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Biden Confirms Leader of ISIS Died in U.S. Special Forces Raid in Syria; Weekly Jobless Claims Fell to 238,000, Fewer Than Expected; Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) Takes on Dr. Fauci in Re-Election Messaging. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired February 03, 2022 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:04]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN NEWSROOM: Can you talk about what you're hearing and what White House sources are telling you transpired last night?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, this is something that was months in the making. It is a very delicate and complicated situation at times. White House officials, administration officials said especially in this situation given where Haji Abdullah was living, in this residential building.

And that is that the president was referencing there, the concern, of course, and you talked what Barbara was reporting earlier about the calls to try to get people out of the house given before this operation went down and the concern that he would self-detonate, which the White House and administration officials said did eventually happen.

And so this is something that was months in the making. They were waiting to get intelligence to confirm that, yes, he was residing in this building, somewhere where officials said he rarely left and was instead basically conducting ISIS via couriers, instructing people what to do, and he rarely left this building himself. So, it's not like they had an opportunity to target him out of the building, officials said.

And so President Biden himself was first briefed in depth on the details of the potential options here for this operation about a month ago. They even brought in a table top model of where Haji Abdullah was living to go over this with the president himself. And officials said that the president wanted to make sure they could minimize any of the civilian casualties.

We know, according to report, that there were civilian casualties that the Pentagon has confirmed. None of those are from the U.S. side. And so that is something that was of concern to the president. We are told that he got that in-depth briefing about a month ago.

And then on Tuesday in the situation room, where we had noticed he was meeting with the defense secretary, who was at the White House, for about three hours, that's when President Biden gave the final go-ahead to conduct this mission.

So, he watched it last night. You see this picture released by the White House, where President Biden, the vice president, the deputy national security adviser, other officials around the table watching, watching and waiting to make sure this mission was conducted successfully. And officials said that afterward, President Biden said, God bless our troops, he left the situation room once the team was wheels up and then he was updated throughout the night by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.

But these are always very tense situations for any kind of White House because, of course, you never know if things go wrong. You plan and you plan down to the minute but there are always a big -- there's a big risk factor in this. And, certainly, that's what officials described last night.

But just to give you one last detail into the detail of the planning for this, they believed Haji Abdullah was on the third floor of this building. And they wanted to make sure that if he did self-detonated, that it would not cause the building to collapse and, therefore, put the lives of the other people in the building at risk.

And they said that the military engineers had tested that beforehand. They were confident that the third floor would not collapse if he did that. Of course, they said he may have not known, not even himself, he did end up doing that last night but, of course, the people who were on the first floor were able to get out safely, according to the White House.

SCIUTTO: Barbara Starr, the president said, thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is with us no more. You know better than anyone the risk involved in an operation like this, but also, the preparation, as he noted months in advance. Can you describe briefly the level of intel, the number of forces involved, the difficulty of that and the risk in a calculation like this. Because the president did have an option to drop a bomb, much easier to do it from far away, didn't do that here and that was a riskier choice.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Right. And you say the size of the force. That's something I think is worth considering. So, what we know is a number of special operations forces came in on the ground via helicopter. That's essentially the part we see, if you will. But whenever those kinds of forces move, there are aircraft overhead who are constantly surveying, collecting intelligence, eavesdropping on cell phone conversations, collecting every bit of imagery they can, so you would have had aircraft overhead.

You also, just like in the Bin Laden raid, would have had a quick reaction force on standby at some point in not too far away, perhaps just over the Turkish border. These quick reaction forces are always on standby during these missions in case U.S. troops get into trouble and they need to go in and get them out of there. So, this would have been a considerable force that would have been devoted to this.

What we know is the administration, like past administrations, for some time, continues to basically maintain a list, if you will, of the terrorist leaders it wants to go after and they constantly try to collect intelligence on them and wait for that moment when they essentially get the aha moment. It may be a cell phone that suddenly activates. It may be a visual sighting, something that tells them that person is there at that location. And then they can begin to watch it and develop the fine tuned intelligence so they know when to go in.

They want to know as much as possible about every single thing.

[10:35:01]

And to Kaitlan's point, the fact that they had a military engineer consider whether the building would collapse, that tells us that somehow they had an assessment of the construction of that building, perhaps whether there was rebar steel in it or what. And that's a pretty interesting tidbit that they would have some understanding of that.

SCIUTTO: To think, Bianna, all that goes into this raids in advance, if you look back at the Bin Laden raid, I mean, they were using satellites to attempt to measure the height of the person they suspected to be Osama Bin Laden to make sure he was the target, but Barbara's point there shows that these things, they aren't done lightly. They require a lot in advance.

GOLODRYGA: Months of planning here. And, Colonel, interestingly enough, there are still Russian Special Forces there on the ground in Syria. At times, they themselves are fighting with ISIS. I'm just curious, given the conflict now in Ukraine and the increased rhetoric between Russia and the United States, is this a situation where perhaps the U.S. military and some of their Russian counterparts had either some conversations leading up to this or most likely coming out of it?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, that's a really good question because, of course, we all know that the Russians are active in Syria. Russian Special Forces as well as our special forces sometimes meet either intentionally or unintentionally in Syria or over Syria in some cases. And this kind of mission often requires some degree of de-confliction. They probably asked the Russians for some airspace or something like that. Maybe they didn't.

But, certainly, on the way out, like you mentioned, they would have requested the Russians not do anything. And that is something that I think we always have to look out for because the Russians could have easily been tipped off or could have tipped off others that this was going on. And, of course, they chose not to act. So, this is a possibility with a degree of cooperation, if it happened, in Syria to take care of this raid, may be a harbinger of other methods or other avenues of cooperation between our two militaries.

SCIUTTO: Maybe. And then there has been the case in Syria, you'll remember, a number of years ago where there was a deadly clash, actually, between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria. Certainly with those de-confliction lines, they want to do everything to avoid it. GOLODRYGA: Kaitlan Collins, Barbara Starr, Colonel Cedric Leighton, Peter Bergen, thank you so much. We'll continue to follow this developing story.

In the meantime, supply chain issues, inflation, gas, high prices, all of this still walloping the wallets of families and small business owners. Next, I'll speak with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo about that and also ask her about the hope for future investments in our country's manufacturing industry.

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[10:40:00]

GOLODRYGA: New jobless claims in the U.S. fell to 238,000 last week, a lower number than economists expected. That's a drop for a second straight week. Labor Department data shows that the four-week average for jobless claims is now at the lowest level since 1973.

That bright spot comes as the White House braces for what's expected to be an unusual weak January jobs report which will be released tomorrow morning. White House officials attributing that to omicron cases peaking while the payroll data was being collected.

Joining me now to discuss is Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Secretary Raimondo, thank you so much for joining us.

So, let's talk more about that jobs report that we're expecting tomorrow morning. How worried is the administration about this weaker than expected number that our reporting suggests the administration is bracing for and how concerned is the administration that this may not be a one-time factor?

GINA RAIMONDO, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE: Good morning. First of all, thank you for having me. We are not concerned. We were just flagging so people are not surprised that this will be an unusual month, potentially. It's important to remember that in any given month, the way we collect the data, it's just a snapshot in time. In this past month, due to omicron, the snapshot in time happened at the height of omicron. So, for example, if somebody was out sick for the week, they'd be counted potentially as unemployed. They're not unemployed.

So, the bottom line, and I say this every month, you can't take too much out of any one month's numbers because it's a snapshot in time. You have to look at the trend. And the trend is enormously strong, creating over 6.5 million jobs last year, wages are up, unemployment is down. America is the only economy in the world that's stronger now than it was pre-pandemic. So, as I say, it's a snapshot, but by any measure, our economy is strong and growing and we're very pleased with that.

GOLODRYGA: So, you expect this to be an outlier month? You're expecting a stronger reporter and stronger data to come out for the month of February?

[10:45:00] RAIMONDO: We'll wait and see what the data is. I haven't seen it. But I wouldn't at all be surprised if this month were, I don't know what the right word is, a blip.

GOLODRYGA: Well, let's get to an issue that I know you are very concerned about, and that's America's competitiveness internationally, specifically when it comes to technology and microchips. The America Competes Act is something you want to speak about. And let's talk to our viewers more about this, because in this act is the chips for America fund and that has to deal with microchips. And that is something that are components that we find in our computers and cars and basically every electronics we use on a daily basis. And the supply here in the United States really is dwindling.

Now, this act passed through the Senate in a bipartisan manner over the summer. It is stalled right now in the House and that has been going on for several months now. If this is such a critical issue for our national security, for the economy, why hasn't this passed yet?

RAIMONDO: Yes. This is 2,000-page bill, it's complicated. I think Speaker Pelosi said the work spanned 11 committees in the House, so they've been doing their work. But here's the important point. It's time for pencils down, take a vote, take action. The House is posed for a voice tomorrow in the House. I am confident it will pass tomorrow.

I hope it passes on a bipartisan basis. There's no reason it shouldn't, as you said. It was bipartisan in the Senate. Most of the bill in the House includes Republican bills, so I hope that it's bipartisan. But regardless, we're poised for action tomorrow with a positive vote. And then we move on to the conference process and, as you say, we're out of time. So, I hope that the conference process goes quickly and we can move to action.

GOLODRYGA: Well, I don't have to tell you many Republicans here are pointing the fingers at Democrats. There's more than 500 proposed amendments that have been added to this bill. And I want to read to you what one Republican congressman from Ohio, and that's the state where Intel is planning to spend $20 billion on a microchip plant.

And he was talking about this frustration yesterday. He said, quote, the chips act represents Congress with a golden opportunity to finally pass a bipartisan common sense investment that would bolster American competitiveness on the world stage. Unfortunately, the Chips Act reflects the bill's overall price tag, which is $300 billion. Instead, House Democrats worked behind closed doors with no Republican input and managed to bury good provisions under a mountain of unrelated policies that have nothing to do with American competitiveness.

What is the administration's response to that?

RAIMONDO: So, a few things. First of all, that's just not true at all. The facts don't bear out. As I said, most of this bill -- this bill is a compilation of many other bills, almost all of which are bipartisan. So, that is just factually incorrect. The content of this bill is bipartisan. Much of it was written by Republican lawmakers. So, definitely, no one can be serious about competing with China and vote no tomorrow.

If you're serious about competing with China, if you're serious about investing in America, you have to vote yes tomorrow, then go to Congress to work out the differences. I understand this big bill, there are differences, so that's the conference process and that's what has to happen.

But this -- to be clear with you, this is the biggest investment in America, American research and development, American competitiveness in a generation and we have to vote for it and anyone serious about America competing in the world should vote yes.

GOLODRYGA: And you know that China and even in Europe is spending more money on this very issue than the United States is right now. And even if this does pass, it's going to take months, if not years, to get the United States where it needs to be and that's because it took us years to get to where we are now. Look at some of these numbers. In 1990, the U.S. accounted for 37 percent of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity. By 2020, that number fallen to 12 percent. How did the United States get to such a vulnerable place?

RAIMONDO: We took our eye off the ball in manufacturing. We pursued manufacturing in the cheapest place possible and slowly, over time, the American manufacturing base dwindled and atrophied and we wake up today finding ourselves completely dependent on foreign countries for their manufacturing. We pursued cheap labor, and just in time, to our detriment. Because now, in COVID, we realize we're completely dependent on Taiwan for semiconductors.

[10:50:00]

We're completely dependent on China and India for medicine and the inputs into our pharmaceuticals, completely dependent on other countries for so much advanced manufacturing.

And that's exactly why President Biden is focused with urgency on bringing manufacturing back to America, creating good-paying jobs for Americans and manufacturing operations, securing our national security and helping us to be stronger by being less dependent on countries halfway across the world.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. And I know you and the president are saying and linking this to helping the supply chain issues and even inflation. Though, as we know, this is going to take a long, long time to get to a level where the United States needs to be, maybe not fast enough for the American consumers dealing with the inflation right now every time they pay their bills.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, I know this is an important issue for you. We'll see what happens in Congress this week. Thank you so much.

RAIMONDO: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead, while Republicans wait for former President Trump to officially declare 2024 candidacy, his fingerprints already all over the 2020 midterms. What does it add up to?

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SCIUTTO: Florida's Republican governor Ron DeSantis does not have a clear opponent as he seeks reelection there this year using the open field to take on a different opponent, Dr. Anthony Fauci, favorite target in speeches and even in his campaign merchandise, which he sells. Yes, those flip-flops read, Fauci can pound sand. But the open field is letting DeSantis eye something else beyond 2022. If former President Donald Trump stumbles, decides not to run, DeSantis already presenting himself as a potential alternative in 2024 for Republicans.

Joining me to discuss a whole host of things, Joe Walsh, he's a former Republican Congressman from Illinois, Host of the podcast White Flag with Joe Walsh. Joe, thanks so much.

I wonder just, big picture here, what do you make of this, I don't know if you want to call it infighting, but competition in the party between DeSantis and Trump. Is there anything there and do you find DeSantis, if Trump stays in, a credible, a potential opponent?

FMR. REP. JOE WALSH, (R-IL): Jim, good to be with you. I don't think there's a lot there. I don't think there's a competition between DeSantis and Trump. I'm kind of Johnny One note on this until somebody proves me different.

[10:55:01]

This is Trump's party. I talked to hundreds of people in the -- every day, it's still his party. I think if he runs, Jim, I don't think there's a Republican that would challenge him.

SCIUTTO: You do hear from Republicans that they look at some of the polls and see some of his support waning, a bit, right, for instance, folks who identify with the party as opposed to Trump. And, again, listen, we have to take polls with a grain of salt and look at the bigger picture, but I respect your point of view because, as you say, you're speaking to folks every day. Do you see any waning of that support?

WALSH: Among the base, Jim, I don't. And this is what's so scary. Among the base, their belief that Joe Biden didn't win fair and square, that's been hardened. Their belief that January 6th was actually a patriot day, that kind of belief has been hardened. You talked about what DeSantis said about Fauci, damn near every member of the Republican base I talk to every day, they think Fauci ought to be in prison.

So, I think the base is where it is and nobody channels that base better than Trump or, sadly, somebody like Tucker Carlson or DeSantis.

SCIUTTO: Now, Trump does miscalculate. We saw that in the Georgia Senate races, for instance, in 2020. Some of the party said that he basically undermined those races and gave them to the Democrats. He's now trying to play a game in the Georgia governor's race there, clear the field for David Perdue, push out for Brian Kemp who wouldn't go out with the big lie. Do you see that as a successful effort? Does he have the influence and does he have strategy to get this right?

WALSH: Well, he's never had a strategy because a strategy, Trump is not a thinker. But, look, there's a reason why Liz Cheney is in trouble. There's a reason why I no longer am in the Republican Party. There's a reason why Adam Kinzinger, a good friend, isn't running again. If you're publicly opposed to Donald Trump, you have no future in this party. So, to have his endorsement is a really, really big deal. It still is. Perdue is a weak candidate, Jim, but Trump's endorsement will make it competitive.

SCIUTTO: If one of the many investigations of Trump, whether his businesses, civil cases in New York, you have the case in Georgia, as you know, which could lead to potential criminal indictment for his interference in the election there and, of course, you have a report that's going to come from the January 6th committee, does any of that lead that support to waiver or are the walls just too built up at this point?

WALSH: Look, Jim, I know, I apologize, I'm a dark Irish man on all of this. My God, Trump incited a violent attempt to overthrow an American election. And here we are, Jim, a year later, and his support among the Republican Party base is stronger. So, no, an indictment here or an indictment there, forget about it. That's not going to matter with the party base, sadly.

SCIUTTO: Remarkable point of view. Joe Walsh, it's good to have you on the program.

WALSH: Thanks, Jim.

SCIUTTO: And thanks so much to all of you joining us today, yet another busy day. I'm Jim Sciutto.

GOLDRYGA: They keep coming our way, Jim, I'm Bianna Golodryga.

At This Hour with Kate Bolduan starts right after a quick break.

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