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Rebels Storm Yemen's Presidential Palace; Obama: 'Tonight We Turn a Page'; Interview with Sen. Angus King

Aired January 21, 2015 - 07:00   ET

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to NEW DAY.

President Obama laying out an ambitious agenda for his final two years in office. In his State of the Union Address, he announced a renewed focus on the middle class. The president also received a rousing ovation when he vowed to hunt down terrorists amid the growing list of international crises.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: One of those hot spots is Yemen, where the presidential palace is said to be under control of rebels on the verge of a coup. There are two U.S. Navy warships in the Red Sea ready to evacuate Americans.

Yemen, you have to remember, a key U.S. ally and also home to one of al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliates, AQAP. That's al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

We are the only western news outlet to have someone on the ground, which speaks not just to CNN's dedication, but to how dangerous it is there right now. And you're looking at him, senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, with the latest from Yemen -- Nick.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We woke this morning to a much more confused situation about who is in charge, frankly, of Yemen. The president is still called the president by the leader of the Houthi rebels, who swept into his administration yesterday. But outside his house, his presidential bodyguard, we're told by a Houthi commander, have left, and it's instead Houthi gunmen who are looking after him.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH (voice-over): This morning, Yemen under siege. By Iranian- backed Shiite Houthi rebels. A look, Yemen's capital, Sana'a appears to have fallen, the insurgent group proving their power on the streets. This gaping hole on the side of the presidential palace, the aftermath of what Yemen officials are calling an all-out coup.

The fate of the elected president, Abd Mansur Hadi, remains unclear. We reached his information minister by phone, who says so far he is safe and alive.

(on camera): Do you believe that the president is still in control of the country? And is his life safe?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think the president is in control of anything.

WALSH (voice-over): The Houthis have been vying for radical political change for years. Houthi rebel leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi appeared on television demanding changes being made to the Constitution saying, quote, "We're trying to bring some legitimacy to the government."

The U.N. Security Council urging dialogue and consultation.

CRISTIAN BARROS MELET, PRESIDENT, U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL: The members of the Security Council emphasized that all parties and political actors in Yemen must stand with President Hadi.

WALSH: The power position vital to the U.S. as the Yemeni government and its neighboring country, Saudi Arabia, are America's key allies against the looming threat of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP.

At least one of the attackers responsible for the "Charlie Hebdo" massacre in Paris, officials say trained in Yemen and has ties to the terrorist group.

The immediate worry: the safety of several hundred American embassy workers. Two U.S. Navy warships in the Red Sea positioned to evacuate the embassy if ordered. Some U.S. officials say get out now.

SEN. DIANNE WEINSTEIN (D), CALIFORNIA: It's better not to risk the fact that Yemeni troops guarding the embassy default and if something bad happens to our people.

Walsh: Unknown assailants fired shots at one of the embassy's armed vehicles. The U.S. Diplomats inside escaping uninjured. But the embassy said there was intent to kill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH: Now of course, how all this pans out is so vital. For the future of one of the U.S.'s most important counterterror allies, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The clearest threat, say many U.S. officials, to the United States. The more chaos there is here, the greater collapse of government, the easier it is for al Qaeda to hide and the harder it is for the U.S. to target them.

CAMEROTA: All right. Nick Paton Walsh. We'll watch that all morning.

Back at home, a defiant President Obama challenging the new Republican-controlled Congress to practice a different brand of politics during his final two years in office. In his State of the Union address, the president laid out an expansive and expensive wish list to help middle-class Americans. Let's begin with Michelle Kosinski. She is at the White House.

Tell us more, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alisyn.

This morning the White House says they are very pleased with the speech and how it was received. And this is the State of the Union address the president has been wanting to make. They say now, for the first time, the economy is strong enough that he can really focus on some of those initiatives to benefit the middle class. Here's one of them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you truly believe you can work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year? Try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest working people in America a raise.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: The president fired up there at times. Really throwing down the gauntlet, challenging Republicans to come up with better proposals on a range of issues.

For example, one of them was the Keystone Pipeline. The president has already threatened to veto that, at least for now. He said, "Let's set our sights higher than one pipeline and let's pass a bipartisan infrastructure Bill. That's one area of working together with Congress that might actually happen. That was a theme of his. It was how he wrapped up his speech, saying that he envisions, in fact, a better politics in America, where people can have strong differences of opinion. But not demonize each other --Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right, Michelle.

Meanwhile, freshman Senator Joni Ernst, an Iraq war veteran who grew up on a farm in Iowa, she delivered the Republican response to the State of the Union. So how did her party receive the president's agenda? Chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash live from Washington.

How did her fellow Republicans receive it?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, not so well, when it comes to what Michelle was just talking about, the cost of what the president was proposing, especially when it comes to the new tax benefits that he's talking about.

But when it comes to Joni Ernst, she did something a bit different in a lot of ways. But in terms of the substance of her speech, she specifically said she wasn't responding to the president, she wanted to talk more about Republican ideas. She did talk about the Keystone Pipeline, the tax reform.

But the big thrust of her speech was about her, that she is a different kind of Republican. And she talked about growing up in Iowa and wearing bread bags on her feet, because she only had one pair of shoes. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JONI ERNST (R), IOWA: I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet. Our parents may not have had much, but they worked hard for what they did have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, that is a classic reason why Republicans chose Joni Ernst. She is a very new Republican senator from the state of Iowa. But there is another reason, not just because of her, her upbringing, not because she, they believe, really represents sort of middle America, the Midwest. It's also because of her experience on the battlefield.

And I want you to check out the shoes that she wore. She's a lieutenant colonel. She saw combat in Iraq. She wore camo shoes. So Chris, I think we can call that a statement shoe.

CUOMO: Yes, the president used the word "strong." It applies equally there. And you know what? She's getting some heat, Dana, for her delivery. I think it misses the point. You're right. It's not just middle American values. She represents a lot of generations of people who have come and fought their way to some kind of prosperity of being a fighting man and woman should be honored.

All right. So that's what we heard from the right. Where are we going to come out on all this? We have independent senator from Maine, Angus King. He's a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the intelligence committee. And I want to talk to you about the pressing matters that we have abroad here, because you just came back from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. So you can really help us on that in understanding the state of play.

Let's deal with last night first. Senator, what did you hear? Give me the up and down on it.

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: Well, I think the president made a lot of good points. I thought the end of his speech was very interesting. Because usually, State of the Unions are just long laundry lists of proposals. But in the end, he went into this whole thing about how do we want our politics to work?

And I think what I would like to see is for the Republicans to respond to his proposals based on what they would do. In other words, based on the merits, and not just say, "If it's his idea, I'm against it." And if we can get by that step, and say, "OK, some of these will work. Some of these make sense. Some of these we don't like," you know, I think we'll get a lot further along.

And I've got to tell you, Chris, I do sense that there's more of a mood around here among everybody, but including Republicans, to talk about some of these issues and try to get at them.

I think it's interesting last night on TV, the former Republican chair, Michael Steele, said, you know, "Let's do this minimum wage thing and move on." I mean, that's the kind of thing that, you know, we ought to -- we ought to just be able to take care of and not turn into some kind of partisan battle just because it's the president's idea.

CUOMO: So just to get a second beat on this, you do believe -- because we're hearing a lot of the typical opposition from the right, but you're saying that that may be resistance, a lot of the typical opposition from the right. But you're saying that that may be just talk. You do sense there may be a change, there may be a chance for Congress to get back to work again?

KING: Well, absolutely. I mean, it depends on the issue.

CUOMO: Right.

KING: It's going to be issue by issue. But you know, the president talked about trade last night. He's going to get overwhelming support on that from the Republicans. And I think his problem is going to be with the Democrats.

CUOMO: Do you think objectively it is true that the shadow of crisis has passed in terms of the economy?

KING: We're certainly way ahead of where we've been. I mean, we've seen good job creation, good GDP growth.

The problem is wages. People are still stagnant, and the growth in wages hasn't caught up. But as the unemployment rate goes down, wages tend to go up.

And by the way, Chris, something is going to happen in the next month that nobody is talking about, that I think is going to be very significant. The president has the unilateral power to increase the level where -- where overtime clicks in. It's no question he has it. This isn't the imperial presidency. George Bush did it, you know, ten years ago. And that's going to suddenly change the incomes of a lot of middle-class people. And that, I think is something we're going to see. I'm predicting a story. You're going to hear it, I suspect, in about a month.

CUOMO: Well, it's important for it to be on the radar. It's more important to see what you do about it, obviously. And we'll be watching for leadership from somewhere on that issue and many others.

Let's talk about the trip you just took, Senator. You came back to some hotbed areas: Saudi Arabia, kind of on both sides of the ball here, right? They're a U.S. ally, but they're also known for funding extreme groups. They're helping out with France, but they're also, you know, giving 100 lashes or whatever it is, 1,000 lashes to this blogger. So they're on both sides of the ball. What did you see there? And the state of play in the Middle East?

KING: Well, I think ISIS has gotten their attention. I think they have been somewhat ambivalent. I think they've been mostly helpful to us. They certainly have been participating, including flying air strikes in the coalition fight against ISIS. They had an incident on their border recently where they had some people killed by ISIS. And I think their -- their attention is focused.

What's going on in Yemen, though, is just really difficult and what they're -- what the Saudis and the Qataris are concerned about is Iran.

CUOMO: Right.

KING: And I think, you know -- I don't want to make life more complicated, but a lot of this is a dispute between Iran and the Arab states. The Iranians are not Arabs. They're Persians, and this is a 2,000-year-old rivalry.

And here's how complicated Yemen is. Your reporter mentioned AQAP. That's a Sunni-based extremist group. The Houthis, who just took over last night, apparently...

CUOMO: Shia.

KING: ... are Shiites aligned with Iran. So, you know, how is all of that going to play out? So it's, you know, you've got to have a program. You've got to know the players to be able to follow this.

CUOMO: Senator, isn't part of the problem we've had here since 1998, if not earlier, is that the American people have wanted it to be simple; and it allowed certain moves to be accepted that probably shouldn't have. It is complicated. This is a complicated set of factors that you're dealing with.

You have Iran, not just potentially funding the Shiite insurgents, the Houthis, in Yemen. But they're also fighting side by side with the Iraqis right now, making progress on the ground. You know, these are things that have to be recognized.

The question is what does the U.S. do? Let's start specifically with Yemen. You can't lose Yemen and you're about to.

KING: Well, I don't think we have much control there. I've got to be honest. I think had you a clip earlier. It sounded like Dianne Feinstein. I couldn't see it. But I agree with her. I think we ought to get our people out. I don't want to see a hostage situation.

CUOMO: We have the ships there.

KING: We have ships there; we have air assets. I think we should get them out right away.

Because their -- the outer perimeter defense of the embassy and the compound are local troops. That's true all over the world. And if they collapse, disappear, melt away, we've got a real problem. We've got some Marines there, but in my view, let's be -- I'd rather be safe than sorry. Let's get them out.

And if things settle down, we can work out something diplomatically. They can go back in; that's fine. But I don't want to be here talking to you later this week about a hostage situation. CUOMO: Look, and I don't want to find myself in Yemen because it's

gone wrong again. I mean, this is supposed to be the lesson of Benghazi, is that if you're depending on local troops and they just lost their presidential palace, why are you still there?

I get that you don't want to lose U.S. presence in Yemen. But you can have presence a lot of ways now. You can video conference, you know? If -- why be on the ground there right now? Is there any chance that you can get people to give some analysis to this situation, because we're not hearing it from the White House?

KING: Well, I know from a meeting I was in yesterday afternoon that this is at the top of the agenda at the National Security Council right now, I suspect at this hour. They've got contingency plans for getting people out. I think somebody just has to say, "OK, let's do it."

And my feeling is, now is the time; and we'll see what happens later. Because we -- like you say, I don't want to utter that word, "Benghazi," but it's on everybody's mind.

CUOMO: And well it should be.

Senator King, thanks very much for joining us. Good luck in the work ahead.

KING: Thank you, Chris.

CUOMO: All right. Now, in our next hour, we're going to discuss the speech with Republican Senator Thom Tillis; White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett; and Congressman Keith Ellison. The point, obviously, to give you all your different points of the players, their perspective on what was said last night and what we need to do to get some progress going forward, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris. We also have a breaking story overnight to tell you about, a stabbing spree on a bus in Tel Aviv being called a terror attack. Israeli police say a Palestinian man stabbed at least nine people, one of them suffering serious injuries. Police say they shot the attacker in the leg once he got off the bus and then arrested him.

PEREIRA: In a new video, Boko Haram threatens attacks on Nigeria's neighbors, Niger, Chad and Cameroon and claims responsibility for a massacre in the northern Nigerian town of Baga. As many as 2,000 people have been killed in that rampage. The reported leader of the Islamist terror group says the fighters were doing, quote, "what their lord told them to do."

CUOMO: All right. A little of the latest news in the Cosby situation. A fellow actor is adding fuel to the fire. Alan Thicke tells the "Toronto Star," quote, "There's no doubt in my mind Bill Cosby was a bad boy." What does that mean? Well, because bad boy, he ought to know. Thicke was a producer on Cosby's variety show in the '70s. However, Thicke admits he never witnessed behavior from Cosby like he has been accused of.

CAMEROTA: That is big. I mean, bad boy does -- it sounds more tame.

PEREIRA: In the article he goes on to say he doesn't have a reason to believe that those accusations are true.

CAMEROTA: Are not true.

PEREIRA: He believes that they're true. He believes that they're true.

CUOMO: But he's giving himself some cover, because he worked with him.

PEREIRA: He never witnessed it. Exactly.

CUOMO: So if you're not going to say something, say nothing, because this is a very volatile situation.

CAMEROTA: It sure is.

Meanwhile, an apparent coup in Yemen. U.S. Navy warships offshore, ready to evacuate embassy personnel if need be. More on what this means for the U.S.

CUOMO: And we're going to dive even deeper into what was behind the State of the Union. We'll take you actually behind the scenes. John King has all of that and more on "Inside Politics."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Yemen, a critical American ally in the Mideast, is on the brink of collapse this morning. A rebel group has started an attempted coup and, at this hour, they are in control of the presidential palace.

Yemen, home to the dangerous al Qaeda affiliate known as AQAP, though there's no evidence that they are involved in this takeover. Still, they could exploit any power vacuum.

So let's bring in our experts: Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New American Foundation. And Major General "Spider" Marks is a CNN military analyst and the executive dean for the University of Phoenix.

Great to have both of your expertise with us this morning.

Barak, I want to start with you. The fact that this group is in control of the presidential palace, what do we know about the Houthis?

BARAK BARFI, RESEARCH FELLOW, NEW AMERICAN FOUNDATION: Well, the Houthis are a Zaydi revivalist movement. They are an offshoot of Shi'ism. They fought to get more rights for their people in the north of the country. They fought six battles, war -- rounds of war between 2004 and 2010.

But their godsend for them was the 2011 revolution and the instability that flowed from that. And recently, they've been able to move into many provinces in the country and now have taken over the capital. CAMEROTA: And Barak, I want to stick with you for one more second.

What do they want?

BARFI: Well, what they want is the end of marginalization of the northern provinces. They want to decrease the influence of the Islamists and the Sufiists.

But right now what they want, their immediate demand, is the end of the constitutional amendment which calls for the division of Yemen into six federal republics.

CAMEROTA: General Marks, I want to go to you. We just had Senator Angus King on our air say that he is worried about a hostage situation in the embassy if we're to leave our U.S. personnel in there much longer. Is it time, today, at this hour, to get them out of there?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It is, Alisyn. I think the decision should be made very quickly.

Let me follow up on what Senator King said. Clearly, the National Security Council is in consult, and Central Command is really creating all the contingency plans in terms of what the next steps look like. So that the NSC clearly is going to take the lead from CentCom, which is where it should be.

The issue inside Sana'a, and Yemen more greatly, is that you've got AQAP, Sunni essentially, and you've got the Houthis, Shia essentially. And so what you have is this incredible turmoil. The United States is stuck right in the middle of that with no good potential outcome, unless they get out of there right now.

Clearly, what you see is the larger collapse of governance in the Mideast that we see. So you've got to work both ends of it. You've got to protect what you have now and preserve life. And then at the end of this thing, we've got to be able to try to work in some way to create governance and some degree of stability. Clearly, that's not on the near horizon.

CAMEROTA: General, why aren't we getting them out right now? Why didn't we get them out yesterday?

MARKS: Well, I think this more has to do with our relationship with President Hadi and to insure that he gets the clear message that the United States remains a very strong friend of the government of Yemen. They've been very good to the United States in our efforts to act, in many cases unilaterally and with their support, against AQAP both there and to launch other operations elsewhere in the Middle East.

CAMEROTA: Barak, is it surprising that the Yemeni government collapsed in this way to allow the presidential palace to be taken over?

BARFI: Not at all. President Hadi never had the support of the ruling party known as the General People's Congress or the GPC. He took power from Ali Abdullah Salah, and since day one President Salah has been trying to undermine him. We have heard reports that his son, Ahmed, has been working closely with the Houthis, that Salah's nephew has been working closely with the Houthis. Military units have refused to fight the Houthis, so there's all types of collusion trying to undermine the president at this time.

CAMEROTA: General, while we have you, we want to ask you very quickly about what's going on this morning in the Ukraine. The Ukrainians say that Russian troops have been deployed into Ukraine. Russia says that is, quote, "complete rubbish." What's the truth?

MARKS: It's not complete rubbish. The -- the Russian forces have been in Ukraine and have clearly been a part of what has been going on over the course of the last year overtly. We shouldn't be surprised at all by the claim that Russian forces are in Ukraine. Clearly, Crimea has gone away. And that this is kind of more of the same.

And it's -- it's Putin taking advantage of our glance and our focus elsewhere. This is -- more of this we can anticipate if we don't step up as a coalition, as NATO and as the European Union, unless we look Putin straight in the eye and say look, no more. But we haven't been able to touch the right buttons to provide leverage against him. That's the challenge.

CAMEROTA: It's interesting you say we haven't gone far enough. The president last night, President Obama talked about this in the State of the Union address where he said, "We are" -- I'll just quote him. He says, "We're opposing Russian aggression. We're supporting Ukraine's democracy. We're reassuring our NATO allies." It sounds like you think he's not going far enough.

MARKS: This was his speech last night, Alisyn. I think you and I would agree, what we need to see is actions on the ground; and we haven't seen that in a concerted way, really, to confront this. We've contained it, and we've watched it, but we haven't confronted it.

CAMEROTA: Major General Spider Marks, Barak Barfi, thanks so much for being on with all your expertise.

MARKS: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Let's go over to Chris.

CUOMO: All right. We have the risk abroad, and then we have the risk at home. And we have an example for it -- of it for you in reality. A man's son converted to Islam, but then became radicalized, trained with al Qaeda, returned to the U.S. and killed an American soldier. Now, his father is speaking out to NEW DAY about how this all happened, just ahead.

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