's right.

BERMAN: What more should they do right now?

JEFFREY: Well, I would recommend far more -- looser rules of engagement, more advisory teams on the front lines, probably a few elite U.S. combat units to lead the attack in places like Meinbich (ph) in Syria, where we've tried to cut off ISIS's flow of recruits and supplies, but ISIS is fighting back hard.

BERMAN: So you want more troops, among other things. What do you think is holding the Obama administration back from doing some of the things you would like to see?

JEFFREY: Two things. I think the president is very reluctant to use troops and suffer casualties, and that's understandable, particularly in the Middle East.

The second thing is people in Washington, understandably, are very worried about, well, what will happen the day after? They're right to worry. I've seen the mess after we went into Iraq in 2003. The point is, if -- you have a terrible mess right now. If you don't act, you're going to have that mess and sooner or later when ISIS goes, you're going to have that mess, too. We need to move as quickly as possible.

BERMAN: By doing or not doing what you think the administration should do right now, do you think that's allowing ISIS to grow stronger, in some ways allowing these attacks that we've seen over the last month to take place all around the world?

JEFFREY: Well, the administration does everything it can, as do all of our allies, to stop these attacks. The point is, as long as ISIS, which is known for these attacks for many years, is out there, is operating, has this appeal to recruits around the Middle East, it's going to continue doing this.

And perhaps the Abadi government in Iraq doesn't fall tomorrow because of that attack in Karrada. Perhaps the Erdogan government doesn't reduce its support for the fight against ISIS. But these things are all possibilities. That's why we're incurring huge risks by not doing as much as we can, as rapidly as we can against ISIS.

Berman: Ambassador James Jeffrey, thanks so much for being with us. I appreciate it, sir.

JEFFREY: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right. Well, NASA is celebrating a huge milestone almost five years in the making. Its spacecraft Juno is now orbiting Jupiter. So what mysteries will this unlock?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)