Return to Transcripts main page

Wolf

Awaiting Obama End-of-Year News Conference; Obama Begins End- Of-Year News Conference

Aired December 19, 2014 - 13:30   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The White House officials I've been talking to and other officials, they think that the Cuba development, the improved relationship, the opening of embassies, exchanging of ambassadors, they think this is going to be a winning political issue here in the United States for this president despite the criticism from some Cuban-American lawmakers and others. They think this is going to be a positive development.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: They have an argument for that based on the changing political makeup in. There is not this knee-jerk opposition to any sort of outreach. But this is a risky -- it's a bold but also risky diplomatic effort by this administration to some degree similar to the Iran outreach. Historical decades' old enemy. Hostility has not worked and there are risks. They needed another extension just last month or early this month in Vienna to come to an agreement there. There may not be an agreement. And if that happens the outreach will come back to haunt them. The administration is still very much committed to it and certainly committee to this with Cuba but there are a lot of pitfalls to come with this kind of change.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF SECURITY ANALYST: What it's done is set the table for division in the Republican Party on Cuba. I mean, you've seen fighting already begin between Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, and Rand Paul supporting the president, Marco Rubio saying he's the worst negotiator that he's ever seen in his entire life. Jeb Bush saying, I don't think you should repress with regime but I'm glad that Gross is out. You have seen him stick his finger in the eye of the Republican Party saying I am forcing you to take positions on these things that you might not have done so early on. And also it's going to affect the Democratic side. Hillary Clinton is tied to Barack Obama in terms of foreign policy at the very least and, if things fail, she'll either have to defend him or support herself.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Jake, as you know, the new Senate, 54 Republicans, Republicans in the majority, they will be able to decide which issues coming for votes. They will be able to subpoena administration officials if they want. They will have enormous power and be the largest Republican majority in the House of Representatives going back to the 1920s, if you will. The president is going to have a major problem there in dealing with a lopsided Republican majority in the House and Senate. JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT & CNN ANCHOR, THE

LEAD: Well, he's going to have what he hasn't had, which is bills coming to him, one after the other after the other, potentially, that he doesn't want to sign. He's going to have the House passing a bill and instead of it going to die in the Senate, the Senate is going to have to pass it, and he's going to have to make a decision. And what Republicans on the hill are saying he's going to pass a bunch of job measures starting with the Keystone Pipeline but then a bunch more others when it comes to taxes, tax cuts, fewer regulations and the president is going to be put in that position of deciding whether or not to veto a lot of bills.

Bobby Ghosh, we're being seen around the world on CNN and CNN international. People around the world will be watching this news conference from the president of the United States. What are they -- I know it's hard to generalize, but compared to where he stood around the world six years ago, where does he stand international right now?

BOBBY GHOSH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, I think it's much more meddling now international. The Cuba thing is a big deal here in the U.S. But since the rest of the world was already doing business with Cuba, the U.S. embargo made no sense. The removal of the embargo, while significant, is not going to give him a big bump in the polls internationally. They will still be judging him by his performance about is, about Russia and in those areas he doesn't really have much to report. Russia is not currently having problems. President Putin had his press conference a couple of days ago.

And so with ISIS, which is a huge threat, as you know, in the Middle East, and now progressively in other parts of the world, the president of the United States doesn't really have a whole lot to say that is good news. So that's what the world judges him much more than Cuba or American domestic policy.

BLITZER: Just to give it some comparison, Russian's Vladimir Putin's news conference yesterday lasted three hours and he took about 50 questions from journalists in Moscow. The president of the United States' news conference will last about maybe an hour and will take a lot fewer questions than that.

BLITZER: Doug Brinkley, you've studied these presidents for a long time. What advice would you give this president during his final two years in office?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: To keep being a strong executive and use executive power any chance you can. This is a Congress that's not going to do business with him. And don't be afraid to veto things. I think, for example, he very will likely veto Keystone Pipeline. And on the foreign policy front, the president -- and it's all presidents, it's the media. We want to see quick action on everything. But with Russia and Putin's Russia, there is some evidence that our economic sanctions have worked. If he can really make that case, he might be able to see those poll numbers that Jake mentioned, hovering in the low 40s, move upwards. The goal of a president at this point should really be trying to get the Republicans behind him a little more, move up to 50 percent. I think a trip to Cuba could be a big win for him on the visuals of something like that. Certainly, he seems to be having luck traveling. The climate deal he made in China was a big break. That occurred after the media was calling him basically dead, he came up with an historic agreement. There are foreign affairs and executive powers in his last two years.

BLITZER: Jake, it's almost breathtaking when you think about it, a few days ago when somebody said that President Obama may be going to Havana --

(LAUGHTER)

-- and that Raul Castro, the president of the Cuba, may be invited to come to the White House and meet with the president of the United States in the Oval Office, we would have said, what?

TAPPER: That's true.

BLITZER: But those are real possibilities now.

TAPPER: And I think this is part of President Obama -- taking a page from what Doug just said, making bold -- Republicans would say imperial moves, strong moves, one way or the other, whether you prove them or not.

And when you look at the last 50 years of American presidents, there are only four other who is have been exactly in the same shoes as President Obama has been in, meaning elected to two terms not having taken office because of a resignation or a death. They are Eisenhower, Reagan, George W. Bush and Barack Obama and President Clinton. And of those other four, President Obama is second from the bottom when it comes to where his approval ratings are right now. He is only ahead of George W. Bush, who was in a much worse place than Barack Obama is right now. His approval ratings were in the 30s at this point in his presidency. So there is the potential -- Clinton at this point was in the 60s he had much more approval. Same thing with President Reagan.

BORGER: Shortly after Bill Clinton lost control, he famously went to the podium and said, "I'm still relevant."

TAPPER: Right.

BORGER: The presidency is still relevant. And I think that's what we're seeing Barack Obama do. Because he just lost the Senate. He doesn't have control of the Congress.

TAPPER: And, smartly, he's not saying it.

BORGER: He's not mimicking Bill Clinton, right? Very smart. Very smart. But that's exactly what he's doing, saying, you know what, I have executive power, I'm relevant, and I can set the terms of the agenda and I can set the terms of the debate, which I believe is what they are trying to do over there at the White House.

BLITZER: Jim, I've covered these presidents for a while and what they really have to worry about is what they don't foresee, a surprise. Like the North Korean cyber attack. All of a sudden that's become a huge issue and presumably will dominate this news conference that is about to begin or ISIS emerging as a threat not only to Syria but Iraq after the U.S. invested more than a decade, lost a lot of troops, spent trillions of dollars of dealing with Iraq and, all of a sudden, that is in danger. Stuff that isn't anticipated could become huge nightmares.

SCIUTTO: The parts of your foreign policy legacy that are out of your control. Cuba, more in your control. Iraq, certainly not. The defense secretary signing deployment orders for more than 1300 troops. By February, there will be 3,000 troops in Iraq, up from zero just earlier this year, and they are much more forward deployed. There are now 300 U.S. troops in Anbar Province. They are no longer confined to Erbil and Baghdad. They are going to be in a dozen forward-training places around the country. Those soldiers could die. That's a foreign policy challenge this president may not foresee. Of course, he's prepared himself for it, but how does that change the calculus. Americans keeping that crisis somewhat at a distance, but if American soldiers start dying on the ground or in the air in Iraq, what is the response to that policy?

Remember, in Afghanistan, an extra thousand U.S. troops are going to remain in 2015, a thousand more than planned, about 11,000. They are still at risk there. They will still have some combat-related missions, although they're not called a combat mission. They are going to go against the remnants of al Qaeda, do force protection outside the line of their bases. What happens if troops keep dying there? Those are the kind of crises you can't foresee.

TAPPER: We should note, some troops have died. They just haven't died in combat-related deaths.

SCIUTTO: Two this week.

TAPPER: There have been American troops fighting ISIS, in Iraq and Syria, in that region, who have died.

SCIUTTO: That's right.

BORGER: And that's not part of the narrative the president wanted or anticipated. His narrative was, I ended two wars. I got elected to end the war in Iraq. I've ended two wars. And that is, of course, the world is much more complicated than that, as all of us have discovered recently and, again, he's trying to fix that but it's difficult, takes a long time and he's trying to fix himself on domestic policy saying, you know what, I can do this.

Let's go back to Jim Acosta, out senior White House correspondent. He's in the briefing room waiting for the president. He's clearly running a few minutes late.

There will be an opening statement. Are they giving any indication what that opening statement will consist of?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think it's very possible that the opening statement will be about North Korea and about the economy.

And also to pick up on what Gloria was saying a few minutes ago, this notion about the president ending two wars and staring down the worst recession since the Great Depression, I think that's really the first- term narrative for Barack Obama. The second-term narrative is being written as we speak. And if the president comes out today -- and when he comes out today, I think he's going to fill in the blanks of that narrative.

You talked about Cuba. You talked about ISIS. On ISIS, he's going to get some Republican cooperation up on Capitol Hill. He's likely to get this authorization for the use of military force, a new one that he wants and that Republicans want when this comes to taking on ISIS.

But Cuba, immigration, those are two policies where he is really drawing swords with Republicans and, to some extent, sort of cultivating a civil war inside the Republican Party.

Keep in mind, on immigration, there are deep concerns within the GOP as to whether or not they should fight the president on this because they know about the demographics and what that means for 2016 and how it really helps Hillary Clinton if they had a civil war over that.

And then sort of a GOP Cuban Missile Crisis has erupted between Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. Senator Rubio saying that Rand Paul doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to the embargo and policy on Cuba, and Rand Paul, in the last hour, or so saying, we trade with China, Vietnam, why not with Cuba? So you're already seeing two likely presidential contenders in 2016 fighting over this policy that the president unleashed earlier this week. And so one thing I'll be looking for, Wolf, is to whether or not the president is going to stoke some of that a little bit here in this news conference.

The other thing I think will be interesting to ask about, you know, is what all of this means for Hillary Clinton. When we ask about Hillary Clinton, the sense you get from the president is, hey, I have two years left in office. Let's not talk about that right now. One of the curious oddities that I find is, every time Hillary Clinton comes to the White House, we find out that she's been snuck in and snuck out again. What is going on with that?

As you know, Wolf, Jake and others, at the end of the news conferences, we get the sometimes unpredictable questions, like perhaps we've made our way through ISIS and North Korea and immigration and all the obvious questions that need to be asked, but I think at the end of this news conference it might be fun to ask about Hillary Clinton and what's going to happen between these two former rivals as the president begins to wrap up his final two years in office.

BLITZER: I'm sure he'll say only nice stuff about his former secretary of state.

Doug Brinkley, one issue that I suspect will come up during the course of the questioning is the issue of race, police, grand juries, the aftermath of what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York. This is America's first African-American president. He's been talking a lot more openly about that in recent months. And he seems to be much more willing to do so. Give us a little historic perspective.

BRINKLEY: I think he's going to talk about race a great deal more. And Ferguson is one of the central issues of the year.

Keep in mind, Jimmy Carter, there is no such thing as a Carter Democrat. But with Barack Obama, he's maintained 95 percent or something like that of the African-American voter in the United States. So he has an intense moral authority to kind of address some of these social injustice issues. I suspect we'll be seeing him do that a great deal in these next two years.

And also he's gained a moral authority, the president, I think with the torture report coming out, which we haven't talked about yet. I mean, there is Dick Cheney talking about torture on all of the programs. And the president does look more like a Nobel Peace Prize- winning president on these issues. And I'll be curious whether in the next year he tries to get us out of Guantanamo. He had wanted to close Guantanamo. Some prisoners have been moved from there recently to Latin America. So it will be curious to see if he gets that closed in the wake of the terror report.

BLITZER: He's got problems, Jake Tapper, closing Gitmo, Guantanamo, because there's legislation right now, a law saying, presumably, he wouldn't be able to do so and move some of those Gitmo prisoners to the United States.

TAPPER: He's had trouble with that since the beginning of his presidency. He's been saying he wanted to close it and it wasn't just Republicans but Democrats who stood in his way. The administration has been talking about setting up a prison in Illinois and the people in that town even wanted them, but Democrats and Republicans united to keep the prisoners of Gitmo out of the United States proper. And I suspect it is going to be even more of a block now that Republicans are in control.

BLITZER: Yeah, I suspect you're right.

On this issue of race and police, in the aftermath of what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, what happened in Staten Island, if the president -- I believe he will be asked about it at the news conference, and --

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: The Justice Department investigation is going on.

BLITZER: He's walking a tight line.

BORGER: He has.

BLITZER: He doesn't want to come across being critical of law enforcement police officers in the United States but at the same time, there have been some problems out there. BORGER: Right. And I think he's continued to walk this fine line.

He had Eric Holder, for example, going to Ferguson, the president did not. And I think that this has always been an issue for him. He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. It's the difficultly of being our first African-American president. And if he's asked about it, I'm sure he will say there are Justice Department investigations going on and he wants to allow them to proceed.

One thing I want to mention here, though, is that we all remarked in the first term, the no-drama Obama. Now it's kind of all-drama Obama. Every moment we turn, it's like, OK, Obama's doing this on immigration, this huge executive order which could go to the supreme court. Oh, my god, he's doing this on -- you know, this is clearly somebody who has been chaffing to do this as the leader of the Democratic party, whatever. Now he's thrown that away and said I don't have to be the cheerleader anymore. I'm not the cheerleader anymore. I'm the executive-in-chief and these are the things that I can do. So it's a very different president. I'm wondering what tone he's going to strike at this press conference.

SCIUTTO: And some of that drama is not under his own control, right?

BORGER: Yes.

SCIUTTO: It comes out of nowhere. Who would have thought that we'd be dealing with a North Korean attack on a very successful one and --

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: But he's a cautious man, right?

BLITZER: Jake, if he is asked, what do you think of Sony's decision to scrub, to cancel the release of this film because it depicted Kim Jong-Un in a bad way? And it's a comedy. It's not a serious film. What do you think the president will say? He said go to the movies the other day. But this is a sensitive issue.

TAPPER: It is a sensitive issue and, of course, there are -- look, it's very easy for people to say this is a freedom of speech issue and nobody should buckle and nobody should cave to threats of terrorism, and obviously that's what a lot of us feel in our guts. There are liability issues, and that's what the movie theaters were dealing with, and what Sony was dealing with. This threat was issued. It was made public. What if something happened at a movie theater? Maybe not even a North Korean or whomever is behind this attack, but a copycat, a lone wolf, whatever, then there would be legal issues, and these are businesses that have to deal with it.

Now, Michael Moore has pointed out that there were threats when he put out "Fahrenheit 9/11" and his response was, and the studio's response was to hire more security. And that's a perfectly logical argument to make.

But I suspect you're not going to see President Obama take a position on that. He'll probably talk about free speech, he'll talk about counterterrorism but I don't think he's going to criticize a business decision by AMC theaters or Sony.

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: What's interesting about this, I was in China for a couple of years. That's a place that carries out a lot of attacks on American businesses and governments, et cetera.

BLITZER: Cyber.

SCIUTTO: Cyber attacks. But it does so very quietly. But that serves their interests. If you're stealing something, you don't want to advertise it. And there's been loads of property stolen. For the companies, that gives them the ability to not acknowledge it. They don't want to publicize it because it shows they've been vulnerable, et cetera.

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: This attack was set apart because it has been so very public. You have a company forced into a corner, it has to respond. Many American companies have suffered a similar kind of thing but not in public, which allowed them to sweep it under the carpet. Sony didn't have that option.

BORGER: The language is going to be important. The question is, does the president call it a hack? Does he call it an act of terror? We were all -- the question of the president's language on Benghazi, for example, we were looking, does he call it a terror attack? Doesn't he? What is this? How do we describe what happened to Sony?

TAPPER: I suspect he's going to downplay it. Don't you think?

BORGER: I think -- although, the FBI came out today and said North Korea, they believed, was behind it.

TAPPER: No, but do you think he's going to call it cyber terrorism?

BORGER: No, I think he will -- Well, I don't know. I think you're probably right.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: I don't think he will. Yesterday the White House said they want a proportional response --

BORGER: Proportional. Right.

BLITZER: -- which seems to be lowering the expectations about what the U.S. is going to do.

BORGER: And President Obama is -- despite the last six weeks -- a generally cautious guy. I think he wouldn't want to elevate it unless he had such definitive proof that --

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: -- and we had a response. We may not have a response.

BLITZER: Bobby, you study international affairs very, very closely. How is the rest of the world viewing what has happened here in the United States and how are they viewing what's going on in terms of the likely U.S. Response to North Korea now that the FBI says it has concluded North Korea is directly responsible for this cyber attack against Sony Pictures?

GHOSH: The attack itself sends chills through corporations around the world and particularly in Japan. Sony Corporation may be an American company, the one that was attacked, but there's long-standing issues between North Korea and Japan, and Japanese corporations will scramble, as we speak, to improve their defenses, and companies around the world.

As you have been discussing in the studio, this attack is very different from the ones we've seen before. There was not an attempt to extract money. There was not an attempt to steal these movies and then sell them in the market or to take this intelligence and try to make money out of it. This was done to create mayhem, to show that they're capable of doing this. This is not something that companies have been used to. In the past, companies have been used to attacks designed to steal information and they are used to attacks designed to create a blackmailing opportunity. This is very different. This was designed to create mayhem, mischief and to expose a company and create embarrassment. That's got to be -- there are cyber security companies around the world now whose business is going way up because corporations everywhere are turning to them for more security.

BLITZER: You know, Bobby, the problem the U.S. has now is that if the U.S. doesn't respond, it potentially could encourage others to continue these kinds of cyber attacks.

GHOSH: Yes. And people will be looking for a U.S. response. I fear, as I've said before, that there is not a quick response available. This is a country that we've already tightened lots of sanctions around --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Hold on, Bobby. Here's the president.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hello, everybody.

I really got a full house today, huh?

All I want for Christmas is to take your questions.

(LAUGHTER)

But first let me say a little bit about this year. In last year's final press conference, I said that 2014 would be a year of action and would be a breakthrough year for America. It has been. Yes, there were crises that we had to tackle around the world, many that were unanticipated. We have more work to do to make sure our economy, our justice system, and our government work not just for the few but for the many. But there is no doubt that we can enter into the new year with renewed confidence that America is making significant strides where it counts.

The steps that we took early on to rescue our economy and rebuild it on a new foundation helped make 2014 the strongest year for job growth since the 1990s. All told, over a 57-month streak, our businesses created nearly 11 million new jobs. Almost all of the job growth that we've seen has been in full-time positions. Much of the recent pickup in job growth has been in higher paying industries and in a hopeful sign for middle class families, wages are on the rise again.

Our investments in American manufacturing have helped fuel the best stretch of job growth also since the 1990s. America is now the number one producer of oil, the number-one producer of natural gas. We're saving drivers about 70 cents a gallon at the pump over last Christmas. And effectively, today, our rescue of the auto industry is officially over. We've now repaid taxpayers every dime and more of what my administration committed and the American auto industry is on track for its strongest year since 2005.

We created about half a million new jobs in the auto industry alone. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, about 10 million Americans have gained health insurance just this past year. Enrollment is beginning to pick up again during the open enrollment period. The uninsured rate is at a near record low since the law passed. The price of health care has risen as its slowest rate in about 50 years. We cut our deficits by two-thirds since I took office bringing them to below their 40-year average.

Meanwhile, around the world, America is leading. We're leading the coalition to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL, a coalition that includes Arab partners. We're leading the international community to check Russian aggression in Ukraine. We're leading the global fight to combat Ebola in West Africa. And we are preventing an outbreak from taking place here at home. We're leading efforts to address climate change, including last month's joint announcement with China that's already jump-starting new progress in other countries. We're writing a new chapter in our leadership here in the Americas by turning a new page on our relationship with the Cuban people.

And in less than two weeks, after more than 13 years, our combat mission in Afghanistan will be over. Today, more of our troops are home for the holidays than any time in over a decade. Still, many of our men and women in uniform will spend Christmas in harm's way, and they should know that the country is united in support of you and grateful not only to you but also to your families.

The six years since the crisis have demanded hard work and sacrifice on everybody's part. But as a country, we have every right to be proud of what we've accomplished. More jobs. More people insured. A growing economy. Shrinking deficits. Bustling industry. Booming energy. Pick any metric that you want, America's resurgence is real. We're better off.

I've always said that recovering from the crisis of 2008 was our first order of business, and on that business, America has outperformed all of our other competitors. Over the past four years, we've put more people back to work than all other advanced economies combined. We've now come to a point where we have a chance to reverse an even deeper problem, a decade's-long erosion of middle class jobs and incomes and to make sure that the middle class is the engine that powers our prosperity for decades to come.

But to do that, we're going to have to make some smart choices. We have to make the right choices. We'll have to invest in the things that secure even faster growth in higher paying jobs for more Americans.

I'm being absolutely sincere when I say I want to work with this new Congress to get things done, to make those investments, to make sure that government is working better and smarter. We're going to disagree on some things, but there are going to be areas of agreement, and we've got to be able to make that happen and that's going to involve compromise every once in a while. And we saw during this lame-duck period that perhaps that spirit of compromise may be coming to the fore.

In terms of my own job, I am energized. I'm excited about the prospects for the next couple of years. I'm certainly not going to be stopping for a minute in the effort to make life better for ordinary Americans because thanks to their efforts, we really do have a new foundation that's been laid. We are better positioned than we have been in a very long time. The future is ready to be written. We've set the stage for this American moment. I'm going to spend every minute of my last two years making sure that we seize it.

My presidency is entering the fourth quarter. Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter. And I'm looking forward to it.