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CNN NEWSROOM

Trump and Rubio Hurl Personal Attacks; Medal of Honor Award; Ready to Strike ISIS; Tentative Truce Negotiated Between Syrian Rebels and Government; Rubio Continues Presidential Campaign in Tennessee. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired February 29, 2016 - 09:30   ET

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


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[09:30:07] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Hillary Clinton hoping to run up the score against Bernie Sanders. These are live pictures from Springfield, Massachusetts, where Clinton is holding a get out the vote rally this morning. Massachusetts, along with 12 other states, set to take part in tomorrow's Super Tuesday showdown.

Marco Rubio on the trail, too, this morning. He's in Alcoa, Tennessee. He's fighting for those 595 delegates at stake on Super Tuesday. Fifty-eight delegates are up for grabs in Tennessee.

Over the weekend, though, Rubio got rude and crude about Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's always calling me "little Marco." And I'll admit, the guy, he's taller than me. He's like 6'2", which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who's 5'2". Have you seen his hands? They're like this. And you know what they say about men with small hands. You can't trust them. You can't trust them. You can't trust them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right, joining me now, Michael Warren, a staff writer at "The Weekly Standard," and John Avlon, a CNN political analyst and editor-in-chief of "The Daily Beast."

Welcome to both of you.

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: John, good morning. John, it's like high school, except when I ran for student body president in high school, I did not make small hands jokes. I didn't win either. So, hey. You wrote speech --

AVLON: And that might have been the difference, Carol.

COSTELLO: I don't know. Maybe I should have done that. You wrote speeches for Rudy Giuliani. Would you include that line?

AVLON: No. No. But -- but there's been a -- we're -- we're defining deviancy down in the Republican presidential primary and it's been going on for some time. Even in the last cycle we saw that, you know, the more responsible you were, the least good -- well you do in the polls, which helped account for Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain and other folks' rise that time around. And, of course, Trump has completely redefined what the bound of acceptable is. So it's -- it's no small irony that now Rubio's getting a ton of press for taking a page out of the Trump playbook and some Trump supporters are acting terribly offended. But -- but, of course, it's not just about Trump. It's about the conditions the Republican Party has created by shrinking their base and elevating conservative populists, you get a context in which playing to cheap seats is a winning strategy. And so it -- it -- this is a -- a perfect storm that's led us to become stupid in America. Congratulations, everybody.

COSTELLO: Oh, my goodness.

OK, Michael, maybe the strategy will work, but Marco Rubio is so far behind in the latest national poll it doesn't seem like anything will make any difference.

MICHAEL WARREN, STAFF WRITER, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": Well, I don't know about that. And, you know, there are things bigger than polls here to stand for. Conservative principles. I disagree with John that, you know, the Republican Party's embrace of conservatism, tenuous as that sometimes is, is to blame for this. I mean let's be honest here, Marco Rubio, I've covered him. I've covered all the presidential candidates. They talk about policy. They talk about the things they want to do for the country and nobody cares.

And then Donald Trump gets up there and says insults like this -- actually, I would say much worse than this particular insult that Rubio slew at him, and -- and he gets all the coverage. I mean not to pick on CNN, all the networks, all the cable networks do this. But, you know, for two weeks, in the end of August, 77 percent of the political coverage was about Donald Trump. There were 16 other Republican candidates. So I think that, you know, we in the media have a lot of blame here if we want to wring our hands about the way that --

COSTELLO: All right, all right, I must interject. I want to interject -- I want to interject one second. We have given the public Donald Trump speeches. At some point, don't you have to look to his supporters and say, isn't it your fault you're supporting this man, all those Republicans in the audience? Don't --

WARREN: Well, look -- well, do we think --

COSTELLO: I mean if you don't like Donald Trump, that's fine, but -- but people are supporting them.

WARREN: Right, but do we think --

COSTELLO: And isn't it their fault in the end? They're listening to the same stuff you are.

WARREN: But -- yes, but don't we think that Donald Trump's celebrity has a lot to do with it? I agree that, look, he's -- he's actually figured out a lot of things that are wrong with the Republican Party and the way it's currently constituted, but he's very similar in many ways to Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. Do we think if either of one of those candidates had been running this time around, they would be doing as well? I don't think so. I think the attention --

AVLON: But -- but --

WARREN: That Donald Trump is a big part of the reason he's doing so well because it's all any of us talk about.

AVLON: Yes, but, Michael, I -- Michael, I think, you know, you're definitely hitting on something with regard to the fact of his celebrity. He is a celebrity demagogue and he understands very well how to use the media's conflict bias to promote himself. But I think you fundamentally misunderstood the point I was trying to make. The point is not conservatism, it's conservative populism. It's people who profit politically off division and dumbing it down. And Donald Trump talks around a seventh grade, you know, level to folks and people seem to respond. So it's no surprise when candidates respond in kind.

And as you head into Super Tuesday with the new CNN poll support his support increasing, not decreasing after things like, you know, refusing to denounce the KKK, you know, that speaks to a larger problem in the coalition that's bigger than the media.

[09:35:07] WARREN: Well, the poll -- the poll was actually taken before any of the KKK controversy -- or most of the poll was taken before the KKK controversy.

AVLON: You know, but just -- just, you know, controversy TK, you know, it's a rolling boil. I mean how about reforming libel laws and, you know, wanting to, you know, suggest that maybe it's time to bring the sedition act back. I mean, you know, pick your day and there's a new one to tick off.

COSTELLO: All right, I have to leave it there. Michael Warren, John Avlon, thanks to both of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, CNN's Clarissa Ward just returned from one of the most dangerous regions in war-torn Syria. Her exclusive report, next.

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CLARISSA WARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are snipers all around, but this is now the only road to get into Aleppo.

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COSTELLO: Later this morning, the president will award the Medal of Honor to a Navy SEAL. Edward Byers Jr. helped rescue an American hostage being held by the Taliban. Here's CNN's Michelle Kosinski with how the rescue went down.

[09:40:09] (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As a Navy SEAL, Edward Byers Jr. is well acquainted with danger. And the night of December 8, 2012, brought plenty of it.

EDWARD BYERS JR., NAVY SEAL MEDAL OF HONOR RECIPIENT: The mission that night was a hostage rescue mission. So, to us, that is a no fail mission. Our objective, our goal is to bring back an American hostage alive.

KOSINSKI: And that he and other SEALs did, rescuing Dr. Dilip Joseph, whom the Taliban in Afghanistan had been holding captive for about four days.

BYERS: It was at that time that I engaged the person I was on top of and jumped off the guy I was on and on to the doctor who was about three or four, maybe five feet away from me to my right.

KOSINSKI: For his heroic effort, President Obama is awarding Byers America's highest military honor.

BYERS: It wasn't until he called and I got to speak to him that -- and he said, you know, congratulations, I looked at your award and I'm approving you to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. And that's when it's like, OK, this is real.

KOSINSKI: But Byers is also dealing with another reality. He was the second SEAL to burst into the Taliban hideout to free Dr. Joseph. The first SEAL, Nicolas Checque, was killed.

BYERS: Nic was a -- embodied the essence of what it is to be an American hero. He -- you know, he will forever be remembered in the -- you know, the pages of history for the sacrifices that he made.

KOSINSKI: Plenty of people are calling Byers a hero as well, but his young daughter might not be one of them.

BYERS: My daughter knows that I'm daddy. And she loves me just for that. And if you talk to her one on one, she'll tell you the five different nicknames she has for me and I don't think one of them includes hero.

KOSINSKI: The magnitude of the moment isn't lost on everyone, though, especially mom.

BYERS: When I called my mom that night and told her, you know, her -- I got to love my mom, she -- her first question out of her mouth was, do you think I will be able to come to it? And I was like, of course, mom, I'm pretty sure you're going to be allowed to come.

BYERS: Michelle Kosinski, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: CNN is also learning this morning that an elite group of U.S. army members are now ready to target, capture or kill top ISIS operatives. Barbara Starr at the Pentagon with more.

Good morning.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

You know, there's really a common thread here, the increasing reliance on the elite special operations unit by the U.S. military, whether it's SEAL Team Six or, in this case, the Army's elite Delta Force. We're not going to talk about specifics. We're not talking about timing. We are not talking about specific locations. But what we do know now from our sources is that Delta Force operatives in northern Iraq are now ready to begin the operations that they were sent in there to do several weeks ago.

Back in December, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced something called the Expeditionary Targeting Force. That -- what is that? That is the special forces. They've been spending the last several weeks doing what they do, living covertly, gathering intelligence, establishing informant networks and now they've collected enough intel, we are told, to have perhaps half a dozen ISIS targets to go after in northern Iraq. What they are doing is what they've always done in places like Afghanistan, in places like Iraq. They develop intelligence. They go, they hit a compound, if you will, capture or kill who's in there, get all the intelligence they can from laptops, from cell phones and then use that, leverage that to conduct additional missions.

So what we are going to see perhaps in the coming weeks now is a real ramp up in what special operations forces are doing. The Pentagon increasingly reliant on them to be on the ground to go after ISIS.

Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Barbara Starr reporting live this morning. Thank you.

ISIS not part of the temporary cease fire though, but it's now holding in Syria. CNN takes you inside rebel held territory where no one is celebrating just yet.

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[09:48:40] COSTELLO: Some of the killing and destruction inside Syria has stopped, at least temporarily. That's because of a tentative truce negotiated between Syrian rebels and the government. It does appear to be holding despite several reports of violence.

COSTELLO (voice-over): Our senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward just returned from rebel-held Syria. She was on the ground when the cessation of hostilities came into effect and is virtually the only Western journalist to have traveled to the heavy hit area in over a year. Here's her exclusive report. CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIOANL CORRESPONDENT: We are in the

heart of rebel-held Syria and this entire area has seen some of the most intensive bombardment in the past few months.

We've been traveling all around here for nearly a week now, and certainly it is fair to say that since the cessation of hostilities began there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of air strikes.

WARD (voice-over): Now, having said that, earlier we visited a town called Deretiza (ph) on the outskirts of Aleppo and people there told us that about 30 hours after the cease fire began there was an air strike on a house. We were able to capture some video of the after math of that air strike.

There have also been reports of clashes in other parts of the country, but certainly it does feel quite a bit quieter here. Now, what's interesting is that you won't find anybody here celebrating about this cease fir, and that's for a number of reasons.

[09:50:15] Firstly, In the run up to the cessation of hostilities, there was a dramatic increase in the Russian aerial bombardment. Secondly, the people here who live in rebel-held territory simply don't trust the regime of Bashar al-Assad. They see the cease fire as a trick or a ruse designed so that the regime can take more territory.

And for that reason, many people we've spoken to are in fact actually against the cease fire. Just a few days ago we attended a protest where people were carrying signs that said this cease fire is a betrayal of our martyrs, of those who have died for the cause. They were chanting over and over again we must keep on fighting and we must unite.

Even the imam in his weekly sermon was urging people not to heed the cease fire and to continue fighting.

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COSTELLO: All right. Clarissa Ward joins us now live, she's live along the Turkey-Syrian border. So - so, Clarissa, what's next?

WARD (on camera): Well, that's the million dollar question, Carol, and it doesn't seem like anybody has any real answers. Certainly I want to make one thing clear, from the people that we talked to, they do want peace. It's not that they don't want peace, they just don't believe in the terms of this cease fire.

And I think what that really underscores is this fundamental disconnect between the people who are fighting and dying on the ground inside Syria and the people outside of the country who are brokering these types of deals. And everyone we spoke to said they didn't feel that their voice was being represented.

They feel that they are part of a game of chess that is being played out between the world's superpowers, and they're concerned that without an agreement that Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, must go, there can be no talk about peace, and there can be no cease fire implemented.

Carol?

COSTELLO: All right, Clarissa Ward reporting live. And while all of this is going on in the Middle East, Marco Rubio is campaigning to become the president of the United States in Alcoa, Tennessee.

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COSTELLO (voice-over): He's been bashing Trump, calling him unelectable. Let's listen.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: ... nominate someone who refuses to criticize the Ku Klux Klan or distance himself from an avowed racist like David Duke. And we can't lose this election.

The media - the media knows Donald Trump can't win, and that is why they are giving him a pass. You think they don't know all these things about his business record? You think they don't know all these stories? You know what they're waiting for? They're waiting for him to be the nominee, which is not going to happen, but they're waiting for that so they can descend on him like the hounds of hell. They will shred him to pieces and then they will get Hillary Clinton elected, which is what many of them want anyways.

And we cannot allow Hillary Clinton to be elected. Hillary Clinton will follow the same policies that Barack Obama has put in place, and if we stay on the road we are on right now, we are going to be the first Americans that leave their children worse off than themselves.

Hillary Clinton is someone that if she's elected president may need to pardon herself after putting classified information on her e-mail server. And Hillary Clinton is someone who is disqualified from being commander-in-chief because she lied to the families of those victims in Benghazi. And anyone who does that can never be the commander-in- chief of the United States of America.

We have a chance in this election to go in a different direction from the one we're headed now, and it is the direction that I'm offering you. It is direction that I ask you to vote for. It is not one that asks you to act on your fears and on your anxieties, for I know that they are real. It is a direction that asks you to embrace your hopes and your dreams for a better future. It is a direction that says that we, when I am president, are going to re-embrace the Constitution of the United States.

When I'm president, for the first time in eight years, you'll have a president that defends your First Amendment right to live out the teachings of your faith. For the first time in eight years you'll have a president that defends your Second Amendment right to protect yourself and your family. If you vote for me, you'll have a president that understands because of eight years that I spent in Florida, two of them as Speaker of the Florida House, that the Tenth Amendment is right. The government, if it has power, it belongs at the state level, not in Washington, D.C. [09:55:02] You will have a president that believes in free enterprise,

not because I inherited money, not because I'm wealthy, but because my dad was a bartender and my mother was a maid, and the reason why they had jobs is because free enterprise works. Free enterprise is the only economic model in the history of the world where you are judged on your merit and on your work, not on your connections, not on your last name.

It is the only economic model in the history of the world where you can make poor people richer and you don't have to make rich people poorer, where you can lift everybody up and not tear anyone down. And that's why as a candidate I have offered serious ideas and serious proposals, unlike Donald Trump who won't tell you where he stands on these issues because he doesn't care where he stands on these issues. To him it's we'll figure it out when we get there. We cannot elect the dog that caught the car. Get it? Think about it. The dog is always barking at the car. What are you going to do when you catch that car?

We can't risk it. And I ask you to go on our website, marcorubio.com. You'll see I have a serious plan, a real one, to fix our tax code, to roll back out of control regulations, to save Social Security and Medicare, to balance our budget, to fully utilize all of our energy resources. And unlike Donald Trump, my...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO (on camera): All right, we're going to jump out of this. You can see Marco Rubio's a little hoarse this morning because he's been speaking to crowds all weekend long. We'll continue to monitor this - this rally in Tennessee. The next hour of NEWSROOM after a quick break.

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, Donald Trump on the KKK.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I know nothing about white supremacists.