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New Day

Turkey Pardon at the White House; Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; Obama Could Face Trouble With Nominations; More Close Calls Between Planes and Drones

Aired November 27, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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

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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to NEW DAY. Happy Thanksgiving to you. There's news to be had. Let's get you to Deb Feyerick for the latest headlines.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN GUEST ANCHOR: Thanks so much and thanks, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving. A lot of headlines breaking overnight, a British diplomat among five people killed in a suicide attack in Afghanistan.

An Afghan national working for the British Embassy was also killed. We're told that a car filled with explosives detonated targeting a convoy of foreign embassy vehicles passing through Kabul. More than 30 others were hurt including some children. The Taliban has claimed responsibility.

And the northeast is waking up to drier calmer conditions after a horrible night for holiday travel. Hundreds of flights were canceled. Thousands more delayed by a punishing nor'easter. A lot of people had to be hectic last minute changes. A lot of them spending the night uncomfortably at the airport.

Well, a new report shows more and more smokers are calling it quits. The CDC says fewer Americans are smoking with the rate the lowest it's been in 50 years just under 18 percent lighting up in 2013.

Federal health officials say despite the progress they've got more work to do to get people to quit. Cigarette smoking still remains the leading cause of preventive death among Americans.

And say cheese that is the 20-week-year-old Ohio gobbler that got pardoned by President Obama during the annual turkey pardon at the White House. This year, Twitter voters got to choose which bird would be pardoned.

And you could see his daughters there clapping, would it be Cheese? Would it be Mac, down to the wire, President Obama made sure to mention the turkey pardoned is actually within his legal authority and this would be the most talked about executive action that he talked about this month. He should be so lucky.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: If only. If only, right? All right, Deb, thanks so much.

If you look at your clock, 90 minutes away from the start of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade here in New York City. The weather seems to be cooperating. The giant character balloons are ready to fly.

CUOMO: A lot of people going thousands, really, many of them families with kids, already trying to secure spots along the parade route. That's where we find CNN's Miguel Marquez. How are you? You're looking very festive?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I can barely stand it. It's so cool out here. Check it out, 49 balloons of all shapes and sizes, 27 floats are lined up here along Central Park West, 1,000 clowns.\

And of course, Tom the Turkey, the center piece, and just beyond, you can see one clown on a giraffe, I love that. I have someone who is not clowning around at all. This is Brandon Truit. You're one of the drum majors with Western Carolina University. You guys are the biggest band ever here. Is that right?

BRANDON TRUIT, WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY: We're pushing 505 members marching with us.

PEREIRA: No. What a shame. We were just learning about the marching band. It's such an effort to get those teams and bands here. It's such a great thing to see.

CUOMO: That is going to be a very cool thing there. But it's just great to see. We'll get back to Miguel. I wonder if that turkey is responsible.

PEREIRA: It looks a little lean.

It is a great annual Thanksgiving tradition. We're going to check back in with Miguel so you can so a little of the fun that's happening right here in New York City.

CUOMO: All right, we have other news to give you this morning. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg luckily is recovering from a heart surgery. She is giving no indication that she will step down from the bench, not stopping questions about her future, though, so we'll discuss that.

PEREIRA: Quite a lady. Also really interesting discussion, drones are getting awfully dangerously close to planes. They are concerns that are rising for federal officials. What are they going to regulate it? We're going to talk about that coming up.

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CUOMO: Welcome back to NEW DAY. A health scare to tell you about for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she had heart surgery to reopen a blocked artery. Ginsburg is 81 years old, but she says she's not resigning anytime soon. That's a good thing for President Obama because he would probably have a hard time getting a replacement through the Republican controlled Senate. This really goes through a larger issue that he has. He's becoming an army of one there.

Let's bring in Ron Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst, and the editorial director of the "National Journal. He's running out of people.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, thank God she's going to be OK. She says she wants to return. But if she could not, what do you think? Do you think she could get a justice approved right now?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, you know, if I did my math right last night, when I was looking at this, seven of the current nine Supreme Court justices were confirmed when the president's party held the Senate.

The only two who were confirmed by the other party were Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas under a Reagan and Bush. So it is not easy, you know. And of course, we saw Robert Bourke rejected by the Democratic Senate under President Reagan.

So it would be much more difficult. This is why there was a lot of -- you know, there was at least a murmur of discussion in liberal circles about whether Justice Ginsburg should have stepped down when the Democrats controlled the Senate.

In 2016 Democrats have a reasonable chance of winning back the Senate, but you also have a chance of losing the presidency and losing control of the nomination in the first place.

CUOMO: It's not an academic or political conversation. It's practical. We now don't have a secretary of defense and as we know, there is no shortage of conflict going on. It's only going to get worse in the next calendar year. How do you get someone through?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, the second terms are tough. There comes a moment in every presidential second term where the president looking around in the office each doesn't recognize any of the faces. People get tired, people want to cash in, people don't work out.

And you're kind of in a situation where you're replacing your original team and you add to it the complication of getting it through now a Senate controlled by the other side. Look, I mean, you can see how these decisions get affected by that reality.

There's some discussion of Secretary Johnson at DHS moving over to the Defense Department. If you did that you would open up a confirmation hearing for the kept of homeland security at a time when Republicans really ready to go after the executive action on immigration. You see how that constrains your choices.

PEREIRA: Is there a price for on city innocence at some point? If you need a Supreme Court justice or you need certainly a Department of Defense secretary, can they stone wall effectively there or are they going to have to put somebody through? Does it bite them at all?

BROWNSTEIN: I think on the defense side you definitely do. Look, unless there is some overwhelming health reason, I don't think we're going to see Justice Ginsburg step down. When the next president is sworn in, there will be three Supreme Court justices over 80.

So that really underscores the stakes in an ex-presidential race especially because the patter we're seeing is presidents act -- we start under Bush and now we are seeing under Obama with control of Congress divided from the control of the presidency, usually split control between the parties.

Presidents are taking more unilateral action and that means the courts are the ultimate arbiter of how far they can go. We're going to see on immigration.

We are going to see it on health care. We're going to see it on climate, enormous stakes in the Supreme Court nominations especially with three justices that will over age 80 at the time of the next inaugural.

CUOMO: And by the way, everybody is talking about Ferguson now and the federal investigations. The attorney general choice that the president has, Loretta Lynn, she's not going to go in front of the Senate for a while.

Just explain to us real quickly before I let you go, the logic of why this works. Senate Cruz said if you go through with the lawless amnesty, we'll not confirm any nominees for the next two years. So why does that work with the base?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, because I think the base is demanding that they fight President Obama's initiatives really across the board by any means necessary. They're caught in this bind where are the incoming leadership believing that a government shutdown does not work.

The clear evidence going back to the 1990s is it does not work in the sense of forcing the president to do what you want him to do. But there's overwhelming pressure from the base to oppose in particular his executive action providing legal status to four million to five million, you know, undocumented immigrants.

So they need something that shows they're serious and I think this idea of a block aid of appointments, while it would be difficult to execute at the level of where you're obstructing national defense, I think you're going to see the Republicans looking for a lot of ways to make life miserable for the White House because that is essentially what their base is demanding.

CUOMO: Supposedly a message in this election was that they have to be there to get things done, not just obstruct. We'll see how that follows through. We're getting to the date of where everything changes hands. Ron Brownstein, have a very happy Thanksgiving, my friend. Appreciate the perspective.

BROWNSTEIN: You too, Chris, thank you. CUOMO: All right, Mich.

PEREIRA: All right, Chris, too close for comfort. Federal officials are on high alert after the increase of drones coming far too close to planes in the sky. Why drones could be a bigger risk than previously realized.

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PEREIRA: Good to have you back with us here on NEW DAY. Drones apparently posing a much greater hazard to air traffic than previously thought. Since June 1st, pilots of passenger airlines and other planes have reported 25 near collisions with small drones across the country.

Many of those incidents occurred over New York City airports including two very close calls at New York's LaGuardia Airport. Who is the man to turn to? Our CNN analyst, safety analyst, David Soucie.

David, I had to give my head a shake just before I went live to you. I thought we were talking about something of science fiction, talking about drones, but this is a reality. We have these drones, recreational use, people are flocking to them, and they're posing a threat. Are there regulations in place right now, bring us up to speed on that first.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, there are regulations, Michaela, but here's the situation. The FAA has been asked and asked with integrated drones into our air space, our aero-drone or national air space.

Within that are a lot of challenges because of the fact that they don't have the same equipment that other planes do. Now here's the real problem is that the FAA has said you cannot fly these things, but that's where it fell short because like any regulation, you have to be able to enforce it, and they did not look at that.

They didn't say, how do we find out if somebody violates this rule, how do we know who did it? With a drone, you might be miles away from controlling the vehicle so therein lies the big problem.

PEREIRA: The thought it just occurred to me now we're going to have a fleet of law enforcement drones out there to combat the drones flying illegally. Let's back up. One thing that seems like a common sense move would be to have some sort of a no-fly in proximity to airports and takeoff and landing sites across the nation.

SOUCIE: And that's good, Michaela. You're way ahead of where they are, actually, because it took them years to figure that part out, but they did do that and they did implement some things around that.

Within five miles of an airport, you're not allowed to fly drones into that controlled air space. It's that air space where these occurrences are happening most commonly, and that is really a serious problem because these drones are getting larger and larger as time goes on and they're capable of flying higher and higher. Originally when they came out with these years ago, maybe in 2008, 2009, 2010 when it started to become kind of common, they did not have big ones. They didn't have huge, large ones that could fly into these air spaces and these altitudes, but now they do. Even for about $500 to $1,000, you can buy something that can fly into the same air space as an airliner.

PEREIRA: That's the big concern because there's pressure from the manufacturers of these drones and from federal lawmakers to allow for more and more drones to come. And I'm curious what your thought is because enforcement for you is the issue. Do you think it's a good idea to sort of open up the playing field, if you will, even more?

SOUCIE: Well, I think it needs to be done cautiously. It's a wonderful industry. I'm involved in the industry in Africa, using the drones to prevent poaching down in Africa of the rhinos. That's one project. There are other projects --

PEREIRA: Yes, lots of good things doing things with drones and also the nefarious aspects. We have seen reports of smugglers dropping contraband into prisons using drones. You have to stay one step or ten steps ahead of criminals it seems when any kind of technological advancement comes.

SOUCIE: Yes, that's very true. It goes back to this ability to enforce. Therein lies the biggest problem of all is how do you restrict this. There is no constitutional amendment that says you have the right to fly drones.

You know, that's not what's there and so they do restrict, and they restrict it as much as they can, but they're regulatory agency and they do have enforcement, but they have not played for this.

PEREIRA: David Soucie, we appreciate your input. The drone is not going to deliver your turkey so I release you to go have yours with your family. Thank you for joining us on this Thanksgiving Day. We appreciate it.

SOUCIE: All right, best to you.

PEREIRA: As well to you, David. Thank you. Still ahead, another deadly attack in Afghanistan, a diplomat is dead. Dozens injured. We'll have the very latest developments for you.

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