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U.S. Unemployment Rate Drops to 5 Percent; Ben Carson Doubles Down on Violent Past; Putin Says Flights to Egypt Should Be Suspended. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 06, 2015 - 09:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[09:00:43] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, I'm Poppy Harlow in today for Carol Costello. Thank you for being with me.

We begin with breaking news on the U.S. economy. This country adding more than 270,000 jobs in the month of October. That is driving down unemployment to 5 percent. That is incredibly significant. Five percent. Look where we have come from.

What does this mean for the Fed's decision on interest rates? For all of you out there?

Christine Romans with me, chief business correspondent, breaking it down. Five percent. We haven't seen that since what? 2008?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: These are pre- crisis levels. Five percent is a significant milestone for the recovery of the job market. And even more significant just the magnitude of these jobs, being 271,000 in the month.

It's the best job creation, Poppy, all year now. A big surprise and hiring across the board. So when you look at job gains, 271,000, the best we've seen since late last year. Look at that.

HARLOW: Yes.

ROMANS: That means now this year on average we're about 206,000 job gains a month this year. That means last year and this year are very strong years for job creation.

Let's take a look at that 5 percent unemployment rate where we've come from. You're so right to point that out. This is the unemployment rate since 2007. You can see it reached 10 percent in the depths of the recession and has been slowly recovering here. Now 5 percent.

Let's look at the sectors quickly. You've got a lot of hiring in healthcare. You know those can be jobs that span the income bracket.

HARLOW: Yes.

ROMANS: But business and professional services, very good job creation. Those are accountants, insurance agent, lawyers. Those are technically office jobs in many cases and tend to pay a little bit more, Poppy.

HARLOW: What's interesting is you do have a lot of politicians who will point out, look, these numbers are deceiving because again the unemployment rate doesn't count people who have given up and dropped out.

ROMANS: Right. That's right.

HARLOW: But there is another critical number in here. Underemployment.

ROMANS: Even the bad indicators have been getting better. Let me look at underemployment and you've been hearing a lot on the campaign trail from Republicans about this. They call it the real unemployment rate. It's now 9.8 percent. It has fallen below 10 percent, again, since the first time since the recession.

That number right there, Poppy, as you know, those are people who are out of work and people who are working part-time but would rather be working full-time. There's a number, the people who've been leaving the work force, not even counted in these numbers. The labor force participation rate. That was steady this month. You've got people who are leaving the labor force because they are retiring. There are young people who are leaving the force and we're not quite sure what all of the factors are around that. That number has been static.

All of these other numbers, though, are showing strong hiring in the month. It shows I think, too, Poppy, that of those global winds that were biting.

HARLOW: Right.

ROMANS: In August and September. In October companies had to add workers and so they did.

HARLOW: And so we'll see what the Fed does.

ROMANS: I think it looks now like it gives the Fed a little more -- more people are thinking the Fed will race interest rates in December and that's something that will affect every person watching.

HARLOW: Everyone is getting mortgage, et cetera.

ROMANS: That's right.

HARLOW: Christine, thank you very much.

ROMANS: You're welcome, Poppy.

HARLOW: Much more on CNNMoney com. Go there and you can read all of it.

Next, to politics, quote, "a bunch of lies." Republican hopeful Ben Carson fires back after questions surfaced about his violent past. A CNN team went to his hometown in Detroit this week. They spoke with a lot of people who knew Carson growing up. Some of his closest friends. And many said they were really surprised by Carson's claims. Like the one where he said he once tried to attack someone with a knife.

Also earlier today Carson doubled down in a fascinating interview with our very own Alisyn Camerota.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a bunch of lies. This is what it is, it's a bunch of lies attempting, you know, to say that I'm lying about my history. I think it's pathetic.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Well -

CARSON: And basically what the media does is they try to get you distracted with all of this stuff so that you don't talk about the things that are important because we have so many important things. And, you know, I'm not proud of the fact that I had these rage episodes. But I am proud of the fact that I was able to get over them.

CAMEROTA: Look, of course --

CARSON: My message has been that you can escape from that kind of anger.

CAMEROTA: Yes. People are resonating with that message.

CARSON: And you know, some of the victims were members of my family. I understand that. I will not let them be victimized again by the media. And if you choose to believe that I'm incapable of these acts I guess that's kind of a compliment.

CAMEROTA: But, Dr. Carson, your story has changed. For instance. First, you say that Bob was your close friend, who you almost killed. And then yesterday you said well, actually his name wasn't Bob. I changed the names and that's fine. People do that all the time, Dr. Carson, in their memoirs.

[09:05:10] CARSON: I've changed names throughout all the books.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CARSON: Even of patients because --

CAMEROTA: People --

CARSON: And unless I have specific permission from them to use their names that is an inappropriate thing to do.

CAMEROTA: Of course. And people change the names in their memoirs all the time. But they note that. They note that at the beginning if they say the fictitious names are going to be used. But nevertheless then you change it to say that he was not actually your close friend. He was a family member. So --

CARSON: He was a family member. CAMEROTA: OK.

CARSON: And, you know, I really don't want to expose him further. You know, I've talked to him. You know, he would prefer to stay out of media and I think I want to respect that.

CAMEROTA: Look, Dr. Carson, I know you call this tactic. It's called vetting in politics. You know it well just from the short time that you've been involved in this campaign.

CARSON: Is that what was done with the current president? Is that what you guys did with him?

CAMEROTA: Yes. As a matter of fact --

CARSON: No, you did not. Give me a break.

CAMEROTA: President Obama autobiography, "Dreams of My Father," was also vetted, you will recall, Dr. Carson.

CARSON: Give me a break. Are you kidding me?

CAMEROTA: Don't you remember that there was a whole question --

CARSON: No.

CAMEROTA: -- about his girlfriend. And that people went back to try to find the president's girlfriend and it turned out that she may have been a composite character and that was revealed then the president had to talk about that.

CARSON: So far vetting that you all did with President Obama doesn't even come close. Doesn't even come close to what you guys are trying to do in my case. And you are going to just keep going back trying to find -- he said this 12 years ago. He said -- you know, it is just garbage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: You can see much more of that interview of course on CNN.com. Meanwhile a new CNN-ORC poll shows that the state of Iowa, voters there are embracing the political outsiders. Frontrunners Donald Trump and Ben Carson now battling it out for the top spot with Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz trailing behind.

CNN national political reporter Maeve Reston with me. You broke this story. I just want your reaction off the top from what you just heard from Ben Carson, what he said to Alisyn this morning.

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, there were very many mischaracterizations of our story this morning from Dr. Carson. Just to take our readers, you know, back to the beginning of how this started, Dr. Carson has talked repeatedly about these incidents on the campaign trail. We are not talking about minor incidents here. We're talking about an attempted stabbing, we're talking about hitting a kid over the head with a rock. We're talking about hitting people with bricks and bats.

So my colleague Scott Glover and I set out to find people in Detroit, friends of Carson, as well as victims and eyewitnesses to these incidents, who could talk about Dr. Carson's temperament, his temper, his assertion that there was -- he had divine intervention from God at age 14, after this attempted stabbing. And there was never another violent outburst again. That was something that we wanted to look into.

It's called vetting. It's what you do when you look at any presidential candidate and we did it with President Obama as well. So that is not a true claim that no one looked into President Obama's background or Hillary Clinton's background.

I think what also is important to remember here is that we went out to find these people. We were not able to find them. He has said in various points over the last couple of days that we only talk to people who knew him when he was 14. That's inaccurate. We talked to people who knew him when he was in elementary school. Junior high school. Neighbors. High school classmates. We verified that these people went to school with him.

We talked to other people, other classmates who didn't know him as well. Left them off the list. Just, you know, talked to the 10 people who said that they knew him well and had observed him over this period of time. So he's raised a lot of questions and I'm glad he's coming forward giving us some new pieces of information. Because his campaign did not agree to cooperate with us. When we went to them and asked for the identities of these people some time ago they did not give us names and now all of a sudden these names are fictitious he says.

HARLOW: Right. Right. I know that you e-mailed them twice before and also once you had your findings and the campaign said they weren't going to comment.

RESTON: Correct.

HARLOW: Let's talk about this. The issue that came up about Dr. Carson saying in the interview, you know, you don't vet President Obama like this. And in fact the media did in "Dreams of My Father" when he wrote it. And he's come under scrutiny because of part of how he documented his past. I'm talking about President Obama. Specifically a past girlfriend here in New York City who he wrote about in his book "Dreams for My Father."

RESTON: Right. Exactly.

HARLOW: I want to read you part of what he was quoted as saying in an interview with "Vanity Fair," clarifying who the girlfriend actually was. He said, "That was not her. That was an example of compression. I was very sensitive in my book not to write about my girlfriends partly out of respect." He goes on to say, "I thought that the anecdote involving the reaction of a white girlfriend to the angry black play was a useful theme to make about sort of the interactions that I had in the relationships with white girlfriends." [09:10:13] He went on to say, "It was something editorially difficult

to grapple with. This is how I did it, through a compression. Not the actual person." Clearly that was vetted as well.

RESTON: It was. And, you know, it raises questions about, you know, why President Obama -- or he was not yet president at that point but didn't make it clear at the beginning that these were composites of characters.

Again with Dr. Carson, I have not seen any notation in his book that these were names that were not used. There are other footnotes he pointed out this morning that to conceal the identity of one patient that was talked about in the book. There was a footnote saying that that person's blood type has been changed. There are no stars next to the names of Bob and Jerry in these accounts that he's told us.

And again, I also just want to come back to the fact that we are still reaching out looking to talk to people in Detroit and the people that we talk to, as we said clearly in our story at CNN.com, said that they had no knowledge of these incident, they were out of character. But many of them, you know, still believe him even though they are skeptical. So we're just looking for more details and we hope that Dr. Carson will come forward with those details.

HARLOW: Maeve Reston, thank you very much for joining us again.

RESTON: OK.

HARLOW: For any of you who haven't read it go to CNN.com, CNNPolitics.com and read Maeve's reporting on this.

All right. I want to bring in Errol Louis, CNN political commentator, also political anchor at New York 1. Just your reaction off the bat.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, you know, the stuff about not vetting Obama kind of hit a note with me because I remember, you know, during the Jeremiah Wright controversy back in 2008.

HARLOW: Right.

LOUIS: Humping out to Chicago on a weekend, I would rather stay in New York and going down to Trinity United Church, and talking with the worshippers, where did you sit, and what were the sermons like and sitting through a whole sermon and on and on and on. And you know this is what we do. So my initial reaction would be to say Dr. Carson, welcome to the race to become the most powerful man in the world. Questions are going to be asked.

HARLOW: It's interesting, Errol, because -- and the polling shows this. And we saw it play out frankly at the CNBC debate when you heard the crowd roar when Marco Rubio, for example, or Carly Fiorina, you know, went after the, quote-unquote, liberal media or media bias. That plays well with the public.

LOUIS: Yes. Yes, it certainly does. I mean, as you know, Poppy, it's impossible to convey to people that those of us who have been doing this for a while now, I've been doing this for about 30 years off and on. You know, we really on some level don't, quote-unquote, care who wins. That what we're trying to do is bring forward as much relevant, timely information as possible so that the voters can make the choice.

The notion that, you know, every journalist everywhere has the thumb on the scale in one direction or another is simply not true. I mean, it's hard enough just to try to keep straight what people have said and when candidates don't make it easier for you it doesn't help anything.

HARLOW: So let's take a look at some of these new poll numbers. New CNN-ORC poll coming out today, focusing on Iowa. Carson there making some major gains in Iowa since August, from 14 percent to 23 percent. Why do you think he continues to resonate with voters? I mean, he's pushing up against Trump by less than the margin of error.

LOUIS: That's right. They like Carson in Iowa. I've been to Iowa enough to know that they would like him. He is the kind of candidate that does very well out o there. An evangelical named Jimmy Carter won in 1976. Nobody expected it. An evangelical named Rick Santorum won just four years ago. And he at this point about, you know, less than 90 days out was polling in the single digits, and came from behind.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Ben Carson does very, very well or even wins Iowa. He is their kind of guy. He is -- he speaks the faith language that a lot of the core Republican voters speak. He carries himself with a certain modesty. This morning maybe being a bit of an exception that I think voters respond to. And he's got a message that they like.

HARLOW: It's interesting. He talks frequently in his book about the hand of God coming into his life at certain moments. One saving his wife in a car crash. Another one when he was unprepared for a big exam on his path to becoming a doctor. So certainly that is resonating with that huge evangelical voter block especially in Iowa.

Errol, thank you very much. Have a nice weekend, my friend.

LOUIS: You too.

HARLOW: Still to come, anger and confusion reign as thousands of passengers remain stranded in Egypt. Are they any closer to coming home?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:18:46] HARLOW: This morning, the first emergency flights are due to whisk stranded passengers and tourists out of Egypt and back home to the U.K. But confusion and anger ripple through the crowd at the airport in Sharm el-Sheikh, thousands learning they may they not after all be able to leave today.

Egypt is clamping down on the number of flights, amid growing suspicions that potentially an airport worker may have planted a bomb that brought down that Russian airliner. And if that's the case, is that worker still working at the airport?

Let's get the latest on it. CNN's Nima Elbagir is following this. And before we get to that, the stranded passengers, I just want to ask you about what Russian President Vladimir Putin has just said about these flights.

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, adding further credence to those security concerns here in Sharm el-Sheikh, Vladimir Putin has now stated not only Russian flights to Sharm el- Sheikh should be suspended but the Russian nationals here should be extracted.

Now, this is a pretty drastic about-turn, because Russia was joining Egypt in maintaining some of the comments, some of the implications we were hearing from the U.S. and U.K. about what could possibly have brought down that Russian plane were premature and that they needed to wait to the end of the investigation. Well, now, he is to some extent joining them and saying until the investigation issues its findings, Russian flights to and from Russia and Sharm el-Sheikh should be suspended.

[09:20:09] Now, this has come off the back of a very strong story coming out of British investigators for the BBC that they believe that this could have been caused by a bomb in the hold luggage, which, of course, brings about all sorts of concerns about the security of the broader parameter and about what, how this could have happened. Is it corruption? Is it an inside job? Is there a broader ring?

And the worry is that amidst the background of all that speculation and growing fear, thousands, as you said, are stranded here with at the moment no absolute guarantee that they're going to be going home, Poppy.

HARLOW: And you also have overnight, KLM, a major carrier, coming out and saying no checked luggage from Cairo, Egypt, to Amsterdam. So, you just got this cycle of fear that is precipitating as they wait for answers. All those people we saw on those lines at the airport, many of them thought they could go home today.

How drastically does this change all the contradictory information they are getting on when they can leave?

ELBAGIR: Well, this will absolutely solidify the broader concern. And then when you have a statement like that coming out and you have not just British nationals being extracted from here but potentially Russian nationals, out of a pretty small airport, Poppy. This is a holiday destination. This isn't a major hub. There is potential for a lot of chaos, and that itself feeds back into the fear.

It isn't just about the discomfort of being stuck here. It is also about the fears that are playing out for so many passengers about what happened, what caused this, and what that means for their safety as long as they are stuck here, Poppy.

HARLOW: Absolutely. Nima, thank you very much, reporting for us live in Sharm el-Sheikh today. And if indeed this is an attack carried out by ISIS, it is no question

a game-changer. It would be the group's first successful attack on an airliner. But in some ways, this would be ISIS still holding on to its proven strategy, preying on unstable countries.

Peter Bergen, CNN national security analyst, author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden", wrote a fascinating op-ed today on CNN.com.

And let me read part of it that stood to me for our viewers. You write, "The key to ISIS's success is not the group's military numbers. ISIS is in Syria and Iraq, the numbers there may only be about 20,000 to 30,000 fighters but the weakness in the regimes where the group is doing well."

You see this coming down to basically a power vacuum that has allowed ISIS to thrive.

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, Poppy. I mean, everybody was very excited about the Arab spring but it's turned into the Arab winter and it's created a vacuum of governance in a lot of countries. Whether it's Iraq or Syria or Yemen, or Libya, and to some extent Egypt, where ISIS has quite a strong affiliate in Sinai Peninsula.

And not some -- you know, it's not so much that ISIS is very strong, but it's a pathogen which preys on weak hosts like these countries with pretty ineffective governments. And -- I mean, if indeed this was a bomb that got on the plane in Sharm el-Sheikh, it sort of speaks to the way that -- you know, Egypt doesn't have a particularly strong, you know, national security system in the same way a lot of Western countries do.

And, in fact, I talked to a British official who said their own experts observed what was going on at Sharm el-Sheikh airport in terms of security. They said it was poorly supervised, it was inconsistent and that explains some of the actions the British have taken.

HARLOW: What about the intelligence, Peter, that stands out most to you that would make U.S. intelligence, U.K. intelligence point to a very likely possibility that this was carried out by ISIS? Because we know the group has claimed responsibility in the past for things that, frankly -- attacks that frankly they have not carried out. What is it about this intelligence?

BERGEN: Well, I haven't seen the intelligence. So, I don't -- I can't make an assessment. I mean, we've had a series of different kinds of reports, as Nima mentioned, the BBC's reporting that British investigators think the bomb was in the hold.

And, you know, the British intelligence service is a very series service, MI-6, and the fact that the British Prime Minister David Cameron is on the record as saying that they're leaning in this direction, and President Obama yesterday said it was a strong -- you know, at least the possibility this was a bomb. So take all of this together a lot of potential people have arrived at this conclusion. HARLOW: So, let's talk about ISIS operating in the Sinai Peninsula,

because this is, you know, an offshoot of al Qaeda, previously known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, and they pledged allegiance to ISIS last year.

What else do we know about just the power and the presence of the group in that region?

BERGEN: I think it's one of -- I mean, I think it's generally viewed as one of the strongest after ISIS's regional affiliates. And it is, you know, it's not just an affiliate now. It's declared itself to be part and parcel of ISIS and, you know, it is leading in insurgency in Sinai where hundreds of people are being killed whether they're on the military side or the government side, or the militants themselves or civilians.

[09:25:05] You know, there's a domestic insurgency going on in Sinai. It's not just a terrorist campaign. They've had highly effective attacks on soldiers and government officials. So, you know, it's a serious problem, just as the ISIS affiliate in Libya is a serious problem.

HARLOW: Right.

BERGEN: And ISIS in Iraq and Syria are serious.

HARLOW: So, let's get to that. You bring up Libya and just the bigger concern about all of these sort of failed states, if you will. You write in this op-ed that overthrowing Gadhafi in Libya may be the single, most significant foreign policy blunder of the Obama administration. What lessons can whatever administration takes over going forward from here -- what can they take from that?

BERGEN: Well, you know, Hobbs put it a long time ago. The one thing that's worse than a dictator is anarchy. And people value security, you know, that's the most important thing you can deliver. And if you overthrow a dictator no matter how heinous and there is civil war and anarchy, this is really a problem.

And unfortunately the Obama administration didn't learn from the lessons of Iraq in 2003. You overthrow Saddam Hussein, the civil war ensues anarchy. And the same thing is happening in Libya today. It was very unfortunate.

I was all in favor of overthrowing Gadhafi as many around the world were. But the question is what happens on day two? And now, we have unfortunately a pretty extended answer to that.

HARLOW: Absolutely. As so many governments grapple with what to do with Assad in Syria.

Peter Bergen, thank you.

BERGEN: Thank you.

HARLOW: Still to come we are learning more about an absolutely strategic story, do you see that face on your screen? That is the face of a nine-year-old boy murdered in a Chicago alley. Police calling it a new low. That's next.

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