Return to Transcripts main page
New Day
2 Killed in Latest Chicago Police-Involved Shooting; Trump: Bill Clinton Criticism is "Fair Game"; Benghazi Cmte. Chairman Expected to Endorse Rubio; Bleacher Report; Chicago Mayor Demands Changes in Officer Training. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired December 28, 2015 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Here's what we know from the family. According to the coroner, Bettie Jones, was shot in the chest. And according to police, she was shot accidentally.
[06:30:07] Now, here's what we know from the family. LaGrier's mother, telling CNN that her son was actually shot seven times, that the teen's father was the one who called police. And she says that her son was not a combative person.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANET COOKSEY, MOTHER OF QUINTONIO LEGRIER: I know my loving child. My child ran a marathon last year for charity. Honor roll student. He never had combative behavior. And for them to kill him and disrespect him, and say his behavior was that way. No, it was not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FLORES: Now, the police officer is on administrative duty for 30 days. IPRA, the Independent Police Review Authorities investigating this officer involved shooting like it investigates all officer-involved shootings, and the Mayor Rahm Emanuel has asked CPD and IPRA to review their crisis intervention training, which is the training for calls involving mental health crisis. Christine.
CHRISITINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Rosa Flores for us in Chicago. Thank you for that, Rosa.
Coming up in our next hour, we will speak with the nephew of Bettie Jones. She's the woman accidentally shot and killed by Chicago police. Michaela?
MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Donald Trump upping the ante in his feud with Hillary Clinton by targeting, husband Bill. Is it fair? Is it smart? We'll put those questions for our panel. They weigh in, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: What do you say we talk politics?
PEREIRA: Why not? LEMON: You want to do that on a Monday morning after Christmas?
PEREIRA: Sure.
LEMON: Taking on your opponent's spouse. Not a typical political tactic. But Donald trump is no average politician as we know. And Bill Clinton is not your average political spouse.
PEREIRA: That is so true.
LEMON: Trump says Clinton's past troubles are a fair game and accuses Bill of demonstrating a penchant for sexism, as Hillary Clinton mounts a White House run. But could this backfire for Trump?
[06:35:10] Well, this morning, here with us Senior Political Analyst and Editorial Director for the National Journal, Mr. Ron Brownstein and CNN Senior Political Reporter, Nia-Malika Henderson
PEREIRA: Ain't both looked so well reps that they're ready to work.
LEMON: I know. Yes and great Christmas -- they went on air...
PEREIRA: No, no they weren't like you and I.
LEMON: Yeah, before we get to this. That's not all he -- he's accused quite of playing, his accuser playing the women's card. Let's take a listen and we'll talk.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She's playing the woman's card, and it's like give me a break. And I've had so many women come up to me and say, "You've got to keep her out, she is just terrible." She's playing that women's card left and right, and women are more upset about it than anybody else and including most men.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: So Ron, ten minutes back fire bringing in the family, marriage, past that sort of thing.
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well look I think it is a hard argument to make that she is the guilty party in Bill Clinton's misbehavior particularly in the White House, a hard argument to make the swing voters.
I think what you're hearing from Donald Trump is really some thing that is more about mobilizing the Republican base than it is about dealing with the issues he faces among women himself.
I mean one thing we have seen Don, as you look at the latest CNN/ORC Poll, Donald Trump as a significant gender gap in perceptions about him. His numbers among men are pretty good. 45 percent of men I think he'll bearably among women. Only about a third...
PEREIRA: Yeah. BROWNTEIN: ... you in favorably. And again I think what he is doing here is less likely to close that gap than it is to mobilize conservative Republicans who I think will respond to arguments like this.
There's another indication that pretty much anybody who crosses him, he will go after in very personal terms which is a separate issue that he faces in terms of the questions about his temperament and whether it's appropriate for a president.
PEREIRA: Yeah, in terms of appropriate, Nia. It's interesting because we were thinking about that. Don and I were mentioning it isn't as though this is a spouse just of a presidential campaign, this is a former president but they always seemed -- but Clinton's always seemed to sort of rise above the fray.
Do you think this is going to get to them? Do you think it's going to bother them that this kind of discussion is being even brought into the discourse?
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yeah, I think that's right. They seem to rise above the fray whenever it happens, and it had happened some time to time. Rand Paul back in January in 2014, called Bill Clinton a sexual predator of course in 2008, Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who is standing for a Barack Obama said that she wouldn't let her daughter be alone with Bill Clinton. She of course is endorsing Hillary Clinton this go round.
The problem I think with this line of attack is not only what of the Clinton have to do, it's at often, it actually helped Hillary Clinton some of her highest approval ratings have come right around the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal so it often backfires but it often does pose something of a challenge for them and they've been able I think side step it and rise above the fray in those part.
LEMON: The question is so, that we've been discussing. Is it fair? And because it's really, it really is -- it can be House Part, right.
HENDERSON: Yeah.
LEMON: When you think about -- I mean, Donald Trump is no angel and what if people wanted to bring up his divorce, he had an affair, you know, it's...
PEREIRA: Black house and then all that.
LEMON: He wasn't married when has...
BROWNTEIN: Right.
LEMON: ... and you know so.
HENDERSON: Yeah.
LEMON: Is it fair to bring those sorts of things in?
BROWNTEIN: We are so passed the traditional definitions of fair.
PEREIRA: Isn't that it, good point.
HENDERSON: Great.
PEREIRA: So true.
BROWNTEIN: In any kind of campaign. And I think, look, I think when, you know, in the modern era you run for president, pretty much everything in your life is going to be raised by at one point or another. And, you know, what you're asking I think is whether voters will perceive it as fair.
And again I think, you know, I think this is -- that this is something where what Donald Trump is doing -- the audience is different than the language kind of suggest. I mean I don't think this is an argument that is going to resonate...
PEREIRA: Yeah.
BROWNTEIN: ... with swing voters particularly white collar, white women who are I think the critical swing constituency for Hillary Clinton. This is something that does resonate with the Republican base who views Hillary Clinton as fundamental and Bill Clinton as fundamentally illegitimate. But I don't think it really solves the larger problem that he's aiming at if indeed that is his intent.
PEREIRA: Yeah, quickly, how do think you best use Bill Clinton on the campaign trail for Hillary in terms of -- it's not just using him up there but in response to Donald Trump.
HENDERSON: Yeah, I mean I think the 2012 modeled better than the 2008 in terms of his surrogacy for his wife. He was the explainer and she kind of got that nickname around the White House. He was so well received at that convention in 2012 something for Barack Obama.
So I think he is there but then we explain the democratic way, right. It explained why Democrat in his view had been better at running the country than Republicans. That was his role on 2012.
And in terms of Donald Trump I, you know, I think he'll probably say something probably dismissive and critical of him in terms of the larger issues and also try to also brand Republicans as the party of Donald Trump and why that's a problem for Republicans and this is something that we've seen Hillary Clinton do so of course.
[06:40:12] I think he underscores and echoes what his wife has been doing so far, in terms of Donald Trump.
LEMON: Ron, before we let you go this morning, I want to talk about South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy, he's expected to endorse Rubio this week. How significant would this be for Rubio?
BROWNSTEIN: You know, not a big national resonance from any endorsement of the member of the house, but this member of the house his - is district is a key pivot point in presidential election. South Carolina is absolutely essential in Republican race. He represents Greenville, Spartanburg area, which is a blend of evangelical voter and white collar the kind of professionals. And those voters are voters that Rubio needs.
I mean, Rubio needs to emerge. I mean there a lot of Republicans are still thinking, he is the last person standing in this race. But he's got to win somewhere Iowa, New Hampshire are both tough hauls for him.
South Carolina is a place where he has to show. And given that, I think as Gowdy endorsement is important because it comes in an area of the state that is usually been critical to the outcome of the result in the primary that is often critical to overall results for the Republicans.
LEMON: ... Donald Trump has already said that Benghazi hearings look terrible. He doesn't care about the endorsement.
All right, thank you guys. Good to see you this morning.
HENDERSON: Thank you.
LEMON: So what is your take? Tweet us @NewDay or post your comment on facebook.com/NewDay.
ROMANS: All right. He's one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history guys, but a new doping allegation, has Peyton Manning playing furious defense. Details in the bleacher report, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:45:22] PEREIRA: Good to have you back with us. Violent weather has claimed at least 43 lives in some seven states. People in the Dallas area still reeling from devastating tornadoes, 11 were killed there.
On the heels of all this warm weather, storms, freezing weather and snow is now expected.
Texas governor has declared a disaster in four counties and a state of emergency meanwhile is in effect in Missouri where at least eight people have died in flash flooding.
LEMON: And Michaela, breaking news. Iraq's military now saying the city of Ramadi is fully liberated, including a government compound long held by ISIS. An Iraqi military official says many ISIS fighters either fled or were killed in air strikes and fighting on the ground.
Ramadi, called to ISIS in May in an embarrassing defeat to the Iraqi army, Iraqi forces and coalition air strikes have been trying to retake the city ever since.
ROMANS: The new "Star Wars" film now the fastest to hit the $1 billion mark in global sales. Unbelievable. The Force Awakens hit that milestone in just 12 days, breaking the previous 13-day record set by "Jurassic World" back in June. All of the sudden without help from China where the film have only been debut until next month. PEREIRA: Are you finished talking about it because I'm assuming it does...
Let's move on to sports. Peyton Manning is furious. He says new allegations about him using performance-enhancing drugs are completely false.
Andy Scholes has more for us this morning in the Bleacher Report. What is going on?
ANDY SCHOLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Michaela. Manning immediately came out and said that these allegations were complete garbage. He was one of several athletes accused of using PEDs in an Al Jazeera documentary that aired Sunday night.
In the documentary, Charlie Sly, who work in an Indianapolis anti- aging clinic where Manning went for treatment was caught on hitting camera claiming Manning was allegedly giving human growth hormone when he was recovering from neck surgery in 2011.
And HGH was supposedly sent to Manning's wife Ashley. When speaking with ESPN, Manning called these allegations a complete joke.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PEYTON MANNING, DENVER BRONCOS QUARTERBACK: I can't speak for any other athlete. I know what I've done. I know how hard I've worked during my 18 years of playing in the NFL. There are no shortcuts in the NFL. I've done it the long way. I've done it the hard way. And to insinuate anything otherwise is a complete and total joke, its defamation and it really ticks me off.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCHOLES: Now Sly has recanted his entire story. He posted this video on YouTube saying he made everything up and Al Jazeera should not run the documentary. The anti-aging clinic in Indianapolis, the Guyer Institute released a statement saying that Sly was never an employee and only had a three-month internship with them and it was in 2013 when Manning was not even being treated there.
Now, Manning said he is likely to sue Al Jazeera for defamation and other athletes named in the documentary baseball players, Ryan Howard and Ryan Zimmerman, they plan to sue the network as well.
All right the '72 Miami Dolphins popped up the champagne bottles yesterday. They can rest easy for another year as no one will be going undefeated this season in the NFL. The Panthers are losing to the Falcons yesterday, 20 to 13. It was the first loss this season and their first since November of 2014.
All right, we had an odd ending to the Patriots/Jets game. It went to overtime. The Patriots won the coin toss but they chose to kick off instead of receive. You never see anyone do that. The Jets went right down the field and scored the game-winning touchdown. And after the game, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick said it was his call to kick instead of receive.
The guy, Chris Cuomo did definitely got his Christmas wish, the Jets beat the Patriots. And now the Jets, all they need to do is win next week and they're headed to playoffs.
PEREIRA: I think that's why he's not here today because he has still like fully embrace what happened, right, right?
All right Andy, thanks so much.
LEMON: Hey Andy, I want to ask you real quick, Al Jazeera has not responded as far as we know to the Peyton Manning -- that is just outrageous.
SCHOLES: Yeah. We didn't know. We had not heard anything from them since.
LEMON: Yeah, unbelievable.
All right. Thank you, Andy Scholes.
SCHOLES: All right.
LEMON: Embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel taking quick action after another deadly police-involved shooting. But will it quiet the outrage among those who believe that their mayor has failed them?
[06:49:34] We're digging deeper, next on NEW DAY.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANET COOKSEY, MOTHER OF QUINTONIO LEGRIER: No mother should have to bury her child, and especially circumstances, you called for help. The police supposed to service and protect us, there's a badge to kill. I mean, where do we get our help? When is the mayor going to step up?
(END VIDEOCLIP)
PEREIRA: That was the mother of a 19-year-old that was fatally shot by Chicago police this weekend as they responded to a domestic disturbance at his home. Police are calling the death of a second victim, a 55-year-old grandmother, a mistake. The mayor is now demanding changes to how officers are trained to respond to certain situations.
Let's bring in CNN Law Enforcement Analyst and retired NYPD Detective Harry Houck and CNN Political Commentator and Professor at Morehouse College Marc Lamont Hill.
Gentlemen, thank you so much, I hope you both had a wonderful Christmas. We're back at it, and we're back at it with another story.
Harry, we know the details are scarce right now about what exactly happened in those coming minutes. But we do know a couple of things, domestic calls for police are kind of the norm. They're regularly, you get a lot of those calls. We also know they're dangerous and precarious. The situations unfold rapidly. There's a lot of tension going on. Police have to diffuse a lot of emotion.
What is the protocol though, of when you arrive on scene and someone is swinging an aluminum bat, a teenager?
HARRY HOUCK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Listen, everything is different here. When police -- you got to remember, the father called the police based on reports that I've read, the father had called police because he was afraid for his own life that his son threatened to hit him with a baseball bat.
Now you got police officers responding. Imagine what the police officers are thinking.
Now, if the police officers are responding and at the time when they got there, if and like I said, we don't know yet, if this gentleman, LeGrier, came at the police officers with a baseball bat, the officers have only one thing to do, if they have some time to tell him to drop the bat, they would do that. If not, and if he's too close and the officers' lives are in danger, then the police officers have to use force necessary to stop the attack. And that's firing their weapons at him.
[06:55:28] PEREIRA: And Marc, that's the trouble here, they called for help for the police.
MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right.
PEREIRA: They felt in danger, the child or the young man is killed because he comes at police with this gun. But the problem is, also the fact that this woman, an innocent bystander, the neighbor that was called to open the door for police gets shot to death.
HILL: Absolutely, there are range of things that are problem here, part of why people are reluctant to call police in certain communities is because they're worried that this is the kind of outcome they're going to get, that they'll be shot rather than supported.
Harry said we need more information until we get that information it's difficult to make a definite determination.
What we do know is that the officers have a right to use force under circumstances.
One issue that's been raised by other law enforcement experts is, could a taser have been enough? Could there have been other non lethal forms of force that could have been used to neutralize, particularly since this man called the police for help not to kill his son.
PEREIRA: Would a taser have been effective here in what you know, Harry, I don't know, we don't know everything, could a taser been effective?
HOUCK: It might have if the officers had time to pull a taser. You know, the fact is that, you know, from some of the sketching reports I was seeing is that, he came down the steps, off the steps at the police officers. And there wouldn't have been no time to pull your taser and fire it.
The most effective way to take him down, prevent any injuries to the police officers would be pulling their weapon, because remember, sometimes the taser does not work.
PEREIRA: OK, I want to read to you, Mayor Emanuel there's obviously have been a lot of calls in the Chicago area recently for him to step down, increasing now. I want to read to you what he said over the weekend.
"This afternoon I directed the new acting chief administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority and, the interim Superintendent of Police to meet with each other as soon as possible to review the Crisis Intervention Team training around how officers respond to mental health crisis calls. I've asked that they determine the deficiencies and the current training and determine what steps can be taken immediately to address them."
Now, the family has said, that this young man had some mental health issues. The mother disputes that.
HILL: Right.
PEREIRA: Regardless of all of that, training needs to be assess here in Chicago, Marc, as far as you're concerned?
HILL: Oh, without a doubt. Whether there's mental health issues or not, there is certainly a need for new training. But, I think, particularly when people are called for mental health issues, we need different some sort of special training because there's a different level of sensitivity that need a different level of tactic that's needed.
One question is, did the police follow the rules? Did the police break the law? That's one set of question that we always run to. But the next type of question, honestly, the more set of questions, the more interesting set of questions is, is the law enough? Do we need to change the law itself to respond to a different set of circumstances so people don't keep getting killed?
PEREIRA: Harry, let me listen -- let me play this sound -- let's listen to the friend of the woman that was killed. I want you to hear this sound. It's really emotional.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JACQUILINE WALKER, FRIEND OF BETTIE JONES: Why do you got to shoot first and ask questions later? It's ridiculous. You all, somebody needs to do something about this. This is ridiculous. What about the taser? Taser them down, don't start shooting people, innocent people.
(END VIDEO CLIP) PEREIRA: A lot of emotion in that, you can hear that quickly, Harry, how can you counteract that idea that a lot of people feel that police shoot first and ask questions later?
HOUCK: Well, you know, I don't know how you can really counteract that because right now this woman is saying police -- the police officers shot first and then asked questions later. She wasn't there, so she's just making comments, you know, of what she thinks it happened here. She's just assuming what happened because this is the hatred for the police.
Yes, there's a young man dead, but we very might well have had a police officer killed getting hit in the head with a baseball bat.
Now, people got to remember, police officers are out there, they don't get paid to get hurt. They don't get paid to get killed. So in the event somebody comes at them with a weapon, police officers can shoot, then yes, they can use a taser but, you know, it's not often effective and you don't have the time to do it.
PEREIRA: Quick response for that.
HILL: We're all responding and we weren't there, so I think that's the major commentary.
PEREIRA: Good point.
HILL: But I think that what the woman is saying is not that the police just in this case shoot first and asked questions later, is that there's a general pattern, not just in the United States, not just in Illinois but in Chicago, we've been covering it for the last month and so, I think, is a very -- there's a warrant of skepticism. We can't operate from the assumption that the police were right until we prove otherwise. We need to operate from the assumption that everybody needs to be investigated, all facts have to be uncovered, and police don't deserve the benefit of doubt.
HOUCK: And we can't assume the wrong either.
HILL: Like I said, we shouldn't assume anything --
PEREIRA: Gentlemen.
HILL: We should give no one the benefit of the doubt, we should investigate.
PEREIRA: We're going to leave it there because we'll be talking a whole lot more about this.
Marc Lamont Hill, Harry Houck, we appreciate you.
[06:59:59] All right we're following a whole lot of news this morning. Let's get right to it.
>
