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New Day

Complicated Profile Emerging of the Orlando Terrorist; Trump Downplaying National Polls; U.S. Diplomats Urge Obama To Strike Assad Regime;. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired June 17, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Such a great point. We are all following your lead --

TERESA JACOBS, MAYOR, ORANGE COUNTY, FLORIDA: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- with your message of love. We've heard that repeatedly in the past few tragic days. Mayor Teresa Jacobs and Demetrice Naulings, thank you for both sharing your personal stories with us.

JACOBS (Hugging Naulings): I love you, baby.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN HOST: A dynamic duo this morning with such a great moment, and voice, and message after such a difficult week. We are going to turn, after a break, back to presidential politics. Live by the poll, die by the poll. I think that's what Donald Trump must be thinking. He's had some rough weeks. He was up in the polls and now these poll numbers show that he may have quite a bit of trouble in his campaign. So what can he do now to turn things around? We'll discuss it right after this.

[07:30:45]

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[07:34:40] GREGORY: We are back, and back to politics this morning. Donald Trump downplaying some new national polls that show him trailing Hillary Clinton now, and another poll showing seven in 10 people have an unfavorable opinion of him, which is devastating as the presumptive GOP nominee seems to be at war with party leaders.

We want to discuss it all. "New York Times" political correspondent, Patrick Healy, is here and CNN political commentator, senior contributor to "The Daily Caller", Matt Lewis, as well. Good morning, guys.

[07:35:00] Patrick, let me start with you. Here you have high unfavorables for Donald Trump at a time -- he's on his third week now -- finishing his third week of bad publicity, of self-inflicted wounds. And he's now raising money in Texas, and not anywhere near the swing states where he needs to go to actually start adding to his political base.

PATRICK HEALY, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": No, exactly. He needs to be in Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and Virginia, rather than just presuming that all of these swing voters are going to come to him just because they dislike Hillary Clinton so much.

But he's sort of trapped right now, David. He needs to raise money. They're not on the air anywhere near like Hillary Clinton is or her super PAC is in terms of fighting back to her message. And he's just going to these safe places, letting the crowds give him the love that fuels him and that he grows off of.

CAMEROTA: But where the money is.

HEALY: And where the money is.

GREGORY: And he does need to raise money.

HEALY: There's no question he needs to raise money but those unfavorable numbers are really troubling. Hillary Clinton hasn't even begun to start uniting the Democratic Party. She hasn't even started beginning to do real business with Bernie Sanders --

GREGORY: Right.

HEALY: -- and Trump's heading in the right direction.

GREGORY: Can I just say one other thing for Matt Lewis?

CAMEROTA: Yes.

GREGORY: I think what's interesting, too, is the kind of political malpractice because there's a great opportunity here, Matt Lewis, for him to start defining Hillary Clinton who is, of course, vulnerable herself. Very high negatives. You have the I.G. report about her emails. He's missing an opportunity to really define her and leaving all the room for her to define him.

MATT LEWIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, and talk about a missed opportunity here. Donald Trump surprisingly closed out the Republican nomination long before Hillary Clinton did. She still hasn't really, completely finished off Bernie, but she's now the presumptive Democratic nominee, I think it's safe to say.

But, Donald Trump had this big head start where he really could have started to consolidate support and define Hillary Clinton. I think the opposite has happened. I think that he has squandered these weeks. This is a time when candidates get defined, but I think Donald Trump is the one who is being negatively defined right now.

HEALY: You're so right. He's leaving money on the table, if I can just say. I mean, Syria -- if he made -- if he found more deft ways to make connections between Hillary Clinton's State Department, the rise of ISIS, Syria -- but instead, he's just recycling these old arguments.

CAMEROTA: And that leads us to Richard Armitage, who was the Deputy Secretary of State under George W. Bush, who has come out -- this national security official -- and said I can't, in my own good conscience, vote for Donald Trump. I will be voting for Hillary. We've heard other people say I don't support Donald Trump, but he says

that he's going to go as far, Matt Lewis, as voting for Hillary Clinton. Do you -- you know, Jeffrey Lord, a Trump supporter, sort of scoffed at this and said he would never have been in the Donald Trump camp anyway. Do you think that that's a big deal?

LEWIS: Well, I don't think it's a big deal, in and of itself, so if Armitage doesn't support Donald Trump that doesn't matter, but this is actually a microcosm of a larger problem. Donald Trump has a lot of problems. He's got the fact that the electorate is dramatically different. He won a primary but now the general electorate is different. I think the media coverage has changed.

And then, on top of it all, you have Republican voters and Republican opinion leaders, especially in the national security community, who are not rallying around him. So not only does he have to worry about getting undecided swing voters, he has to worry about keeping his base together. That's a huge problem.

GREGORY: Right. So, Matt, here's why I think Richard Armitage does matter, in and of itself, Patrick, because first of all, he could be a leading indicator for Colin Powell, with whom he's exceptionally close. He was his top aide at the State Department. These were not -- these were guys who had problems with the Iraq war. We know all of that. They didn't become Bush Republicans on national security but they are national security Republicans.

If Powell were to come out and endorse Hillary Clinton, or if there are others like Armitage in the Republican national security sphere who endorse here, that could have a real impact on Independent voters.

HEALY: Oh, you're absolutely right, David. If Colin Powell were to come out in favor of Hillary Clinton it would be staggering, and it would be a very hard thing for Donald Trump to build up a real kind of moral authority argument against Colin Powell. That somehow oh, if it's Colin Powell, we don't care about him. He's not tough enough.

But the thing is this gives such an advantage to Hillary Clinton to be able to not run a traditional scorched earth Democratic versus Republican race. These Republicans are falling in line with her. She seems like she's sort of the patriotic, country first, rising above -- she would love to be able to run a race that's not just pure Democrat versus Republican usual stuff where she seems to be uniting the country and Donald Trump is seen as just shouting from the sidelines.

CAMEROTA: Matt, we have 30 seconds left. Do you think that any of this means that Donald Trump's campaign is in trouble, and I know you'll say yes because, obviously, this is all the indicators? But, the media and pundits have gotten it wrong every step of the way when it comes to Donald Trump and he is full of surprises.

LEWIS: Yes, you can't count him out but I think his campaign's in grave danger right now. This is when campaigns are defined, it's when candidates are defined, and I think he has really missed an opportunity -- a window that he had and he squandered it. He can get it back, but I'm telling you what. Nothing he is doing is leading us to believe that he's going to do that.

[07:40:00] CAMEROTA: Matt, Patrick, thank you very much. Great to get your perspective.

LEWIS: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: All right, on to the other story that we have sadly been covering all week. The Orlando killer seemed like a devout Muslim to some but he may have been hiding a secret. We will talk to an author about Islam and homosexuality, next.

[07:40:35]

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[07:43:57] CAMEROTA: A complicated profile emerging of the Orlando terrorist, a radical Muslim who hated gay people, all the while trolling gay dating apps. So what does Islam and the Quran say about being gay?

Here with some answers is the author of "In the Land of Invisible Women", Dr. Qanta Ahmed. Great to see you, Dr. Ahmed. Thanks so much for being here.

DR. QANTA AHMED, AUTHOR, "IN THE LAND OF INVISIBLE WOMEN", SLEEP DISORDERS SPECIALIST: A pleasure.

CAMEROTA: So we've been talking all week about whether or not being Muslim is incompatible with being gay. What does the Quran say?

AHMED: The Quran is very clear. It recognizes only heterosexual marriage that is between a man and a woman. Any other sexual activity is deemed as a moral transgression. The Quran specifically talks about male homosexuality, but very important -- very important is the Quran specifies no punishment. There is nothing in the Quran about punishment for anyone that decides that they engage in those activities.

CAMEROTA: That's interesting. So you are not allowed to be gay, but if you are gay you are not allowed to be punished -- or, you shouldn't be punished.

[07:45:00] AHMED: There is no prescribed punishment, and also, there are two other powerful rules. Islam is very protective of an individual's privacy. If anybody goes intruding on an individual's privacy, including their private sexual practices, that is a violation of the Muslim's privacy. And, for anyone to claim somebody's engaged in these activities could be also a sin of defamation.

CAMEROTA: OK, so fast-forward 1,400 years from the Quran to today. Are modern Muslims, today, allowed to be openly gay?

AHMED: I think the answer is that one can be Muslim and one can be gay. From what my reading and my knowledge is that many Muslims around the world are living these lives in fear and underground because fast-forward 1,400 years we've had severe punishments on gay Muslims around the world that are not sanctioned by the principles of Islam.

For instance, if you think there's been a sexual transgression the Quran requires you to have four witnesses of the act, an impossible evidentiary standard. So it really can't be prosecuted but Muslims around the world are killed and executed for this.

CAMEROTA: In the most barbaric fashion, the way that we have heard of things happening in Iran and Saudi Arabia, it's disgusting.

AHMED: According to legal scholars, over 4,000 homosexuals have been executed by Iran since 1979. In Saudi Arabia, punishable by death but very rarely has anyone been prosecuted for that. In the Afghanistan's Taliban they have dug pits and put individuals accused of homosexuality and collapsed walls on them. Absolutely counter to Islam's prescription for how we should behave when these things occur.

CAMEROTA: So, in other words, you can understand why modern Muslims would not want to come out of the closet and be openly gay, given that that's what's going on in modern day around the world.

AHMED: And we can also understand that there is a real phenomenon of Muslim homophobia, which is additionally un-Islamic but it is sanctioned because prosecution or persecution of gay individuals is institutionalized in Muslim governments across -- very widely. More than 10 Muslim countries prosecute this with the death penalty.

CAMEROTA: OK, I want to talk about the term "Radical Islam". As you know, this has been hotly debated --

AHMED: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- this week, again, as it so often is because Donald Trump is aggravated that President Obama won't use the term. President Obama has basically said what would it matter? What would it change if I were to use the term? Where are you on that term?

AHMED: My feeling is it's very important. President Obama's theory is it would marginalize and vilify the entire religion. Our entire religion, myself as an observing Muslim observing Ramadan now, is vilified by the actions of radical Islamists. And I think the distinction is very important.

If these actions -- and I do believe the Orlando Jihadist was an Islamist. People claim he was mentally ill, he was intoxicated. That's not the reason. His motives were Islamist. That helps us distinguish and helps us engage the wider Muslim body to fight this. I think words are very important.

CAMEROTA: So, if the president were to say radical Islam, what does change? In other words, how does it help fight it?

AHMED: It helps, first of all, acknowledge there is an ideology that is not just the generic violent extremism, but a specific ideology which targets anyone that does not subscribe to the Taliban version, or the ISIS version, or the Hezbollah, or Hamas version. Versions which claim it is a religious duty to execute a Jew, to execute a gay, to execute a Yazidi. This has to be repudiated.

Unless we can have frank conversations -- people who are critics of the president feel that he's too weak and Muslims, like us, who are trying to make the distinction are marginalized from both directions.

CAMEROTA: And you have been so great about trying to educate people and trying to have that conversation. What else should Muslims be doing?

AHMED: I think that the disaster and the catastrophe that's befallen our country is an opportunity for us to reexamine why these acts can be adopted by Islamists, like ISIS, and where the role of Muslim states that have these punitive laws, which I call an invented Sharia, no basis in the Quran --

CAMEROTA: So, Saudi Arabia, Iran invented Sharia, you think?

AHMED: There are scholars who, for centuries, have claimed to develop these ideas, but if you look at any of these ideas that are counter to the Quran, the Quran always supersedes this.

CAMEROTA: And we need to keep getting that message out. Dr. Qanta Ahmed, thanks so much. Always great to talk to you.

AHMED: My pleasure.

CAMEROTA: Let's get over to David.

GREGORY: Thanks, Alisyn. Dozens of diplomats at the State Department demanding that President Obama take more significant action in Syria. Will the president consider airstrikes against Assad? Our counterterror experts are going to weigh in, coming up next.

[07:50:10]

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[07:53:45] GREGORY: To the fight against terrorism, now. In a new memo, more than 50 State Department diplomats calling on President Obama to order targeted airstrikes against Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria. They say getting tough with Assad is the only way to force him to the negotiating table.

Joining me now to discuss this and some warnings from the CIA director about the fight against ISIS, CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd, and senior editor for "The Daily Beast" and CNN contributor, Michael Weiss. Welcome to both you.

Michael, let me start with you. This is an interesting example of our diplomatic core breaking ranks with administration position with regard to Syria, and specifically ramping up airstrikes against Syria. This is all part of the broader fight on ISIS.

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE DAILY BEAST": Yes, and it's unprecedented. Fifty-one State Department officials, they're all said to be mid-ranking. But really, Sec. Kerry has been rather forceful about this. There is a consensus belief that you cannot deal with ISIS. ISIS is a manifestation of the problem caused by the Bashar al Assad regime.

Barack Obama's own State Department has said that we have more evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity than we did during Nuremberg, after the Holocaust, to indict the Third Reich on this particular regime.

GREGORY: So, Phil Mudd, what breaks this impasse within the administration? We know that as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton proposed more robust action in Syria, so did Gen. Petraeus, and President Obama has resisted it.

[07:55:00] PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: That's right. What breaks us, David, is what the president decides to do. Look, let's sort of frame this. In 2012, the president draws a red line in Syria and says the use of chemical weapons is outrageous. Nothing happens.

We're now four years later -- three and one-half years later -- and diplomats are saying we've negotiated with the Russians a ceasefire. Assad -- Bashar al Assad and Syria is violating the ceasefire every day. There's got to be a cost.

But consistently there's this tension, David, starting with that red line four years ago. The president is trying to get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq and meanwhile others, including diplomats, are saying unless we use military force as a stick -- as a way to prod Assad -- in other words, trying to bring the president back in, in other words, this is not going to succeed the effort to bring Assad to the negotiating table --

GREGORY: But, Michael, the president --

MUDD: -- negotiating this effort to get out and this effort to get in.

GREGORY: Right. Obviously, there's a desire to have negotiations move forward but I think it's striking that the head of the CIA, John Brennan, is on Capitol Hill yesterday. One of the things he's saying is that the fighting force strength of ISIS far exceeds what al Qaeda had.

We know that their desire to create a caliphate to actually control territory is what makes them powerful, but to me there's something of a fallacy of pursuing an airstrike strategy as opposed to -- how else are you going to take out tens, maybe more than 20,000 ISIS fighters without a serious commitment of U.S. ground troops?

WEISS: Right. Well, I mean we saw this during the Iraq war, right? The battle of second Fallujah in 2004. I mean, how many tons of ordinates were dropped on that city, and all it did was flush these guys out of Fallujah and put them up in Mosul as their new fallback barracks.

You cannot win a war with air power alone. And the real problem, David, is the United States is leaning overwhelming on proxy forces to fight this fight on the ground that are, at best, sectarian actors and at worst, in many cases, as bad as ISIS.

Right now, around Fallujah, Shia militias are rounding up Sunni Arabs and either disappearing them or torturing them, or if some of the sheiks who've gone on record are to be believed, burying them alive. Doing these kinds of atrocities that ISIS does to people.

And in Syria we're relying on the Kurds. I mean, we're dressing this up as a kind of pluralistic Syrian defense force but, overwhelmingly, this is a Kurdish proxy army. The problem there, they fight ISIS extremely well, but they are building their own nation state, Rojava. They are looking for their own autonomous feith (ph) in Northern Syria, which is going to create tensions with the Arab population in Syria.

GREGORY: So, while this is happening, Phil, there is the broader question of the influence of ISIS. To whatever extent ISIS is gaining or, what is closer to the case, losing key territory, they are still a source of inspiration. But you draw a distinction between al Qaeda and ISIS as lone wolves using ISIS as an excuse versus al Qaeda as an ideology. Explain what you mean.

MUDD: Yes, this is hugely significant, David. When we saw al Qaeda attacks and plots 10-15 years ago, al Qaeda would draw recruits in and explain to them and doctrinate them into the al Qaeda way of thinking. We have to get the Americans, the British, the Israelis out of the Middle East and then we, al Qaeda, can control those governments.

It was a very clear, ideological goal that went back centuries. What's happening with ISIS is fundamentally different. ISIS has said to folks, even in the past months, don't come here, to recruits. Attack where you are -- in Europe, in Orlando, in New York, and Washington.

What these recruits are doing is saying to themselves, whatever I'm angry about -- gay people, America -- we saw attacks on museums and tourist sites in Tunisia. Whatever I'm angry about ISIS gives me the validation to do what I want to do anyway. So, ISIS has become an excuse for recruits to attack, even those there's not a clear ideology I can follow that sort of brings all these attacks together.

GREGORY: Well, if there's ideology -- I mean, it is, in part, to kill non-believers based on a rigid view of Islam.

MUDD: Yes.

GREGORY: What other ends, Michael, are they trying to serve? Just a few second left.

WEISS: I have interviewed ISIS fighters who are secularists who drink alcohol and smoke marijuana. I say, why did you join? They say well, we hate the United States and they've done nothing to rescue our people in Syria.

GREGORY: Right. So they can take the young, the alienated, the angry, that hateful, and give them a sense of belonging?

WEISS: Yes, there was an Australian fighter, one who blew himself up at a checkpoint in Iraq, and if you read his blog, up until a certain point when he flipped to radical Islam --

GREGORY: Right.

WEISS: -- he sounded like a Chomsky follower. He was a far left antiglobalization activist.

GREGORY: And we should mention, CIA director Brennan warning, though, they could intensify their attacks on the West which is, of course, so alarming. Phil Mudd, Michael Weiss, thank you both very much for being here this morning.

WEISS: Sure.

GREGORY: We are following a lot of news this morning, so let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was texting with his wife when he was barricaded in that bathroom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The harrowing moments inside the club.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You could smell the blood. There was so much blood.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had information that he was going to put explosive vests on four people.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Grieving family members ask why does this keep happening?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE: I'm going to save your Second Amendment, folks.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Donald Trump, talking the talk, but he ain't walking the walk.

TRUMP: President Obama, he's blaming guns.

OBAMA: If we don't act we will keep seeing more massacres like this.

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It began in the voice of Donald Trump.