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McConnell Delays Attorney General Vote; Congress May Go To Court To Get Hillary's Server; Walker Highlights Contrast With Bush In New Hampshire; Another British Teen Arrested Trying To Join ISIS

Aired March 16, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN GUEST ANCHOR: Also huge corruption scandal involving the country's state-run oil company.

<07:30:00> MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: I'll show you this dramatic video emerging now for a police body camera showing that rescue of the 18-month-old girl from a car that had plunged into a frigid Utah river.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pass her up. Pass her up. Come on, sweetie. Come on, sweetie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Goodness, emergency responders found her Lily Grossbeck seemingly lifeless in the upside down vehicle still strapped in her car seat 14 hours after the crash.

Rescuers can be heard saying that the little girl was hypothermic, without a pulse when they found her. Lily's mother, Lynn, who was driving died in that crash. Little Lily, though, was released from the hospital and reunited with her papa last week.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: My gosh, just incredible. I mean, every day something new comes out about this mysterious and sort of -- it gives you goose bumps.

BERMAN: The urgency they all to keep that girl alive. All right, let's go "Inside Politics" right now with John King. Hi, John.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": Happy Monday, John, Alisyn, and Michaela, nice to see you all. A busy day "Inside Politics" so let's get right there, Ed O'Keefe of the "Washington Post" and Jonathan Martin of the "New York Times" with me this morning to share their reporting and their insights.

Let's start, we thought maybe last week even, but then we thought this week we'd get a vote on the new attorney general. Eric Holder wants to retire. He is ready to go. Loretta Lynch, she has the vote. She will get approved if they get to the vote, but it was held up right now.

First, she was held up as part of a fight over the president's immigration policy. She became sort of the proxy in that fight between the White House and Senate Republicans.

Now she's hung up because Mitch McConnell and the Republicans are trying to pass what they thought was a pretty non-controversial bill about human trafficking. There is some language Republicans inserted in there about abortion policy.

Democrats are objecting. Mitch McConnell says, well, you help me, or else you won't get your vote on Loretta Lynch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SENATOR MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MAJORITY LEADER: It's not a threat. We need to finish this human trafficking bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee unanimously. It's all on the Senate floor right now. We need to finish this to have time to turn to the attorney general.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The country does need an attorney general at some point. This is again dysfunction in this town and distrust between the parties.

ED O'KEEFE, "THE WASHINGTON POST": This is a legislative tactic. I mean, there is going to be a vote on this human trafficking bill tomorrow. At this point, it looks like it probably would fail. That will tick off Republicans who had been working on this who argue that Democrats didn't probably read the bill that had the abortion language in it this whole time.

And it will cause just more great will. There are two weeks left before Easter, they have to get a lot of different things done, there is a Medicare dock fix, there is the Loretta Lynch nomination. The budget process begins in the next two weeks.

You know, the Democrats clearly see an opportunity here to continue to badger Republicans saying that they are holding this up. It probably will be their main topic of discussion this coming week.

She does have the votes right now. What's to say that if Democrats tick off Republicans, one or two of those Republicans don't pull back and cause headaches?

JONATHAN MARTIN, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Yes, I mean, given the current temperature up there, nothing is assured. So the idea that she is a lock, I think is a dubious proposition given how tenuous this relationship is at Capitol Hill now between both parties.

KING: It has nothing to do with her, but she is caught up in this climate at the moment. Another thing stoking the climate is the Hillary Clinton e-mail controversy. The Benghazi Select Committee says it wants her testify probably twice now because of the e-mail controversy.

And listen here, the chairman of that committee, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, "says Mrs. Clinton, if you are smart, you will turn your private e-mail server over to some independent authority who can go through it to make sure you gave up everything that the government should have.

Not just his committee, but other government records, and essentially, listen here, Trey Gowdy saying, choose that route, Mrs. Clinton or else we may subpoena it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPRESENTATIVE TREY GOWDY (R), CHAIRMAN, SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI: If it becomes an issue for her, if the public believes it is reasonable for her to turn over that server, which contains public information to a neutral detached orbiter, not Congress, but a retired judge or an archivist or inspector general, then she will be forced to do so. Otherwise, the House as an institution may be forced to go to court to try to get access to that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN: Doesn't that sound familiar to you? It really does harken back to the '90s. Hillary Clinton famously and the Clinton White House fought against the creation of independent prosecutor as you know, John, from covering those days.

Because her fear was able to open up this entire can of worms, if you will, which ultimately did and led to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton because of land deals in Arkansas, and so what Hillary Clinton hears about, that's let a retire judge look at, I don't think so.

KING: She was pretty adamant in her news conference that the server will remain private. She said, essentially trust me. Trust me. My people have looked at this. We have given the government what it deserves, the rest of it. I've deleted it or it's mine.

O'KEEFE: Well, that's the thing. I mean, if she really has deleted all this stuff, what will be left. The other thing he said if the public feels it's necessary I'm beginning to wonder, will this just fade into the background like all the other Clinton problems? Will people just see beyond it? I don't know. Certainly, it looks like deja vu all over.

<07:35:02> KING: We'll actually see this afternoon. CNN releasing a brand new poll this afternoon, questions to the public about the e- mail controversy -- so tune in this afternoon, release that one at 4:00 today. We'll talk about it here tomorrow as well.

Both of you guys are just back from New Hampshire. You cannot look at a photograph of a candidate in New Hampshire this past weekend and not see these two fine gentlemen.

Two handsome guys helping the candidates out a big, getting some public exposure. People want to see Jay, Mart, and Ed and there is that guy, Jeb Bush, in the middle of it.

Let's start with Governor Walker, though, he was up to the state. This is a time of the campaign, the candidate says a thing this is Scott Walker saying I'm Mr. Blue Collar. You can make the conclusion at home maybe who is not.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER (R), WISCONSIN: My grandparents on one side were farmers. My mom didn't have indoor plumbing until she went off to junior high. My granddad was a machinist for 40 years. From all my parents and grandparents, I didn't inherit fame or fortune. What I got was something more important.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN: To paraphrase the great poets of our time, credence from the Bible, I aint no son of senator, I screwed it up. The point being that Scott Walker is talking about how, he isn't no senator's grandson as the song lyrics have it.

He is not alone. I actually wrote about this. They are talking about their humble origins, but Scott Walker, especially, seems to really -- you know, it's his origin, but also it's his cold shirt. His kids are in public schools.

KING: It's a completely wide open race. So you know, his biography phase actually does matter to places --

O'KEEFE: It is incredible that nobody who really played last sometime is in the mix this time. This required both of them, Scott Walker and Jeb Bush to hold a lot of things this weekend, introduced themselves to people who they don't know. Bush said they seemed to do well at a house party we were at.

KING: Let's listen to Bush. He has the Republican base standard support because of the support for at least the legal status and maybe even a path to citizen subpoena for the undocumented.

Listen to him here again, he doesn't mention any candidate, but some candidates including Governor Walker have shifted on immigration. Governor Bush says he has something very important.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEB BUSH (R), FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: You don't abandon your core beliefs, you go persuade people as I've tried to do right now. I think you need to be genuine, I think you need to have a backbone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Need to have a backbone?

ED'OKEEFE: Yes, he did take debate. We've pressed him on Walker's positions and he conceded, yes, Walker has changed his position on immigration. We then talk to Walker. What does he say? He has changed his mind because he's talked to people.

MARTIN: He is devoted. Even in Walker's pushback. He concedes, he changed his mind, he says he did so because he listened to the people. The people want leaders, who will listen to them, OK, itself, John, is a knock against Jeb Bush. So I have moved because the people want that. This is going to be the sort of fray right now. They're being polite about it. They aren't going after each other that explicitly.

O'KEEFE: It's coming.

KING: Yes, it's coming. These guys are just back from New Hampshire. I know they will be there again. I have to get out soon. Alisyn, Ted Cruz in New Hampshire this morning, again, the onslaught of candidates continue. It's good part of the process. Governor John Kasich of Ohio is up there next week. It is 2015. In the state of Ohio, it's already 2016.

CAMEROTA: You know what they say out of New Hampshire, don't take it for granted.

KING: That's good, love it.

CAMEROTA: John Berman is moaning.

KING: He will fall out of the chair over there, yes.

CAMEROTA: Exactly. Thanks, John. Great to see you.

All right, how has ISIS been successful in luring teenagers from the west to join them? Three British teens who failed to make it are the latest example. We will examine the appeal next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

<07:43:06> BERMAN: New this morning, another teenager from Britain arrested planning to travel to Syria to join ISIS. This happened as three other British teams are back in the U.K. after being nabbed in Turkey. They were trying to get to Syria to join ISIS as well.

Joining us now is CNN counterterrorism analyst and former CIA terrorism official, Philip Mudd. Phil, some of these guys, these three teenagers who were apprehended in Turkey have now been released on bail in London. They're out trying to join ISIS now out on bail. Does that seem like a risky combination to you?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: It does, but it seems like the right choice to me. The British announced recently when those girls went a couple of weeks ago, some are 15-years-old, that they wouldn't even charge them. I think when you are dealing with 15, 16, 17-year-olds who don't I think have an ideological commitment to ISIS.

These are kids who are misguided, recruited on social media, given the volume of kids we are dealing with, I think countries, United States, Canada, Britain, Australia have a big problem, have to step back as we get deeper into ISIS game and say is it worth charging dozens or hundreds of teenagers or is it worth laying them out on bail or setting them to halfway houses? That's what I'd do.

BERMAN: It's an unexpected soft side to Philip Mudd here. These are kids you are saying, these are kids who want to be a part of ISIS, killing people in Syria, but they're kids nonetheless. So how do you treat them? How do you keep them from going to join this terror group?

MUDD: It's very difficult to keep them from going out there. I think there are some issues we have to deal with that are tough. One is profiling. How does a kid, who is 15-years-old, walk into a travel agent, and buy a ticket for cash, going to Turkey.

In this case, in many cases, you have a difficulty that we call in the business of CI broken travel. They will not fly directly to Turkey. In the most recent case, they flew to Madrid, but still I think you have to get out there and profile with travel agents kids who want to buy a one-way ticket that ends up in Turkey --

BERMAN: Just to clear --

MUDD: -- how can you get that money?

<07:45:09> BERMAN: Just to be clear, you are saying three Muslim kids with Muslim names or Arabic names, if they walk into a travel agency, that itself the profiling you are talking about?

MUDD: No. I don't care about Muslim, I care about kids, 15 years old, where do you get a $1,015 going in with a friend of yours, without a parent, and you want to buy a ticket to Turkey? I don't get it. The problem, though, you will get into is volume.

The Australians, for example, a relatively small country, that has a significant number of people in Syria and Iraq, they're stopping at their borders 400 people a day to question. I'm not saying these are all bad guys. I'm saying that gives you a sense of the magnitude here.

BERMAN: Phil, help me understand something because we keep on hearing about the allure on social media of ISIS to these young people, what does that mean? Is ISIS is good in 140 characters or uses the right emoticons, what does ISIS do on Twitter that is so attractive to these teens especially across Europe?

MUDD: There are a couple characteristics that I've seen in ISIS in Syria and Iraq that are fundamentally different than I what I witness when I first started watching al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the '90s.

Let's go through just a couple, John. The first is when they see something on Twitter on social media. They're talking potentially about attraction to a place. It's very geographically approximate. You can get there easily from Europe. You could not have gotten to Afghanistan.

Second, if there is some attraction to these kids, they can find a facilitator online. Can you imagine in 1995 if you are in Chicago or New York saying, how do I find an al Qaeda guy who can help me get to Afghanistan?

The last thing is I think they're attracted especially by people who speak British or American Canadian English. I think they are attracted by a message that's not about violence. It's to naive kids, again, 15 years old to say, why don't you come live in a place that's better? It's offers a chance to live a real Islamic, a real Muslim life, very simple message. It's not about beheading. It's about a better life.

BERMAN: If we can't reach kids, if other groups can't reach kids, how do you reach the parents of these kids? I was struck by the fact that in Brooklyn, it was the mother of one of these guys that was apprehended here in the U.S. that took away his passport because she didn't trust him. But how do you get this message out to parents?

MUDD: One of the things you have to have is to have a conversation about the consequences are for kids. Here's what I mean, we just talked about whether you charge these kids or not. If you have a program to send them to halfway houses, I think the chance of success to engage parents is greater.

No parent who suspects the kid wants to bring the feds in, if the end of the line is that kid going to federal prison or having charged against them, I think a part of the dialogue has to be do we want all these kids charged or especially given the number of kids we are dealing with, do we want a better way to deal with someone?

One of the reasons I raised that John, these kids aren't ideologues, they are emotionally committed to the cause and in my experience, you can turn that emotional commitment around if you get some engagement with the kid. They are not going to be terrorists forever or Jihadist forever.

BERMAN: It's a really interesting point. Philip Mudd, a kinder, gentler, Philip Mudd, this morning, thanks so much for being with us. I really appreciate it -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, John, well, there is utter devastation in Vanuatu from Tropical Cyclone Pam. CNN's Bill Weir has seen Vanuatu up close. He will join us next to discuss this tragedy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

<07:51:35> PEREIRA: The reports of devastation are severe in Vanuatu after Cyclone Pam roared through the island chain northeast of Australia. An estimated 90 percent of housing has been damaged in the capital city of Port Vila.

The 60,000 children are in need of help after suffering through winds equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane. We know at least 11 people have died, many more are feared lost.

Joining us now via Skype is CNN's Bill Weir, he traveled just recently to Vanuatu a few months ago for the first episode of his new series "The Wonder List."

And I know this has hit you particularly hard, Bill. Thanks so much for joining us to give us a little perspective on this. I know one of the biggest challenges here. We saw even from your visit there is the remote nature of the area of this world. Logistically it's going to be a gigantic challenge to get help to those hard-hit islands.

BILL WEIR, CNN HOST, "THE WONDER LIST": Exactly right, Michaela. We're seeing pictures of Port Vila, the capital, which is a little bit deceiving. That's a town of maybe 50,000, 60,000 people, but there's twice as many in outlying islands.

There are some 60 different inhabited islands in Vanuatu. Some of them maybe have one landing strip that can take a small single-engine plane, maybe one or two boats. At least based on our attempts to reach out to our friends back there, it is a communication black hole.

Some of these islands only have cell tower, but only rated for Category 3 cyclone, and this was rated a 5, of course. Just figuring out who is OK is a challenge that we can't really fathom given our definition of search and rescue.

PEREIRA: Right. And the fact that the death toll is at 11 right now, Bill, do you understand how -- maybe you can give us context on why more people weren't killed, given the devastation?

WEIR: I think there -- I just think they don't know. In absence of information, they can't give a firm number. But for example on Tana, these are folks who lived like they have for thousands of years, literally in banyan tree houses, maybe a thatch walled.

We stayed in a place with the first concrete floor on the island. So I can't -- I cannot fathom 150 miles an hour winds, literally lashing your self-to a tree, that's the only hope. If the boat is gone, how do you fish? You know, there's no power on a good day anyway, but if your battery is dead on the phone, how do you recharge?

My heart just breaks. These are some of the sweetest, most generous, open folks I've ever met. I was drawn there because of their openness and their lack of development, but this storm casts that whole argument about how fast these places should develop into a whole new light.

CAMEROTA: It's a toll to the ecosystem, the human toll that is just seemingly right now immeasurable. They're saying this cyclone is unprecedented in this island's history. Bill Weir, thanks for giving us a perspective that only you have an experienced at least here at CNN, and sharing it with us. Thanks so much.

WEIR: Thanks, Mich.

BERMAN: Secretary of State John Kerry is in Switzerland for a new round of nuclear talks with Iran. Are they close to a deal? We'll get the latest from the State Department. That's coming up.

07:55:02

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran has begun.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't know whether they're any closer to the question of sanctions.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I'm embarrassed for them. That's close to unprecedented.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you going to apologize for this letter?

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: Not on my life.

BERMAN: Could a TV series finale have uncovered the truth?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You do a documentary about a murder and then you come up with this amazing evidence?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From a high altitude. I've been through worst.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Look at that view. How beautiful?

CAMEROTA: That is beautiful. Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to your NEW DAY. It is Monday, March 16th, 8:00 in the east. Chris is off today, and we are happy to be joined by John Berman. Thanks for being here instead.

Two weeks and counting that is the deadline for the framework of a nuclear deal with Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry in Switzerland this morning resuming talks and refusing to apologize to Iran's leaders for that controversial letter written by 47 Republicans.

<08:00:00> PEREIRA: The White House desperately trying to keep Congress out of that process as the author of that letter doubles down insisting he has no regrets about writing or sending it.

CNN senior international correspondent, Nic Robertson tracking developments for us live from London -- Nic.