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Friends of San Bernardino Victims Speak Out; CNN Money Now; Bleacher Report; Interview with Sen. Rand Paul. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired December 07, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] JENNI KOSSE, FRIEND OF SAN BERNARDINO VICTIMS: As I remember them.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

Ray, I know that when all of this was happening, you were searching for - when you started hearing the news reports, you started trying to find and get ahold of Jenni. Tell us about those moments.

RAY KOSSE, FRIEND OF SAN BERNARDINO VICTIMS: Well, my - my neighbor called and said that there was a shooting. And so I turned on the television and kind of realized where - where it was at. So I called my wife to see if they were all OK or if they were on lockdown. She didn't get back to me right away. But when she called back, she told me that they were safe where they were at. And then we were able to - to connect a couple of hours later.

CAMEROTA: Jenni, you knew -

R. KOSSE: After they were released from the lockdown.

CAMEROTA: Thank goodness.

Jenni, you knew the gunman. You had interacted with Syed Farook. Can you tell us what he was like and what your interactions were like with him?

J. KOSSE: Our interactions were always pleasant. I knew him from when he came on board. I worked with him often, you know, side by side as the receptionist and, you know, taking messages and, you know, different aspects that would involve his inspections and such. And he was always very pleasant, always had a smile, was always very courteous, you know, said, I don't want to interrupt you, but can you help me with this or that type of thing. So he was very pleasant to work with.

CAMEROTA: Did he say anything about his marriage or about his wife?

J. KOSSE: That all happened after I had left the department. I left a year and a half ago. And so, no, I didn't have any connection with him in regard to that.

CAMEROTA: So you had no indication - or correct me if I'm wrong - that he had changed or somehow become extreme? J. KOSSE: No, I didn't. And I think I had enough connections still

with most of the staff in that office that if anyone had noticed anything, they would have told me.

CAMEROTA: As we've said, you were friends close to some of the victims. I mean just to go through three of them. There was Mike Wetzel, 37 years old, father of six children, left behind a wife and those children.

J. KOSSE: Yes. Right.

CAMEROTA: I mean every single one of these stories that we're seeing on our screen here is heartbreaking in its own right. You were friends with Robert Adams, 40 years old, married, had a 20 month old daughter. You were friends with - there was the picture of him and his beautiful baby and his smile. You were friends with Nicholas Thalasinos and he's gotten a lot of attention, this particular gentleman, because it had been reported that he had some possibly heated exchanges in the office about religion. What was your experience about that?

J. KOSSE: If it's OK, I'll let Ray answer that.

CAMEROTA: Yes, go ahead, Ray.

R. KOSSE: I don't think Nick would have had those conversations in the office. Nick was a very professional man. He would talk about his religion if you want - if you were interested in hearing about it. He didn't preach to you. When he was at work, he was extremely professional in what he did and all of the aspects of his job. So for people to make him out to be an extremist, these people are terribly wrong, you know.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I mean -

R. KOSSE: They can't judge the man because they didn't know him.

CAMEROTA: Yes. One of the most remarkable things about where you both worked is how multi-cultural it appears to have been. At this holiday party, there were Christians, Jews, Muslims. There were Hispanics, whites, blacks. You, in particular, I mean, it's been called like a - almost like a little United Nations where you worked. And somehow, Jenni, until then, it seemed as though everyone melded.

J. KOSSE: Yes, definitely.

CAMEROTA: And so -

J. KOSSE: Yes, I don't think anyone had any clashes.

CAMEROTA: And so how do you explain, if you can, Jenni, what happened with Farook?

J. KOSSE: I can't. I don't think anyone, unless they were in his inner circle, that were part of all of this, can answer that question. It just, somehow, he started, I don't know, getting information that he was told that this is the way he was supposed to start behaving and thinking. And this was his mission, I guess. And it just happened to be an opportunity that came up and he took it.

[08:35:10] CAMEROTA: Jenni, the county office is open today for the first time since the attacks. Will you be going back to work?

J. KOSSE: No. No, I'm not. I'm going to be staying available for my friends and the survivors that were there, for the families. We, again, are a tight-knit group and so we are meeting up every day. We have projects that we're working on for the families and such. So I'm going to be continuing with that.

CAMEROTA: That sounds like the right thing to do. Jenni Kosse, Ray Kosse, thank you so much for the information. We're sorry for your loss.

J. KOSSE: You're welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us.

R. KOSSE: Yes, thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's get to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Reaction to the president's Oval Office address drawing quite a mixed response, not shockingly. Republican presidential hopefuls none too pleased. We are going to get Rand Paul's take, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:40:17] PEREIRA: The president is calling on tech companies in the fight against ISIS. "CNN Money Now" time. Chief business correspondent Christine Roman in the Money Center.

What's the president asking for?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela.

Well, President Obama urging tech leaders to make it harder for terrorists to, quote, "escape from justice." It seems to be a reference to this ongoing battle over encryption. It's easier than ever for people to have a private conversation using several different apps and the phones themselves are also encrypted. Tech companies have fought government efforts to change that. The conversation is on.

Hillary Clinton pushing her reform agenda for Wall Street. In a "New York Times" op-ed this morning, Clinton said, if elected, she would impose fees for risky behavior and give the government more tools to break up big banks if necessary. Plus, she wants to tax some high frequency trading. She also wrote, quote, "executives need to be held more accountable. No one should be too big to jail."

Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right.

Time for the five things to know for your NEW DAY. At number one, President Obama pledging to overcome ISIS in a

primetime address from the Oval Office. His address some say lacked any new specifics as he tried to calm a jittery nation.

Syed Rizwan Farook's father speaking out, saying his son was an ISIS supporter and was fixated on Israel. A senior official says the 28- year-old also looked into contacting terrorist groups overseas.

The Justice Department is expected to investigate the Chicago Police Department. That force facing heavy criticism upon the release of dash cam video in the fatal shooting of teenager Laquan McDonald.

Venezuela's opposition party wins a majority in the - in that nation' election. It will be the party's first time controlling the legislature in nearly 17 years.

Jimmy Carter is cancer free. The 91-year-old former president says his latest brain scan shows no sign of the original cancer spots and no new ones since he was diagnosed with brain cancer over the summer.

And as you know, for more on the five things, you can always visit newdaycnn.com for the latest.

Ah, that music tells me it's time for sports. Jets fans with local bragging rights here in New York. That's making certain anchors here a little unbearable, Andy Scholes -

ANDY SCHOLES, BLEACHER REPORT: Yes, I bet.

PEREIRA: As if he needed any more reason to be. What's going on in "The Bleacher Report"?

SCHOLES: Yes, I bet Chris and, you know, Jet fans all over New York are happy because they're going to get to hold on to some bragging rights for a while because, you know, the Jets and Giants, they only play each other every four years. Of course both teams call MetLife Stadium home, so there was no home field advantage in this one. And the Giants, they had this game in hand, up 20-10 in the fourth quarter. But Ryan Fitzpatrick led the Jets in a comeback with 27 seconds left, found Brandon Marshall for that touchdown to tie the game. We go to overtime. The Jets took the lead on a field goal and the Giants had a chance to tie the game but Josh Brown misses it for the first time this season. The Jets win in a comeback 23-20. They're 7-5 now. The Giants fall to 5-7.

The Steelers, meanwhile, putting a beat down on the Colts in the late game yesterday. Antonio Brown had three touchdowns. And by far the most entertaining one was his 71 yard punt return that he finished off by doing this. Ouch. That makes me cringe every time I see it. Somehow Brown popped right up and was a-OK. Steelers won that one big by a final of 45-10.

And Heisman votes are due today. Guys, for the first time in Heisman Trophy history, I have a vote. So, right now I'm going to go crunch some numbers and figure out who I'm going to vote for right after I get done with this. CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Wow.

CAMEROTA: That's great. Every here is very impressed.

PEREIRA: Including you.

CUOMO: Oh, wait, he can have an Alisyn moment here. The Heisman. You know what it is. Can you give us "The Heisman"?

CAMEROTA: I can give you "The Heisman."

CUOMO: Oh!

PEREIRA: (INAUDIBLE).

CAMEROTA: All the time.

PEREIRA: This is something. Our baby is all grown up.

CUOMO: That's awesome. I appreciate that.

CAMEROTA: I know.

CUOMO: That was a little bit of low hanging fruit -

CAMEROTA: It was.

CUOMO: Because she's found so many ways to reject me.

PEREIRA: (INAUDIBLE), come on. Give me a little something there.

CAMEROTA: From bar speech (ph). Yes.

PEREIRA: That was good. Good job.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much you guys.

Well, the Republican presidential hopefuls criticizing President Obama's Oval Office address about destroying ISIS. So we will get senator Rand Paul's take when he joins us live in just a moment. Stick around.

CUOMO: That was impressive.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:48:34] PRESIDENT BARACK 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: That was President Obama calling on Congress to take action to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists, and reiterating his strategy to fight ISIS.

Let's bring in Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. He is running for president. He joins us now.

Senator, thanks so much for being here. Let's talk --

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: Great to see you. Let's talk about everything the president talked about last night. But let's just start there. Let's start there because that's one that seems as though it should be easy to fix. Why not close the loophole that allows suspects on the FBI's no- fly list to buy guns?

PAUL: You know, I think there probability is a way to do it. But I would put the analogy this way, though. If we were to get rid of the freedom of the press, would you want to do it because you're on a watch list, or would you want to do it because there had been a form of due process or a trial that says you no longer get your First Amendment privileges?

It's the same with the Second Amendment. If we're going to take away Second Amendment privileges, nobody wants somebody who is a terrorist to have a gun, myself included. But there has to be a process. One of the reasons has to be a process is, you know, Ted Kennedy was on the watch list, so was Cat Stevens. It was a mistake, but would you want to take away their constitutional rights over a mistake.

[08:50:03] So it's a pretty serious thing to take constitutional rights. There needs to be a process, not after the fact, but before the fact. We had a Republican alternative that was similar but had more due process. And I think there is a middle ground if the other side wants to work with us on this.

CAMEROTA: Look, I mean, I hear you. But fix the watch list. That's an issue of fixing the watch list so as not to have Ted Kennedy on it, not to somehow let terrorists get their hands on guns.

PAUL: Well, it's both. It's both. I mean, I don't think we should take away your First Amendment right to have freedom to express yourself in the media without some kind of due process. I'd be very worried about saying, we're going to have a watch list of journalists who we think are inappropriate on TV and we'll take away their First Amendment rights.

What you really need is a constitutional process. I'm all for keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists, but you can't just have a list. I'll give you an example. In the fight against terrorism, we set up these centers called fusion centers and some of the people they put on the list to watch were people who were from the Constitution Party, people who were pro-life, people who were supporters of my dad.

So I think you have to be real careful about saying, oh, it's just a list, we'll gather up everyone on the list. There has to be due process and constitutional rights. But I think also the president mistakes the real problem here. The real problem is about who we're letting into the country. I mean, we have to have a pause on immigration from the Middle East until we can get a handle on are we admitting people who want to attack and kill us?

CAMEROTA: But of course, this is a case where this gunman was born in America. He was American.

PAUL: His wife came here recently, and there's many arguing that she was the one that radicalized things. But even the president last night in his speech, if you look at his speech, admitted that there wasn't enough scrutiny on her. And I think if you look at -- we have 150,000 students here from the Middle East. Do we know where they all are? Do we know that they in school? Do we know that they haven't overstayed their visas?

So I think we have to really look hard at what we're doing now before we make the haystack bigger, before we admit millions of new people into this country. I think we have to push pause and have a moratorium on new immigration from the Middle East because I think that is a great danger to us and making this about gun control, I think, mistakes the real danger, and that is people coming here to attack us.

CAMEROTA: When you say a moratorium on immigration from the Middle East, you mean where? The whole Middle East, not allow anyone in? Because - I mean, in other words, it sounds like what you're saying is that you don't trust our Department of Homeland Security and other officials to actually do a proper vetting process.

PAUL: Right. What we do is in our bill we have a couple of different items and once these are achieved, we would try to get back to some sort of normalcy. But we would have 100 percent entry and exit. So we know 100 percent of the time who comes and when they leave. So we have 11 million people here illegally and 40 percent of them are said to have overstayed their visas. If we can't get a grip on who is overstaying their visas and who is not obeying our visa system, that is a real danger to us. It's also a danger from the visa waiver countries.

The president mentioned this, also, but what I'm saying is, anybody coming from Germany, France, England, they need to come through global entry. That's - like our frequent flyer program, but you do a background check. Once you have the background check, people would come in very easily and very quickly, but known travelers would. If you're an unknown traveler, I think it should take awhile. That's how we're going to defend our country. This is going to be going on for a long time. So we're going to have this debate for a long time. But in order to defend our country, we have to defend our border.

CAMEROTA: The theory -- One of the theories, as you say, is that he was radicalized by his wife. Another theory is that he was self- radicalized by online readings and communications and that can happen. What's the answer? PAUL: I think no easy answer, unless you're like some of the

authoritarians who want to ban reading. So I don't know that there is an easy answer there. But the one thing we can control is immigration. The other thing that we can do is, I think, we can decide whether or not we're wanting to go back to another war in the Middle East. I don't think American sons and daughters need to go back into the Middle East. I'm for letting the boots on the ground be Arab boots on the ground.

CAMEROTA: One of your fellow Republicans running for president, Governor Chris Christie, has said that now is no time to curtail the NSA surveillance program. Let me play for you what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It was so wrong for Congress and the president to pull back on our surveillance capability with the NSA. So wrong to demoralize our intelligence community through the report they issued at the end of this last year. You know, the fact is that we need to strengthen our intelligence, strengthen our law enforcement community, and just work as hard as we can to try to intercept this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Senator, why not use every tool at our disposal, is his point?

PAUL: There will always be authoritarians like Christie who want you to give up your liberty for a false sense of security. But the facts of the matter are this. The court just below the Supreme Court has ruled this program to be illegal. Two bipartisan commissions have said we haven't stopped any terrorist attacks from it. And there's a real fundamental question that is a constitutional question, can you allow the indiscriminate collection of everyone's data, everyone's private information, without a warrant?

[08:55:10] The Fourth Amendment says that you have to individualize and put a name on the warrant, have suspicion, and talk to a judge. But when you want to gather every American's information, that's gone too far and there's got to be somebody who is going to stand up and say we have to defend the Bill of Rights, and that includes the Fourth Amendment.

CAMEROTA: Senator Rand Paul, we appreciate getting your perspective on NEW DAY.

PAUL: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much for being here. And thanks so much to all of you for watching us today.

"NEWSROOM" with Pamela Brown will begin right after this very short break. See you tomorrow.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Pamela Brown, in for Carol Costello. Thanks so much for being here with me on this Monday.

The U.S. will prevail and beat the evolving threat of terrorism. That message from President Obama during a rare primetime address from the Oval Office. His goal, to try to ease fears after that ISIS-inspired killing spree in San Bernardino. The president's speech isn't quieting his critics. Many are blasting him for not going far enough. The president calling the California rampage an, quote, "act of terror," and saying the shooters embraced a perverted form of Islam.