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New Day

Obama Issues Budget Challenge To Congress; President Tries To Maintain Defiant Tone; More Than 50 Threats To U.S. Flights; Marshawn Lynch In Trouble With NFL?

Aired January 29, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: That is what is called a nonstarter and remember, this is just a month after President Obama began lifting some restrictions against Cuba that show of good faith, now not being taken gracefully.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this Sunday bring your game face, bring passion for your team, but at Super Bowl XLIX don't bring your drone. The FAA has released this kind of bizarre YouTube video deeming the Super Bowl a no-drone zone.

There actually will be a virtually no-fly zone around the University of Phoenix Stadium. Drones have sparked security concerns of late. One crashed landed on the White House grounds. We've seen incidents where they've been disruptive at airports. So they're saying no drones at Super Bowl. Go ahead, sound off.

CUOMO: I have a question, what do you do if someone does fly into a zone? How do they get the drone out of the air?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: They dispatch the police.

PEREIRA: I don't know.

CAMEROTA: A huge net, a huge drone net.

CUOMO: Do they use their own drone --

CAMEROTA: To shoot it down?

CUOMO: -- to go after the drone that they don't want?

PEREIRA: Questions you pose to John King.

CUOMO: Things I won't be able to pay attention to during the game because I'll be drinking. It's time to get "Inside Politics" on NEW DAY with John King. I know you're getting jazzed up for Super Bowl because your team is in it.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": I'm excited for the Super Bowl again, but we've got to win one, it's been ten years. We're excited because of what Joe Johns just talked about, the president going up to the Democratic meeting in Philadelphia.

So let's go "Inside Politics." With me this morning to share reporting and their insights are Nia-Malika Henderson of the "Washington Post" and Tamara Keith of NPR.

It's an interesting moment for the president so let's spend a few minutes and dig deep. He was in the State Of The Union address. On the one hand, he says let's get along, but then he lays out some very confrontational policies with the Republicans even though the Republicans won the election.

Today, we are told he's going to go up to this retreat. Sit down with the Democratic lawmakers and as the White House puts it, the president says believes we should end the era of manufactured crises and mindless austerity and instead build on the bipartisan budget agreement signed in late 2013 that helped us end some of the arbitrary budget cuts, and so on and so forth.

I want to focus, though, on the manufactured crises. He means government shutdowns or threatened government shutdowns, mindless austerity, Republicans would call that responsible spending cuts and deficit control.

So what's the president's end game here? The Republicans won big in the election. They have more votes in Congress and he's essentially saying you're wrong.

TAMARA KEITH, NPR: The sequester I think that many Republicans would also call it mindless. That's the thing. It's this meat ax approach, but the president's proposal for getting rid of it is raising taxes on the rich, heard that before, and the Republicans say no, no, no.

So we're kind of back in that same standoff over how do you balance this spending priorities and other priorities that Republicans have. So it's -- it's kind of back to where we've been all along.

KING: Back to where we've been all along, but look, the president knows the math, Nia, and so what's he doing here. He knows the Republicans are going to recoil when they hear what he says today to House Democrats.

They're going to say, Mr. President you're ignoring what the American people just told you in November. But the president is not doing this for fun. He's got an end game, right?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes, he's got an end game. The end game is he's got Republicans who came in wanting to prove that they can govern, wanting to prove that they can get something done. But he's put them in the exact same spot, which is saying no, no, no.

Every interview you've heard so far from Boehner or McConnell, everything that the president brings up, they say no so what the president is doing is laying out a vision, a political blueprint in the way that the State of the Union was the same thing.

It won't have the force of law, none of these things do. It's rhetoric, but it's setting the terms of the debate and now Republicans have to come back with some budget where they lay out what the Republican Party stands for.

So that's the thing, they're still. They're not quite on offense yet. They're still on defense still saying no, no, no.

KING: That's the interesting thing to watch because so many people thought after the election, he's a lame duck. He'll be essentially irrelevant the last two years. I want to remind viewers that right after that State Of The Union address, remember, he said raise the minimum wage.

Republicans aren't going to do that. He said, as Tamara just noted, let's raise taxes on the wealthy. Republicans are very skeptical about doing that. The president hit the road, on the one hand, still standing by his proposals, and yet trying to strike a balance. On the other hand saying why can't we get along?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I've got two years left in office. I'm not going to stop trying to make our politics work better. That's what you deserve. That's how we move the country forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So that's sort of the kinder, gentler, let's be bipartisan president striking that tone with the American people. While at the same time at the moment, at the moment -- this is what I'm trying to get at, he's trying to get leverage.

At the moment, his proposals are, go away, Republicans, I'm right. You're wrong even though you just won the election. He stood with the Democrats in that speech when they were worried about him. We have seen Democrats peel away on their rush to pass an Iran sanctions bill that the president doesn't want.

The Democrats says, maybe we should give the president a bit of a chance. "Politico" reporting this morning that there's a debate in Camp Clinton about whether she should wait until July to get into the race or get in, in the next month or two. How would that factor into the president's calculation?

Look, any time he does anything, people are going to say, what does Hillary think, but is it easier for the president, does it buy him more time if she stays out, not being an official candidate longer?

KEITH: Well, I think that it makes him a slightly less lame duck for a few more months. He can continue to set the agenda and set the tone and that's exactly what he's doing. He's saying yes, yes, you guys think I'm a lame duck, but I'm going to keep laying an agenda here.

And then the Republicans are going to have to answer, well, what do you think of that? What do you think of that? Because he's just continuing to throw ideas out there, refusing to sit back and be lame. HENDERSON: In the meantime, what you've seen is his approval ratings ticking up. If you're in the Clinton camp, you want to see those approval ratings at 50 percent. Again, we've got people like John Podesta, who are behind the scenes, work for Hillary Clinton at some point.

Has been orchestrating what the president's approach to politics and policy has been for the last year. So I think Hillary Clinton, she stays out until July. The president keeps doing this keeps putting Republicans in a box.

I mean, the Republicans have had a rough go of it. Think about what happened with the abortion debate in the House. Think about how they came in with the Scalise debate. It was not helpful to them.

So I think people are surprised that the Republicans, you had somebody like McConnell saying we're going to turn the page and it's really Obama who has been able to reset his presidency in the last six weeks.

KING: You made the point and it's a great point about his approval ratings if he can keep those numbers up. The cut budget deal is not in January or February, if they go by what they want to do, the old order. We'll be cutting those deals in August and September.

So the issue is, who has the political leverage then and that's essentially what all this is about now for the president, right, trying to keep his numbers up to build strength for negotiation?

HENDERSON: Yes, to build strength for negotiations and he knows the magic number for Republicans is 67. He's got the power of the veto and they've got to get 67 votes to override that. So he's in oddly, a strong position, I think they're playing it very smart. We've got to see what Republicans do.

KING: Interesting. We'll watch the president today. Keep track of the Democratic event. Democratic losers in the election, but on offense, whether pretend or not, let's go to another couple of other topics.

Mitt Romney has said within a couple of weeks he is going to tell us whether he's going run again, a third time in 2016. He was in Mississippi yesterday, gave a speech to some students, but also spent some time in a restaurant.

One of the rules in politics, Mitt Romney said is that you're not supposed to let the cameras shoot you eating. But he decided, is this the new Mitt Romney? Answer the question about whether he's still a politician.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you still consider yourself a politician?

MITT ROMNEY, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You're taking my picture? What can I say? It's dangerous. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this the new Romney now? Eaten when the cameras are rolling?

ROMNEY: I didn't know I had a choice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I didn't know I had a choice about being the new Romney. Are we seeing a new Romney? Is he trying to be more likable, more approachable?

HENDERSON: Sure, he is. Whether or not it will work is the question. We know, you know, Mitt Romney from 2008, 2012 and here's a different Romney now.

KING: You write a piece this morning, Nia-Malika Henderson about conservatives breaking up with their girl, Sarah Palin. She was in Iowa this past week. She gave a speech that many found kind of hard to follow. Here's a piece of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH PALIN (R), FORMER ALASKA GOVERNOR: GOP leaders by the way, you know, the man can only ride you when your back is bent. So strengthen it then the man can't ride you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It is interesting. She was the VP candidate in 2008, 2012 cycle, Republicans seem to be joining Democrats in saying please, please, you'll be a problem for us. We'll continue to keep an eye on Sarah Palin.

But Alisyn, as we get back to you, it is interesting. If she ran, she would be a force in Iowa, maybe and Republicans think after that, not so much. It's interesting to see so many conservatives, when liberals criticized her, the conservatives would say don't do it now it's the conservatives criticizing Sarah Palin saying please, go away.

CAMEROTA: Interesting how the tables have turned. All right, John King, thanks so much.

KING: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: See you soon. Dozens of online threats, more than 50 of them made against U.S. commercial flights in just the last two weeks, some of them claim to be from ISIS. So what's being done to make sure you're safe in the sky? We'll talk to our aviation expert about that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Good to have you back with us here on NEW DAY. More than 50 threats have been made on Twitter against U.S. commercial flights in less than two weeks. How do officials know which ones they need to take seriously? Here to discuss, Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and

former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, and Howard Schmidt is a former cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, and a partner for Ridge Smith Cyber, LLC.

I don't know if I'm supposed to call you Czar Schmidt, but I think I might. I like the sound of that. All right, so let's talk through this, Mary, first of all, walk us through how airlines manage this. They get a threat, what happens next?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, they get a threat, they call the FBI. They alert the FBI and then the FBI has to work very quickly because obviously the plane is often in the air when they get them or about to take off and the FBI has to do a quick assessment as to whether this is someone on the Internet, a prankster or something they have to take seriously.

And they also have to make the decision, is this the kind of threat where they're using the bomb threat to commander the plane or just a threat to disrupt the system and that's why the two sets of jets were escorted by fighter planes because they didn't know if the bomb was to commander the plane.

PEREIRA: So then how -- in terms of that assessment of, is this real or is it a hoax, how can they do that? Especially when these people are using Twitter and all you've got is a Twitter handle?

HOWARD SCHMIDT, PARTNER, RIDGE-SCHMIDT CYBER LLC: Well, that's one of the challenges we have because there are so many ways to number one mask your identity. Mask your intent, and you have to, you know, analyze this, at Internet speed so it's extremely difficult.

There are certain circumstances that exists where you know, we see some sites where we can track it down immediately to say some teenagers being stupid or something like that. But the ones that really know how to hide where they're coming from, it's really difficult to figure out what their intent is and who they are.

PEREIRA: Well, it seems like there's been such a cluster of them. Our staff says there have been about 50 threats in the last 11 days, Mary. What do you make of that? Why the uptick?

SCHIAVO: Well, a lot of times in any kind of crime you have copycats and people in this case, in this case it's a felonious, monkey see, monkey do. You see one crime will follow another. That doesn't surprise me.

What surprises me is so many people get the idea this is something they should do when it's one, a serious federal felony, and they can be prosecuted, and they can be hit with an order to pay restitution.

PEREIRA: But Mary, the concern is that it could be a real threat or it could be someone testing the system or the response, right?

SCHIAVO: That's exactly right. That was a big concern in the wake of September 11th, 2001. We found out that they did test the system for many, many months, in fact a couple of years before so that the FBI has to sort out. It's very difficult.

PEREIRA: So Howard, this is the challenge, right? You know, cybersecurity officials trying to track down these perpetrators online. Yet, we know about the dark web. We know about the ability of hackers to remain anonymous. How do you confront that? Because there's so much, and you've got privacy concerns to add on top of that.

SCHMIDT: Yes, it was yesterday it was privacy day, and this was a big topic, is how do you stop these sorts of things while still preserving privacy and freedom of speech? It's really, really difficult. We had to sit down and analyze the system to say, OK, here's the category, here's the regions, here's the things that come that we can figure out, and then sort of separate the noise from there.

I mean, I remember back when I was a policeman in high school, bomb threats were sort of a, the common way, but they were coming from a phone booth right next to the school. We have to do that analysis, yes.

PEREIRA: Cutting through all the noise is so time-consuming and expensive. Mary, I was thinking the airlines are then confronted with the expense of for example, you scramble fighter jets, if you delay flights, if you take people off of a flight that's already boarded. The expense adds up.

SCHIAVO: It does. And for anyone who is thinking about doing this, a prankster, the expense could be half a million dollars if the airline has to cancel a fight and rebook everybody, loses the revenue from any individual flight depending on the size of the plane and the number of passengers.

So that could be a mighty big restitution order and as a former federal prosecutor, let me assure that they are required to put that restitution order in any prosecution.

PEREIRA: It's a federal offense. Don't get it twisted. All right, our thanks to Czar Schmidt, Howard, thanks so much for being in such good humor. Mary, always a delight to have you, thanks so much.

We want to put it to you at home. Are you concerned? Does it worry you flying amidst these online threats? Tweet us @newday or go to our Facebook page, facebook.com/newday -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, hold on to yourself, from deflate-gate to sinus- gate. Tom Brady's got a nasty cold. So what? Guys play with broken bones, but so much is on the line. This may affect the odds of the Super Bowl. Does this matter to the game? He's sweating, wiping his nose, still handsome, though.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: All right, those are footballs. Now as we get closer to them, we'll start discussing them. CAMEROTA: Taking note.

CUOMO: The duke, a very good ball, was a ball in its own right. Now they use it as a nickname for balls in general. I'm explaining these. That's where we're starting.

Next lesson, Marshawn Lynch is a beast. They actually say he has beast mode when he's the running back for the Seattle Seahawks. He's phenomenal. Here's what's not so good. He doesn't like talking to the media.

CAMEROTA: Why not?

CUOMO: Because he doesn't want to, he says, so they fine him. Now there is a wrinkle. He does not like talking to the media, comma, unless --

PEREIRA: He's wearing one of his hats.

CUOMO: He can make some money off of it. Andy Scholes live in Arizona. The latest in the Super Bowl drama dynamic, say it ain't so, my white tooth friend. What's going on?

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Hi, Chris. What's up? Yes, Marshawn Lynch is not budging when it comes to talking to us sports reporters. Media day on Tuesday he said, I'm just here so I won't get fined 29 times before leaving. Then yesterday he had a whole new phrase ready for us. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARSHAWN LYNCH, SEAHAWKS RUNNING BACK: Ain't nothing changed from yesterday. You know why I'm here. You know why I'm here. Y'all know why I'm here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: So he said, you know why I'm here 14 times before leaving after the mandatory 5 minutes. He's putting on these short performances because he was reportedly looking at a $500,000 fine if he refused to talk. It turns out he may get fined anyways.

ESPN is reporting the league may penalize Lynch for wearing his beast mode hat the last two days. It's against the NFL rules to promote your own brands or brands that conflict with league partners during interviews.

Now Lynch's teammates have his back saying he's being who he is. They think the league should be spending time dealing with other issues as opposed to fining Lynch for things like a hat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAM CHANCELLOR, SEAHAWKS STRONG SAFETY: They're focusing on the wrong thing. It's about the game. It's the patriots against the Seahawks. It's not about a hat. It's about the game. They are taking away from us. It's not about a hat, man.

It's about football and the people, the media, the people want to see us guys play football. They don't care about a hat. They want to see us go out there and battle and compete and show good sportsmanship.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: All right, the Patriots side of things, Tom Brady has the sniffles. He said his kids and wife, Giselle, are all sick. He's been under the weather for four or five days. He's eating a lot of garlic. He did practice yesterday with no issues.

The Patriots and Seahawks players will talk one more time today. So far you've gotten Lynch saying I'm here just so I can't get fined. Then he said you know why I'm here. Maybe today, Alisyn, he'll go with something like why do you guys keep trying to ask me questions.

CAMEROTA: OK. Maybe that would be good. You know what Tom Brady needs. Michaela just offered it up. He needs a tissue. Somebody needs to give Tom Brady a tissue. I guess not -- incredible. Andy Scholes, thanks so much.

SCHOLES: Or a hanky. Have a good one.

CAMEROTA: Listen to this, our top story, another recording, a deadline and new ultimatum from ISIS. Jordan says it is open to a prisoner swap to get the pilot back. How should the U.S. respond to all of this? We'll ask the State Department.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The clock is ticking. Will the Jordanians comply with the terror group's demands?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not sure that Jordan can go ahead without an assurance that they are going to get their pilot back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will never give up. They are holding the --