Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Democrats Weigh Changing Message Post-Election; Hundreds Killed in Eastern Aleppo Bombardment; Chicago Airport Strike Announcement; Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired November 21, 2016 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00] HILARY ROSEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: To really focus on, and yet he had a really strong record against working people in this country that got very little attention, I think, from most of us. And you know, myself included. So I'll own a lot of that. But I think the problem now is that we cannot divide ourselves into sort of, are we going to be cultural Democrats or are we going to be economic Democrats? We can't afford that fight, particularly at a time when so much of our social progress seems to be on the verge of being rolled back.

And it is important I think that we find ways to come together on those two points. We are having the argument in the Democratic Party that we thought the Republicans were going to have when they lost, because we thought they were going to lose. And so now we have to figure out how to mesh this kind of identity politics that we have become as a community and --

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: But here's --

ROSEN: There's a very real desire for economic empowerment.

COSTELLO: Here's the problem. The politics of identity, they are still going on and you can see them in these protests taking place across the country.

ROSEN: That's right.

COSTELLO: So Democrats are still --

ROSEN: Passionately.

COSTELLO: Passionately identifying with cultural issues over economic issues. And hey, the people are more powerful than maybe any candidate out there or any Democratic office holder right at the moment.

BILL PRESS, HILLARY CLINTON SUPPORTER: No, I would -- I agree with Hilary on the cultural issues and on the diversity issues and this new America majority. But somehow we lost focus on the people who are always -- have always been the base of the Democratic Party, and again, the Democratic Party has produced for them but somehow we didn't get the message out that we are fighting for them and they are the essence of what Democrats are all about. And so I think we have to mesh those two with particular emphasis now

on those economic issues. Again not forgetting the others. And that brings us back to Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, particularly which we never should have lost.

COSTELLO: OK. So let's --

ROSEN: You know the other thing -- just quickly, Carol. The other thing and this is connected to what the president said, that will help honestly is that, you know, Donald Trump and his colleagues are not for an increase in the minimum wage, they are interested in busting up unions and have fought for --

PRESS: Right. Right.

ROSEN: So-called right to work laws in states around the country which make it difficult to unionize. They -- you know, when millions of Americans lose their subsidies for health care, when Planned Parenthood clinics threatened being close because they can't get reimbursement, there is going to be some of that economic organizing that will mesh with this cultural identity very quickly because there will be sort of togetherness in opposition. The working man will get screwed.

COSTELLO: I will say in going back to working class America, much of working class America really don't much like unions and they don't buy the 15 bucks an hour thing because they think companies ought to have a right to control wages on their own because they are the ones running the company. I hear a lot of that from working class people.

PRESS: But Carol -- Carol --

ROSEN: I don't hear much of that.

PRESS: With all - with all due respect, I think if you go to working class America, you go to union shops, they are not going to say that. I mean, they think a minimum -- a $15 minimum wage is too low and they are right. And I think they know who's fighting on their side. We just have to reinforce that.

COSTELLO: OK. So let's talk about -- let's just talk about -- I want to talk about Nancy Pelosi and concentrate on her. Why doesn't she just step aside? Because obviously something didn't work in the last election and don't we need somebody new, a fresh voice, somebody not from the state of California, Hilary?

ROSEN: Here's the thing. I love Nancy Pelosi and I'm always going to be for her. I do think that they ought to bring more young leadership into that House leadership, and I don't know why they are not doing that, why they are not bringing Tim Ryan and some of his colleagues in. There are plenty of leadership roles that they can create or invent to widen that table. I think they ought to do it. I certainly support Nancy staying on as leader. She is a good fighter and a good fundraiser at tough times, but I do think they ought to find ways to expand that table. And if they can't do that, they are going to face challenges instead of collaboration. COSTELLO: Bill, do you agree?

PRESS: Yes. I do. First of all, I'm a big Nancy fan but Hilary is right, there are lots of great young leaders, potential leaders, in the House. And the problem today is that all the leadership, they are basically all of the same class and all of the same age and they have left no room for young people to come up. I think it's very important that they do so now. And Tim Ryan is a great example of that new leadership.

But, you know, we are going to have a new head of the party. I think that's extremely important. I think we need to bring up some new leaders in the United States Senate, too -- in the Senate, too. The Democratic Party, that's another party. The leadership. We really have to reach out to the next generation of leaders and start at the state legislative level which has been ignored.

[10:35:10] And that's why we get this redistricting and that's why it was so difficult to take control of the House back.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there. Bill Press, Hilary Rosen, thanks as always.

Still to come --

PRESS: Thanks, Carol.

COSTELLO: You're welcome.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, bombs raining down on Aleppo. President Obama says he is not hopeful things will get better any time soon. Could that change under President-elect Trump?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: More than 300 people have been killed in eastern Aleppo in just six days. Activists are calling this the deadliest week since the start of the Syrian civil war, even worse, the bombings have taken out all of the hospitals in East Aleppo.

[10:40:06] I want to warn you these next pictures I'm about to show you, they're disturbing. A quarter of a million civilians now living in East Aleppo without access to emergency care. President Obama says he is not optimistic about Syria as long as Bashar al-Assad stays in power.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is a man who has decided that destroying his country, turning it to rubble and seeing its population scattered or killed was worth it for him to cling to power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN correspondent Will Ripley live in Turkey, in Istanbul, with more. Hi, Will.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. And Syria's President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview just last week that he believed the U.S. President-elect Donald Trump could be a natural ally in his fight against terrorism. He promised to target terrorist targets in eastern Aleppo yet what we have seen over the last week is a systemic destruction of the city's capability to care for the increasing number of injured patients and that's not even counting the routine medical needs of a quarter million people, people who have cancer, diabetes, other illnesses.

They can't even get to see a doctor right now. All of the trauma hospitals are knocked out of service. Any hospitals that are functional are at just a fraction of their capacity. The blood bank, ambulances, medical vehicles, all were destroyed. And to get you -- give you a sense of the intensity of this, people who have survived the Syrian civil war and more than four years of bombing in East Aleppo say this is something that they have never seen before, the intensity of the explosions.

I was interviewing one man over the weekend and I want to play for you this, because as we were speaking to him, we had a 14-minute conversation. I counted at least 17 explosions that I could hear through the computer. He was taking shelter in his basement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ISMAIL ALABULLAH, ALEPPO RESIDENT: Why do we stay? We stay because it's our city. They stay because they have no place to go. Am I going to leave? We are going to die. Yes, I think --

RIPLEY: That was close. That one was close.

ALABULLAH: OK. I'm going to go.

RIPLEY: OK. Be safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RIPLEY: The United Nations says something needs to be done now in order to prevent what they call a humanitarian catastrophe, a mass starvation scenario, because food and medicine is not being allowed into the city. The Syrian forces have cut off those supply roads. There's also reports of chemical weapons being used on civilians by both sides, the rebel fighters and the government. But you have these families that were rapidly running out of food and Russia and Syria, the two forces that are supporting this assault on East Aleppo and other areas of Syria, have not even responded yet to the United Nations plea that they allow a plan to deliver humanitarian aid to these people.

COSTELLO: Will Ripley joining us live from Turkey, thanks so much.

So let's talk about what's happening in Syria right now. And could things change under a new administration? David Rhode is CNN global affairs analyst and the national security investigations editor for Reuters.

Welcome. Do people care enough about what's happening in Syria?

DAVID ROHDE, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: It is, and I do think things will change under the new administration. President-elect Trump has said he will not support what President Obama has called a moderate opposition and what we see in the short term period is that there is sort of a lame duck president, President Obama, who has been hesitant to act in Syria and then President Trump saying he's not going to back these rebels. So there's an excellent chance this ferocious assault, this effort by the Syrian government backed by Russia and Iran to take back Aleppo will intensify and continue. As Will just said, 250,000 civilians, this could get very ugly very quickly.

COSTELLO: It's already ugly. There are no hospitals working in eastern Aleppo. No hospitals. Schools are being targeted. Children are dying. Chemical weapons are being used. It seems as if the President Bashar al-Assad wants to destroy his own country to remain in power.

ROHDE: Well, he does, and that's what President Obama said, but I think we should be fair here in that President Obama's policy which was sort of to half help the rebels, to not really engage militarily has essentially failed. Russia has stepped in and is using, you know, very aggressive military force to help Assad crush these civilians. Assad has shown he will kill his own people. He will continue to do that.

The question is over the next few months is, you know, will President Obama act? I don't think so. And what will President Trump inherit? Some people argue that the Syrian forces just simply aren't strong enough. There's 250,000 people there, there are a large number of rebel fighters, they won't be able to take East Aleppo. But what will the American public think as President Trump comes into office if you have -- what we have today, 50 people dying a day. The chemical weapons attack, you mentioned, no hospitals.

[10:45:09] President Bush's -- I'm sorry, President Trump has said he will sort of pull us out of Syria. How will that look to Americans, how will that look to U.S. allies in the region? It's a really --

COSTELLO: Well --

ROHDE: The violence is escalating.

COSTELLO: What can be done? If someone were to actually act right now, what can be done?

ROHDE: Well, there's a decisive move. I think there's a move that President-elect Trump has talked about which is to pull back, to not arm these rebels, to let essentially Syrian forces retake Aleppo with Russia's support and just say the United States isn't going to do anything to stop this humanitarian catastrophe.

The other side is to move more aggressively. U.S. allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey have all called for a more aggressive effort to sort of back these rebels. I don't see that happening under a Trump administration. So you know, it looks like more violence and victory for Assad .

COSTELLO: OK. OK, so, what if Bashar al-Assad with Russia's help retakes all of Syria? What happens in the region then?

ROHDE: Well, they'll take Aleppo. I don't think they can regain all of Syria. But the danger here, and it's an excellent question, is all of these -- some of them are moderate rebels. It's a mish-mash. It's a very complex situation with a very splintered Syrian resistance to Assad. But any semblance of moderate rebel who believed in the West, if the U.S. walks away, you know, very clearly under Trump, that will push them towards radicalism. Many of them have turned radical.

Doing nothing to help Aleppo will lead more young Syrians to join ISIS and other radical groups. And they will use this -- radical groups will use the lack of action in Aleppo as 250,000 civilians face this onslaught as an effort -- as proof that there's a double standard. The West cares about Western lives but not the lives of innocent civilians in Syria.

COSTELLO: David Rohde, thanks so much.

ROHDE: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, airports are already crowded, you know, with the holiday time. And now a strike at Chicago's airport could make things even worse.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:51:15] COSTELLO: All right. At the top of the hour we are expecting a new conference out of San Antonio, Texas. Police officials there will update us on this manhunt for this cop killer. This is a picture of a man they suspect that's involved in a police shooting in San Antonio. Somebody walked up to a police car and shot the 50-year-old detective inside that car in the head. He died a short time later.

Again, we are expecting a news conference at the top of the hour. When it happens, we will bring it to you live.

In other news this morning, new details on a possible strike at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Just a few minutes from now, airport workers will announce whether or not they will go on strike, a move that could be a major disruption to Thanksgiving and holiday travel.

Ryan Young is in Chicago with more. Good morning.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Just to give you a heads up, if you see us kind of moving around here, the police are kind of telling us to kind of shift where we are for this news conference that's supposed to start in the next 15 minutes or so. But I can tell you these workers who are about 500 of them, you see them going through the airport all the time. Baggage handlers, the people who clean the airplanes, and also the folks who wheel people through in wheelchairs through the airport. They are talking about striking.

They want to have a living wage. They believe $15 an hour is a living wage. The $8.50 they get paid they say is not enough. So that's the conversation that's happening. We will find out in the next 15 minutes or so whether or not this will happen during the busy holiday period. We know this is the second busiest airport in the country so there's a lot of conversation about what happens next.

The lines here are already large. Sometimes especially during the holidays, you see them stretching out the door. So when people heard about this strike, of course, they're going to have a reaction.

Now what we're told is security personnel and the people who check you into the TSA, that should not be affected but again, this strike could have effects for people who need wheelchair access through the airport.

Now some of the major airlines say they are going to set up some guidelines and have some support staff ready just in case this happens. Of course, the next 15 minutes, we'll learn more about the plans.

The workers here are contractors and they say they need more money to be able to make it during this economy. And that's something -- actually we're all shifting as some of the workers are coming out now. So as we learn more, Carol, we'll pass it on to you about information about what they're going to do especially during this busy travel holiday period.

COSTELLO: All right. Ryan, we'll let you get to it. Thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, police unleash water cannons on angry pipeline protesters in below freezing temperatures. The demonstration in North Dakota turned into riot.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:57:56] COSTELLO: Time for a check on today's top stories at 57 minutes past. Hundreds of people protesting in North Dakota oil pipeline clashed with officers this weekend. Police used water to control the crowds. The move sparking fears of hypothermia. Temperatures were below freezing. One official called the scene an ongoing riot with police reporting that two cars and a bridge were set on fire. One person was arrested.

A closed hearing will take place in a South Carolina courtroom today to determine whether or not Dylann Roof is mentally competent to stand trial. Roof is accused of killing nine African-Americans in a Charleston church basement last year. Roof's trial began earlier this month but was put on hold after his defense questioned his mental state.

Pope Francis has just given Catholic priests the right to forgive abortion. In a letter, the Pope wrote, "Abortion is a grave sin since it puts an end to an innocent life. In the same way, however, I can and must state that there is no sin that God's mercy cannot reach and wipe away." He then calls on priests to be a guide, support and comfort to penitents on this journey of special reconciliation.

"Saturday Night Live" is poking fun at President-elect Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR, "SNL": Google, what is ISIS? Oh, my, 59 million results. Siri, how do I kill ISIS?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Trump didn't like that much. He's slamming "Saturday Night Live" saying it was biased and he asked for equal time. But FCC equal time rules only apply during an election campaign, not after. Alec Baldwin who plays Trump on the show responded, he tweeted this out. Quote, "Equal time? There is no more equal time. Now you try to be president and people respond. That's pretty much it," end quote.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello. "AT THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND BOLDUAN" starts now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm John Berman. Kate is off today. Our breaking news, any minute, you're looking at live pictures right now from San Antonio where police will hold a news conference on a huge manhunt currently under --

(END)