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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

CNN Republican Debate Tomorrow Night; Ted Cruz Soaring in Latest Polls; San Bernardino Massacre Investigation; Two Mosques Vandalized in California; Geneva Terror Arrests; Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired December 14, 2015 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:48] ALISON KOSIK, CNN ANCHOR: A big shake-up in the polls just one day before the CNN Republican presidential debate. Which candidate is now being targeted by his competitors?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: President Obama meeting with military advisers in just hours working to reassure the public that the White House strategy in the war against ISIS is working.

Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.

KOSIK: And I'm Alison Kosik. It's 30 minutes past the hour.

Nine candidates, count them, they're converging on the Venetian Theater in Las Vegas tomorrow for the fifth Republican debate right here on CNN. It's the last debate of the year with only 48 days left until voting begins at the Iowa caucuses. The focus sure to be on national security in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks. And with Donald Trump still taking fire over his Muslim exclusion plan.

CNN's Athena Jones is in Las Vegas with the latest.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm coming to you from the Venetian Theater right here on the Las Vegas Strip. This is where it will all go down on Tuesday night. And we're in the middle of rehearsals right now but you can see here the main stage has been set. We now know the nine candidates who made the cut for the primetime debate. They are, in order, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Rand Paul.

Trump is center stage once again. He is still the frontrunner nationally but his frontrunner status is being challenged by Cruz in the state of Iowa. Three new polls now showing the Texas senator leading there.

Now CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash, along with Salem Radio's Hugh Hewitt, are spending a lot of time over the next several days in the cone of silence, finalizing debate questions for this huge production. There will be 17 cameras and an invite-only audience of about 1400 people filling this theater on Tuesday night. Of course this will be the last debate of the year. The last chance for these candidates to make a strong impression with voters heading into the holiday season.

Millions will be watching. So the big question, will Donald Trump attack Ted Cruz? Will Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz get into it? Will Ben Carson and Jeb Bush and others have breakout performances that can boost their poll numbers? We'll be watching to see what happens.

KOSIK: All right, Athena. And four Republicans fill out the undercard debate. They are George Pataki, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum and Lindsey Graham. The undercard beginning at 6:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

ROMANS: And if you want to know how much time, you can see right there on the bottom of your screen exactly when it's going to start.

A huge shakeup in the Republican race. As Athena mentioned, Ted Cruz is suddenly soaring in Iowa leaving Trump in his wake. The latest "Des Moines Register"-Bloomberg poll has Cruz at 31 percent with Trump 10 points behind and Carson and Rubio barely breaking double digits.

And in a new national poll, Cruz is surging into second place. Five points behind Trump. The NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll has Ben Carson sinking to fourth place.

The reconfigured race leading to more than a little sniping all aimed at Cruz. Trump hitting the new Iowa frontrunner on his temperament. Rubio criticizing his national security cred and Carson comparing his life-or-death calls in the operating room to Cruz's Senate fundraising prowess.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, you know, we've all had different types of experiences. There's no question that I haven't spent a lot of time smoozing and asking for big money and going to cocktail parties. But I've spent many a night in the operating room, cold stirrups placed with a little child's life on the line, working hard to preserve that. You know, that's a very different kind of experience.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He talks tough on some of these issues. For example, he's going to carpet bomb ISIS. But the only budget he's ever voted for in his time in the Senate is a budget that cut Defense spending by more than Barack Obama proposes. We've had it.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't think he's qualified to be president.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Why not?

TRUMP: Because I don't think he has the right temperament. I don't think he's got the right judgment.

WALLACE: What's wrong with his temperament?

TRUMP: Well, you look at the way he's dealt with the Senate, where he goes in there like a -- you know, frankly like a little bit of a maniac. You're never going to get things done that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: The put-downs continued on Twitter with Trump writing, "I was disappointed that Ted Cruz would speak behind my back, get caught and then deny it. Well, welcome to the wonderful world of politics."

[04:35:04] Cruz parried, tweeted a link to the song "Maniac" from "Flashdance" with the caption, "In honor of my friend Donald Trump and good-hearted maniacs everywhere."

KOSIK: Twitter is really becoming that political weapon of choice in the campaign.

ROMANS: That song is going to be in my head all day. Thank you very much.

(LAUGHTER)

KOSIK: Happening today, President Obama dropping by the Pentagon for a progress report on the war against ISIS. The White House saying he's going to be meeting his National Security team for an update. No major policy announcement are expected but the president will follow the meeting with some public remarks. It's the next phase in his campaign to reassure a nervous public that his counterterrorism strategy is working.

In his weekly media address, the president highlighted the killing of two ISIS leaders by U.S. strikes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our airstrikes are hitting ISIL harder than ever in Iraq and Syria. We're taking out more of their fighters and leaders, their weapons, their oil tankers. Our special operations forces are on the ground because we are going to hunt down these terrorists wherever they try to hide.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSIK: The next stop in the president's reassurance campaign, a visit to the National Counterterrorism Center on Thursday.

ROMANS: Secretary of State John Kerry in Europe right now meeting with world leaders to secure a peace deal in Libya and stop the spread of ISIS there. A representative of 17 nations including Libya's two rival governments, they're expected to sign an agreement Wednesday in Morocco. The Libyans will then have 40 days to form a unity government. Kerry heads to Moscow Wednesday. He'll meet with President Vladimir Putin to discuss the crisis in Syria and Russia's military buildup in Ukraine.

KOSIK: A new week brings another threat of a government shutdown. A short-term extension signed by the president is keeping the money flowing until Wednesday night. Most of the $1.1 trillion deal is done, but the two parties are still haggling over add-ons to the spending bill like measures requiring more vetting of Iraqi and Syrian refugees and provisions for cleaning up the air and water. ROMANS: All right. 37 minutes past the hour. It is Monday morning.

Fed decision week is here, folks. European shares are up this morning. U.S. stock futures are higher ahead of the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision Wednesday. Almost everyone expects the first rate hike in nearly a decade. It will be a small rate increase. Rates expected to rise gradually. And as they do, nearly everyone will feel it. Your mortgage, your car loans, your credit cards, all become more expensive. Mortgage rates more expensive. Lock in now, folks, if you can.

Oil prices moving lower again today. Prices have been hammered in recent weeks, hovering around $35 a barrel this morning. That's near a seven-year low.

There's been a drag, a big drag on stocks. You have the Dow lost more than 3 percent last week. Both the Dow and the S&P 500 are down for the year. Where is that Santa Claus rally?

KOSIK: It still could come. We've got a couple of weeks.

ROMANS: Maybe.

KOSIK: Investigators combing a lake for clues in the California terror attack. What we are learning this morning, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:42:05] ROMANS: FBI dive teams wrapping up a three-day search at the bottom of a lake just north of San Bernardino, California. They were looking for evidence that might have been dumped there by Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the radicalized couple who murdered 14 people earlier this month. And investigators recovered nothing related to the investigation.

We get more from CNN's Ana Cabrera in San Bernardino.

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Alison, we are here at the makeshift memorial set up near where the shooting happened. This is a tribute to the 14 people who lost their lives. Their funerals have begun and many of them have been laid to rest now.

This as the Department of Environmental Health where many of them worked is set to reopen today. And as the community moves forward and tries to heal, the investigation continues. Over the weekend, investigators wrapped up their search of a murky lake near the crime scene and we've learned it yielded no evidence that was connected to this case but they aren't giving up finding that missing hard drive or the data that was on it.

In fact they will now be working with Internet providers to try to pull some of the records connected to the killers' IP addresses.

Now we're also learning more about their online communications. The "New York Times" reporting American law enforcement sources have found social media postings made by Tashfeen Malik, one of the killers, prior to her even coming into the U.S. Now according to the "New York Times" these postings talk about violent jihad that she supports and even wants to be part of it. And they are saying she made no effort to conceal her views yet it wasn't caught through the background checks that she had prior to getting her visa when she came here in 2014.

And why was that the case? Because they weren't checking social media. U.S. officials say that just wasn't part of the screening process. She had three background checks that did not look at social media.

Since that time, we have learned that U.S. officials are looking at social media as part of their screening process for visas for applicants of specific countries. It just wasn't happening at that time. And now the Obama administration has ordered a thorough review of the visa application process -- Christine, Alison.

KOSIK: OK. Ana, thanks for that.

Two mosques vandalized in Hawthorne, California. The name Jesus and the words "Jesus is the way" spray-painted outside the buildings. Investigators also finding a fake hand grenade at one of the sites. The FBI classifying the case as a hate crime, something they've had to do way too often this year.

We get more now from CNN's Polo Sandoval.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Alison, good morning. 2015 will likely to see the most anti-Muslim incidents in the U.S. since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And that's according to some experts.

Over the weekend we caught up with one of them, Afaf Nasher. She is the president of the New York chapter of the Council on American- Islamic Relations or CAIR. Well, the group's data shows that mosques and Islamic centers have been targeted by vandals at least 63 times this year. And that number could actually be higher since the Department of Justice says that hate crimes often go unreported.

[04:45:09] One of the most recent cases left the worshipers to pray on the sidewalk in Coachella, California. Their mosque was set on fire Friday. 23-year-old Carl James Dial was arrested in that case and charged with a hate crime.

Another case got the attention of the FBI in Philadelphia. Surveillance cameras there show a severed pig's head being thrown out of a truck at a mosque. This too being investigated as a hate crime by the FBI this morning. Practicing Muslims are prohibited from eating pork or pork byproducts.

And in Florida, the owner of a gun shop is selling these signs declaring Muslim-free zones.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW HALLINAN, GUN SHOP OWNER: We don't know who their ties are. We don't know who these people are. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: Andrew Hallinan calls the signs novelties and, quote, "something humorous." Critics like Nasher however believed that these are just some of the actions that are fueling Islamaphobia in the U.S. They say the damage goes far beyond any material losses. People are getting hurt.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AFAF NASHER, PRESIDENT, CAIR NEW YORK CHAPTER: Muslim store owner was attacked violently. He was sent to the -- he got to the hospital. And we were talking about coming together as a nation. What stops that attack was actually a customer coming in and acted as a Good Samaritan. So if not for that Samaritan, perhaps this would have been much different.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANDOVAL: And this morning, Nasher is joining the chorus of Muslims condemning attacks around the world that have been carried out in the name of Islam. They said the violence really has no place in her faith. She hopes that people really of all denomination, of all faiths, also do the same.

Christine and Alison, back to you.

ROMANS: All right. Polo, thank you for that. A deadly shooting in California triggering a heated debate over the use of police force. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department says 28-year-old Nicholas Robertson was shot and killed by officers in Lynwood after he fires six or seven shots into the air and began waving a handgun erratically. As officers approached, the deputies at the scene fired a total of 33 shots. The L.A. County D.A. and the sheriff's office will open an investigation.

KOSIK: Closing arguments begin later this morning in the trial of William Porter, the first of six Baltimore police officers facing charges in the death of Freddie Gray. Prosecutors claimed Porter cared so little for Gray's well-being he ignored his pleas for help and left him to die in the back of a police van. The defense argues Porter went above and beyond most cops would do. They blamed two other officers claiming they failed to act when Porter told them Gray needed medical help.

The warm weather, it looks like it's going to be hanging on in the east. Let's bring in meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.

Good morning.

(WEATHER REPORT)

ROMANS: All right. Pedram, thanks. I guess technically this is still fall. So we'll wait for the winter weather until sometime next week.

A mortgage meltdown. A financial system collapse. An economy in shambles. Coming to a box office near you.

KOSIK: That could be reality.

ROMANS: Brad Pitt tells me why he is so angry, next.

KOSIK: You talked to Brad Pitt?

ROMANS: I did.

KOSIK: Nice.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:53:25] ROMANS: The Egyptian panel investigating the crash of a Russian jetliner in the Sinai desert. That panel said it has so far found no evidence of terrorism. A preliminary report says the technical investigation committee has not found anything indicating that crash that killed all 224 people aboard was an act of terror. Well, that's different than what Russia has said. Russia has said it's found evidence a bomb caused the crash and ISIS has claimed responsibility for downing that plane.

KOSIK: Two people with Syrian passports now arrested and traces of potential bomb-making chemicals found in a car in the Geneva area. The search for more radicalized suspects, that is still going on as security there remaining tight. But there are some arrests linked to the -- those Paris terror attacks. That's the question.

CNN's international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson joining us live from Geneva.

So are these two arrests, Nic, linked to the Paris terror attacks? Are these two men who were arrested believed to have been involved in those attacks?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: That's certainly one of the lines of investigation at the moment. The police say they are investigating the connection between these men and a terrorist organization. They're not saying specifically if it is ISIS. But we do know that just prior to these men being arrested, the terror threat level here was raised because of specific ISIS chatter about the possibility of an attack in Geneva or Toronto or Chicago.

There were also two other leads that both linked back to the Paris terror plot that gave reason to believe that there was associates of those Paris attackers here in Switzerland, in and around the Geneva area.

[04:55:03] So at the moment, the police aren't saying that there is a specific connection. There are two investigations going on. One into these two men who were arrested. The police say that their Syrian passports appear to be authentic. But we do know that ISIS attackers have used falsified Syrian passports in the past. The police won't say if they have Schengen visas, that's the visa that would allow you to travel legally throughout Europe. So a lot of questions remain. But this is a city that is going about

its daily life as normal, but it is on a high terror alert at the moment. And the concern is that there may be still an active ISIS plot. And that's what the police are concerned about and investigating at the moment, Alison.

KOSIK: And speaking of that possible plot that is in the works for Geneva, is it looking more and more likely that an actual ISIS terror cell is residing in Geneva?

ROBERTSON: You know, the Paris police chief this weekend said that was a possibility. And she wasn't ruling it out. We spoke with the Geneva minister for security and economics here. He told us that there are concerns or a real concern that the two men arrested, that their plot may stretch beyond the borders of Geneva. It's not quite clear how far. This has become not just a matter for Geneva itself but for the whole of the Swiss authorities. And being a terrorism investigation, it involving the possibility of explosives.

The explosive link in the vehicle, that there were explosive traces found, according to the Geneva prosecutor here, it appears at least from what we're learning from a European security source, that these -- that the traces of explosives may be the traces of precursor chemicals, sort of -- from the household, the easy to buy household products that have been used in the past by ISIS and others to make homemade explosives.

So that's the line of investigation that is currently being followed with these two apparently Syrian men -- Alison.

KOSIK: All right. Nic Robertson, reporting live from Geneva, thanks for that.

ROMANS: Another confrontation between Turkey and Russia. A Russian warship firing warning shots at a Turkish fishing boat in the Aegean Sea. Officials in Moscow say this vessel came within 1600 feet of their warship and failed to heed calls to change course. Russia had summoned the Turkish military attache to discuss the incident. The Russian warship is in the area supporting Moscow's military intervention in Syria.

KOSIK: A historic election in Saudi Arabia. For the first time in its history, women have been allowed to vote in an election and to run for office as well. Saudi officials report at least 17 women candidates won their races for local government offices in both small villages and big cities. Most had to run their campaigns online because men and women aren't allowed to interact in public.

ROMANS: All right. Let's get an EARLY START on your money this morning. A much anticipated interest rate hike expected this week. European shares are up this morning. U.S. stock futures are higher, too. Ahead of that big decision the Federal Reserve's rate decision on Wednesday.

And here's what -- here's what investors are betting. They're betting the first interest rate hike in nearly a decade. Also watching oil. Oil moving lower right now. Prices have plunged in recent weeks. Now around $35 a barrel. You got booming supply. Weakening demand. It's a big reason why stocks are now down for the year.

To the box office now. The "Girl on Fire" still lighting it up there. "Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Part Two" topped the box office for the fourth week in a row. The finale of the "Hunger Games" franchise has raked in more than $244 million so far. Coming in second was the Ron Howard whale epic, "In the Heart of the Sea." I really want to see this one. I loved that book. It brought in a disappointing, though, $11 million.

Perhaps movie goers are waiting for the upcoming weekend when it's all about "Star Wars." The seventh installment in the legendary film franchise premieres Friday.

Also coming to the box office soon, debuting in collect audience this weekend actually, "The Big Short." Here it is. It's this film that decodes the language of Wall Street and explains the 2008 housing crisis. You know, Brad Pitt's firm produced it. He's also one of the co-stars in it. And I caught up with him on the red carpet for this film and he told me he was so mad before he made this film and even more angry after.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD PITT, ACTOR, "THE BIG SHORT": Yes, I'm angry. You see families put out on the street and losing their savings and their mortgages and not knowing why. And this film attempts to explain it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: The film was nominated, just nominated for four Golden Globes. And what you could hear me asking there, we didn't show his answer, but what I was asking, do you think the greed is good mentality? It's bad. Did he think anything has changed? He said no. Greed is good is still alive and well.

KOSIK: An eye-opening movie for everybody to see.

ROMANS: It sure is interesting.

KOSIK: All right. EARLY START continues right now.

A big shakeup in the polls just one day before the CNN Republican presidential debate. Which candidate is now becoming the focus of his competitors?

ROMANS: President Obama trying to reassure the public in the war against ISIS, meeting with military --

(END)