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Team USA Still Alive; Mexico's World Cup Fever; Kerry Visits Baghdad; Search for Flight 370; Starbucks Raises Prices

Aired June 23, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

World Cup fever is hot, hot, hot despite that heartbreaking tie with Portugal. Huge watch parties from coast to coast, fans cheering on Team USA, hoping and praying for the team to advance to the next round. And even though last night's match against Portugal ended in that draw, the U.S. team is still alive and is looking forward to Thursday's match against Germany. Oh, that's going to be a tough one. Chris Cuomo live in Rio de Janeiro.

Oh, you talked to Jeremiah Jones, did you?

CHRIS CUOMO, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": I did. I did. Jermaine had a lot to say. You know the interesting thing is, Carol, they got a point last night, so they actually moved closer to advancing. You know losing would have been the problem here. Yes, yes, they did have the victory in their hand and it did hurt, but you've got to remember, that's the nature of this sport.

Just a few minutes in, when Portugal scored first, people thought the USA were done. The crowd was so quite last night. So while it's disappointing on one level, you can't see it as too much of a negative because I'll tell you who doesn't, the U.S. squad doesn't. Yes, they wanted to win, but they know that the tie puts them in position where they want to be and they believe in themselves going into their big match on Thursday against Germany.

And how do I know that? Well, the young man named Jones, who had the biggest goal of the match, in my opinion, because forget about Portugal's goal to tie, that's about their existence, I'm worried about the U.S. They were down 1-0. The U.S. needed something. And Jones gave it to them. Here's his take on the game, his goal and why he believes in the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JERMAINE JONES, TEAM USA MIDFIELDER: But, yes, mistakes happen and we have to learn that we step on and we have still everything in our own hands and we have to try now to take something from the German game. And we still can go to the next round so we don't try to make us so - so much crazy about what happened. We have to step on and look that we get some points against Germany. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: See, so there's a quiet confidence there. It's also interesting, Jones, you know, lived in Germany. Three of the player on the U.S. side have connections to Germany. And, of course, the coach was a star, a legend in German futbol, as a coach and a player, so it's very interesting that they're matched up against the German side in this very important match for them.

But I tell you, it was so amazing to be here, Carol. You would have loved it. Rio is one of most exciting cities as it is, but it's just on fire because it's the futbol mecca and you've all these countries here coming together and for once, you know, for people like us, we're not covering it as a negative.

COSTELLO: No. And I must admit, I'm not a soccer fan, which is why I got Jermaine's name wrong. I know him now and that's good, but you're right, this is - this is - I don't know, it's almost making me a soccer fan, but not quite because, you know, I'm into Team USA and everything and it is exciting to watch, but I'm just not used to such low scoring games.

CUOMO: Well, but you like baseball, you know, and baseball can be low scoring and yet you just have to appreciate the strategy of it. Look, I am a contact guy. I'm getting more into futbol - soccer. I'm trying to get my kids to play it. I don't want them to play football, like I did. But for me, what you would love is this international comity, c- o-m-i-t-y. You know, these people coming together, being here for each other. It's so refreshing, Carol, given what we cover day in and day out and so many of the places we travel and why. That's what I love about it.

You know, one of our producers here is from Portugal and we had a fun bet about the game and if I lost, I was going to wear the Portuguese jersey. He wound up saying that if they tied, he would lose, because he was that cocky about Portugal. You know that's the way they can be. They may have the best player in the world, Mr. Ronaldo, who's also so handsome that I've got to hear about it all the time from my - like three generations, my daughter, my wife and my mom all think this guy is gorgeous. So, anyway, the tie went to the U.S., so he had to wear the U.S. jersey and yet there was still love. He hasn't spoken to me this morning. He's shooting me some very hateful looks right now, Carol, but that's what I love about it and you would too. And you're in Rio, you're in Manaus, you're in Sao Paulo. I mean this is Brazil. This is just awesome.

COSTELLO: Yes, I would probably love it a lot more if I was in Rio.

Chris Cuomo, thanks so much. I appreciate it. We'll catch you later.

Well, Team USA's fans might be dominating the headlines. Fans of the Mexican national team aren't that far behind when it comes to showing their love for their soccer team. Stephanie Elam has that part of the story for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Of all the countries playing in the World Cup, there's one team with two huge fan bases, the Mexican national team.

GEORGE ALFARO, SOCCER FAN: If the United States play Portugal, I root for the U.S. If the U.S. plays Mexico, I might (ph) root for Mexico.

ELAM: Affectionately known as El Tree (ph), the team is not just supported by its country men and women, but also by patriotic young Americans of Mexican descent.

ELAM (on camera): You were born here, but you love watching Mexico play. Why?

ALFARO: Of course. Because my parents, you know, they came over here, migrated to the U.S. and I've been to Mexico many times. I love Mexico and I love the spirit, I love the culture and everything about it.

ELAM (voice-over): In the U.S., games are often broadcast in English and in Spanish, or a combination of both. But there is definitely something about watching a match in Spanish.

GUSTAVO DOMINGUEZ, PRIMETIME SPORTS & EVENT MARKETING: It just has a rich tradition, just the way you do the play by play. The calling of the game becomes a little more dramatic.

ELAM: The team is so popular in America that it played several games in the U.S. before the World Cup.

DOMINGUEZ: The attendance for the Mexican national team games, for example, this year, ranged from 50 to 85,000 people, which are big figures, big numbers and such highly competitive, some would argue the most competitive sports landscape in the world being the United States.

ELAM: A companies are taking note. Some are finding branding opportunities, while others are opening early for a crowd eager to watch El Tree take on the world.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's all ages. It's a family oriented event.

BRYAN DE LA FUENTE, FORMER CHIVAS USA PLAYER: Beautiful to see all the nationalities, all the countries together watching the games.

ELAM: Bryan De La Fuente played in the American league, the MLS, for Chivas USA. Born in the U.S. but raised in Mexico, he says soccer, well, futbol, is part of his culture.

ELAM (on camera): Let's just say in the World Cup, in the final, it was Mexico (INAUDIBLE) -

DE LA FUENTE: Yes.

ELAM: Who do you pick?

DE LA FUENTE: I can't tell you that. (INAUDIBLE), I couldn't tell you that. I just couldn't (ph). It's hard to say because in my heart is like (INAUDIBLE), whatever team, like I'll be happy.

ELAM (voice-over): Fans in two countries brought together by one ball.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Stephanie Elam reporting.

Mexico takes on Croatia at 4:00 p.m. Eastern, just in case you were wondering.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, as terrorists march toward Baghdad, American's top diplomat goes there to discuss Iraq's best defense. And John Kerry says it does not involve American guns or bullets. We'll talk about that next.

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COSTELLO: President Obama has a message for Iraq. American firepower can't hold your country together. He says only a new government, one that unifies Iraqis, can push back the terrorists. And those fighters are now sweeping toward Baghdad with breathtaking speed, gobbling up more towns and villages over the weekend.

In the capital today, the American secretary of state, John Kerry, drives home a sense of urge urgency. He sat down with the embattled prime minister, Nuri al Maliki. He also sat down with Sunni and Shiite leaders. So there's a lot to dissect here. Let's turn to our panel of experts, retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling is a former commander of U.S. troops in northern Iraq, Tara Maller is a research fellow in the International Security Program at the America Foundation, and David Gergen is CNN's senior political analyst and a former adviser to four U.S. presidents.

Welcome to all of you.

LT. GENERAL MARK HERTLING, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Thank you, Carol.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Thank you.

TARA MALLER, AMERICAN FDN., INTL. SECURITY PROGRAM: Thanks.

COSTELLO: Thank you for being here.

So, Tara, I want to start with you.

Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to hold a news conference any moment now out of Baghdad. He sat down with the prime minister earlier today. What do you suppose he said?

MALLER: Well, I think what John Kerry is trying to do is to diplomatically engage with the Iraqis, both Sunni Iraqi leadership and Shia. He needs to put pressure on Maliki to try to force Maliki to unify the country. It is a sense of urgency that the country is feeling. And without a unified government with Maliki making some overtures to the Sunnis, he's going to see his political days numbered as the jockeying for power continues in Baghdad the next few days and weeks.

COSTELLO: But, David, though, the United States is in a strange place. I mean Nuri al Maliki was democratically elected and we're kind of pushing for regime change, aren't we?

GERGEN: Absolutely. And I think the chances of getting there are quite remote. The more we push publicly, by the way, I think the less likely it is to happen. Once you challenge somebody's manhood in politics, they tend to go the other way. They want to resist you to show that they're a strong, independent sovereign nation. So I think more of this diplomacy conducted behind closed doors might be helpful.

COSTELLO: General Hertling, four more Iraqi cities fell to ISIS. It seems like they're surrounding Baghdad to choke it off. How long will it be before these terrorists get into Baghdad? How long do we have to use intelligence and diplomacy to solve this problem?

HERTLING: Well, I think you've seen early on, Carol, that in the west and the north it's a tribal society. So you had tribal sheikh support for even when we were recruiting soldiers for the various army divisions. You won't have the same kind of implications within Baghdad. I think you're going to see some stronger fightings. You have the Iraqi special operation forces, ISOP (ph) as we call them. You have commando units there. So there is the potential to create a better defense of Baghdad. But in the north and the west, those cities fell because I think the Sunni tribal leaders gave in to ISIS and told their young men to withdraw from the army.

COSTELLO: Tara, it's just - it's astounding to me how the Iraqis just said, well, we're not going to fight because our government's not listening to us, so we're going to let these terrorists take over.

MALLER: Well, it's actually not as surprising as it might seem. I mean it did catch the Iraqi government and the U.S. off guard. But we saw these problems back in 2004 to 2006 period. That's when I worked on Iraq as a military analyst. We saw that Iraqi security forces, there were problems in terms of morale defections. If people aren't getting paid, they're not going to necessarily show up to work. In addition, if they don't feel that they have a country or a future to fight for and they don't feel that they have a government that is reaching out to them in the way that they would like, they might not have the sort of impetus to fight in the way that we would expect. So I think it is, you know, surprising how quickly they fell and the degree to which they fell, but problems with the Iraqi security forces have plagued Iraq since the United States was there, you know, a decade ago.

COSTELLO: David, I know that there's been a lot of finger pointing over the last few weeks, but doesn't this really show that we still don't understand this part of the world and what makes it tick? We just don't get this part of the world.

GERGEN: I wouldn't - I wouldn't go that far, but I do think this is part of the world where hatreds and rivalries go back, you know, centuries, if not thousands of years. And we have to appreciate that we have to be humble about this part of the world. But that does not mean we can't be on the side of people who are seeking greater opportunities in life. We can be on the side of empowering women across the Middle East, for example. I don't think this is hopeless, Carol. I don't think we played our cards very well. We've had one administration that botched getting into Iraq and now we've got another administration that seems to be botching trying to get out of Iraq.

COSTELLO: General, you know, I had a lot of conversations with my friends over the weekend about Iraq. They're very worried that there will be American boots on the ground. Senator Rand Paul came out and said, you know what, would I send my son there for anything? No. I think people are really concerned about that. Will that ever happen? Is there a guarantee?

HERTLING: Well, you can never say never. But what I would suggest, Carol, is right now the president has said, we're giving advisers to the country. And they had some very set rules and requirements that they're going to live by while they're there.

It's a difficult situation. It is going to become more and more complex. You know during the heyday we had 160,000 soldiers there and really the best of our diplomatic core was there. So these advisers are going to attempt to help. I think the push by the government to try and get more inclusion is the appropriate way to go. But we're going to see some very complex fighting with a lot of different elements of both sides. And it's going to be a really tough couple of weeks, months, perhaps years. It's going to continue to go on and we will likely see atrocities as this goes on.

COSTELLO: I think sadly we've all grown used to seeing those things. Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, Tara Maller, David Gergen, thanks to all of you.

MALLER: Thanks.

GERGEN: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, more than three months after Flight 370 disappeared, stories are popping up that the captain is now the prime suspect. But Malaysian investigators saying, hold on a minute, those reports are wrong. We'll talk about that next.

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COSTELLO: It has now been 108 days and still no trace of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 or the 239 people aboard. Authorities are now shifting the search area again. This map shows where they were looking earlier, but they may head hundreds of miles south in the hopes of finding some closure to this aviation mystery. Saima Mohsin is live on the phone from Thailand with more for you.

Good morning.

SAIMA MOHSIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Good morning, Carol.

Yes, they're due to announce a new zone to search for missing plane Flight MH-370. That will be the Australian transport (INAUDIBLE) bureau's task on Wednesday we believe. Hundreds of kilometers or miles south, we believe, off that area they've been searching in over the last few weeks.

Now, the thing to note here, Carol, is that there is no debate, at least amongst the experts, that they are searching in reasonably the right area. That is that southern arc in the Indian Ocean that, of course, that crucial Inmarsat data led the world experts to believe that the plane had ended its flight path in the southern Indian Ocean. No debate as to whether that is the right arc to be looking at. But in terms of the precise area, well, that seem to be wide open, hundreds of kilometers south of where they were first looking.

But then let's not forget what led them to the areas they searched over the last few months, Carol, were those crucial pings, which as CNN discovered from various officials may well not have been the flight recorder. And, of course, they didn't find anything in that area. So they're going to have move on.

Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. There are also reports out there that the pilot, the captain of this airliner, is a prime suspect in the plane's disappearance. What are Malaysian authorities saying about that?

MOHSIN: You know, Carol, yes, that's a couple of news reports that came out over the weekend, speaking to various sources, whoever these reporters spoke to, saying that if this turns out to be some kind of human intervention that led to the disappearance of the plane, then they're going to be looking at Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. He is, of course, the pilot of that plane, Flight MH 370.

Now, we've been speaking to the police themselves directly. The police spokeswoman has told CNN that she refuses these articles, saying we've made no statements that Captain Zaharie is the prime suspect. Saying also that the investigation is still ongoing. They are looking into all angles, but have made no conclusions.

Now, let's not forget, everyone on board that plane at some point has been a suspect. When a plane disappears and there's no trace to be found, Carol, of course everyone on board is going to be investigated thoroughly. I've spent several days outside both the pilot and co- pilot's homes trying to gather what information we can. I questioned the investigators as they left the co-pilot's home, taking away hard drives, taking away computers, and, of course, the pilot's home, where that crucial flight simulator was. He was, of course, an aviation enthusiast. His friends telling me, Peter (ph), one of his friends Peter telling me that this was nothing untoward (ph) or suspicious. He was simply passionate about flying and that's why he had a flight simulator on board (ph).

Now, those -- equipment, that hard drive and flight simulator were sent to the FBI in the USA, Carol, and they said - they told CNN that there was no smoking gun in relation to any of that. So, so far, as far as our reporting is concerned, we don't know who the prime suspect is and there is nothing that leads us to believe that the pilot or indeed the co-pilot were involved in the disappearance. Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Saima Mohsin reporting live for us this morning.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, do you love your latte? Well, getting ready to pay more. Starbucks hiking prices on some of its signature drinks. We'll tell you why and how much it's going to cost you.

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COSTELLO: Ah, Starbucks. The coffee chain announcing it's going to cost you a little bit more to get that morning jolt. CNN business correspondent Alison Kosik is in New York with all the details.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Ah, yes, Carol, get ready to pay more for your latte. Starbucks announced it is raising prices for some of its drinks beginning tomorrow. So you'll pay anywhere from 5 to 20 cents more per drink. Now, not all drinks are going to be affected. For example, a tall or venti latte will go up about 20 cents. But brewed coffee and Frappuccino's, they will cost the same.

Starbucks insists the hike will affect less than 20 percent of its customers' orders and boost most total receipts by less than 1 percent. Starbucks is just the latest coffee maker to raise prices. Folgers, Dunkin Donuts and Maxwell House did so earlier this month.

The price of coffee has been rising worldwide hitting a two-year high in April. Increased global demand, coupled with a drought in Brazil, which produces about a third of the world's coffee, shot prices up about 59 percent this year. But the company says the price hike is because of its overall cost structure instead of skyrocketing coffee prices. Starbucks buys its beans in advance and has enough for at least the rest of the year.

Carol.

COSTELLO: Alison Kosik, thank you.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.