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Barack Obama Press Conference Expected Soon; Evacuations of Civilians in Eastern Aleppo Suspended; Barack Obama Press Conference. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired December 16, 2016 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Michelle Kosinski is in the briefing room getting ready.

Michelle, set the scene for us. You're getting information about what we might hear.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: There are going to be a lot of questions obviously. But obviously, this isn't for the benefit of reporters who have these difficult questions, this is also for President Obama to get out there and hit those points he feels are important. I mean, he's going to want to be in a position of strength against Russia towards the hack without getting into too much detail on this proportion al response he's been warning about but the White House wants to clarify what's been called now an ugly transition, what's been termed a gloves-off back-and-forth between the white team. It has been surprising in some respects the way this information has been put out there, the responses by the White House and the defense of the White House for the way it's responded and why. The White House has been wanting to explain that and I think President Obama will want to put that in his own words. We're hearing from senior administration officials that it's materially different, the kinds of statements that have been made by Trump's team with Kellyanne Conway getting out there and calling the press secretary, for example, a foolish guy or saying he's deeply irresponsible or calling on President Obama to end this back and forth. If he loved America more. Is they see that as being an entirely different category than the kinds of things they've said publicly this week this they say is stating facts, repeating things Donald Trump has said himself that is true but context also matters. And that's where the Trump campaign -- the Trump team now has bristled. The back and forth and strong words go back to the campaign and now despite the initial smooth transition and the, well, it seems to have gotten back to some of that so President Obama's going to want to speak in direct terms, he's going to want to clarify points. He's going to want to hit on the point he is feels are important. One thing the administration feels was a game changer was Donald Trump's about others denials and questions that Russia even played a role in this hack. I think the president will want to hit on the risks of those kinds of statements, why they're not true, he's going to get his own way of framing this out there and I think he's going to do so at some length -- Wolf?

BLITZER: Michelle Kosinski is in the briefing room waiting for the president. We're all waiting for the president right now.

Michelle, stand by.

One other issue the president will almost certainly face, the crisis in Syria. Evacuations from Aleppo suspended, thousands of lives are hanging in the balance right now. That's the situation in Aleppo where people desperate to escape a five-year-old civil war are told the buses sent to rescue them have stopped.

Fred Pleitgen is joining us now.

Fred, you told me a second round of buses have started shipping people off. Now we're getting conflicting reports about the evacuation. What happened between then and now?

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, there were several convoys that made it through, we're hearing about six or seven or possibly even eight convoys with about a thousand people each that made it out of eastern Aleppo through government-held territory and then into other rebel-held areas. So about 8,000 to 9,000 people were evacuated. Many of them very sick, many wounded, many of them children on the brink of dying. But at some point, one of the convoys got stopped and it becomes unclear what happened. The Syrian government says some of the people on the convoy were rebel fighters trying to smuggle their weapons out of eastern Aleppo. The opposition, for its part, says the convoy was held up by a Shiite militia that fights on the part of Syrian President Bashar al Assad that they were unhappy with the fact that this evacuation deal for the rebels had gone through. And so therefore, they stopped the convoy, allegedly executed several people, and then sent the convoy back. And after that happened, Wolf, all of the international aid workers in eastern Aleppo, from the International Red Cross, from the World Health Organization, the Red Crescent, all of them were pulled, were told to go away because the situation was so unsafe.

It's unclear whether or not these evacuations will resume because the United Nations believe there is could be up to 50,000 people still in that rebel enclave trying to get out, needing to get out because, again, many of them are also children. UNICEF put out a statement really that sounds tragic about a number of orphans, they say, "Thousands of children are still there in eastern Aleppo. They're also in dire need as well."

The temperatures are cold but, Wolf, right now, it's not clear whether or not the evacuations will resume. And you and I know how volatile the situation is on the ground there with those different militias, people who have been fighting each other for a very long time. Anything could kick off at any time, and that would be the worst scenario because that would be full-on war again. That certainly would be a tragedy for the people who are still stuck there in eastern Aleppo -- Wolf?

[13:35:17] BLITZER: Good point. Thanks very much. A real tragic story unfolding there and has been unfolding for the past five years.

Fred Pleitgen joining us from Beirut.

Jake, when the president, at this news conference -- presumably, he'll be asked what are you going to do? What are you done? What can you do to try to stop the slaughter of these women and children, these -- the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding, that is escalating in Syria right now. What can he say?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: What he has said I think most recently to Fareed Zakaria is that it was the best option of a host of horrific options and that he didn't think involving U.S. troops in any major way and entangling the United States in another Middle East war would have made the situation any better. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, but that's basically been his argument. There are a lot of people in the human rights community and people who are looking at what is -- has essentially been a genocide by another name in that country. Hundreds of thousands killed, millions and millions displaced, a whole bunch of instability throughout the region now, even in Europe, because of the immigration crisis that they have there, who can't imagine how anything could be a worse option than this one. But, yeah, as you watch these images from Aleppo, it's just been one of the worst thing that's happened in the Obama presidency. And it will be something that he, as president, is going to have to reckon with in the same way President Clinton had to reckon with inaction in Rwanda.

BLITZER: I heard yesterday from Chuck Hagel, who was President Obama's defense secretary, and he said there were other options short of deploying 50,000 or 100,000 U.S. ground troops to Syria that might have prevented this humanitarian disaster but for whatever reason the president decided to stop short of that.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yeah, and part of -- this president wanted to pivot away from the Middle East, wanted more of an Asia pivot. And I think it's one of these quagmires. And we hear the practical Obama when he talks about this, this idea that, as Jake said, there aren't necessarily any good choices in this. I do think -- you think about Syria, again, I think at this point it will be Trump's problem, right? He's going to be inaugurated next month and obviously, the Russian government and Putin has a hand in terms of that alliance with Bashar al Assad there. So, Obama has done what he's done. Some people criticize him and say he hasn't done enough and he blinked, right? This whole idea of setting a red line when there were -- a sense that there was chemical warfare being used there. But it's Trump's problem now so it will be up to him to figure out what a solution is.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The thing is, there was an option short of 50,000 troops on the ground, right? That's a no-fly zone. That's not a low-investment problem. The U.S. military made very clear the Syrians, unlike, say, Iraq, had sophisticated anti-aircraft systems. It wouldn't have been a small job but certainly something short of putting 50,000 troops on the ground. And one of the justifications for not doing that that the president cites now, which is igniting a war with Russia, because you have loads of Russian assets. That didn't exist a couple years ago. Yes, Russia was backing Assad but you didn't have Russian planes on the ground there, forces, et cetera. So, there were steps he could have taken, not to say they were simple, but there were steps short of a full- scale Iraq invasion. TAPPER: Two people have blood on their hands for what's going on in

Syria, Vladimir Putin and Bashar al Assad. Those are the two people responsible for the bloodshed we've seen there.

In terms of the blame in the United States, President Obama gets blame for his policy, which cannot be seen as a success in any way, shape or form. But to let Congress off the hook would be doing a disservice to history. Congress didn't have the votes. They weren't going to vote to try to impose and enforce the red line that President Obama talked about when it came to chemical weapons against -- using chemical weapons against his own people. There are not a lot of profiles in courage I see on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue when it comes to Syria either, and it's very easy for members of Congress to beat their chests and talk about President Obama's failure. I didn't see many of them -- there are exceptions -- stepping up to the plate and saying we need to send troops and this is what we need to do and why we need to do it. I saw a lot of them running back to their home districts and blaming it on President Obama from the comfort of under their desks.

BLITZER: You make a good point, because the president did say, I don't need congressional authorization to deploy troops or engage in a no-fly zone, but it would be good if Congress had the guts to go ahead and act and pass legislation authorizing the U.S. to do something. Congress didn't do that.

[14:40:04] TAPPER: They like shirking responsibility. They like not having the War Powers Act actually be a real resolution because it enables them to blame the president when things go wrong and not have any ownership of anything that goes wrong as well. And the truth of the matter is, anybody who wants to blame President Obama for this, who's in Congress, needs to show all the places and times when they pointed to what they wanted to do and called for action and called for voting.

BLITZER: Here comes the president of the United States.

BARACK OBAMA, PRSEIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good afternoon. This is the most wonderful press conference of the year.

(LAUGHTER)

I've got a list of who's been naughty and nice to call on.

(LAUGHTER)

But let me first make a couple of quick points. Then I'll take your questions.

Typically I use this year-end press conference to review how far we have come over the course of the year. Today, understandably, I'm going to talk a little bit about how far we have come over the past eight years.

As I was preparing to take office, the unemployment rate was on its way to 10 percent. Today it is at 4.6 percent, the lowest in nearly a decade. We've seen the longest streak of job growth on record, and wages have grown faster over the past few years than at any time in the past 40.

When I came into office, 44 million people were uninsured. Today we have covered more than 20 million of them. For the first time in our history, more than 90 percent of Americans are insured.

In fact, yesterday was the biggest day ever for health care.gov, more than 670,000 Americans signed up to get covered, and more are signing up by the day.

We've cut our dependence on foreign oil by more than half, doubled production of renewable energy, enacted the most sweeping reforms since FDR to protect consumers and prevent a crisis on Wall Street from punishing main street ever again.

None of these actions stifled growth as critics are predicted. Instead, the stock market has nearly tripled.

Since I signed Obamacare into law, our businesses have added more than 15 million new jobs, and the economy undoubtedly more durable than it was in the days when we relied on oil from unstable nations and banks took risky bets with your money.

Add it all up, and last year the poverty rate fell at the fastest rate in almost 50 years, while the median household income grew at the fastest rate on record. In fact, income gains were actually larger for households at the bottom and the middle than for those at the top.

And we have done all this while cutting our deficits by nearly two- thirds, and protecting vital investments that grow the middle class.

In foreign policy, when I came into office we were in the midst of two wars. Now nearly 180,000 troops are down to 15,000. Bin Laden, rather than being at large, has been taken off the battlefield, along with thousands of other terrorists.

Over the past eight years no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed an attack on our homeland that was directed from overseas. Through diplomacy, we have ensured Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon without going to war with Iran.

We opened up a new chapter with the people of Cuba. And we have brought nearly 200 nations together around a climate agreement that could very well save this planet for our kids.

And almost every country on Earth sees America as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago. In other words, by so many measures our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started. It is a situation that I'm proud to leave for my successor. And it's thanks to the American people, to the hard work that you have put in, the sacrifices you have made for your families and your communities, the businesses that you started or invested in, and the way you looked out for one another. And I could not be prouder to be your president.

Of course, to tout this progress does not mean that we are not mindful of how much more there is to do. In this season in particular, we are reminded that there are people who are still hungry, people who are still homeless, people who still have trouble paying the bills or finding work after being laid off.

There are communities that are still mourning those who have been stolen from us by senseless gun violence, and parents who still are wondering how to protect their kids.

OBAMA: And after I leave office I intend to continue to work with organizations and citizens doing good across the country on these and other pressing issues to build on the progress that we have made.

Around the world as well, there are hotspots where disputes have been intractable, conflicts have flared up, and people, innocent people are suffering as result, and nowhere is this more terribly true than in the city of Aleppo. For years, we've worked to stop the civil war in Syria and alleviate human suffering. It has been one of the hardest issues that I've faced as president.

The world as we speak is united in horror at the savage assaults by the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies on the city of Aleppo. We have seen a deliberate strategy of surrounding, besieging and starving innocent civilians. We've seen relentless targeting of humanitarian workers and medical personnel, entire and neighbors reduced to rubble and dust. There are continuing reports of civilians being executed. These are all horrific violations of international law.

Responsibility for this brutality lies in one place alone, with the Assad regime and its allies, Russia and Iran, and this blood and these atrocities are on their hands. We all know what needs to happen. There needs to be an impartial international observer force in Aleppo that can help coordinate an orderly evacuation through say corridors. There has to be full access for humanitarian aid, even as the United States continues to be the world's largest donor of humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. And beyond that, there needs to be a broader cease-fire that can serve as the basis for a political rather than a military solution.

That's what the United States is gonna continue to push for, both with our partners and through multilateral institutions like the U.N.

Regretfully, but unsurprisingly, Russia has repeatedly blocked the Security Council from taking action on these issues, so we're gonna keep pressing the Security Council to help improve the delivery of humanitarian aid to those who are in such desperate need and ensure accountability, including continuing to monitor any potential use of chemical weapons in Syria.

And we're gonna work in the U.N. General Assembly as well, both on accountability and to advance a political settlement because it should be clear that although you may achieve tactical victories, over the long-term, the Assad regime cannot slaughter its way to legitimacy. That's why we'll continue to press for a transition to a more representative government, and that's why the world must not avert our eyes to the terrible events that are unfolding. The Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies are trying to

obfuscate the truth. The world should not be fooled and the world will not forget.

So even in a season where the incredible blessings that we know as Americans are all around us, even as we enjoy family and friends and are reminded of how lucky we are, we should also be reminded that to be an American involves bearing burdens and meeting obligations to others. American values and American ideals are what will lead the way to a safer and more prosperous 2017, both here and abroad. And by the way, you (ph) embody those values and ideals like our brave men and women in uniform and their families.

So I just want to close by wishing all of them a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

With that, I will take some questions, and I'm gonna start with Josh Lederman of A.P.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

There's a perception that you're letting President Putin get away with interfering in the U.S. election and that a response that nobody knows about (inaudible) don't cut it. Are you prepared to call out President Putin by name for ordering (inaudible)? And do you agree with Hillary Clinton now says, that the hacking was actually partially responsible for her loss?

And is your administration open to correlate with Trump and his team on this issues, tarnishing (ph) the smooth transition of power that you have promised?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, with respect to the transition, I think they would be the first to acknowledge that we have done everything we can to make sure that they are successful, as I promised, and that will continue. And it's just been a few days since I last talked to the president-elect about a whole range of transition issues. That cooperation's gonna continue.

OBAMA: There hasn't been a lot of squabbling. What we've simply said is the facts, which are that based on uniform intelligence assessments, the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC and that as a consequence, it is important for us to review all elements of that and make sure that we are preventing that kind of interference through cyber attacks in the future. That should be a bipartisan issue, that shouldn't be a partisan issue.

And my hope is that the president-elect is going to similarly be concerned with making sure that we don't have a potential foreign influence in our election process. I don't think any American wants that. And that shouldn't be a source of an argument.

I think that part of the challenge is that it gets caught up in the carryover from election season. And I think it is very important for us to distinguish between the politics of the election and the need for us as a country, both from a national security perspective but also in terms of the integrity of our election system and our democracy to make sure that we don't create a political football here.

Now, with respect to how this thing unfolded last year, let's just go through the facts pretty quickly. At the beginning of the summer, were alerted to the possibility that the DNC has been hacked. And I made (ph) an order, law enforcement, as well as our intelligence teams to find out everything about it, investigate it thoroughly to brief the potential victims of this hacking, to brief on a bipartisan basis the leaders of both the House and the Senate and the relevant intelligence committees.

And once we had clarity and certainty around what in fact had happened, we publicly announced that in fact Russia had hacked into the DNC. And at that time, we did not attribute motives or you know any interpretations of why they had done so.

We didn't discuss what the effects of it might be. We simply let people know -- the public know just as we had let members of Congress know that this had happened.

And as a consequence, all of you wrote a lot of stories about both what had happened and then you interpreted why that might have happened and what effect it was going to have on the election outcomes. We did not -- and the reason we did not was because in this hyper-partisan atmosphere, at a time when my primary concern was making sure that the integrity of the election process was not in any way damaged, at a time when anything that was said by me or anybody in the White House would immediately be seen through a partisan lens. I wanted to make sure that everybody understood we were playing this thing straight, that we weren't trying to advantage one side or another. But what we were trying to do was let people know that this had taken place.

And so if you started seeing effects on the election, if you were trying to measure why this was happening and how you should consume the information that was being leaked, that you might want to take this into account. And that's exactly how we should have handled it.

Imagine if we had done the opposite, it would become immediately just one more political scrum. And part of the goal here was to make sure that we did not do the work of the leakers for them by raising more and more questions about the integrity of the election right before the election was taking place -- at a time, by the way, when the president-elect himself was raising questions about the integrity of the election.

And finally, I think it's worth pointing out, that the information was already out. It was in the hands of Wikileaks, so that was going to come out no matter what.

What I was concerned about in particular was making sure that that wasn't compounded by potential hacking that could hamper vote counting, affect the actual election process itself.

And so in early September when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that did not happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out, there were going to be some serious consequences if he did not.

And in fact, we did not see further tampering of the election process. But the leaks through Wikileaks had already occurred.

So when I look back in terms of how we handled it, I think we handled it the way it should have been handled. We allowed law enforcement and the intelligence community to do its job without political influence.

We briefed all relevant parties involved in terms of what was taking place. When we had a consensus around what had happened, we announced it, not through the White House, not through me, but rather through the intelligence communities that had actually carried out these investigations.

And then we allowed you and the American public to make an assessment as to how to weigh that going into the election.

And the truth is, is that there was nobody here who did not have some sense of what kind of effect it might have. I am finding it a little curious that everybody is suddenly acting surprised that this looked like it was disadvantaging Hillary Clinton, because you guys wrote about it every day, every single leak about every little juicy tidbit of political gossip, including John Podesta's risotto recipe.

This was an obsession that dominated the news coverage. So I do think it is worth us reflecting how it is that a presidential election of such importance, of such moment, with so many big issues at stake and such a contrast between the candidates came to be dominated by a bunch of these leaks.

What is it about our political system that made us vulnerable to these kinds of potential manipulations which, as I've said publicly before, were not particularly sophisticated. This was not some elaborate, complicated espionage scheme.

They hacked into some Democratic Party e-mails that contained pretty routine stuff, some of it embarrassing or uncomfortable because I suspect that if any of us got our emails hacked into there might be some things that we would not want suddenly appearing on the front page of a newspaper or a telecast, even if there was not anything particularly illegal or controversial about it.

And then it just took off. And that concerns me, and it should concern all of us. But the truth of the matter is, is that everybody had the information. It was out there, and we handled it the way we should have.

Now, moving forward, I think there are a couple of issues that this raises. Number one is just the constant challenge that we are going to have with cyber security throughout our economy and throughout our society.

We are a digitalized culture. And there's hacking going on every single day. There is not a company, there is not a major organization, there is not a financial institution, there is not a branch of our government were somebody is not going to be fishing for something or trying to penetrate or put in a virus or malware.

And this is why for the last eight years I have been obsessed with how do we continually upgrade our cyber security systems. And this particular concern around Russian hacking is part of a broader set of concerns about how do we deal with cyber issues being used in ways that can affect our infrastructure, affect the stability of our financial systems, and affect the integrity of our institutions like our election process.

I just received a couple of weeks back -- it wasn't widely reported on -- a report from our Cybersecurity Commission that outlines --