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Did Obama's Terror Speech Go Far Enough?; Terrorist's Father: Son Supported ISIS. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired December 07, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This was an act of terrorism.

[05:58:09] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From the Oval Office, a setting the president does not choose very often.

OBAMA: We will destroy ISIL.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I applaud him for the more forceful, passionate rhetoric.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He basically just explained what he's doing now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His head is in the clouds if he thinks this burn (ph) strategy is going to succeed.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: In touch with people being investigated by the FBI for international terrorism.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On Facebook a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: His father goes on to say, "I cannot forgive myself. Maybe if I had been at home, I would have found out and stopped him."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Justice Department reportedly set to launch an investigation into the Chicago Police Department.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why did it take 13 months when they had video cam footage of this incident?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The accounts of other officers and the sergeant don't match the video.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Monday, December 7, 6 a.m. in the East. So did the see the big speech last night? Well, we'll tell you about it. President Obama attempting to reassure the American people after last week's deadly terror attack in San Bernardino. The president using a rare primetime Oval Office address to acknowledge the terror threat has evolved and vowing to overcome it.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: But it's what the president did not say that has critics pouncing this morning. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump tweeting, "Is that all there is? We need a new president fast."

Let's get more from CNN senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns. He's live at the White House. Good morning, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

A relatively short Sunday night address from the president of the United States, confirming that the attack in San Bernardino was an act of terror and, in the process, firing up the president's critics, who say the administration isn't doing enough.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

OBAMA: The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it.

JOHNS (voice-over): President Obama speaking passionately to millions in a rare Oval Office address late Sunday, strongly condemning ISIS and calling Wednesday's mass shooting at San Bernardino a terrorist attack.

OBAMA: It is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization. So this was an act of terrorism.

JOHNS: Obama doubling down on his four-point strategy to defeat the terrorist group.

OBAMA: The strategy that we are using now, airstrikes, Special Forces and working with local forces who are fighting to regain control of their own country. It won't require us sending a new generation of Americans overseas to fight and die for another decade on foreign soil.

JOHNS: At home, Obama putting stronger screenings on people arriving in the U.S. without a visa and insisting on more gun control.

OBAMA: Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What would you do as president to prevent the mass shootings?

JOHNS: The policy GOP presidential hopefuls are calling insufficient to tackle the evolving threat. Donald Trump tweeting, "Is that all there is?" And retweeting, "He needs to stop all visas, not look at them." Jeb Bush proposing a more aggressive strategy, and calling the

fight against ISIS "the war of our time."

OBAMA: It's a real problem that Muslims must confront without excuse.

JOHNS: President Obama ending his 13-minute speech with an appeal to Muslims to root out extremist ideology while also calling on Americans to reject discrimination.

OBAMA: Muslim-Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes. And yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The cynicism...

JOHNS: Senator Marco Rubio pushing back.

RUBIO: Where is there widespread evidence that we have a problem in America with discrimination against Muslims? And the refusal to call this for what it is: a war on radical Islams. Not only did the president not make things better tonight, I fear he may have made things worse.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: And among the many things to highlight here, the president said he does want a closer look at programs that allow people to come to the United States, with or without visas in order to get a handle on visitors to the United States.

Back to you.

CAMEROTA: OK, Joe, thanks so much for setting all of that up.

Here to analyze now the president's address, CNN political commentator and Washington correspondent for "The New Yorker," Ryan Lizza; and senior contributor to "The Daily Caller" and conservative commentator Matt Lewis.

Matt is also the author of "Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections."

Gentlemen, great to have you here. Ryan, also with you.

So in that pithy tweet that Donald Trump sent out in which he said, "Is that all there is? We need a new president fast," he sort of summed up the critics' charge against it. What was new?

RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I was just going to say, Trump, you know, for all of his flaws, he does have a talent for cutting to the heart of the issue, right? A lot of people who didn't like the speech said, "Where's the new strategy?"

And there wasn't a lot new. Even the one thing where he did call on Congress to do something that could lead to a new debate, the authorization for the use of military force which we don't have. We're relying on this 2001 authorization...

CUOMO: Why don't we have?

LIZZA: To go off al Qaeda. Because Congress doesn't want to debate it. They are scared to have that fight. And I think if there's one political angle that comes out of this speech that is important, it's a challenge to Congress to step up and debate how this war should be going and give the executive branch the authority it should have. You have several senators running for president, and none of these guys want to go back into Congress and put this on the floor and debate it.

And we are -- we are relying on this flimsy 2001 resolution that existed before al Baghdadi or any of ISIS existed.

CUOMO: Now, the political play here is that what Ryan just laid out, Matt, is completely unspoken in the political dialogue. The idea of why we are doing what we're doing, why that we're not doing more, has an answer, doesn't it? But it's not a good answer for Congress. So they're ignoring that part of the analysis. What's your take?

MATT LEWIS, SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR, "THE DAILY CALLER": Well, look, I felt last night President Obama did one good thing which the moral clarity which has not been there was more prevalent. He talked about radicalization. He said the word "terrorism." I think that's a good start.

He also laid out a strategy for defeating ISIS, which frankly, was recycled, nothing new. And clearly, has not been effective in defeating ISIS. I think he wanted to reassure the American people, unfortunately, it's hard to do that when, you know, the day before Paris, he says ISIS is contained.

The day before Thanksgiving he says there's no credible threat. Clearly, his comforting and reassuring is not that reassuring. And then the last thing he did was sort of spell out these action items.

And unfortunately, the vast majority of the things that he wants to do, including gun control, have nothing at all to do with what happened in San Bernardino.

So you have, essentially, a speech that I'm not sure really had a point other than could have been a press release saying, yes, this was radical extremism.

[06:05:07] CAMEROTA: Here's one -- here's one of the action items that he talked about. And it's the how about not letting people on the terror no-fly list not be able to get their hands on guns. Let's play that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Congress should take right away. To begin with, Congress should act to make sure no one on a no-fly list is able to buy a gun. What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terror suspect to buy a semiautomatic weapon? This is a matter of national security. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK. To Matt's point, sensible. But what does that have to do with what happened in San Bernardino?

LIZZA: That's a good point. That's right. And sometimes the solutions that are promoted here are not necessarily a direct response to the San Bernardino or the issue at hand but things that, in general, might be a good thing to do.

Congress, is like -- they've got to get out of town by December 11. They've got to get these spending bills done. The Democrats want another vote on this. They want this to be in the final year of negotiations. You're going to have a big fight over that issue in Congress.

CUOMO: Seems to be off topic, though, Matt. Let me ask you something. We always talk about words. We always say words matter. Why is it so important? You said he said terrorism. That's a good start. President said "terrorism" lots of times. What he doesn't say is what you want to hear, which is "Islamic extremism."

Now, he could make a very cogent, as his people do, theological argument as to why it's not Islamic. It's Islamism; it's Islamist. But they don't want to make any of these distinctions, because they think it means that you're going to war against a faith. Why do you need to hear those words? Why do you think they matter.

LEWIS: Well, first let me say, I think it's appropriate to parse language very carefully. And I do not think we should be, you know, promiscuous in the way that we define the enemy. I think that it is wise to be prudent.

I would say, however, that it's hard to defeat an ideology. It's hard to defeat a problem if you're so politically correct that you're not willing to call it what it is.

So I'm not for painting with a broad brush. We're not at war with Islam. But we are at war with radical Islamists. And you have to be willing to call it that. If you can't call it that, then I don't know how you're going to marshal the energy and the passion and the sacrifice it's going to take to defeat it.

LIZZA: I'm of two minds about this. I mean, the administration...

CUOMO: You have to pick one. That's what the show is about, Ryan. We don't have two minds. That's why we're here.

LIZZA: There's a certain political correctness about it. They argue when they go -- I talked to Jeh Johnson, the homeland -- secretary of homeland security, about this interview from over the summer. You're being politically correct. Why don't you just say it, as Matt points out?

Their argument is when they go into Muslim communities in the United States, that is the first thing that gets the Islamic communities back up. And as you -- in that clip you played of the president, if you want neighbors, friends, people, Muslims in America to be on your side and to root out extremists or people who have gone over to the other side, the dark side, you need their trust. And you have to -- the government has to be seen as being on their side.

And so that's one of their concessions to the Muslim community in the United States, is to talk about it in a different way, to recruit Muslims as allies of the government.

So that's the argument, and if that works, you know, I think that's good. We should -- we should be using that language.

CAMEROTA: Ryan, you talked about how you're not sure that this speech will help to reassure Americans who are so nerve-wracked by this. In fact, there's a poll out. This was a CNN/ORC poll. It was released yesterday, but it was taken. The respondents answered before the San Bernardino crisis, and here's what it said.

"How is Obama handling ISIS?" Only 33 percent approve of how he's doing it; 64 percent disapprove. So what -- what were people hoping the president would say to your mind? What do you think the president should have said to sort of kind of quell some of the anxiety?

LIZZA: That was to Matt, right?

CAMEROTA: Oh, yes. That's to Matt. Sorry.

LEWIS: Oh, I'm sorry.

CUOMO: He really wanted to own the question. I respect the tactic.

CAMEROTA: It's all right.

LEWIS: Look, I'm not sure that this speech need to be delivered again. This is a president who, you know, the day before Paris said ISIS is contained. The day before Thanksgiving, said there's no credible threat.

So I'm a big believer in the importance of symbolism and a president calming and reassuring the public. But when President Obama reassures us, I think that's a little bit scary.

And then the worst part is, his prescription for solving this, I think was a non-sequitur. I think it was aimed to score political points by putting Republicans on the defensive. More interested in taking on Republicans than taking on the actual cause of the problem.

The one area where I think he did make some sense was looking at visas, and frankly, you know, this plays into questions about immigration, questions about refugees. Gun control's not the answer, at least not to this problem. It would not have done anything to stop this shooting. And in fact, as we know, there were explosive -- they had a dozen pipe bombs that could have been used. We saw what happened in Boston. What are you going to do, control pressure cookers?

I think that this was a speech that did not need to be given, and I don't know that it helps anybody.

CUOMO: I wonder if you're cherry picking a little bit here. I mean, there's no question that you're right about the explosive argument. There's no question that this does not scream gun control as an issue. It's a terrorism issue. There's no question about that.

[06:10:19] But apply your own analysis to your people, Matt, in terms of that side of the equation, the GOP. There is this call: "We have to do more. This isn't enough. Obama didn't say enough last night." Like what? You don't vote on the AUMF. It's easy to say, "Do more." You won't say you really want to put troops on. You kind of pander a little bit to the idea of doing more.

How do you scrutinize that within the GOP side, that it's easy to say Obama's not getting it done? What more should we be doing? And why aren't we hearing specifics?

LEWIS: Well, we could talk forever on this. First, I would say with the AUMF, look, I think that they are operating under the 2001, you know, bill. There's a bipartisan problem with passing it. Democrats do not want to give the president a carte blanche to go do something such as what happened in Iraq, and Republicans don't think it goes far enough and that it might actually tie the hands of a president.

So there's bipartisan problems with passing that. I think you're right. There is blame to go around. Republicans are not sure what they want to do. Do they want to, you know, go in more with ground troops? There's a soul searching taking place on the right, right now.

I think that it's fair to hold the president to a higher standard. I think it is fair to say that whoever the commander in chief is, part of the job, as thankless as it might be, is to provide a vision, and to either sell it to inspire people to joining him or to scare them into joining him by the force of his rhetoric.

And President Obama, frankly, has not risen to that occasion. It's a high bar, I'll grant you. But he has not done it. I think that if you look at where we're at right now in this country, it feels like things are falling apart. And I think that's part of the reason that Donald Trump, for example, is doing so well.

LIZZA: Just you cut to the heart of the issue here, is when you look at what Republicans, especially the ones running for president, are actually saying you should do, and you look at what Obama is doing, the gap is really, really narrow.

CUOMO: It's easy to say you're at war when you don't want to declare war.

LIZZA: Yes. Lindsey Graham is one person that's saying, "Hey, let's put 10,000 troops there." But no one else is willing to do that.

CAMEROTA: Ryan, Matt, thank you.

LEWIS: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Back to Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right. To our other news. The San Bernardino shooter's father speaking out, saying that his son backed ISIS and was fixated on Israel. This as new details emerge connecting the 28-year- old to terrorist organizations.

CNN's Dan Simon is live in San Bernardino, California. A new week, that city and community beginning to heal. What do we know this morning?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Michaela.

The simple question for investigators is how this husband and wife became radicalized and was there a turning point that ultimately led to the shooting? We do know that the shooter, Syed Farook, did try to contact some terrorist organizations at some point, including al Qaeda affiliates.

And we're gaining a little bit more insight into his state of mind, and this comes from his own father, who talked to the Italian newspaper, "La Stampa." What he said, among other things is that his son shared in the ideology of al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, and that he was fixated on Israel.

It's worth pointing out that the father says he never met his -- his own daughter-in-law. And so one of the things that investigators are trying to do is probe into her background, in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Tashfeen Malik, of course, is her name. That's where she lived before coming to the U.S. on a fiance visa.

One of the working theories a law enforcement source tells our Pamela Brown is that she was radicalized before coming to the U.S. on a fiance visa.

Of course, Michaela, there's still a lot to pore over, a lot of electronic data from phones and computers. But the destruction of that evidence and recovering it apparently has proven to be difficult -- Michaela.

CUOMO: All right. I'll take it, Dan. Thank you very much.

It looks like the entire Chicago Police Department is going to be put under a microscope. A source tells CNN the Justice Department will soon launch an investigation into how the force operates overall. It's calling the department-wide investigation a result of requests that were made after the release of dash cam video of that failed shooting of Laquan McDonald. The black teen was shot 16 times, you'll remember, and of course, it was done by an officer who is now charged with first-degree murder. CAMEROTA: Voters in Venezuela demanding a shake-up and getting

one. The country's opposition party regaining control of the national assembly, winning Sunday's election by a nearly 2-1 margin. It follows months of protests as the decline in oil prices depleted Venezuela's fragile economy. President Nicholas Maduro says he accepts he party's defeat but pledged he will not give up on creating a socialist state.

PEREIRA: Great news. Jimmy Carter says he is cancer-free. The 91-year-old former president revealing the news Sunday at his church in Georgia. He says the latest MRI scan of his brain showed no sign of the original cancer spots and no new ones.

[06:15:04] President Carter was first diagnosed with brain cancer over the summer, you'll recall. His treatments have included an experimental drug that was just approved by the FDA.

I imagine this news is going to be greeted with such excitement from other people that have been diagnosed similarly.

CUOMO: Shocked.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. If it worked for a 91-year-old, it can work for other people.

PEREIRA: Absolutely.

CUOMO: I mean, just amazing. But you don't know. No average guy. Being president of the United States is the least of his qualities. I'll never forget what he did for that little kid poet, Mattie Stepanek. He went so out of his way.

CAMEROTA: Aw.

CUOMO: And what a blessing he's gotten. The best to him and his family for the holidays.

PEREIRA: Absolutely.

CUOMO: All right. So we'll take a little break here, and then when we come back, it might just be the single biggest threat we face, the radicalization of Americans that leads to what we saw in San Bernardino, what they call lone-wolf attacks. How do you detect when someone is going down that road? Is there even a way? We have a closer look for you ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: People on edge understandably after what happened in San Bernardino, so the president takes to the bully pulpit. And we get a promise from him that he will destroy ISIS.

[06:20:07] But with the threat evolving into now lone wolves and different types of radicalization here, what can we do? What should we do? What are we not doing? Phil Mudd is a CNN counterterrorism analyst and a former CIA

counterterrorism official, and Mr. Paul Cruickshank is a CNN terrorism analyst, as well, and the editor-in-chief of "The CTC Sentinel." Also the co-author of "Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA."

Phil Mudd right now, you're looking at me saying, "Why didn't you say the name of my book?" Fair criticism. Let's put it to the side. My question to you is this.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Have you ever written a book?

CUOMO: I have written a book. I'll send it to you later. It's called "Why Mudd Should Sit Across from Me."

Here's my question to you. The president comes out last night.

MUDD: Yes.

CUOMO: And people are looking for profound reassurance, and here's the answer. Arguably they did not get what they wanted. Is it an unreasonable expectation?

MUDD: I don't think it is. I think what the president is sitting back and saying, this wasn't a policy speech. This was a political speech to reassure the American people. As a professional, what he's saying is, whether you like it or not, ISIS has lost ground since we were concerned about their gains toward Baghdad in 2014.

CUOMO: Seems that they're more of them and more present and more attacks than ever.

MUDD: You can dispute, again -- you can dispute what to do about it. You can't dispute the facts.

The flow of recruits in the United States, according to the FBI director, is slowing. The border where they can cross from Turkey is tightening. The number of countries that have united against them, including, like it or not, the Russians, is expanding.

So you can say we had a tragedy in the United States. If you want to transfer that to say, therefore, the battle against ISIS is losing, I'd say give me some facts. I don't see it yet.

CUOMO: Well, Paul Cruickshank, you know what the facts are. We're all hearing these concerns from people, not just in the United States but around the world it is. Paris, San Bernardino. You don't see them coming. They seem to be radicalizing at a greater rate than you can control them. What are some of the true observations of the state of play?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, I think that the trouble with the war on ISIS is that we're winning too slowly, that it's going to take too long to take out this terrorist safe haven.

I mean, we're looking now at a number of years before you can even start to think about eradicating ISIS from this dangerous safe haven, the most dangerous terrorist safe haven we've ever seen in history, and that includes al Qaeda on the day of 9/11.

And the worry is that ISIS is increasingly pivoting towards international terrorism. We've seen 40 attacks around the world in the last year linked to ISIS in one way, shape or form, where you have a more sort of a direct ISIS role.

And we've seen the fact that people are responding around the world, including in the United States, to the ISIS message, which is launch attacks in our name. It's that very territorial control that they have in Syria and Iraq and also growing parts of Libya, which gives them that legitimacy, that persuasive power. There's a direct relationship between that attack in San Bernardino and the fact that there is a caliphate now, which supporters believe is under attack by the United States.

CUOMO: All right. So I stay on this point of criticism then, because despite what you say is qualified success, it seems, according to the White House report on ISIS and what Paul just said, it is spreading. Their reach is now beyond what it used to be into Indonesia and other places. That's what the White House report is about.

We just saw Paris. Paul just said, 40 attacks. We have a president and an administration that won't say the words "terror" in any connection to any Muslim at all. How are we on the right page?

MUDD: Look, I don't care what the president says. I don't care about language. I care about action.

The question that's not being answered, and I think the gap that we didn't see addressed in the speech last night is not about what we do in the United States gun control, et cetera. You can talk about that. It's about geographic space.

You cannot defeat a terror organization developing a capability to send people into Paris or into San Bernardino without destroying their space. To destroy their space, you have to have a process, a political process, like it or not, in Syria, that means there will be some international coalition that owns space once you retake it.

You can bomb all you want. My question is who's going to take over that space once you bomb it and clear it from ISIS? So the easy answer is bomb the hell out of them.

And my answer is you've got to get to the hard question. What's the political process to ensure when you bomb the hell out of them, somebody is sitting on the grounded to take that space? Nobody wants to take that on.

CUOMO: Well, except they take it on vocation, right, Paul? Because that's the problem we have right now in Afghanistan. That's the problem we have right now in Iraq. That's the concern we have right now in Yemen. Is that you go in there. You slap people around. Then you leave a vacuum. Do you think that right now that part of the plan is where it

needs to be?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, I mean, that's the concern there, the potential vacuum even after you kind of make progress against ISIS.

But I think, you know, there's just one big kind of alarming fact here. It's the fact there's a lack of Sunni Arab forces locally and regionally that are willing and capable to take on ISIS. We see that in Iraq.

[06:25:02] I mean, the Iraqi army is dominated by Shia forces. Then you've got all those Shia militias. There's just not enough Sunnis who are part of the army to take on ISIS.

And in Syria, you don't have Sunni Arab forces either, really. I mean, you have some Kurdish forces, but it's those Sunni Arab forces that you're going to need to take on ISIS. And so much the strategy right now, Chris, is predicated on the idea that you can hurt ISIS enough to make life unpleasant in this so-called caliphate. And then the Sunnis who are living in Raqqah or in Mosul and other under control, like Ramadi, are going to kind of spontaneously overthrow ISIS. That's essentially the strategy right now.

The problem is ISIS behaves like a police state. They're brutal towards those populations. And it's going to be very difficult, indeed, to see any kind of uprising.

So I think the whole strategy is based on a lot of wishful thinking right now.

CUOMO: Right. Critics say that it's not unlike what my 12-year- old is doing right now in her hopes for a segue at Christmastime: wishful thinking. Mr. Cruickshank, Philip Mudd, thank you very much.

MUDD: Thank you.

CUOMO: Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris. President Obama telling a nervous nation that ISIS will be defeated. But critics say he did not spell out a plan. So what should happen? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: The threat from terrorism is real. But we will overcome it. We'll destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was President Obama standing by the current strategy to fight ISIS. In a rare Oval Office address, he vowed to destroy the terror group, but a new intelligence report finds ISIS is not contained.

Joining us now is Nicholas Burns. He's the former undersecretary for political...