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Amtrak's Northeast Corridor Trying to Return to Normal; Jeb Bush's Presidential Campaign. Aired 6:30-7:00a ET.

Aired May 18, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Amtrak's northeast corridor trying to return to normal this morning. Full service between New York City and Philadelphia got rolling for the first time since last week's derailment that left eight dead and more than 200 injured. You are looking at the first Amtrak train to leave Philadelphia 33rd station and then passed over that crash site. That curved section of the track now has automated speed controls. The FBI investigators examining the train's windshield, which was reportedly struck before the accident.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: The Iraqi City of Ramadi now controlled by ISIS. The terrorists are using armored bulldozers and suicide bombers to force Iraqi troops and police to retreat. Ramadi is just 70 miles west of Baghdad. U.S and Iraqi officials insist the fight there is far from over. Citizens meanwhile are fleeing the city in droves. The White House now ordering expedited weapons shipment to Iraq over the weekend.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Saudi led airstrikes resuming overnight against the Houthi rebels that's in Yemen. This hours after a five- day truce ended. Both sides have been holding their fire since Tuesday to allow much need humanitarian aid to get in. The United Nations is now calling to extend the troops. Obviously, that's not being respected. But they say that more aid needs to be delivered to the millions of people who've been caught in the middle of this conflict.

[06:35:00] CAMEROTA: And music's biggest and brightest stars shined at the Billboard music award. But the night belonged to Taylor Swift who took home eight trophies, including top artists, and of course, it would not be an awards show without a little controversy. Kanye West closed out the show being booed by the audience for his profanity laced performance. For viewers at home, most of his performance was silent, as ABC censored him for more than a minute. Listen.

Huh, hard to see him. The performance widely banned online. A silent music performance.

PERIERA: If I was watching this at home. I would have been yelling at my TV. And being like, this darn TV isn't working and then throwing the remote around, trying to figure out why my tech issues were not resolved.

CUOMO: Does it bother you a bit that we keep rewarding him for like you know, doing bad things. He reminds me one of those parenting books that says, just ignore the bad behavior.

PEREIRA: Ignore the bad behavior. I'm with you. I'm there with you.

CUOMO: And exercise the good behavior. I'm like this guy - I keep saying his name for bad reasons.

PEREIRA: You've got to stop now in. It's mere silence.

CUOMO: No, that itself the problem that frustrates me.

PEREIRA: You can't.

All right. Let's take a look at weather with Chad Meyers, he's giving us a look at the week's forecast. There will be no Kanye in your forecast.

CHAD MEYERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No. There will be thunderstorms in Houston and a back door cold front for New York. It feels like spring again in New York. Houston, you may get some important things there, there are storms to your west. But this front has pushed out of the south to Philadelphia and New York City is back to refreshing air again today. It will heat up again, I understand that. At least a day or two, we're going to have very nice conditions there. Couple of thunderstorms in the plains nothing to really worry about today, just heavy rain showers across the parishes of Louisiana.

There is your warm back up in the northeast for the next couple of days. But look what happened in Minneapolis. Yesterday was a beautiful 74. Today the high will be 45. So that's the cold front we're talking about basically for New York. Yesterday you were 83. And it felt like summer. Today is 66. You are back to spring. Guys, back to you.

CUOMO: I'll take it.

MEYERS: It was muggy yesterday.

CUOMO: All right. So here's the question. Was going into Iraq in 2003 a mistake? You may think the answer to that is simple. But another Republican who wants to be president just make it seem very difficult. That man is Senator Marco Rubio. And he tried his best to best his friend and opponent Jeb Bush and then bungled the obvious question contest. How did he do this? Your answer ahead.

[06:40:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was it a mistake to go to war with Iraq?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I understand, but it's not the same question.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the question I'm asking. Was not a mistake for the president to go into Iraq.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm asking you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In hindsight. The world is not a better place because Saddam Hussein is not there. I don't understand the question you are asking.

CAMEROTA: Well, that was Senator Marco Rubio struggling to answer, whether the U.S. envision of Iraq was a mistake. It is a question that has dogged potential candidate Jeb Bush all last week why are they having so much trouble answering it?

CUOMO: It's good question, let's get some answers. Editor in Chief for the Daily Beast John Avlon here, he is a CNN (inaudible) and Republican consultant and CNN political commentator series, XM radio host Margaret Hoover here. Margaret, why are you smiling? What is going on here with your big dogs and this relatively simple seeming question?

MARGARET HOOVER, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is a simple question. But there are two different questions that have two different answers if you are Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. Would you have done the same thing in 2002 and 2003 with the same information that George W. Bush had, that Hillary Clinton had when she was had to authorize the Iraq war?

CAMEROTA: That wasn't the question.

HOOVER: You are right.

CUOMO: There are certain questions.

HOOVER: And I think what's happened is, there is some confusion to clarify which one. I don't think Marco Rubio is confused about this answer the way that Jeb Bush was. Marco Rubio said very clearly, knowing what we know, it was a mistake. If I were in his shoes in 2003, I would have made the same decision. Those are two different questions, I think it's really legitimate, two different questions, two different answers.

CUOMO: I think the confusion may have been motivated by a concern on the part of this guy to not upset different factions within the party.

JOHN AVLON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, DAILY BEAST: Correct.

CUOMO: Otherwise, it doesn't make sense why they get caught up in it.

AVLON: I understand. It's the I'm running the president of the United States answer. It's not about re-litigating should W have done it? But what lessons have you taken going forward? Right? That's the key question. And the conundrum the candidates are in, is that they don't - they haven't figured out a way to separate themselves from the policies in the past because invasion was something that united the Republican party as a positive good even through the Bush presidency.

CAMEROTA: So they could never say yes to mistakes?

AVLON: That would involve repudiating. The Bush administration repudiating those policies that most of them supported in the past. And that is tricky within the Republican party. It just is?

HOOVER: You're totally wrong because they are doing precisely that. I mean, Marco Rubio said, it was a mistake. George W. Bush said it was a mistake to go to the Iraq war without weapons of mass destruction. I had bad information. So what's happening now on a Republican side and you're seeing this in a really painful drawn out way. Is Republicans are trying to coalesce around what a Republican foreign policy is going to be wake of an incredibly unpopular and failed experience in Iraq.

CUOMO: Does Jeb have the old Bush guys advising him on foreign policy? Could that be part of his, you know, you can argue unfair standards for him anyway, let's talk about his brother. Does he also have to be careful because his guys are those same guys?

HOOVER: They're not. I mean, he does have 19 of the 20 you know of his brother's foreign policy advisers that he rolled out on that same day. But the question is, who is he actually listening to answering to? Most of these people are secular. He's not calling up 93-year-olds and 88-year-olds every moment to ask some questions on how to handle these questions on a day-to-day basis.

AVLON: But the problem is that intervention foreign policy united the Republican party for a long time. But that all of a sudden gets complicated if you say you know what that was a failed policy.

CAMEROTA: Let's shift gears and talk about another question that Jeb Bush says about this weekend and that is about gay marriage and his answer seems to suggest a bit of a pattern. Let's listen.

[06:45:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe there should be a constitutional right to same-sex marriage? Because that's the argument in front of the Supreme Court?

JEB BUSH, FORMER GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA: I don't. But I'm not a lawyer and clearly this has been accelerated as a war pace. What's interesting is that four years ago, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton had the same view that I just expressed to you.

CAMEROTA: How did that answer that, Margaret?

HOOVER: There is very challenging, because 50 percent of republicans under the age of 50 are in favor of same sex marriage. More than 60 percent of Americans are in favor of same sex marriage.

AVLON: Zero percent of Republican candidates.

HOOVER: That's actually not true. Carley Fiorina has said, that if she is the chief executive and the Supreme Court says, that there is a constitution for freedom that her job is to enforce the laws of the land.

AVLON: That's like saying are you in favor by the way.

HOOVER: So here is the question for Jeb Bush.

AVLON: Hold on. I feel edgy.

HOOVER: So, the question is, is he going to be for constitutional amendments to overturn the Supreme Court? If he is going to say, will he say, we should take it back to the states and every state should decide on their own? What is this, does this position move him further to the right? By the way, will he be able work himself out of it? Because three times he had to change his positions on answers related to LBGT freedom.

CAMEROTA: And John, it's also curious that this answer is twice now he's suggested here's in the line with Hillary Clinton. He keeps saying that. That's not a good position.

AVLON: Well, he keeps harkening back to the past, to say, you know, this answer seems to be focused on say look, we can't change civilization so quickly that's a conservative virtue. But as Margaret pointed out it leads him down a slippery slope of logic. We've got a lot of trouble. Does he back a constitutional amendment that his brother didn't if 2004, mostly in the campaign deeply regret or something of that nature like Ted Cruz, when you have a Supreme Court decision coming down if June saying it's not constitutional, that is a question, that is an answer fraught with problems let alone being entirely out of step. But arise in generation in America.

HOOVER: Just one point of clarification. The constitutional amendment that Ted Cruz is now forwarded, Scott Walker now forward to, it's not a primary between a man and a woman or to define it is simply to throw it back to the state. Which is actually not the same constitutional amendment that this brothers appointed in 2004.

CUOMO: Either way you wind up that the Supreme Court decides in favor of this equal protection right. You're going to wind up violating the federal law in order to make a change. They will have that problem. We will play that out over time. When is one of the men or women going to own the infrastructure we just saw from train 188? I will be that president. I will make sure our rail system isn't the best money to 18th century.

AVLON: No brainer.

CAMEROTA: Margaret, John, good to see you guys. You can Tweet us using the #NewDayCNN or post your comments on facebook.com/newday. Also, programming note I will be sitting down with GOP hopeful Senator Rand Paul. I will ask him all of these tough questions. You can see my interview tomorrow morning on "New Day."

PERIERA: All right. We look forward to that pretty much Alisyn, meanwhile, ISIS fighters are taking a key Iraqi City. How does the fall of Ramadi impact the global fight against ISIS going forward? We will put that question to a military expert next.

[06:50:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Good evening, back with us here on "New Day." Set back this morning on the fight against ISIS the terror group taking the Iraqi City of Ramadi. What does this mean for the fight against them? CNN's Global Affairs Analyst Retired Lt. Col. James Reese joins us again. He was of course, again a U.S. Delta force commander, knows the region very, very well. We will get to our big pap in a second. I want to talk to you about something we talk about in great detail here. About six weeks ago Tikrit failed government forces taking back Tikrit from ISIS. It was sort of seen as this huge victory. The beginning of the end. Pack up and go home. Yet this happens, Ramadi falls. Is this how it goes or are we losing ground?

JAMES REESE, U.S. DELTA FORCE COMMANDER: It's how it goes, Michaela, let me - I spent the month of March with Ben Wedeman in Tikrit. Great victory for the Iraqis et al against ISIS. Now Ramadi falls, but this is how it happens,

these are major cities. Think about you know, Austin, Indianapolis, D.C. you got to take all these down.

PEREIRA: Let's look at the map. This is the province, the capital of the province Ramadi. How important is it if we look at this area that this fell.

REESE: So, if you look down here, you can see the big red line runs to the northwest to the southeast. Very key, that's where everything goes along. Raka, right in the middle there, that's the headquarters of ISIS. That's where everything comes from. That continues to be a place that we look at and bomb and go after.

PEREIRA: You talk about and we can look at the next animation, you've talk about the importance of Ramadi with its proximity to Fallujah. You talk about the airport there in Baghdad how important that is. How close is that in real life in real scale? How easy would this be to overtake that airport?

REESE: So I used to drive this all the time, a little right-hand drive, curtains in it. Did it all the time. It took about an hour to get to Fallujah and an hour-and-a-half, two hours from downtown Baghdad into Ramadi. That's how close it is. Think about that.

PEREIRA: OK.

REESE: So D.C. to Baltimore on a busy day, it's nothing.

PEREIRA: OK. Now, location of Ramadi along the Euphrates river. We will animate this too. You can see we talk about the fact that this Euphrates river rolls right up to Syria, which you mentioned Raka is a de facto capital for ISIS. Is this going to change the way the Iraqi forces and U.S. coalition, U.S.-led coalition deals with ISIS in Iraq when you look at that area that we're talking about?

[06:55:00] REESE: Well, like we talked about before, Iraq is where they get their center of gravity from. They're pushing up supplies, pushing up more people. Right now because they own Ramadi, which is the capital, they have a good chunk of Fallujah and the big piece right now which is really critical is this whole refugee aspect that has fallen. You got a quarter million people. They're trying to bail out of Ramadi, going into Fallujah, bypass that with ISIS.

PEREIRA: They are caught in the middle.

REESE: We're caught in the middle. Imagine this, what if tomorrow morning you woke up and a quarter million of people were standing on the mall in D.C.

PEREIRA: Well, it's not even just that. It's because I understand that ISIS is sort of blending in with those refugees, the locals, it makes it much more difficult to sort of rat them out?

REESE: It does. I am not a fan of doing this, Sunni versus. Shia. I've seen it, in detail. Both these people are fighting together for tear country if Iraq. The problem is, all these refugees is ISIS is smart. They blended in the with the refugees him they get in there. They're causing disruption and havoc in Iraq. So it's making some of the people who are from Baghdad look at teams refugees as not good people.

PEREIRA: Skeptical, right of course. And then you see this humanitarian crisis is holding. We also know there have been this plan for the United States has been training its troops to be a part of this retaking of Mosul this attack scheduled next month. It makes you wonder where it was announced, the U.S. working alongside the Iraqis. Do you think what happened with Ramadi falling it going to pull the focus away from most? A separate entity on to its own?

REESE: It's a separate entity, the Iraqis are making the call. They got to look at where they want to shift their main effort. Right now, Ramadi is only 60 miles from Baghdad. Mosul is like on the other side of the moon, literally, when you look at it from prospective in a geographical area. From a threat perspective in Baghdad, Ramadi is important right now. Mosul is isolated. Kurds are on top of it. It's pretty isolated. You got that force up there, it's isolated.

PEREIRA: Ramadi, quickly, is this another combination that the U.S.-led airstrikes are only effective if you got the really effective ground force that's giving you good intelligence, is that a perfect example there.

REESE: Absolutely. You have to follow up with ground forces. You can bomb or whack them all day. You got to have people on the ground to seize it and bring it back to people.

PEREIRA: Always good to have you here. Thank you. We appreciate it. We are certainly following a whole lot of news this morning on this Monday. Let's get to it.

CUOMO: Amtrak is row storing full service this morning.

CAMEROTA: The FBI now examining the train's windshield.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The strike on the windshield would be a very disturbing and distracting event.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ISIS terrorists taking over the key City in Ramadi.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To see that city fall.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A daring raid by American special Ops in Syria.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They call this a serious proceed to ISIS.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was it excessive force or a justified reaction?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 137 shots fired by 13 police officers.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's really scary.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Close 20 to 200 members escalating into a fierce gun battle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bikers are headed this way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is New Day with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

CAMEROTA: And welcome back to New Day. Amtrak trying to return to normal this morning. Trains once again operating at full capacity on the busy northeast corridor six days after the derailment that kills eight people. The first trains rolling out of New York City and Philadelphia about an hour ago.

CUOMO: We know a speed control system is now in place at the site of the crash which reminds that there was not one accident before. And also a reminder that there is still no positive train control as required by congress. That's the bigger issue of safety. There is news on train 188 specifically. The FBI is betting reports the train's windshield

was hit by a projectile just before the wreck. Let's go to Alexandra Field. She is live on that first Amtrak train to leave Philadelphia's 31st street station since the crash. Everything all right?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure is. Chris. We have passengers getting on as we have just stopped right now. We have been making the ride from Philadelphia to New York. Also this morning, trains left in New York headed for Philadelphia. This is the first run on this stretch since that deadly derailment.

About 10 minutes after we left the 33th street station in Philadelphia, we've passed this juncture where that derailment happen but at the slow speed we were moving, that bend in the track almost imperceptible for riders, even those of us who were looking out for or waiting to see it as we passed.

Amtrak told us they worked through the weekend, having 300 crews out there to make the repairs necessary, getting it up and running today. They have also activated the speed control systems we mandated by the Federal and Railroad Administration in order to restore service. We spoke this morning, they make an arrangement for the last week.