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49 Dead and Dozens Hurt in New Zealand Mosque Terror Attacks; Terror Suspect Posted 87 Page Manifesto Filled with Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Muslim Rhetoric; Terror Suspect Claims Donald Trump Is A Symbol of White Identity; North Korea Threatens to Walk from Nuke Talks; FBI Says Rising Domestic Terror Arrests. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired March 15, 2019 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: We're watching CNN here on this Friday. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me. Let's dive right in to the heartbreak and disbelief in New Zealand where 49 people are dead and dozens more have been injured in the deadliest shooting in the nation's modern history. As Muslims gathered for Friday prayers in the city of Christchurch at least two mosques that are a mere three miles apart their worship was shattered by an attack that officials say was driven by extremist views.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACINDA ADERN, NEW ZEALAND PRIME MINISTER: It is clear that this can now only be described as a terrorist attack. From what we know, it does appear to have been well-planned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Four people have been arrested in connection with this massacre with one of them officially charged. The wounded among them young children. They're now being treated in local hospitals and for anyone planning to attend a mosque anywhere in New Zealand today, the police commissioner is asking that they do the opposite, urging them to stay home and close your doors until you hear from us again. A survivor who managed to escape safely with his wife and 4-year-old little boy grew emotional when describing the chaos inside.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAHMOUD NASSIR, SURVIVED MOSQUE ATTACK WITH WIFE AND FOUR-YEAR-OLD SON: It was from the main entrance of the building and everybody just ran towards the back doors just to save themselves. We saw many injured. She was just lying in the road and I don't know how many people died.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Bliss Savidge is live for us in New Zealand outside the hospital in Christchurch, tell me what you know.

BLISS SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've been here all night. We've been here since midnight. It's past 6:00 in the morning right now. Relatively before now it's been really quiet, unusually quiet. The streets are really clear of the there's been a lot of road blockages. It's really hard to get into the center of town here. The sky's starting to lighten up a little bit. People are going into work. There's a lot of staff coming in and out of the hospital now. People are waking up in New Zealand to the reality of what has happened yesterday, this terrible tragedy.

We still don't have a lot of information, obviously, this investigation is still really young, so this morning, the man, the 28- year-old man officially been charged with murder will have his first appearance in court in just about three hours and then there's expected to be a lot more press conferences today where we're hoping to get a lot more information on what happened and also just more about the information about the victims.

There's not a lot of information about the victims that's being released right now, what we do know is there's still a lot of people in the hospital behind us that are wounded, some minor, but a lot of them very critically injured. We're still standing by hoping to hear more information about that and we'll be moving over to the courthouse soon to see what more we can learn about the man who is being charged and what happens next.

BALDWIN: Those details will start to come there as the sun is just rising over New Zealand here. Bliss, thank you very much. I want to focus on the few details we do have, what we do know. A 28-year-old man is now facing murder charges. Two others are in custody and another person was arrested after the attack. Police say this investigation is ongoing and part of it has taken them to an 87-page online manifesto so for that CNN Jessica Schneider is in Washington for us and so, we know that this manifesto was posted just before the attack to an account that officials believe belongs to one of the attackers. So, what do you know about that?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: So, this is really a hate filled rant in these 87 pages and they spell out the gunman's motivations and they also detail the logistics and the planning behind this attack. So, this explanation really was posted online minutes before the mass shooting and it was filled with these anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim messages. The author in it identifies as a 28-year- old from Australia who is been thinking about this attack for two years now and has been plotting this shooting specifically in Christchurch, New Zealand for the past three months. The word he uses repeatedly throughout this manifesto is revenge. He wanted revenge against the immigrants he called invaders of European countries. He wanted to intimidate immigrants and he used guns to sow further discord and divide right here in the United States when it comes to the second amendment.

[14:05:00] In this manifesto there was also one mention of President Trump where the gunman describes President Trump as what he calls, a symbol of white identity. Of course, the President sent out a tweet this morning saying that he sends his warmest sympathy and best wishes to the people of New Zealand after this horrible massacre and in just a few minutes ago, Brooke, the deputy secretary was even more forceful on behalf of the President saying President Trump is, in fact, outraged by this terror attack and we expect to here more from the President himself later this afternoon. But this is the first mass shooting in New Zealand since 1990, so this is stunning in that sense as well and the gunman in this manifesto said part of the reason he chose New Zealand, Brooke, was as a way to show in his words that nowhere in the world is safe. Really chilling and laying out these messages of hate throughout. Brooke?

BALDWIN: Just hearing from people in this community since 1990, people are saying this just doesn't happen here. Jessica Schneider, thank you. We'll listen for the President next hour if he has some himself more forceful words. Bob Baer is a former CIA operative and CNN intelligence and security analyst. As is Arwa Damon our CNN senior international correspondent. Bob, I want to start with you here because police say none of the four people arrested was any sort of security watch list prior to this attack, so Assad from these 87 pages hate laced manifesto, this rant, what else will law enforcement be looking in to?

BOB BAER CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST: Well, first of all, Brooke we're behind the curb on Neo Nazis. We've been looking at Islamic radicals and terrorists for so long that these people all over the world have not been looked in to including in this country and, of course, the New Zealand police are going to look for a wider network. Often these groups are just autonomous and so far, this sounds like it is, three or four people inspired off Twitter and Facebook and conspiracy theories and they pick up a weapon. There's a lot of weapons there, long guns and these, by the way, these mosques as well as synagogues and churches are frankly indefensible. One guard with a side arm is not going to do it. We have a problem.

BALDWIN: Hang on. Back on your point how it's easy to get these kinds of guns. This hasn't happened since 1990, so despite that you're saying they're easy to get.

BAER: They're easy to get. Semi-automatics, yes. There's a lot of guns in New Zealand. It's not like Australia which is cut way back. New Zealand was a more vulnerable target.

BALDWIN: Arwa, we know officials say this attack was carried out by an extremist right-wing violent terror and a far-right Australian lawmaker blamed the attacks on the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand of the increasing Muslim presence. You know about this part of the world. You tell me how views like that have influenced that region.

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, Brooke, this is really a punch to the gut of anyone I think on either side of this who is listening to this rhetoric going back and forth and seeing how hatred and rage and violence is just being abused and manipulated in this manner. Here in the region there has been a lot of concern about this growing anti-Muslim/anti-Arab rhetoric this growing sense of Islam phobia and we even heard from the Turkish President when he was talking about the horrific attack in New Zealand addressing just that, talking about the arise in Islam phobia and he was calling on western countries to try to do more to stem this hatred that exists out there and even a taxi driver I was talking to, Brooke, was quick to highlight that about how deliberately divisive this type of violence sets out to be, to try to pit peoples against one another, to try to foment hatred, sow fear and that's exactly what all of us to a certain degree need to try to stand up against.

BALDWIN: So, Bob, too, Arwa's point and the anecdote she just shared, and we talk about this every single time we cover terror attacks like this, but what actually can be done from a government/national security perspective to prevent them? There's always so many red flags after the fact, what do you do to prevent it?

BAER: Well, frankly, you have to do censorship. You can't have people on the web promoting conspiracy theories which are believed and you have to identify potential shooters and get to them early.

[14:10:00] It's going to require new laws, but there's no center to these movements. That's the problem. It's traced back to a Frenchman who said there are too many immigrants in France but he's got nothing to do with this that we know of. It's this kind of hate on the internet, which is spawning but there's no center to these movements. That's the problem. It's traced back to a Frenchman who said there are too many immigrants in France but he's got nothing to do with this that we know of. It's this kind of hate on the internet, which is spawning this, and the more -- the more problems there are in the world, the more they're going to blame it on others and it doesn't have to be Muslims. It could be anybody. It could be Chinese, Africans and the rest of it and this is what concerns me.

BALDWIN: Arwa and Bob, thank you so much for that. We'll talk with members of the Muslim community responding to this tragedy in New Zealand as well.

President Trump will carry out his threat on camera, mind you, the veto that will be his rebuke on his border security after these 12 Senate Republicans rebuked him yesterday siding with Democrats on the measure. What will he say? What happens now?

Also, North Korea threatens to walk from nuclear talks with the Trump administration, but is Kim Jong-un taking a page out of "The Art of The Deal" in his latest move.

And thousands of students worldwide skipping school today to demand action on climate change. Al Gore joins me live. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

[14:15:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We're back. I'm Brooke Baldwin. In the next hour a made for TV event at the White House to show a move President Trump has never done before. His first veto. It will make his rebuke of lawmakers as public as the one the Senate made against him exactly 24 hours ago. 12 Republicans joining Democrats in approving resolution to block the President's national emergency declaration. The declaration unlocked more than $3 billion in defense funds to build a border wall. Kaitlan Collins is with me now. What are you hearing about how and when this whole veto will happen?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Essentially Brooke, what we're seeing is the President has zero hesitation about signing this veto. He seems to be relishing it. He's going to do it in the oval office in front of the cameras with reporters around making clear that the President believes this is the right thing to do because he believes those senators who went against him yesterday were not voting for border security. Now, of course, these senators are arguing that, in fact, they believe this is more about a separation of powers and that's why they decided to rebuke the President. An astounding number yesterday going against the President but that's just now how Trump has seen it. During calls with senators about this national emergency declaration, he's really dismissed their concerns about whether or not this is constitutional, saying that this isn't about that, it's not about precedent, it's about border security. They disagree. That's why you saw those 12 go against the President. He's going to sign that veto today. Something that he's had his mind set on since about a week ago even his staffers were briefing him about that proposal, the Republicans had been floating, didn't get any traction that the President could sign this as long as he limited himself going forward. Now we're just going to have the President take his pen and veto this measure from yesterday.

BALDWIN: We'll chat about that and see the President next hour. Those cameras in the oval. Thank you as we wait for that big veto, the House has already started to schedule the vote to override the veto. That is likely to happen Tuesday, March 26th.

We are seeing the first signs of fall. Now the vice foreign minister says North Korea may suspend denuclearization talks. This as North Korea acknowledges for the first time things did not go the way Kim Jong-un wanted, according to state news agency there. What is more, the minister blamed the breakdown of talks on the U.S. side saying the American delegation was being too demanding and inflexible. She specifically called out Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton. They created a, quote, atmosphere of hostility and mistrust and, therefore, this is all according to the North Koreans, obstructed the constructive effort for negotiations. Bolton and Pompeo pushed back on that today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BOLTON, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: I think that's inaccurate, but the President is our decision maker.

MIKE POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE: They're wrong about that and I was there. It's not the first time. I have a vague recollection of being called gangster-like from a visit I took one time previously and following that we continued to have very professional conversations where we tried our best to work together and represent our respective sides. I have every expectation that we'll be able to continue to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: With me now, the author of "Nuclear Showdown, North Korea Takes on The World", Gordon Chang who's also a distinguished fellow at the Gatestone Institute. Gordon, is this move from North Korea, is this like vintage Kim or is this just proof that "The Art of The Deal" book that we know Dennis Rodman handed Kim is something he actually read?

GORDON CHANG, author of "Nuclear Showdown, North Korea Takes on The World", This is play book of the Kim family decades long. Whenever they don't get what they want, they ramp up pressure. We've seen this before.

[14:20:00] BALDWIN: OK. I wanted to add this color. This is also from the vice foreign minister saying even though she threw Pompeo and Bolton under the bus, the relationship between Kim and Trump is still good. Despite that, North Korea made the move. What's the risk now if the U.S. says, we're done with you, full stop?

CHANG: The risk is that negotiations stop. I think that if we were to take a more resolute position, you heard Pompeo with those measured words, this is traditional American foreign policy toward North Korea. It sounds good to the ear. Previous administrations have done this. Always failed.

BALDWIN: What works?

CHANG: What works is pressure. You go back to the middle of May of last year, Trump had an extraordinarily successful policy. He was making no concessions, the North Korea's were making all of them. Then he decided to relax sanctions enforcements and guess what happened? We were making most of the concessions and the ones that Kim were making were unimportant.

BALDWIN: Therefore, they have all the leverage.

CHANG: Trump can get it back by going after the North Koreans, the Chinese and the Russians making sure they follow U.N. rules but until our President does that, he's going to be subject to North Korean humiliation which is what occurred today.

BALDWIN: So how does the U.S. get the leverage back?

CHANG: What we do is we say to Kim, look, you don't want to talk, we don't want to talk either and what we'll do now -- we play tough right back. What we do is we say to the Chinese, look, you're not going to launder money for the North Koreans any more. We're sanctioning your big banks. You go to the Russians. You say no more ship to ship transfers of oil.

Go to the South Koreans and say their sanctions enforcement means busting is over. We can do this but we haven't. We've been very, very patient. Trump at the Ottawa G7 said, look, I'll give the North Koreans a one time shot to do the right thing. They haven't reciprocated.

BALDWIN: The language has totally changed it seems between the two countries. Another key piece of this North Korea said it might end its self-imposed moratorium on tests on weapons and long-range missiles. The last known was November of '17. What would stop -- what would stop Kim from doing something incredibly provocative tomorrow, next week? CHANG: If he felt that the sanctions enforcement were actually going

to bite into his regime, then he would stop it. He's not getting all the money that he wants but he's getting all the money that he needs. You see him running around in those Mercedes, the Rolls-Royces. He cannot have those cars. That's a violation of the sanction rules because those are new cars and he's flaunting it. He's basically telling Trump, look, you can have your sanctions, I don't care, I'm going to openly violate them. Trump has not responded and so Kim says, I'm just going to push further.

BALDWIN: We watch for the move back from the U.S. now. Gordon Chang, thank you so much. Good to see you.

CHANG: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: More on the terror attacks in New Zealand and today the FBI is dealing with an uptick in domestic terror in the United States, but the horrific attacks just show how serious right-wing extremism is all around the world. We'll talk to a man that lost his father in Milwaukee nearly seven years ago.

[14:25:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: As we are following all the breaking developments in the deadly mosque attack, we are learning new information about domestic terror arrests right here in the United States.

A senior FBI official says there has been an uptick in those arrests with nearly 25 in the first quarter of the 2019 fiscal year. Those arrests include but are not limited too, white nationalists. Right now, there are 900 open domestic terror investigations according to that official. So that said with me now a man that has experienced the aftermath of a tragedy similar to what so many are experiencing in New Zealand, he experienced it had right here in the states. He's made it his mission to fight against hate.

He is Pardeep Kaleka. Thank you so much for being with me.

PARDEEP KALEKA, FATHER KILLED IN 2012 WISCONSIN SIKH TEMPLE MASSACRE: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: So, in 2012, your father was one of the six people murdered when a gunman went on that shooting rampage at that Sikh Temple in the Milwaukee suburbs. When you see what's happening in New Zealand, can you take me back to 2012? You were on your way to the temple, your daughter forgot her notebook, you turned around, so what happened?

KALEKA: That's pretty much it. She forgot her notebook. My mom and father were in the temple. My mom made it out and she escaped. My dad died in the temple and was shot along with five others. Wade Michael Page took his own life in a fire fight with police and what was going through our minds at that time was this chaos and the sadness that -- that our community was really just confused by of why this happened to us.

BALDWIN: And so, some time after that experience, you to the unthinkable, you reach out to a former white supremacist to understand why someone would commit a hate crime. You went to dinner. You left that meeting changed. Can you just tell me about that and how that plays into your mission to fight hate today?

KALEKA: Yes. In the aftermath of what happened August 5th, we really were searching for a way for our community to show the broader community who we were and what we represented and so in that search for meaning of why people like this do what they do, I reached out to a person who started that same organization that the shooter belonged to and his name is Arnold McCallis. I went there to understand why but what I really got out of that discussion was, what we can do about it going forward and me and Arnold have been working with our organizations for the past seven years and it really is a punch in the gut when something -- when something like this happens, but it strengthens our resolve to combat hate going forward.

BALDWIN: Have you seen progress?

[14:30:00] KALEKA: In ways we have seen progress.