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Manhunt in Tunisia for 3 Escaped Gunmen; Federal Reserve Runs Out of Patience; CNN Poll: Americans Say Things Are Going Well. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired March 19, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:32:47] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Developing story this morning, there's a manhunt under way for the three terrorists who escaped after slaughtering 19 people in Tunisia's national museum. Seventeen of the dead are tourists. Two gunmen were killed by Tunisian security forces. No one has claimed responsibility for the massacre, but a government spokesman in Tunis called the attackers Islamist extremists.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Hundreds of students rallying at the University of Virginia, following a violent arrest of a student all caught on camera. Martese Johnson who can be heard on video, calling the officers racist after they slammed his head into the pavement. Police maintain that he was drunk and resisted arrest when that video was taken. The governor has ordered a full investigation.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The FBI reaching out to law enforcement agency across the country for helping to investigate decades of cold case murders for any possible link to accused killer and real estate heir, Robert Durst. Court documents reveal that Durst had a gun, al latex mask, fake ID and $40,000 cash when he was arrested last week in New Orleans. He is being held on drug and weapons charges there, but faces a first-degree murder charge in Los Angeles.

CAMEROTA: OK. Time to renew your faith in humanity, a truck driver lucky to be alive thanks to another motorist. Thick black smoke pouring from this truck, as you can see it, after it blew a tire and overturned. The guard rail puncturing the fuel tank with the truck driver still inside. That's when a Good Samaritan arrives on the scene, breaking the windshield with stones from the truck's spilled load, and he frees the driver.

Look at this the man reuniting the next day. The driver calls his rescuer his guardian angel.

PEREIRA: The guardian angel of Buffalo.

CAMEROTA: It's so great. To be able to run towards that scene?

BERMAN: That looked really dangerous. The black smoke and fire there, that was threatening. PEREIRA: So often you go your separate ways and never see each other

again. I'm so glad they were reunited.

All right. Should we look at our money see how it's doing? It's time for CNN Money now. CNN Money correspondent Alison Kosik in our money center.

Big news on interest rates?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: There is, Michaela. Good morning.

The Fed dropped its promise to be patient as it plans to first interest rate hike in nine years. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen stressed the central bank, though, will not be impatient either and a rate hike is unlikely at its next meeting in April.

[06:35:00] Target has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a class- action lawsuit following its huge data breach. Victims able to prove they were harmed can collect up to $10,000 in damages. The breach during the 2013 holiday season affected up to 110 million target customers.

A big win for workers in Seattle. Local franchise owners had challenged the city's plan to have the highest minimum wage in the country. But a judge shot them down and beginning April 1st, workers will get at least $11 an hour. That will wind up going up to $15 an hour by 2017. So, it looks like higher minimum wage catching on ever so slowly.

BERMAN: All right. Thanks so much, Alisyn. Appreciate it.

A manhunt under way right now in Tunisia for three gunmen who escaped after opening fire inside a museum. No one has claimed responsibility, but we will tell you why fingers are already pointing at ISIS.

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[06:40:00] BERMAN: Three gunmen remain at large this morning after a terrorist attack at a museum in Tunisia. No group has yet claimed responsibility for this attack, but suspicion has fallen on ISIS or perhaps a splinter group affiliated with ISIS.

Here to weigh in on this, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism analyst and senior fellow at the Foundation of Defense and Democracies. Also with us, Philip Mudd, CNN counterterrorism analyst and a former CIA counterterrorism official.

Phil, let me start with you here.

No one has claimed responsibility yet. There are suspicions it could be ISIS or an ISIS-affiliated group. We've seen Boko Haram say they want to be part of ISIS. We've seen people who pledge their support to ISIS.

Where does this fit to you? What does it feel like to you, looking at it now?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: If I gave awe sense of feel, it would be ISIS, just because this is unique in my experience of doing counterterrorism. The speed with which this organization is finding itself affiliated with groups around the world.

One critical distinction, though, with groups like al Qaeda, and that is we use this word "affiliates" loosely. My sense is some of the groups like Boko have very loose connections with ISIS. I don't think they have operational linkages. It's not clear that the groups tell ISIS that they're going to affiliate.

What's happening is that this ISIS ideology is moving out so quickly across extremist world, that groups like splinters potentially in countries like Tunisia are saying, I want in this game. Regardless of whether I've talked to ISIS, this attack is under the ISIS flag.

BERMAN: And, Daveed, this is not have to be ISIS to be significant or threatening. There are other possibilities in Tunisia, just as much of a threat to security right now.

DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS, FOUNDATION OF DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: Absolutely, the most prominent Tunisian jihadist groups are affiliated with al Qaeda as opposed to ISIS. You have number one, Ansar al- Sharia in Tunisia. But number two, more significantly here, Katiba Uqba bin Nafi, which is a battalion that's subordinate to al Qaeda's North African affiliate, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Now, let's be clear, the two of the gunmen who have been named are known affiliates according to local media of Katiba Uqba bin Nafi. That doesn't mean this was an al Qaeda attack. If we have an ISIS splinter, it very well could have come from Uqba bin Nafi or one of the local jihadist organizations.

So, ISIS is still in the realm of possibilities. But I think a lot of our ISIS, ISIS, ISIS is much more indicative of where the media is currently than necessarily who is powerful and who might launch an attack within Tunisia itself.

BERMAN: The question of who did it significantly. And the question of what happened here, Phil, obviously significant. Any time you have 19 people killed, some many of them tourists, in a public place, you know, it shakes so many people to their foundations here, but where this happened, so significant now. This happened in Tunisia.

Tunisia is sort of one of the relative success story in the region right now, where the Arab Spring continues to take hold here. You know, they had elections there, it's a relatively speaking secular government right now. And yet, they have this terror attack within feet of their parliament.

MUDD: Yes, one of things you've got to think, about I think we ought to change the dialogue here. We keep using the phrase "Arab Spring". You know, after 2011, we're four years in, it looks like an Arab nightmare to me in places like Libya, Yemen, Syria. But the important issue here and the thing that really strikes me

after a couple of decades of doing this business, if you look at places where terrorists had success, they're places of great instability. No secret -- Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Northern Nigeria, every place I'm reeling off is a place where local governments lack the will or capacity to extend power.

The interesting litmus test here over the months and years to come will be, can an extremist group go into a location as you said, that's had a relatively stable transition, from the revolution in 2011 and gain a foothold? My guess is no, but if they do, that will be a change to me that is substantial.

Terrorist groups going into places where there's instability, now a terrorist group going into place where there's relative stability.

BERMAN: Because, Daveed, you know, at least at an official level in Tunisia, there's the will to battle terror. However, you know, Tunisia has been an enormous source of recruits for the battle that's going on in Syria right now. Some 3,000 fighters have gone to fight alongside ISIS and other groups in Syria. Tunisia, right in the border with Libya right now, which, of course, is pure chaos, with so many terrorist groups that work right now.

GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Yes, that's precisely right. The Tunisia prime minister has identified Libya as in his view being the biggest threat to Tunisia's future.

You know, the last two times I've done field research in Tunisia the past couple of years, what's always struck me is how vulnerable Tunisia is to an attack of this very kind, because it's very dependant upon a tourist economy. You know, they've had to significantly increase their security over the course of the past couple of years, as jihadist groups have become more a part, although still in the margins of Tunisian society.

I may agree with Phil's take, that overall, jihadist groups have a much easier time benefitting from an environment of instability, which is why if you trace the attacks in Tunisia over the past few years, most of them have not been in cities at all, but have rather been in the western part of Tunisia, the mountainous area that abuts Algeria. And the reason why is that's an area that's harder to patrol and an area also where these kinds of groups have greater support locally.

[06:45:12] BERMAN: No. But here, the victims here in this attack, Phil, you know, in the capital, main terrorist distinction, and the victims were sort of the United Nations of humanity here, people from all over the world.

MUDD: Yes, I think that's one thing we've got to think about when we think about the significance of this attack. We've got people who had military uniforms, they clearly had looked at the target in terms of how to penetrate it.

But the most significant issue, let's go back to 9/11. Why does al Qaeda pick those targets? There's a financial target in New York. There's a military target, that's the Pentagon. There's the political target, that's the U.S. Capitol. Those are he pillars of U.S. power.

What's the most significant source of foreign money coming into Tunisia? Of foreign dollars? And that would be tourism.

Somebody here with a terrorist mindset didn't just go shoot up some place randomly. They said, we want to take out one of the economic pillars of Tunisia, this has got to be in my judgment, one of the reasons this suggests affiliation with a group, very strategic selection of a target.

BERMAN: Philip Mudd, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, thanks so much for being with us. I appreciate your input here.

MUDD: Thank you.

BERMAN: Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, John.

To domestic politics now: how do Americans think President Obama is doing at this point in his term? How about Congress? We have hot off the presses poll numbers for you, next.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our unemployment rate has fallen from a peak of 10 percent in 2009, when I first came into office. First and foremost, it's the direct result of you, the drive and determination of the American people.

[06:50:07] But I'm going do take a little credit.

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CAMEROTA: That was President Obama giving himself a pat on the back, for the improving economy.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: But do Americans agree with his assessment? We have some new poll numbers to share with you.

Let's debate them with CNN political commentator and Republican strategist Tara Setmayer, along with CNN political commentator and Democratic strategist Paul Begala. Paul is the senior adviser for the super PAC, Priorities USA Action.

And before we get to politics, Paul you gave us quite a scare when we heard you were in a hospital in Israel.

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I had an appendectomy. It all went great. Israeli health care is fantastic, by the way, if you ever have to have emergency surgery. I recommend Tel Aviv Medical Center. CAMEROTA: Wow. Well, you look great. How are you doing?

BEGALA: You guys sent flowers, by the way, NEW DAY. My mom didn't even send flowers. She was like, oh, you'll be fine. There you are. Thank you. That is so gracious, I mean it.

CAMEROTA: I'm sure you love seeing yourself in a hospital gown. It's great to have you back.

All right, Tara, let's talk about the fresh polls that have been released this hour. I want to show you how Americans think the country is doing right now. This is interesting and telling.

Fifty-three percent of the country thinks that the country is doing well, 46 percent think they're doing badly. What's interesting is that when President Obama took office, February of '09, only 21 percent thought it was doing well, 79 percent thought the country was doing badly.

What do you make of these?

TARA SETMAYER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, most people know, and Paul will attest to this, that polls are a snapshot in time. How people feel at moment they're asked the question. So, whether -- it's about perception.

So, whether that's actually true, with the country is on the right track or not, doesn't matter, it's the perception. So, sure, when President Bush left the office, we had a financial crisis, people were upset about the war in Iraq. So, President Obama ushered in supposed to be the new hope and change, so people felt better.

As of right now, I mean -- you know, this poll, he's over 50 percent on this a little bit. But that's -- it's just for right now because people think oh, the unemployment rate is down, so things must be good, gas prices are down, things must be good.

CAMEROTA: Sure.

SETMAYER: But that's not actually the truth of the matter, the health of our economy, or what's really going on in our country, but what's going on in the world as far as American leadership is concerned. So, perception and reality sometimes can be differently reflected in polls.

CAMEROTA: I mean, though, they say perception is reality. If people are feeling more optimistic, then good things happen in the country, Paul.

BEGALA: Right. The economy is not something you can spin. I've tried, OK? People live it, they experience it, they don't think, they know how things are going.

But this actually as a strategist, a much more important leading indicator than the horse race stuff. I mean, we all do the horse race stuff. My gal Hillary is beating everybody by 100,000 points, that's baloney. OK? That's useless.

BERMAN: As an aside.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Aside right now.

BEGALA: No, but what's important is this -- are we moving in the right direction or have things gotten off on the wrong track? Are things going better or worse? Is the president doing well or the Republican Congress doing better? Those kind of indicators are much more important future predictors of where American politics is going.

BERMAN: Let's take a look actually where the president is doing right now because we have the poll on that also. The favorability rating at 46 percent, you might look at it and say, hey, look, he's under 50, things aren't great.

But look at it relative to where George W. Bush was, Tara, in march of 2007. You see that you know, Bush obviously had huge problems and it led to huge electoral difficulties for the Republicans in the following election, President Obama in a much different place.

SETMAYER: I think that President Obama is much better at going out there, giving speeches when he, when it looks like things aren't going well, he'll give a big rah-rah campaign speech, to make people feel good again, to deflect from what's going on.

BERMAN: So, he's tricking people into thinking the economy is going well?

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: But what do you think the problems are?

SETMAYER: Absolutely.

Well, one of the biggest problems is the fact that we have an unbelievable debt going on, doubled since Obama took office. More businesses are falling, that are being started in this economy. The economy is not doing that well. It's recovering at a very slow rate, the slowest since the Great Depression.

You have 46 million people on food stamps, records number of people on disability. I mean, the government overreach going on in people's lives is awful.

And people don't feel -- when you ask more specifically about how they feel about the economy and how things are going well, the American people don't feel that positive about what's happening.

When I see a poll like this, even on unemployment, that's an inflated number. Unemployment being down, you know, 5, whatever percent it is now, the labor participation rate is at a 37-year low, that's because people are dropping out of the workforce. Most people don't know that, they just think, oh, unemployment is at 5.7 percent, things are going great.

CAMEROTA: It's not as rosy as it looks, Paul.

(CROSSTALK)

BEGALA: Well, right. But as Republicans say, don't compare us to the Almighty, compare us to the alternative. You know, politics is a comparative business. The greatest political strategist ever was Henny Youngman. Anytime, when I asked him, how's your wife? He said, compared to what? OK?

How's the president compared to what? No, he's not perfect. Yes, there are problems. Tara mentions them, we have to address them.

But people are smart, they make their own assessment. How is the president doing? He's been there for six years. As a strategist, looking forward to 2016, I can run with this guy leading my country.

When Bush was president, poor John McCain was trying to win, and we tagged him as a third term of Bush. The Democrats carried every single state where Bush was below 35. I can run with this guy.

BERMAN: Let's talk about the Henny Youngman test right now, because compared to what?

[04:55:01] Compared to the Republican Congress. We talked about President Obama's favorability of 46 percent, let's look at the Republican Congress.

The approval rating is 23 percent, disapproval at 74 percent. Actually, I don't think 23 percent is as low as we've seen for Congress in the past. But still not high, Tara.

SETMAYER: Yes, but Congress is traditionally at a low rate. I think at one point the Republican Congress was down to 9 percent when Nancy Pelosi was speaker of the House, it was in low digits. People just traditionally don't think Congress is great, because people are frustrated with Washington, they think it's gridlock. People are fighting with each other. We're not getting anything done.

So the perception of what's going on in Congress compared to the president who has the bully pulpit, he has the ability to shape news where he wants to. You can create a -- it's a perception game. Like I said, it's messaging.

Paul himself even just admitted that you can run with this guy with these kinds of numbers, not based on his record, but based on how you can turn it around.

(CROSSTALK)

SETMAYER: You know what? I would love to see -- I would love to see a candidate with his record, and wait that how horrible this country is doing, not only domestically but internationally. Let's run another third term of Barack Obama and see how it works in 2016.

CAMEROTA: But I mean, let's talk about 2016, because, you know, to his -- to Paul's point: if it's Hillary Clinton, if she's the candidate, then it will be something of a third term. She was involved in this administration and you're saying that's fine with you?

BEGALA: Well, she'll have -- she'll have her areas of separation, obviously, like everybody does. But the model here, the only time in our lifetime that a party got three in a row was Reagan to Bush.

And Bush had served loyally for Ronald Reagan, Bush senior, of course. But he had his points of separation, I'll be kinder, gentler. You know, I think that is -- obviously, it's the only successful model in my lifetime. I think that's much more like it.

I look at this -- of course, this super PAC that I help run supported the president's re-election. You know my biases, right? But still, just as somebody who wants Hillary to run and wants her to win. I can run with this guy -- it's a good record and it's only going to get better, I have to tell you. The economy is improving.

The biggest thing is we've had great jobs reports for many months, we're finally getting some wage growth. That's the most important thing.

If you see this -- so, you know, our economics reporter is going to be more important than a political analyst as wages start creeping up, man, it's going to be good for the Democrats.

BERMAN: The Fed has their eye on it, obviously. It could be acting soon.

SETMAYER: If they're honest about the economic report, I mean, the average family income has gone down under this president. This -- you have to be honest.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: According to you today, people aren't being honest about a lot of things when they're talking to pollster, but, Tara, we're going to take it up another time.

Tara Setmayer, thanks very much. Paul Begala, great to have you with us.

CAMEROTA: Good to have you guys. Thanks so much.

All right. We're following a lot of news, let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just heard gunshots.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A massive manhunt to track down the terrorists.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's been no official claim from ISIS, but many of their supporters have been celebrating.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I felt it in my stomach. I just, seeing the blood run down this young man's face.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who would marry Robert Durst?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We never found her body.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was emotionally abusive, he was physically abusive.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She would call me late at night for hours about his violence.

BERMAN: More fraternities in hot water this morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Something happened in the last pledge class.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The comprehensive investigation of all of our chapters.

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Good morning, and welcome back to your NEW DAY. Chris Cuomo is off. I guess he's preparing for the snow tomorrow. John Berman is here with us.

We begin with the desperate search for three terrorists that are on the run after opening fire on the national museum in Tunis. Five attackers in all, killing 19 people, most of those tourists. Two of the attackers were shot and killed by security forces during that bloody siege.

CAMEROTA: No one has claimed responsibility for the massacre, but a Tunisian government spokesman says the gunmen were, quote, "Islamist extremists", and at least one of them was known to security services.

We begin our coverage with CNN senior international correspondent Arwa Damon from Tunis -- Arwa.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This morning, a massive manhunt for at least three suspects continues. This as scores of international visitors depart Tunis on a cruise liner, following the deadliest attack on tourists in the Middle East in over a decade.

On Wednesday, men strapped with high-powered guns, dressed in military fatigues, stormed the Bardo National Museum in Tunisia's capital, opening fire inside. The museum connected to Tunisia's parliamentary building, full of lawmakers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We heard a firefight just next to the building. It was very strong and administration came to tell to us to lay down.

DAMON: Security forces killing two of the gunmen. But not before the attackers shot and killed at least 19 people, including 17 tourists from around the world.

More than 20 others were injured in the attack, including this man -- visited in the hospital, by Tunisia's president. This morning, concern the brazen attack could have been the work of ISIS supporters. The opening of a new front for their violence in North Africa. Out of the 20,000 foreigners that have joined the fight in Iraq and Syria, a British think tank says, out of 3,000 of them.