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CNN NEWSROOM

Trump Threatens Thirty Party Run; San Bernardino Shooters Radicalized Before Marriage; Secretary Carter Defends Plan Against ISIS; U.N. Council to Tackle North Korean Human Rights; World Rebels Against Trump's Proposed Plan; Chinese "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Posters Spark Controversy. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired December 10, 2015 - 00:00   ET

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


[00:00:21] JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles.

Ahead this hour, R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Trump wants it and warns Republican Party leader, if he doesn't get it, he could go rogue and run for president as an independent.

Romance of the radicals. The FBI says California's killer couple was committed to jihad before they even met.

And while the U.S. president says ISIS is contained, his Defense secretary says they're not. Now more U.S. troops and hardware could be heading to Iraq.

Hello, everybody. Great to have you with us. We'd like to welcome our viewers all around the world. I'm John Vause. NEWSROOM L.A. starts now.

For the second time in as many days, U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested he could bolt the Republican Party and run as an independent. Trump is leading the latest polls, including a new FOX News survey giving him a 20-point lead over Ben Carson among Republicans in the key state of South Carolina. Insiders say his defection would give the White House to the Democrats.

CNN's Don Lemon asked Trump exactly what he plans to do.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR, CNN TONIGHT: Here's what Jeb Bush tweeted. He said, "Maybe Donald negotiated a deal with his buddy, Hillary Clinton, continuing this path will put her in the White House." And then he linked to this -- the tweet of you saying that 68 percent of your supporters would support a third party bid.

Here's the pledge that you signed. You saw this pledge. You know where I'm going. Are you going to break this pledge?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think it's highly unlikely unless they break the pledge to me because it's a two-way street.

LEMON: What does that mean?

TRUMP: They said they will be honorable. So far I can't tell you if they are, but the establishment is not exactly being very good to me. But I'm leading in every poll by a lot. It looks like I'm going to win. My whole life has been about winning. I'm not like so many of the other people that you talk to that are essentially losers, OK I know how to win. I intend to win. It's the best way of beating the Democrats, if I get the nomination.

In the FOX poll that I'm sure you saw, I'm way ahead of Hillary. Head to head, I'm ahead of Hillary. I will beat Hillary. The one person that Hillary doesn't want to run against. I know a lot of people inside because I get along with Democrats, with Republicans, with liberals, with everybody. The one person that they don't want to run against is me. Only me.

LEMON: OK. I just want this plain spoken for the viewer. What do you mean when you say if they break this pledge, then you'll break the pledge? What do you mean by that?

TRUMP: Well, if they don't treat me with a certain amount of decorum and respect. If they don't treat me as the frontrunner -- by far the frontrunner. If the playing field is not level, then certainly all options are open. But that's nothing I want to do.

LEMON: How will you know that? What determines that?

TRUMP: Well, I think I'll know that over a period of a number of months. We'll go through the primaries. We'll see what happens. And I'll make a determination. But I would imagine they would treat me properly because I'm leading by a lot.

LEMON: So the pledge is, you keep your word, if they keep their word?

TRUMP: Don, I want to run as a Republican.

LEMON: OK.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Dylan Byers, our senior reporter for media and politics is with me here now.

So, Dylan, is Donald Trump basically holding a gun to the head of the Republican Party leaders here, essentially saying that, you know, if you try to undermine me, I'll run as an independent? And if so if I run as an independent, the Democrats win?

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR MEDIA AND POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes, he is. I don't know if it's an incredibly powerful gun. I mean, once you get past the sort of incendiary rhetoric that he's come out with, certainly on Monday with the call to ban Muslims entering to the United States, once you look at the political calculation that he is making, he is trying to gin up more support from the base, solidify his support from the base and box out Ted Cruz and his rivals. What he is doing by threatening a third party run is the same sort of

thing. He is saying look, you can't come after me. You can't try and taint me, because if you do, I may run as a third party candidate. And even if he won't necessarily win, I mean, it's much harder for him to win as a third party candidate --

VAUSE: It's almost impossible.

BYERS: Yes.

VAUSE: Yes.

BYERS: I mean, it's not even clear that he would be eligible in Ohio on a third party ticket, right. But once you do that, you pose a threat to Republican candidates because the last thing they want is to run a campaign against Hillary Clinton and have Trump eat off support from the side.

VAUSE: OK. The first indication we have the level of support that Trump has for this temporary travel ban on Muslims. It's coming from a Bloomberg online survey. We should note that this is an online survey. In the past Trump has done quite well when it comes to these sort of online surveys.

But let's take a look at the numbers. Among Republican likely voters, 65 percent back the plan. And of that 65 percent, 51 percent strongly support it.

[00:05:05] So the bottom line is here, despite all the controversy, all the outrageous claims and the outcry, this plan to have this temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States could help him lock up the nomination.

BYERS: Right. And again you say online poll. But it almost doesn't matter. I mean, the support exists out there. And if we look over the six months of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, what you've seen time and time again is said something, done something that every single political pundit sits back and says OK, that's going to tank his campaign, there is no way the American people are going to support what he is saying or what he's proposing and time and time again the American people have turned out and supported him in larger and larger numbers.

Look, you can look at some of the interviews CNN has done down in places like South Carolina there is support for this proposal. It does exist out here, and it is too soon to write off Donald Trump's campaign.

VAUSE: And again that's what translates into a possible independent third party run.

BYERS: Exactly.

VAUSE: So it's all very -- you know, it is a real threat. OK, now Donald Trump no stranger to being mocked on late-night television here in the United States. BYERS: No.

VAUSE: But the "Daily Show" last night really went to town on Trump. Take a look at this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump is an extremist leader who came out of nowhere. He is self-financed, recruits through social media, attracts his followers with a radical ideology to take over the world, and is actively trying to promote a war between Islam and the West.

NOAH TREVOR, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": Oh my god, Hassan, he is white ISIS.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: OK. And then there is the front page from the "New York Daily News" showing Trump cutting off the head of the Statue of Liberty. And there's that variation of the famous anti-Nazi poem.

So this kind of stuff, this criticism, is this sort of rocket fuel for Trump and his supporters? Is this the kind of criticism, you know, I guess from the lame stream media that they embrace?

BYERS: Sure. So two things happened after that "Daily Show" clip comes out, or after the "Daily News" front page comes out. One is liberals retreat to their dinner parties where they say he is like white ISIS. Did you see that cover? The other thing that happens is conservatives band together and they say look, the media -- Trump is right. The media is scum. And they're going after Trump. They're treating him unfairly. It's completely over the top to draw these parallels to Hitler, Japanese internment camps, you know, ISIS, things like that.

And that becomes something that buoys the very support that we all thought might go away after such an incendiary call, the one he made on Monday.

VAUSE: So effectively, this kind of stuff helps him, it feeds into the narrative that he is spitting out there?

BYERS: Yes. Absolutely. And look, Trump has his entire campaign, I mean, from day one has been based on going after not just minority groups, it began with Mexican immigrants. Now we're talking about Muslims. But also going after the media. And there is extraordinarily little support for the media among the American people at large.

VAUSE: Yes.

BYERS: And especially among the conservative base.

VAUSE: Yes. Absolutely. OK, Dylan, thanks for being with us. Appreciate it.

BYERS: Thank you.

VAUSE: OK. We are learning new details about one of the shooters in the deadly San Bernardino case. A U.S. State Department official says Tashfeen Malik was not asked about any jihadist leanings when she was interviewed by U.S. official for her visa application. That interview took place last year in Pakistan before she came to the U.S. to marry Syed Rizwan Farook. The acknowledgment highlights how the two evaded detection during security and background checks.

U.S. officials are also investigating a former neighbor's claim that he plotted an attack alongside Syed Rizwan Farook several years ago, but then abandoned it. Details now from CNN's Pamela Brown.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Investigators now believe long before the attack in San Bernardino, Syed Farook may have plotted with his friend and former neighbor Enrique Marquez to carry out an attack in California in 2012. They apparently picked out a specific target, but got spooked by a round of terror-related arrests in the area and abandoned their plans.

Marquez told investigators he purchased two AR-15 assault weapons in 2011 and 2012 that were later used by Farook in the San Bernardino attacks. Marquez has not been charged with any crime and maintains he knew nothing of the plan to launch last week's attack. He checked himself into a mental health facility soon after.

Sources says Marquez also told investigators he and Farook were on the path to radicalization as early as 2011. Today, FBI James Comey said Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, became radicalized before they started dating online several years ago.

JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: As early as the end of 2013, they were talking to each about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged.

BROWN: Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2013 when he met his Pakistan-born bride and eventually bringing her into the U.S. in 2014 on what is called a fiancee visa.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Is there any evidence that this marriage was arranged by a terrorist organization or terrorist operative?

[00:10:02] COMEY: I don't know the answer to that yet.

GRAHAM: Do you agree with me that if it was arranged by a terrorist operative organization, that is a game changer?

COMEY: It would be a very, very important thing to know.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: Pamela Brown there with that report.

Now the father of one of the Paris attackers says he would have killed his son first if he had known what the 23-year-old was planning. Fouad Mohamed-Aggad was identified Wednesday as one of the killers at the Bataclan theater. His father told French media he never knew his son had returned to France after a stint in Syria. The gunman blew himself up during the attacks.

The U.S. Defense secretary is trying to defend the White House strategy to defeat ISIS. Ash Carter was grilled by lawmakers on Wednesday. He says U.S. President Barack Obama's plan is working. It just needs time. Mr. Obama claims the militant group is contained, but Secretary Carter seems to disagree.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: From the start, our goal has been first to contain. And we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria, it -- they'll come in, they'll leave.