Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

White House Hosting Summit on Extremism; Egypt Battling ISIS in Libya; Denmark Shooter Swore Allegiance to ISIS; Clashes Threaten Ukraine's Ceasefire; Snow Hits Much of Country

Aired February 17, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Horrific scenes, one after another. This is a cult.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ISIS is clearly in communication with others who have taken on the ISIS name and the ISIS brand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 0nly 40 percent of the American public supports the president's handling of the war against is.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've seen three major terrorist incidents in Europe over the last five weeks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It takes a great deal of energy for someone to finally decide that murder is appropriate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are next, but remember we were first.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're standing on the river bank when we saw the train explode.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, February 17th, just before 6:00 in the east, up first, the global fight against terrorism is coming to the White House. Leaders will try to coordinate a strategy to prevent radicalization and terror recruitment of young men and women around the world. A big problem and an obvious one, the big question is can they find a solution?

CAMEROTA: This as new public opinion polls shows the president losing support on foreign policy. Will the White House Summit on terror turn that around? Let's get to CNN's White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski with a preview. What do we know, Michelle?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: We've heard the White House talk about the fight against is really being a regional fight because it poses an existential threat to countries in that region.

But what we've seen lately is it takes something like a brutal murder to a country specific to that region for say Egypt to join the coalition or Jordan to step up air strikes. The UAE to get back into the fight, so more than 60 countries in all will be represented at the summit that starts today on countering violent extremism because, you know, also for a long time we've heard the White House say that this focus on stopping violent ideologies is really key to defeating ISIS long-term.

At the same time, though, this comes as domestically, according to this new poll, we're seeing a growing disapproval with how the war against ISIS, how the war on terror are going. You look at the numbers, 57 percent disapprove of how the president is handling foreign policy overall.

So the summit today is going to look at what is working nationally and internationally in countering violent extremism -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Michelle, we'll be watching that, and also there are going to be events that are going to weigh in on that. Egypt, for example, they believe they've been targeted by ISIS directly, and now they're taking their revenge in Libya, because that's where 21 Christians were beheaded.

CNN's Ian Lee joins us now from Minya, Egypt. That's where most of these beheaded victims were from.

Ian, what's the situation on the ground?

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you can see, this isn't a wealthy village, and you won't find it on most maps. But 13 of those 21 men came from this small village that I'm in right now. They went to Libya looking for decent wages to provide a better life for their families back here, to create a better home. But they were brutally executed by ISIS militants. And now Egypt is trying to seek retribution.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEE (voice-over): This morning, Egypt appearing to gear up for war against ISIS in Libya. Airstrikes hitting ten target ISIS used for training and weapon depots up north in Derna, according to the Egyptian government. But Islamist militias in the ISIS strongholds say they, quote, "woke up to disaster" and claim the bombings killed women and children. CNN could not independently verify these claims.

SAMEH SHOUKRY, EGYPT FOREIGN MINISTER: We are hopeful that the strike was surgical, was targeting specific installations and that there has been no collateral damage.

LEE: The strikes, Egypt's immediate retaliation over the slaughter of 21 Egyptian Christians. According to an Egyptian official, they have already undertaken activities to restrict the brutal militant group's finances and recruitment measures. The country also preparing to ask the U.N. Security Council to treat the terrorist group's presence in Libya as serious as ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

GEN. SAMEH SEIF ELYANZA (RET.), CHAIRMAN, AL-GOMHOURIA: First is now (ph) they're at the western border with Libya. We will not wait until they come -- they come next to our border and threatening our border or trying even to penetrate our border.

LEE: ISIS, a growing threat as the brutal beheadings posted online rallies the nation.

Al-Azhar, Egypt's leading Islamic institution, issued a ruling prohibiting Muslims from watching the video. This, as Egypt's president declared a week of mourning in the Muslim-majority country for the slain Christians.

Grand Mufti Shawki Allam, the state's authority responsible for religious edicts in Egypt, said in a statement, "The blood of our Christian children and brothers is the same blood as that of Muslims which belongs to the Egyptian nation."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEE: Egypt seems content with airstrikes for now. There's no plans of putting boots on the ground. I talked to one retired general, though, and he said it's likely to remain like that, unless ISIS threatens Egypt's borders or people directly -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK. Ian Lee, thanks for all that background.

Well, new information overnight about the shooter in Denmark and his possible ties to Islamic terrorism. He apparently swore his allegiance to ISIS in a Facebook post before the attacks on a free- speech event and the synagogue.

Denmark is on edge again this morning after a suspicious package was found near the scene of one attack. CNN's senior international correspondent, Nic Robertson, is live in Copenhagen with more -- Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, the police brought in a bomb -- army bomb disposal team. They looked at that package, took it away, decided that it wasn't dangerous. They reopened this area again. But it highlights the security concerns in this city because of the possibility for other associates of this gunman.

More details coming to light about him. In the hours before the attack, on his Facebook page pledging allegiance to the ISIS leader, al-Baghdadi. Also, we're learning, as well, that he may well have been radicalized in jail, according to the Danish ambassador to the United States. And he was only released from jail just two weeks prior to this attack.

And in the last couple of hours, we've heard from the Danish intelligence authorities who say, "Yes, while we were aware of his sort of changed circumstances, changed outlook in prison," they didn't believe -- they say they didn't believe that he was on the verge of coming out of jail and committing an attack like this. They -- essentially, they say they didn't see this coming -- Chris.

CUOMO: Well, Nic, as you know, it's get so hard to see it coming, because it could be coming from anywhere. And that's why it's such a difficult situation to deal with. But thank you very much for the latest from the ground.

Let's get some perspective on this ISIS fight with Bobby Ghosh, CNN global affairs analyst and managing editor of "Quartz"; and Lieutenant Colonel James Reese, CNN global affairs analyst, former Delta Force commander and founder and chairman of Tiger Swan. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning.

All right. So let's look at the state of play. All right. Let's begin there. All life matters. Any time these murderers put somebody on video and take their lives in any fashion, it's wrong. However, numbers sometimes count. They can exacerbate.

Twenty-one Christians. All right, you're going after another big group, and we want to talk about why they seem to be targeting enemies that technically they can't take on. The pope says the blood of these Christians is crying out to be heard. You hear Cardinal Dolan, the big cardinal in the U.S., saying, "We stood up as Catholic leaders 40 years ago in Ireland and said, 'This must stop. You are not Catholic.' And today Northern Ireland is peaceful. The Muslims must do the same."

Bobby, what do you see in ISIS targeting groups it seems, right, going after the Jordanians with what they did to their pilot. They had to know what the response would be. What they did now with these Christians. They had to know what the response would be. What's the play on each side?

BOBBY GHOSH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, it's terror, and it comes from the knowledge that these countries, for all their bombast and the occasional jet that goes over and drops some bombs, are not going to put boots on the ground. They're confident of that. Because these countries -- the United States but also these Arab countries -- have said over and over again, "We're not going to put boots on the ground."

That's going into the night with one hand tied behind your back against an enemy that is willing to use any weapon and then that is willing to hide among civilians. They feel, ISIS does, that they can get away with this, and on the basis of the evidence so far, they have.

CUOMO: Now, Bobby says because they know that you won't put boots on the ground. So Colonel, then we put up the poll number. And you know what? He's right. Americans don't want to put boots on the ground. However, you know that these numbers, you know, polls are, you know, worth what they are. But the numbers are moving closer and closer. What about that threat? You won't put boots on the ground. You can't stop us without them. So deal with it. What do we do?

LT. COL. JAMES REESE (RET.), CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes, Chris. You know, I have a slightly different look at it than Bobby does.

The problem is, we can't look at this ISIS issue as a singular focus, like Iraq or now Libya. There's five or six different fronts right now with ISIS. If you look at in Iraq right now, we have boots on the ground supporting the Iraqis. Libya, we don't have anything, but the Egyptians could. It's plausible the Egyptians could do it if they decided to.

I've said for months now that the center of gravity on this entire piece is Syria. The big issue is, is if the home front for ISIS sits in Syria, will any of the Arab countries ever decide to literally go into Syria, that has Bashar al Assad, and his army, to go in there and eradicate ISIS with boots on the ground? Right now, I don't think so.

Do I think the U.S. would put boots on the ground to support an Arab push into Syria to eradicate ISIS? I do. But I think that's what we're missing on the political aspect, is what are we going to do about Syria, home front for ISIS?

CUOMO: Bobby, you're shaking your head. Why?

GHOSH: I think in the ideal world, yes, Egypt and all the Arab countries should put boots on the ground, but let's face the facts. And Colonel Reese knows this. Arab armies, most Arab armies, including Egypt, are not really built to fight foreign enemies. They're built to fight domestic civilians. They're very good at beating up on civilians who are trying to protest peacefully. They're not very good at taking on foreign enemies.

Egypt has been facing an insurgency in the Sinai...

CUOMO: They've got their own problems.

GHOSH: ... for months and months, for years now, and have done very, very poorly there. So I'm not that confident that an Egyptian army, A, will go across the border into Libya, and if they do, are going to be particularly effective.

CUOMO: And el-Sisi, the current leader in Egypt, is not who Mubarak was, in terms of having control over his people and the state there. So these are unstable places.

And you know, Colonel, it comes down to the same problem. They're going to have this extremism summit down there in Washington, D.C., to come up with a solution. I feel like we had this same conversation, not you and I, but I was learning about it from men like you a decade ago, with al Qaeda. They're not just a group anymore. Now they're a brand, and everybody around the world thinks that they're cool if you're in the killing business. And so everybody is saying that, just like this fool that we just had to deal with in Copenhagen, you know, "Oh, I did this for ISIS." I feel like we had this conversation before.

Did we find a way to stop it then? Or is this just the same iteration of the same problem?

REESE: Chris, you're right. I mean, we did have this conversation. Unfortunately for us, it takes us a while to figure it out.

And I -- and I think you'll agree, that with al Qaeda, we started to figure it out. We started to really chip away at that and really at times, neutralize it in certain areas. Yes, they pop up, kind of in the shadows, and they try to make an effect. But we have done very well against al Qaeda, especially in the manhunting and the capture/kill missions around the world against al Qaeda. I think what we're going to have to do now is learn this whole lesson learned with ISIS. We've been doing it now for about eight, seven months, and it will be interesting to see when we pick up and figure out this next step.

CUOMO: So Bobby, how do we deal with getting around the absolutes? Life is cheap. When you are uneducated and disaffected and see no better path for yourself, you will be susceptible to doing ugly things.

GHOSH: There's one more part.

CUOMO: There's plenty of that in the world. And what's the third factor and how do we deal with it?

GHOSH: Which is that the regimes in these Arab countries oppress their people and do not give them -- do not even try to give them another alternative route.

CUOMO: Which is a big region that the U.S. says it is a regional thing. You are creating the problem. Why wouldn't you create the solution? So how do we deal with this in a way that's better than what happened 10 years ago when we were doing this?

GHOSH: ISIS represents a greater existential threat to Arab states, I think, than al Qaeda did. Al Qaeda used Arab states to recruit, to take money, to conceal themselves and attack the west. ISIS wants to take territory in Arab land: Syria, Iraq, Libya now. So that represents a different kind of threat. And the hope is -- and it's a hope -- that Arab countries will take this more seriously.

The discussion that takes place in Washington has to be political and social. It's not going to be a military dictator -- discussion about how we're going to fight these people. That discussion takes place behind closed doors. But there's got to be a discussion about, socially, how do you tackle this problem? Politically, how do you give these people, these young men an alternative, a different way to express their dissatisfaction?

CUOMO: Bobby Ghosh, Lieutenant Colonel Reese, thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it.

Unfortunately, this conversation, Alisyn, just keeps going, because it's just too hard to find inroads to solutions.

CAMEROTA: It sure does. We'll see if the summit bears any fruit this week.

Meanwhile, there are new developments this morning in eastern Ukraine, where the fragile cease-fire barely hangs on. Clashes escalating between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels. European leaders trying to salvage the deal, agreeing to, quote, "concrete steps" to fully implement the truce negotiated last week. CNN's senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh joins us

from eastern Ukraine with more. What is the latest, Nick?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, see if this sounds like a ceasefire. We just think we heard outgoing rocket launchers here in the center of Donetsk. The monitors, all French -- French, German and Russian leaders agree should be allowed to monitor the ceasefire, but that was already agreed before the weekend's actual truce. And still, artillery raining down around the key town of Debaltseve. Such a dangerous place, as we saw yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH (voice-over): These Ukrainian tanks have just come out of the besieged town of Debaltseve. The road down to it a one-way street to the grave, one said.

We're following an aid mission to civilians caught by this fight in the supposed ceasefire.

This is Mironovsky (ph), cursed to be an artillery range of Debaltseve.

(on camera): This quiet former Soviet Union town caught in the cross- fire, even now, still, with a supposed ceasefire, its people forced off the streets, underground, its homes reduced to rubble.

Yevgeny has brought Red Cross food.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe 2,000.

WALSH: Well, why don't they leave?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know.

WALSH (voice-over): In the Palace of Culture are those who have nowhere or way to run. The children show us, Maria Nikolaivna (ph).

"I'm death," she cries. Imagine only knowing the bombs are landing when the walls shake.

(on camera): You can hear still in this town, shelling in the distance, unclear which way it's going, but definitely not the sound of a ceasefire.

(voice-over): This used to be a hospital. Now it's a woodshed. And shelter to the very youngest. Like Denis (ph), who tries to use his fingers to show us he's 2. "It's scary," they all say.

"I want to go home," says Dasha (ph). "It's cold and uncomfortable." Dasha (ph) is, it turns out, actually a dance champion, hip-hop in fact.

Here, they don't care who was shelling or why, just that it stopped. But on the highways above, hours away from when the heavy guns are

meant to be withdrawing, we saw these Ukrainian weapons headed the wrong way. Ever louder the question: what do you call a ceasefire when the fire hasn't stopped?

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Mironovsky (ph), Eastern Ukraine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH: You can hear behind me here an ambulance in the streets of Donetsk. There is heavy fighting raging in Debaltseve now for the railway station, which the rebel separatists say they've taken.

We are also, of course, concerned at the lack of heavy weapons being withdrawn. That was already supposed to be happening. Really, in many ways, how can this ceasefire still be that in anything other than name, given the violence swirling around the Donetsk region?

Back to you, Michaela.

PEREIRA: So important to see the human lives that hang in the balance. We so appreciate your reporting, Nick. Excellent work, thank you.

Back here at home, breaking overnight, a federal judge in Texas has blocked President Obama's executive action on immigration. The order is temporary, but it gives 26 states more time to press ahead with a lawsuit to stop the president's action entirely.

First orders have been set to go into effect tomorrow, protecting people from deportation if they were brought illegally into the country as children. The Justice Department plans to appeal the decision.

CAMEROTA: Jurors in the "American Sniper" trial hearing the taped confession of the suspect charged with killing Chris Kyle. In the 90- minute videotaped confession, Eddie Ray Routh answers several questions about what happened the day he shot and killed the former Navy SEAL and a friend at the gun range. Routh said he fled after killing the men, realizing that what he did was wrong.

CUOMO: All right. This is a little bit of an odd one. A Moscow based software maker says it has discovered a series of American spying operations, including the hiding of spyware in the networks of 30 countries, including Iran and China. It has supposedly been going on for two decades, and the software is beyond the reach of anti-virus programs. The software maker involved is called Kaspersky, and it appears to suggest the NSA is behind the program.

CAMEROTA: Hmm.

CUOMO: Unusual to have the Russians telling us about the U.S. spy programs. And then reporting it on American television as the source.

CAMEROTA: I can't tell who's spying on whom any more.

PEREIRA: It's hard to follow the bouncing ball now.

CUOMO: We know that the blame goes like this. (POINTS FINGERS IN TWO OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS)

PEREIRA: Absolutely.

CUOMO: But it's an odd way to learn about it.

CAMEROTA: All right. Well, wait till you see this. A pair of blasts in western Virginia after a train derails. Look at this explosion. What went wrong here and what's the damage?

CUOMO: You know, and plus, it's one thing for it to be cold. The problem with the cold is that things freeze, and then we see this. I mean, horrible. Every -- we've all seen it before. You've seen it on the road and you just hope to God it's not you. But we're going to show you what happened in this one. The outcome is worth seeing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Parts of the Midwest, the South and the East are all dealing with intense snowfall and unusually bitter cold, and it is not over by a long shot. Incredibly, yet another arctic blast is coming. We are tracking every winter development for you. We've got our correspondents dispatched all over. We begin with Sunlen Serfaty in D.C., which we know was hit with heavy snow overnight -- Sunlen.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Michaela, this is the most snow that Washington has seen all season. I want to show you a little bit of the heavy accumulation that came in here overnight. About four inches, as you can see here on this park bench, here in Washington, about six in the suburbs outside of D.C.

But look at this. This is the iconic view of the National Mall. You see the Washington Monument there at the end, just blanketed in snow. The federal government is shut down. D.C. schools are closed.

And even President Obama himself was hit by the storm. He arrived back here in D.C. Here's a little bit of the video arriving in D.C. from (UNINTELLIGIBLE) last night. Immediately hit the cold and snow. He was forced to motorcade back to the White House instead of flying, as he normally does in Marine One.

But Michaela, the snow will potentially continue later today. There is a winter warn -- storm warning remaining until noon -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right. And we're just having some transmission issues there. A winter warn -- winter storm warning until noon in the D.C. area. Sunlen Serfaty, our thanks to you.

We're going to move to Boston, where you really should just add insult to injury, if you want to think about what Boston's dealing with. Snowfall records have already been shattered. There, more is on the way.

Ryan Young has been braving the bitter cold there in Somerville. Nothing summery about that place.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, not at all.

There is good news this morning. In fact, it's 10 degrees, and that's a lot warmer than it was yesterday. The wind chill is 1, and of course, yesterday we dealt with wind chills at negative 25.

But we wanted to show you something. Take a look at all of this behind me. This is some of the snow that's been collected over the last few weeks. It's a massive mountain, more than 50 inches. And you can see as we walk toward this mountain, it just doesn't stop. We could climb this. It's a solid, just lump. And this is a total warehouse district where they're storing some of the snow.

Now, there are issues here. They're starting to run out of salt. But you can see what they're going to start melting and what they've been carting around, trying to get this off city streets. We passed places where it had been impassable for drivers on small streets. You can tell why they're just tired of this. And now you said it: more snow is coming. You almost want to have some relief for these people, but it's just so very cold -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: Not quite yet, Ryan; no relief quite yet. My goodness. And it really is relative: 10 degrees today is much better than yesterday. We'll get back to you. Thank you so much.

YOUNG: Much better.

PEREIRA: Even the south hasn't been spared. They have been seeing a mix of snow, sleet and driving rain. And certainly, this made for treacherous driving conditions. I want you to check this out. A driver spinning out of control, hitting a car, skidding towards the TV camera, just stopping in the nick of time. Thank goodness our Ana Cabrera was not anywhere near where this happened. She's live in Richmond, Virginia, right now.

And it's the driving concerns that are the most treacherous, and that's what the big concern is there.

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is definitely slow going on the roads here in Richmond and the surrounding area. We know state police have responded to hundreds of accidents in the last several hours, and you can see just what a slushy, chunky, slippery mess it is here on the roadways. Cars we've seen here having some trouble even getting up this very slight incline. And you can see people are already at it down the road here, where they're already shoveling out of this mess.

About six inches of snow fell on Richmond, Virginia, overnight. That's more than half of what they usually see in the entire winter season, so that gives you a sense of just how big of a storm impact this really has for these southerners -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: Yes. The winter of 2015 is definitely going down in the record books. All right, Ana, thank you so much.

The relentless cold is now making more than 100 million people shiver, winter storm warnings stretching from Oklahoma to New Jersey, with much of the northeast in a deep freeze once again.

Our Rosa Flores has bundled up. We made sure she was. She's right outside our studio here in New York, where it is snowing once again.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Michaela, take a look around me. Take a look behind me, and you'll see that it almost looks like Christmas. But let's remember: today is actually Fat Tuesday, so happy Mardi Gras to everybody at home.

Now I want to share with you probably the best thermostat here in New York City. We're going to do an extreme tilt, because this is the official CNN thermometer, folks. You can see it is 15 degrees in New York City.

Now, the city expecting one to two inches of snow today. In the area, we're expecting about two to four inches. Not much is going to stick, so take a look right now. Very little snow here at the Time Warner Center, very little.

But Michaela, if you look behind me, this is Central Park. And let me just tell you, about 50 -- 50 inches of snow last year, about this time. This year, Michaela, only about 22 inches, so we have nothing to complain about, my friends.

PEREIRA: All right. OK. So I officially cannot complain. That's the word from our -- word from our Rosa Flores. Thank you so much for that. We appreciate it. I'm sure the folks at Time Warner Center appreciating you doing a little clearance there in front of the building.

So the big question is: how bad will this next arctic blast be? And how many days until spring? Because that's what I'm doing. We're counting, right, Chad Myers?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, we are.

PEREIRA: How many days until spring?

MYERS: You know, I keep hearing everyone talk about the next arctic blast. I don't see this current one ending. I don't know when one starts and one ends, because it never really warms up.

You know, the snow is about done for New York. It's done for Philadelphia. Corbin (ph), into Kentucky, picked up 18 inches of snow. Powhatan (ph), not that far south of Richmond, Virginia, southwest there, picking up 11 inches. If you get down toward Midlothian, where Rosa was, there's a lot more snow there compared to Hanover in Virginia; only 4-6 inches there.

And the cold just continues. It is cold all the way down to New Orleans. It's cold in Atlanta, where it's been freezing. Look at these. The current wind chills right now, it feels like 12 below in Buffalo, 11 below in Detroit. And here's the wave of cold air we have now. Well, it warms up maybe a degree before the next cold wave comes by on Saturday and then the next one comes by on Wednesday. It's one after the other. I looked it up today. I Googled it because I can. When does spring

start? About 31 days and 12 hours, officially, is what the computer told me. So I'm not sure that that's a technical term. I don't think meteorologically it's anywhere near.

PEREIRA: He counted the hours. It was even 12 hours.

CAMEROTA: Did Chad also just say that the cold is never going to stop? I feel that that's what he also showed on his map.

PEREIRA: And when you showed the map, there's only two little slivers of green. Florida and Los Angeles. That's it.

CUOMO: They thought it was cold. I just came back. I had the kids in Disney. It was in the 60s there. I mean, yes, compared to this, it's nirvana, but for Florida, it's cold.

I don't blame Chad Everett. I like to blame you in general, but I won't. And here's why. You've been consistent. You've got a lot of people in his business where they're always trying to give you this false promise. "It's going to be nice for an hour next Tuesday."

PEREIRA: Oh, my.

CUOMO: He doesn't do that, and I respect that.

CAMEROTA: He gives you the cold, hard truth, Chad.

PEREIRA: Thirty-one days and 12 hours until spring.

MYERS: There could be one hour next Tuesday, Chris. Maybe one.

CUOMO: I'll take it. I'd rather know. I don't want any false hope, Chad. Don't give me any false hope.

MYERS: All right. I got you.

CUOMO: All right. So we have this video that you showed earlier on that is worth showing again to understand why it happened. All right? This train derails in West Virginia and then this. What was in the train? Why did this happen? We have the next ahead.

And then you would think that homeland security would be among the last agencies to lose with all the terror and border issues, but a shutdown does loom, and no one in D.C. says they want it. So who would be to blame? We have what you say in a newly-released CNN/ORC poll.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)