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Pentagon Announces Leader of ISIS Killed in Raid; President Biden to Address Nation on Killing of ISIS Leader; Winter Storms Threatening Large Parts of U.S.; Some Athletes in Beijing Will Not Attend Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Protest over Human Rights Abuses in China. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 03, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: A real commitment to liberal values means an open dialogue that doesn't immediately assume the worst about people who say disagreeable things.

And as Suzanne Nossel, the head of PEN America cautioned, "If these suspensions were prompted solely by offensive speech rather than bias conduct, they could add to the existing sense of chill in our public discourse regarding sensitive topics. The drive to appease upset stakeholders must not override an institution's commitment to free speech," she said.

So what are the takeaways? First, these viruses of group hate will only be defeated when we all take them as a personal insult, not to our tribal identity, but to our common humanity. Second, some historic tragedies are not like anything else. The holocaust is the holocaust, just as slavery is slavery. Third, and finally, in order to build the broadest possible coalition to confront bigotry, we need to distinguish between poorly chosen words and that that are repeatedly designed to promote division hate.

And that's your Reality Check.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: A very needed one, John, thank you.

NEW DAY continues right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

KEILAR: And a very good morning to our viewers here in the U.S. and around the world. It is Thursday, February 3rd. And breaking just moments ago, President Biden confirming that the United States carried out a counterterrorism raid in Syria that has killed the leader of ISIS.

So this is the first video that we are seeing of this operation. It is just in to CNN. And these are the first images from the scene showing some of the aftermath of this mission. The Pentagon so far not saying much about this except that it was, in their words, successful.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. has targeted Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the Idlib province before. Syrian Defense Forces say this operation killed 13 people including six children. But again, the breaking news, which is hugely significant, if true, this statement from the White House that the ISIS leader is dead, or as they say, off the battlefield. Barbara Starr with the very latest from the Pentagon. Barbara, what can you tell us?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: This is someone named al- Qurashi. He is the successor to the ISIS leadership, of course, after al-Baghdadi was killed a few years ago during the Trump administration. We expect to hear more from the White House.

What the Pentagon is saying so far is that this was a successful special operations mission. This tells us that special operations went in on the ground by helicopter, and this would have been some of the most elite, highly trained special operations forces. It is our understanding this was something called JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command. They oversee units like SEAL team six, the Army's Delta Force. These are the best of the best. They are expert at what they do.

We also are able to now confirm one of their helicopters suffered a mechanical problem, they were not able to fly that helicopter out, and it was blown up by U.S. forces, of course, so it would not fall into any enemy hands.

Syrian civil defense folks on the ground say 13 people, including six children, were killed. It will be investigated, we're told, how that all happened. Right now, no one is saying that U.S. forces were responsible. There were a number of explosions on the site. There was a lot of gunfire. Some of the other options that we have seen in the past could be that explosives at the site blew up. We just don't know yet. That will be a major question to be asked. But it looks like President Biden, like many of his predecessors now, has what he will consider a win in the counterterrorism column.

BERMAN: Look, just so people know, Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi taken off the battlefield, as Biden says, President Biden says, the U.S. had offered a $10 million reward in exchange for leading to his arrest. In 2020, the State Department designated him as a specially designated global terrorist. This is a guy who met the former leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in an Iraqi prison in 2004. So this would be a significant operation and a significant removal from the theater there. Barbara Starr, thank you very much.

KEILAR: Well, let's go now to the White House and White House correspondent Jeremy Diamond, who is there. This is something that we're going to be hearing more about, Jeremy, from the president later this morning. JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

President Biden is set to address the nation at 9:30 this morning in the Roosevelt Room after announcing that this operation was carried out successfully, killing the leader of ISIS. And we saw the White House actually tweeted out a picture also of President Biden in the Situation Room, it appears, yesterday, as this operation was being conducted.

[08:05:05]

You can see the president at the head of the table, sitting next to the Vice President Kamala Harris, Deputy National Security Adviser, it appears, Jon Finer, and several other officials observing this mission, it appears, as it was taking place, at least that's the indication from this White House image. Obviously, we have seen ISIS step up its operations with more emboldened actions in recent weeks, including with that attempted raid on a prison in Syria. And so obviously it's notable that this operation took place when it did and that it was able to be successful. As you guys mentioned, President Trump, former president Trump, was able to take out the former leader of ISIS, al-Baghdadi, and so now President Biden also to his name having the -- able to take the credit for taking out the next leader of ISIS.

KEILAR: And let's talk about that, because there are some similarities, Barbara, when looking at the death of al-Baghdadi, taking out first leader of ISIS. It was in the same area, and this was, you mentioned, JSOC in this operation. Same in that one. Delta Force was involved in that operation.

STARR: Yes, I think it is really interesting to shed a little light on how special operations conduct these missions. There is something called tier one units, that is SEAL team six, Delta. All special operations forces are capable of doing this. But the most dangerous missions, the most covert missions that they do go directly to a president for his approval. And that is apparently what has happened here.

So, what we can discern from this, because it all unfolded over the last several hours, they had some piece of intelligence that the person they were looking for was at this site, and then what they do is they begin to watch it, proof of life, if you will. They keep intelligence eyes from overhead, from any assets they have on a site to determine that the person is actually there. That where civilians might be, how they want to go about those last few minutes of launching their attack on this site to try and minimize civilian casualties and get who they want.

So they would have had eyes on this location for some period of time before they launched the attack. And that's part of what makes it so dangerous. When these kinds of special forces units go in, they go in -- to use a cliche, they go in hot, very hot. They go in with overwhelming firepower to try and make the mission as short as they can, to minimize their own time on the ground, to get the target, kill the target, if that is the mission, and get themselves out of there safely. We saw that all the way back to the raid that killed Usama bin Laden

in 2011 in Pakistan. These are the ways these missions are conducted -- short, sharp, lethal, hot, get in, get out, and know for a fact your target is there. That's what they take to the president, the knowledge that they have, the intelligence they have, and they say to any president, look, here's what we can do, here is what the risk may be, do you want to sign off on it?

BERMAN: Barbara, what is the current status of ISIS right now in terms of what they're doing and their capabilities, and the significance, perhaps, of the death of their leader?

STARR: Well, I think that is something the intelligence community will assess now, the impact of specifically of the killing of this man and who may be next in line. We saw that for years with Al Qaeda, subsequent leaders all the time.

There are people in the intelligence community, top leadership in the Pentagon, that will tell you ISIS is not down and out. It may not be the same organization it was under Baghdadi, the terrible killing of so many people in Iraq and Syria, including American hostages. But ISIS has morphed. There is no way around it. There's ISIS capability in Afghanistan. There is ISIS in Africa. ISIS continues in the Middle East. Whether they are the same centralized organization, able to direct operations, able to potentially threaten the homeland, may be a question, but there are ISIS cells, there is ISIS capability, and certainly they have fighters around the world that they appeal to and that join their ranks in these various locations.

KEILAR: Barbara, and Jeremy, thank you so much to both of you. And this story, of course, is developing. So we're going to be covering this more throughout the show. The president, we've learned, he says he's going to deliver remarks to the American people later this morning, so we'll be awaiting that as well.

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BERMAN: In the meantime, this huge winter storm stretching more than 2,500 miles from the southwest all the way to New England. It is threatening to paralyze parts of the country with ice, snow, dangerously cold temperatures. We're talking about more than 110 million people under winter weather alerts. And in Texas, there is concern, because there is reason to have concern based on the past, about the power grid. CNN's Ed Lavandera is in Texas. Ed, what can you tell us?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John. It was just a year ago that we saw a catastrophic failure of the state's power grid here in Texas during last February's winter storm. So far this morning, after several hours of sleet and snow falling over much of the state, we have no indication that there are any major issues with the state's power grid right now. But ERCOT, which is that organization that runs this state's power grid system, says that they are issuing a winter weather watch through most of this weekend. Temperatures are expected to be below freezing until this weekend. So the peak use of power we have not seen just yet. So we will continue to monitor that.

And I can assure you that there are millions of people across this state who are just really reeling from what happened last year, anxiously waiting to see how all of this is going to unfold. But right now we have sleet and snow falling over much of the state. That's causing widespread flight cancellations, nearly 4,000 flights canceled across the United States. And we can also show you a graphic there of the percentage of cancellations at the major airports here from Texas to Chicago. A significant winter storm here, John, rolling through this morning. We're expecting to see, depending on where you are, ice and sleet, snow here in Dallas, Dallas-Fort Worth area, expected to start falling in the next couple of hours. We have seen ice and sleet throughout much of the overnight hours, and that's already making roadways a mess throughout much of the state. And this is expected to continue throughout the day today. John?

BERMAN: Ed Lavandera, hang in there for us, appreciate it.

All right, that's a live look now at the Olympic torch in Beijing, or where it will be ahead of tomorrow's opening ceremony. But some athletes will not be there, deciding instead to boycott the opening ceremony as a way to protest China's human rights abuses. That's according to reporting from Josh Rogin, a columnist from "The Washington Post" and a CNN political analyst. And Josh joins us now. I can see you there, Josh. Give us a sense of what you've learned here. How many athletes are we talking, from where, how is this being coordinated?

JOSE ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right, John. For months, Tibetan, Uyghur, Hong Kong, and Mongolian activists have been meeting with Olympic athletes from lots of different western countries, the United States, Canada, European countries, et cetera, and urging them to, first of all, boycott the games. But if they weren't able to do that, to at least not attend the opening ceremonies so that they might not become a prop of the propaganda efforts of genocidal regime.

And these athletes are under a ton of pressure both from the International Olympic Committee, from their national committees, from their sponsors, to just shut up and just ignore the fact that the Chinese government is perpetrating mass atrocities in the countries that they're in. And the Chinese government has even threatened to arrest them.

But many of them, we protect their names because we don't want them to come under additional scrutiny before they actually do the protest, but I've confirmed that many of them have told activists that they will not attend the opening ceremonies, and they might not even say why tomorrow, they might wait until they get out of Beijing just to make sure they don't get arrested, as the very simple, least thing that they could do to make sure that as China tries to burnish its image and its legitimacy through these Olympics that somebody notices that there is a genocide going on.

KEILAR: To make sure they don't get arrested.

ROGIN: Yes, that's right, Brianna. So the Chinese government publicly threatened to punish any international athlete or any international citizens, actually, who violate any Chinese law, and that could be mentioning anything to deal with any Chinese government practices that the Chinese government thinks are just fine. That includes the mass internment of Uyghurs, the crackdown in Hong Kong, the repression of the Tibetans, and all of that.

Now, is the Chinese government going to start really pulling people down off podiums and putting them in chains on international TV? Probably not. But we can't be sure. I talked to the State Department, they have plans in place just in case these athletes need to be speeded out of the stadium and put on a plane or headed to the embassy. Who knows, really?

But at the very least they're under a ton of pressure not just from the Chinese government but also from the International Olympic Committee which has been defending the Chinese government, refusing to meet with the human rights activists, and refusing to take any of these concerns seriously at all.

[08:15:07]

Now, these athletes are in a terrible position. They don't have the money and the power of the sponsors and the governments. They're trying to, you know, live their dreams and compete and win for their countries. But they know that their mere participation can be used by the Chinese government, surely will be used by the Chinese government to legitimize its hosting of the games, which is based on making everybody shut up about the genocide.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, if there are notable holes in the ranks when the delegations march in, that will be a notable protest and the world will take notice.

Josh Rogin, thank you so much for your reporting.

ROGIN: Exactly, anytime.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: While Russia continues its military buildup along Ukraine's border, President Biden has ordered the deployment of about 3,000 U.S. troops to Eastern Europe in a show of support for NATO allies.

A Kremlin spokesman telling CNN's Matthew Chance that they're worried. They're looking at this and worried about this troop deployment.

Matthew is joining us now from Kyiv.

That's probably the reaction that the U.S. is hoping for, Matthew. Tell us more.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, although it does play into the Russian narrative in the sense that the Kremlin has all along saying, look, it is not us posing a threat to security in Europe, it is the continued expansion of NATO, the continuing deployments of U.S. forces. And so, what they're doing is taking this deployment of thousands more

troops to Europe by the United States and saying, look, the U.S. is pumping up tension once again in Europe, and the Kremlin spokesman told me last night, look, this is the best proof we have that Russia has reason to be worried. Again, so they are, you know, sidestepping the blame for the tension saying, look, you know, this is what we have to contend with.

They're also saying this morning that it would be understandable whatever security, whatever measures Russia takes to protect its own security. And so they're sort of flagging there could be a response to this as well. There has been reaction here in the Ukrainian capital as well. It has been somewhat kinder. The Ukrainian officials I spoke to saying that they welcome this bolstering of NATO's eastern flank.

But that's not enough for them. They also want that renewed commitment by the United States to security in Europe, to extend to them as well. And what the Ukrainian official told me last night when I spoke to him, he said, look, we want this to be coupled with more weapons delivered from the United States, particularly of sophisticated air defense systems.

So, you know, that's what Ukrainians are looking for, not just more U.S. troops in NATO countries in eastern Europe, but even more of a U.S. commitment to Ukraine as well.

KEILAR: All right, Matthew, this is developing, we'll continue to follow it, Matthew Chance in Ukraine.

Coming up, some more on the breaking news, President Biden says military forces have killed the leader of ISIS in Syria. He's set to deliver remarks later this morning which we're going to be bringing to you live.

Plus, Rudy Giuliani dancing, singing his way back into the spotlight? Why attempting to overthrow democracy wasn't a disqualifier for a popular TV show.

BERMAN: And new fallout from the groundbreaking lawsuit by former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores, suing the NFL for racial discrimination. This morning, new coaches speaking out, one will join me next.

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[08:22:07]

BERMAN: New fallout this morning from the major discrimination lawsuit against the NFL filed by former Dolphin coach Brian Flores who sat down with me yesterday and explained how it felt learning that a job with the New York Giants he felt had already been filled even before he was set to interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN FLORES, FORMER MIAMI DOLPHINS HEAD COACH: It was humiliating, to be quite honest. There was disbelief, there was anger, there was, you know, a wave of emotions for a lot of reasons. And I think this is -- this is why, you know, we filed the lawsuit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining me now is former Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis.

Coach, thank you for being with us this morning. You say you had a similar experience of your own. Where and when?

MARVIN LEWIS, FORMER CINCINNATI BENGALS HEAD COACH: Well, John, I don't think it was quite to that magnitude that way, but I do think that there came a time when, oh, gosh, we're back in 2001, where -- 2002 when the opportunity to interview for a job with the club, the Carolina Panthers, and I had remember being at home, and listening on TV, on ESPN or whatever the night before where they made an announcement, that one of the anchors made an announcement that John Fox, who is a very good friend, would be named the head coach of the Carolina Panthers on Friday.

And literally on Tuesday morning, Coach Billick walks in my office and said, he got off the phone with Ozzie Newsome and the Panthers would like me to come down and interview for the position. And I said, Brian, I heard last night they're going to name fox to the coach on Friday.

He went back and they talked to the people, no, no, no, that's not true. I went down there and went through it all, and everything, and they named John the head coach on Friday. And, you know, it's -- I think like Brian just said, you know, he is in there and you're going through it, and he already has this in the back of his mind. And it is, it is a frustrating situation that he's just gone through, no question in his mind.

And so I really, you know, these things that have gone on, that he's speaking of, this happened to him. And he wouldn't just make this up and bring this, if this wasn't true and that's what's disappointing and it is really disillusioning a lot of these young black coaches as they continue to pursue their careers and want the opportunity to continue to advance.

BERMAN: One of the major questions outstanding now is will more current and former coaches join this lawsuit?

[08:25:05]

Have you considered joining?

LEWIS: Well, I don't have -- I don't think I have the -- I'm not in the -- I don't have the grounds to stand on that way, as he does. You know what I'm saying.

So, no, I haven't considered joining. I think his position is unique. There may be others who had similar -- were put in similar situations. But I was not in -- you always hear what's going to happen and may happen and so forth. But I felt, you know, one of the last interviews I had since leaving the Bengals that the club was sincere.

You always know there may be -- they may have a first choice in mind. But they don't necessarily know they're going to land that first choice. You have to go into it, just like Brian said, you got to go into it and really, you know, knock their socks off.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: You don't feel personally -- so you don't feel in your own personal experience that you have been held back or decisions made about you because of your race?

LEWIS: I would say this, I think most times, most situations, decision-makers have an idea of what their next coach is going to be like. What he's going to look like, what he's going to do. I mean, people said that.

And I think they have an idea. Sometimes it is the offense or defense or so forth. But I think some guys, what they don't understand they're having a head coach.

BERMAN: Can I ask you one other question this came up? Brian Flores says that the dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered to pay him a thousand -- $100,000 per game to lose games. Did anyone ever ask you to lose games?

LEWIS: No, sir. And, you know, I mean, when I took over, when Mr. Brown, Mike Brown hired me to be the head coach of the Bengals, we had the first pick of the draft. And but I thought it was very, very important and they 100 percent agreed that we win as many games as we could all the time.

So, there is no way in the world I would lose football games. That's just putting what we do, minimizing what we do and the effect it has on the entire building, the players, because they're not guaranteed the next year to come back from the bottom.

BERMAN: How do you feel about -- how would you feel, how do you feel as a former coach, how would you feel as a current coach or current player if you knew that there was an owner offering to pay a coach to throw games?

LEWIS: I just don't think it's right. I don't know how we -- we talk about integrity in the NFL and so forth, how this can be part of the model and the platform that you're on. It is not -- it is not right.

BERMAN: Coach Marvin Lewis, a big fan for a long time, thank you for joining us this morning.

LEWIS: You're welcome, John.

BERMAN: So democracy be damned if it is good TV. Rudy Giuliani invited to sing and dance on a game show. But wait until you hear what the judges did when he removed his mask.

KEILAR: Is it good TV though? Is it? And live pictures right now of the National Prayer Breakfast, the

president is about to speak following his announcement that the U.S. military has killed the leader of ISIS in Syria.

We'll bring this to you live.

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