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Tornado Outbreak Kills 7, Injures Dozens; TSA Imposes Mandatory Body Scanning; Life and Death Fight to Retake Ramadi; CNN Poll: Clinton Leads Sanders by 16 Points; Populist Candidates Shake Up Race. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 24, 2015 - 09:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[09:00:08] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That is a massive mark tornado.

COSTELLO: Deadly storms rip across the south and Midwest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It cut trees in half. And I don't know why I'm still standing here talking to you.

COSTELLO: Tornadoes, giant hail, whipping winds. Even this tractor- trailer can't stay upright.

Plus, terror fears up. Now the TSA is beefing up airport security. Why not everyone can opt out of those body scans?

Also, Clinton dominating in a new CNN poll. But that's not getting Bernie down.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT) DEMOCRATIC, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're feeling good. Your poll seems to indicate that we have national momentum.

COSTELLO: What he has to say about the frontrunners on both sides of the aisle.

Let's talk. Live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. Deadly storms rip through the south and millions are still at risk this Christmas eve. These are live pictures over Benton County, Mississippi. Tornadoes killed seven people in Mississippi overnight. Homes torn off foundations, a twister striking a busy highway, flipping cars across.

Chad Myers is in Atlanta with more. Good morning, Chad.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Carol. Officially 24 reports of tornadoes but we don't know whether all of those reports are from one, two or 10 tornadoes. 24 reports. But the wind, look at that, 170 reports of wind damage. One tornado, though, may have been on the ground for 140 miles making 10 of those reports.

No, it's not unusual, we do get tornadoes in December. Usually 24. Kind of ironic there. The weather service will be out today looking to see how many really occurred.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MYERS (voice-over): This Christmas Eve morning hundreds of people are waking up to utter devastation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy Malcolm.

MYERS: The destruction caused by a deadly tornado outbreak cutting across the south and Midwest. This tornado claimed multiple lives including a 7-year-old boy as residents desperately tried to hide in their cars and homes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: By the time I got out of my car, I had a tree that was in my windshield.

MYERS: In northern Mississippi, this tornado tore through a busy highway. Watch as the massive twister tosses this tractor-trailer as it barrels through traffic. Watch from this angle from what appears to be the same semi. This driver just feet away.

The winds in southwestern Tennessee roared up to 75 miles per hour as officials declared a state of emergency.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The houses just exploded. And they were buried in the rubble.

MYERS: Two people were killed east of Memphis, their bodies found under debris.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were in the house, we heard the wind picking up. We had 45 seconds and it just hit. We walked out to the storm shelter and everything was gone.

MYERS: And in Arkansas an 18-year-old woman died when a tree fell through her house, toppled by the high winds and heavy rain.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Christmas is all about love. And we're going to love through this.

MYERS: Some residents in Mississippi clinging on to what they say matters most, after losing nearly everything this holiday season.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It wasn't about the house. It was about my family and those the most important thing to me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MYERS: Carol, we talked about it this morning already but this is not over. There's still a tornado watch until 10:00 this morning. Now there still will be severe weather possibly all the way from New York City, all the way down to Philadelphia. But we just don't have the power of the storms today. That's the good news. The powerful was yesterday. This is nuisance weather, thunder, lightning, maybe hail and also some flooding.

I don't think we're going to see any tornadoes at all. There could be some small ones, but not what we saw yesterday. Some of those tornadoes may be rated at EF-3 or EF-4. I know a lot of chasers out there that have seen many, many tornadoes. They tell me the trees were completely gone. Sheered off. Houses were completely gone. Maybe only one or two walls left. That tells me very strong tornadoes out there yesterday.

Still a couple possible, but the bigger story today, hail, rain and very slow travel and possible flooding. A lot of people on the roads trying to get to Atlanta. Atlanta's had a difficult morning with thunder and lightning. But there's more to come.

COSTELLO: All right. We'll -- we'll stay tuned to you, Chad Myers. Thanks so much.

With me now on the phone is Kelvin Buck, he's the mayor of Holly Springs, Mississippi. One of the hardest hit areas.

Mr. Mayor, welcome.

MAYOR KELVIN BUCK, HOLLY SPRINGS, MISSISSIPPI: Thank you. How are you?

COSTELLO: I'm good. More importantly, how are you and how are your constituents? What do things look like this morning?

BUCK: Well, this morning we are able to get our first real look at the total amount of damage and devastation that has hit around our area. We've had three major areas hit around -- in and around our town and quite frankly I have never seen this kind of devastation.

[09:05:08] You know, you see tornadoes on the television all the time and having it hit this close to home, and especially at this time of the year, I think we are very lucky if we only had -- if you can say so, only one fatality. And certainly we send our prayers out to the family of that victim. But this could have been a lot worse. And we're just now praying that everybody can recover.

COSTELLO: So what does your Christmas eve look like, sir?

BUCK: I'm sorry, say that again. I'm sorry.

COSTELLO: What are you going to do this Christmas eve? I know you're going to be driving through to look at the devastation.

BUCK: Well, we are already out at a couple of scenes right now trying to do some assessment. We are riding around with some of our emergency personnel. We're just trying to make sure, first of all, that we didn't miss anyone last night because it was so dark. And some of the areas are pretty rural areas. So right at this moment we are on site of the home, and I know many of these families, and it's just devastating to see what has happened to them and what they are going through. And so we are going to try to make sure that they get all the help we can provide for them so that they can try to make it through.

COSTELLO: Mayor Kelvin Buck, thank you for joining me this morning.

Severe weather isn't the only thing facing holiday travelers. For the 5.8 million people passing through U.S. airports avoiding the body scanner just got harder. You can still opt out by asking for a physical pat-down, but the Department of Homeland Security says it may require you to pass through that body scanner anyway.

While passengers may generally decline body scanning screening in favor of physical training, TSA may direct mandatory body scanning screening for some passengers as warranted by security considerations. That's from the TSA.

Sara Sidner is live at LaGuardia Airport to tell us more about that. Good morning.

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Yes, I mean, basically what this means is you can't really opt out of the body scanner. But what is happening, which is a little bit confusing, this is why critics are kind of upset with this new rule happening just as the holidays come to the floor. Basically there will be some people who they say OK, you can opt out, that's fine, we'll bring someone over and we'll do the pat-down. And there will be other people who are told, no, sorry, you're going to have to go through the scanner or you're not getting on your flight.

And so how they decide that, they haven't quite said who gets chosen and who doesn't. They haven't said because it isn't all passengers. They're not saying no to everyone, but there will be some who they decide, I don't know if it's randomly or if they look at where you're going and your ticket and your history of flying, they will say, sorry, you must go through the scanner.

And you remember the controversy over these scanners over the years, people worried that there was too much radiation, and they didn't want to go through the scanners, although there have been studies that have been done saying it is a miniscule amount of radiation that would not negatively affect the human body.

So at this point in time, the general rule is if they tell you that you have to go through the scanner, they mean it, you won't get on your flight. If you say no, I want a pat-down and they won't give that to you. But you can still ask for a pat-down. You can still do that and you may get exactly what you want -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Sara Sidner reporting from LaGuardia Airport in New York.

"Operation Inherent Resolve" is underway. That the mission to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. American special forces are involved on the ground now. This morning we're getting an inside look at the life and death battle to retake Ramadi from ISIS control.

You're looking at pictures from inside that city. Iraqi forces are choking off food and supplies to the terrorists. This is how American Colonel Steve Warren from Iraq describes the operation.

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COL. STEVE WARREN, SPOKESMAN, OPERATION INHERENT RESOLVE: The Iraqi Security Forces over the last month or so have slowly encircled the city of Ramadi to isolate it from any possibility of being supported by ISIL fighters that are outside of the city. So they have isolated the city on all points of the compass. They have cut off all of the supply routes in and out of the city. So that this enemy is not able to reinforce himself with equipment, weapons or manpower. And now they are beginning to squeeze that noose around the city slowly but surely. Just two days ago they were able to successfully cross the Euphrates River in a combat bridge -- combat bridging maneuver. First one we've seen in the Middle East probably since the '70s.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And Colonel, we know that this is incredibly harrowing work for those soldiers because ISIS has reportedly planted thousands of IEDs, explosive devices, throughout the city. So how are they managing that?

[09:10:01] WARREN: The Iraqis were in a fierce fight yesterday, I'll tell you. We watched a lot of it from the ops center. This enemy has set up defensive belts. So they use IEDs, the very same IEDs that we face here in Iraq years ago. But now they use them in clusters as if they were mind fields. They will rig entire houses to be -- to explode if you come near them. So the Iraqis have to very deliberately probe this defensive area and find a weak spot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Colonel Warren, thanks for that.

For more, I'm joined by Barbara Starr, our Pentagon correspondent, and CNN counterterrorism analyst, Phil Mudd.

Barbara, you heard what the colonel said. He says Americans -- well, actually, you did not hear this part of the interview but I did. He said that Americans have trained Iraqi soldiers for a year. He says morale is up because they liberated Tikrit and other areas.

You talked with Defense Secretary Ash Carter. He told you that Iraqi forces cut and run. So what should we believe?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, of course, that interview with CNN was back in May when Ramadi originally fell because Iraqi forces did not stay and fight. We've had many months since then and that's when this training has taken place.

The U.S. has spent a lot of time and money training the Iraqis how to get through some of those barriers that Colonel Warren was talking about. How to dismantle fields of IEDs and just simply better training to improve their morale and their professionalism. For now, it appears to be working. They are making progress in Ramadi. But as we've all said for many days now, it's not just taking Ramadi, it's once you take it, can you hold it? And can you move to the next step, the next town, the next village -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Phil, something I found fascinating, you heard the colonel say that American special ops forces watched the battle in Ramadi from the op center, so they're actually watching the fight in real time?

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Sure. You can do that. If you look at the advent of drones over the past years, I've seen this live in some of the facilities back when we had a large troop presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can use those drones to get real-time video feed, not only to watch Iraqi forces move, but when U.S. special forces engage in raids, those drones give you a real-time feed back to show what is happening during the raid.

By the way, we've also seen some reports about ISIS acquiring drones, which are readily available over the counter. So this is kind of a revolutionary way you can watch war unfold as it happens, Carol.

COSTELLO: That is fascinating.

Barbara, ISIS is -- we know ISIS is now using civilians as human shields and we also know the Pentagon is thinking of changing our rules of engagement. What does that exactly mean?

STARR: Well, this is what is being described as a very quiet conversation inside the administration. Do they want to loosen up some of the rules, some of the standards they have to make before they launch any airstrike? Every official I have talked to has told me they are not talking about, you know, increasing the possibility of civilian casualties. The U.S. military has no interest, no desire to loosen that part of the equation.

What they are looking at is perhaps do they have to have the very strict coordination, do they have to have multiple sources of confirmed intelligence, that sort of thing, before they launch a strike? But they are insistent for now that they are sticking to the very strict rules about civilian casualties and limiting them absolutely to the best of their ability.

COSTELLO: And Phil, we asked Colonel Warren about civilian casualties and the rules of engagement. He says that, you know, commanders within Iraq talk about that all the time. What might that conversation sound like?

MUDD: This is a difficult conversation because of the simple fact that when you see the -- the political atmosphere in the United States and people using phrases like carpet bombing, you get the sense that there are isolated formations of ISIS that you can go and fight and attack from the air.

Obviously, Carol, classic insurgency means that the insurgents, in this case ISIS, are living in towns and cities, mixed in the same blocks as the citizens. So when you're talking about expanding the rules of engagement, I don't see how you do that without raising the risk of women and children will die. I take it one step further. In the past few days in the fight for Ramadi, we've seen that some of those citizens will not heed warnings to leave their homes. These are people who have been around for generations. So I think as was mentioned a moment ago by Barbara, this is going to be a very cautious conversation because you can't weed out insurgents from air power alone. They are just embedded with the population.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there. Phil Mudd, Barbara Starr, thanks to both of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Bernie Sanders edging higher in a new CNN poll but still way behind Hillary Clinton, especially on the subject of fighting ISIS.

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[09:18:17] COSTELLO: As 2015 winds down, Hillary Clinton finds herself in a place that's become very familiar to her this year, firmly atop the Democratic presidential field. A new CNN/ORC poll shows Clinton with a double digit lead over her closest competitor, Bernie Sanders, coming in at 50 percent to Sanders's 34 percent. Martin O'Malley is a distant third with 3 percent.

CNN's Joe Johns has more on this poll from Washington.

Good morning.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

What our poll shows is despite the fact that Hillary Clinton continues to dominate the race for the Democratic nomination, there's still a narrow favorability gap, by a very narrow margin ahead of Democrat Bernie Sanders in terms of favorability. She shows up at 77 percent, and Bernie Sanders at 74 percent, which is well within the margin of error, and puts the two top Democratic candidates essentially at parity, and this goes back to what we have known about Mrs. Clinton for a long time among Democratic respondents. She has higher unfavorables than Bernie Sanders by about seven points according to our poll.

Now, in the head-to-head match-ups against the Republicans, this is one of the most interesting things we're seeing. Hillary Clinton running almost neck and neck with all three of the top Republicans. She squeaks past Donald Trump but runs two or three ticks behind Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. And very important to say, all three of those match-ups are within the margin of error.

So, it sounds all round like a very competitive race in the minds of people who are going to vote, Carol.

COSTELLO: Interesting. Joe Johns reporting live from Washington, thank you.

Amid heightened concerns of terrorism across the country, Democratic candidates are clear about the candidates they feel can best handle the fight. [09:20:02] Clinton with the commanding lead, earning the trust of 72 percent of Democrats, Sanders coming in at just 15 percent.

Well, this morning, Sanders reacted to those findings.

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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: From the poll, we can gleam that the big issue that seems to be holding you back with those potential voters is foreign policy. That's where Hillary Clinton has her biggest advantage. Here's a perception that you do not have the stomach or the head for what it takes to beat ISIS.

Your response, sir?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, let me assure all of the people in our country that I have the stomach, I have the head, I think we have the approach, not only to beat ISIS, but to crush ISIS and to destroy ISIS.

And what my view is, is that we have got to learn a lesson from Iraq. And that lesson is, it's not good enough just to be tough. We have got to be smart. And what that means is, we cannot do it alone. We cannot and should not be involved in perpetual warfare in the Middle East.

What we need to do is bring together a grand coalition led as King Abdullah of Jordan reminds us by Muslim troops on the ground. What we should do along with the U.K., France and Russia and other major powers is give the Muslim nations on the ground the support they need from the air, we should be training troops, we should be doing special forces when necessary.

But ultimately, this war will be won and ISIS will be destroyed with our support and other great nation support taking on ISIS on the ground with Muslim troops.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Joining me now to discuss the new CNN polls and what Bernie Sanders just said is Tom Bevan, co-founder and executive editor of realclearpolitics.com, and Ron Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst and editor for "The National Journal".

Did I get that right, Ron?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Close enough.

COSTELLO: I'm glad. It's Christmas Eve, thank you for giving me the gift of, it's OK, Carol.

Welcome to both of you. Thank you for being here.

Sanders is obviously slipping a bit in the polls, but he's raising a lot of money. Donald Trump is soaring in the polls and he's raising no money. I lump these two men together because both are populist. I want you to listen to what Stephen Colbert will touch on Sunday on

"Face the Nation."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW": There's a populism to Trump that I find very appealing, and it's only this, is that the party leaders want him to go away, but the people decide he's not going to.

JOHN DICKERSON, FACE THE NATION: So you like that.

COLBERT: I'm not disagreeing with anything he's saying and think that his proposals are a little -- well, more than a little shocking. But there is something really hopeful about the fact that, well, 36 percent of the likely voters want him, so the people in the machine don't get to say otherwise. I -- that's the one saving grace I think of his candidacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Interesting, right? So here's the definition of a populist, a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people. Donald Trump says tax breaks for everyone. Sanders says free college tuition.

So, Ron, why is Trump resonating and Sanders not as much?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, first of all, Carol, the biggest single factor is the structural differences in the race. If you look at your polls, Donald Trump is at 39 percent among Republicans, which is the high end of national polling. Bernie Sanders is at 34 percent among Democrats. Not that different. The difference is, of course, Donald Trump is facing a fractured number of opponents with 13 candidates and Bernie Sanders is chasing one big fish, Hillary Clinton, who is consolidating the Democratic Party.

The other point, though, is they are fundamentally different kinds of populist. Bernie Sanders is offering the economic populist, encouraging basically people in the middle to view global corporations and the people at the top as the voices that are threatening them. Donald Trump is offering something quite different -- a cultural, even racial populism in which an implicitly silent white majority is being menaced by Mexican immigrants, by Muslim Americans, by demographic change.

There is some economic overlap, but it is a fundamentally different organizing principle and organizing principle for how you want the voters to kind of align and define their choice.

COSTELLO: It's interesting, Tom, because in some polls when you pit Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders beats Donald Trump.

TOM BEVAN, CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE EDITOR, REALCLEARPOLITICS.COM: Yes. That is one of the interesting things, a poll just came out showing him beating Donald Trump by double digit. Meanwhile, the CNN poll you just referenced, Hillary Clinton is squeaking by. I think it goes to one of -- two things about that. One is the sort of vulnerability that Hillary Clinton faces in the general election, her unfavorable ratings among all unregistered voters underwater. She does have trouble with independent voters on issues of trust.

[09:25:01] And -- so, that's one issue that I think has to be somewhat concerning to Democrats.

COSTELLO: Interesting.

So, Ron, you mentioned that Donald Trump is, you know, at 30-some percent because there's so many Republican candidates. But that may soon change. Rand Paul is threatening not to participate in the next Republican debate because he doesn't want to be on the small stage. Ben Carson's campaign appears to be in disarray.

So the whittling of the Republican field might come sooner rather than later.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, the question is how soon, and really where it happens. I mean, look, I think we're expecting the wrong thing of Donald Trump. After all these months, I think it is pretty clear his base of support is pretty solid, particularly among those blue-collar Republicans, 46 percent of non-college Republicans in your last poll support him, that's not going away.

The question is, really, whether he can grow enough to win states as the field winnows and you need to get to a higher number to win. You know he can get possibly into the 30s and 20s, can he get into 40s when he needs to do so?

And what you got, Carol, is the potential for a three-way race developing. The Republicans have not had this going back to 1996. You have Trump with this blue collar populism. You have Ted Cruz who's doing very well with the evangelical Christians.

The question is, does the other lane in the field consolidate, and that is the center-right, more white collar, somewhat conservative lane that produce John McCain and Mitt Romney, now you got that dividing between Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, all of them may be strong in New Hampshire, reasonably strong, allowing potentially Trump to win.

And the question really is, does that center-right establishment lane consolidate in a point where it is still possible for whoever emerges from it to seriously contest the nomination, or they fracture so long that Cruz and Trump, who many Republican leaders feel is the least electable in the general election end up as the finalists?

COSTELLO: It's just such a strange political season.

So, Tom, I'm going to ask you for your prediction for 2016. Oh, come on, play along with me, Tom.

Who do you think will drop out? Who will the three candidates -- who will the top three candidates on the Republican side be in 2016? BEVAN: I do think Ron is right. It's essentially boiling down to

sort of a three-person race between Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, with Chris Christie as sort of a dark horse.

He seems to have gotten his mojo back a little bit. He's rising in the polls in New Hampshire. He could -- he could win New Hampshire or even have a strong second place or something, he could make some noise overall.

But it's going to be really hard for some of these other candidate who are languishing so far in the polls to surge here in the end, because of the way that this race has gone with Donald Trump dominating the media coverage, the way that he has, and even candidates like Jeb Bush who spent $35 million hasn't seen -- he's gone down in the polls.

So, it's going to be very tough. It's a three-person race. That's kind of the easy prediction. Beyond that, though, it's almost impossible to predict how this race is going to turn out, both in the primary but also in the general election.

COSTELLO: Tom Bevan, Ron Brownstein, thanks to both of you.

Still to come in THE NEWSROOM, the Mall of America was bracing for Black Lives Matter protests, but it was the rally at the airport that caused big problems. We'll talk about that next.

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