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tv   Face the Nation  CBS  March 4, 2019 2:30am-3:00am PST

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adam in a refugee camp what that is now home for the foreseeable future. and the first she learned about the u.s. court hearing tomorrow that may decide her fate came from us. >> being so isolated here, do you have any idea the storm of controversy that has been kicked off in the united states over this case? >> people have been telling me they have seen my case on tv and everyone asks me what are you going to do now? where are you going to do go next? >> i keep telling everyone that we are still trying to win the case and hopefully we will and i know i am an american citizen and i know i have the right to come back. i have no other citizenship. anywhere. even my own home country i don't -- i have never been there and a never stepped foot out of -- >> so there is to talk of a lebanese citizenship? >> no. >> you have no lebanese option?
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that isn't even an option. >> no. >> the president of the united states says you are not welcome back, what would you say to him? >> i would say study the legal system because apparently i am. i have papers, i have citizenship. i have -- my dad, my dad's documents. it is apparent he stopped working with the united nations way before i was born. >> she handed her passport over to isis the month after she crossed into syria from turkey in november of 2014. >> she surrendered to u.s. led coalition forces in january in the dying days of isis. >> she insists she would have left sooner but could never raise enough money to pay smugglers. >> 6,000. >> $6,000? >> $6,000, uh-huh and there was no way i could get that type of money, so i was held, loss standing there basically and the only way to leave was to go through a field of ieds or snipers from isis shooting at
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you. or if you do get caught, which i got caught twice and i was very scared, it go caught twice and one i actually broke my phone and ran away. yet for a time she apparently embraced the darkest beliefs of isis allegedly taking to social weed to insight attacks on americans. her lawyer has advised her not to comment about that. >> i ruined my life. >> you -- >> i really -- i ruined my son's future, i wouldn't have had a son if i didn't come. that's the only regret i don't have. >> she and other western isis families had to be transferred there from another camp because of death threats from isis hard-liners and hers is not an isolated case. she said she knew of maybe a handful of other americans there, but officials say they will not comment on individual nationalities. margaret. >> brennan: that's our charlie d'agata in syria. we are now joined by alabama's democratic senator doug jones.
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he is also the author of a new book, bending towards justice, the birmingham church bombing that changed the course of civil rights. senator, i want to ask you about the book but first let's talk about this young woman. >> sure. >> brennan: because she is from alabama. have you spoken to the white house about her case? >> no, i have not. her citizenship is tied up with the state department right now, they will have that hearing on that, you know, but no one is going to welcome this person back to the united states. that's just a his characterization. i do think we ought to consider bringing her back to face justice. we do it all the time with terrorists, with other people that get, commit crimes against the united states. i think it sends kind of a bad message if we give someone a get out of jail free card just because they go to the middle east. >> brennan: secretary pompeo claims she has no basis to claim u.s. citizenship but she did have a u.s. passport. >> she did i think that will be decided within with the courts and the state department my concern is just the message we are sending by hot bringing someone back to face american justice. i have an abiding faith and a old federal prosecutor myself
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and i have faith in the system of justice to do the right thing and make sure that justice is imposed and i in i that that is what we ought to be looking at here. >> well, you talked about your time as a prosecutor, you famously prosecuted kkk members. >> right. >> involved in the mean 63 horrific bombing of a church that killed four little girls. it took decades for the fbi to release any of the evidence they had gathered against the killers. from your experience, do you think the digging into history, history like this aggravates tensions or is it necessary? >> oh i think it is absolutely necessary. what we saw after -- after those cases it was such a sense of healing, i mean, there are still a lot of open wounds from the civil rights cases because ourself and painful time ind wn those mistakes. i think it is even more important today to, we see hateful rhetoric all over the country these days and not just plaque and white anymore. it is religion, it is
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nationality, it is gender, you maim it, we see that and i this toy go back and look at that history to make sure we don't, you know, commit the same mistakes that we did the last time, i think it is very important and it is a stones healing for the community and for those families. >> brennan: you 0 talk in the book about a backsliding, that's a phras y >> uh-huh. yes. >> brennan: particularly on the voting rights of minorities these days. >> no question. >> brennan: who do you blame for that? >> i think it is a combination of things. i think we have had losses in the courts but also think it is a political power grab right now where people are trying to gerrymander districts, where people are trying to prevent people the right to vote and give them free access to the vote. we need to be expanding the voter roles and getting people to vote and putting the percentage of americans up who are -- who want to vote on election day. and instead we seem to be working and constricting that enhancemt and try to put the teeth back in the voting rights act. >> brennan: who do you blame for this? >> i think if you look carefully you have to look at the state
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legislatures, and members of congress that are republican, for whatever reason they do not want african americans and others 0 minorities to vote, i assume rather than, rather than trying to get those votes they seem to want to restrict those votes. i think that is incredibly unfortunate. we need to have more dialogues in this country rather than monologues and do it about voting rights act. we talk a good game about a everybody having the right to vote and a duty to vote but at the end of the day we seem to be working to try to restrict that and that's just wrong. >> brennan: just yesterday you saw, we learned what was going to than to those 02 sacramento police officers involved in the shooting a man named stephon clark, he was about 22 years only, old, shot in his grsm's backyard, they thought he was armed but it turned out to be a cellphone, it turns out he faced some act aations of domestic abuse, other things but what do because for many, they see this as an example of a criminal justice system that is unfairly treating and just rigged against
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african americans. >> and to some extent i think there is some truth to that, i mean historically over the last three, four years, especially the crack cocaine epidemic, we have seen all manner of things where the people of color have been incarcerated on larger scales than those that are not. and i think we took a first step act that we passed in congress, this past year, past, passed congress with criminal justice reform with the president's approval and support of the administration, i think it is going to go to correct it but it is very difficult when you have tensions between la law enforcet and think minority community, and that's very difficult to do. law enforcement officers have to make split second decisions, but at the same time there has got to be some way to hold people accountable, even if they make a wrong decision at the wrong time. >> brennan: you mentioned the first step act, something you supported, a trump english if the, in your position offing ofg from a very red state i think you are the very democrat elected from alabama. >> since 1992, yes, absolutely.
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>> brennan: you are up for reelection in 2020. you are getting targeted. >> oh, sure. >> brennan: for the republicans to flip it back. how do you convince people in your home state to not make you just the, you know, the the first in 25 years and the last a? >> well, you know, all i do is do my job. i have the people of alabama's best interests at heart. i am an independent voice for them. i am not a solid vote, voice or vote for the president or the democratic party. i will look at each individual vote separately. and i try to do the right thing. i think some of the best compliments i have had in the last a year, my one year in the senate because when i would go home, welling doug you are doing exactly what you said you would go and that is looking out for us and yes a lot of issues we face but i think alabama, the south we are all aging there are a lot of things going on and putting aside a lot of the issues that have divided us in the past, that have caused incredible division, political and social divisions right now we are talking about jobs and talking about healthcare, that's a driving forth, force in my
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state, education, workforce development and a that's what we have in common and we will keep preaching and i feel food about where we are. >> brennan: senator, thanks for joining us. >> thank
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we turn now to our panel for some political analysis. jeffrey gold entering the editor in chief of the atlantic, paul a la reed covers the justice department and the white house for cbs david sanger a national security correspondent and senior writer for "the new york
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times" 0 and david no, ma'am murrah covers to the white house for the "washington post" so i know you guys aren't over your jet lag because i certainly am not having covered this summit in hanoi. david you have a piece in, an extensive one in "the new york times" writing about what went wrong with these talks, you heard the national security advisor give his take. what is the bottom line? >> i think the bottom line, margaret, is that they sent the president of the united states halfway around the world into a negotiation that had not been, not only not precooked but basically they had nothing when he landed. usually the way summits work for all of us who have covered these is, the real estate comes in as a closer on the final ten percent. what was clear here was that this was not just the get to know you meeting that happened in singapore, this was a meeting that was intended to go work out 0 a schedule or the denuclearization and if you couldn't get that, then at least stop the problem from getting worse. >> brennan: they couldn't even agree on the definition of
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denuclearization? >> they could not and kim came in with an offer, which had been made in various forms over the past three presidencies to sort of have a moratorium on some kind of production at pyongyang which is their main a nuclear center, there were some remarkable interchanges you heard a little bit of it when you asked mr. bolton about it, there are sites outside of there that are producing nuclear material. the president correctly, i think, wanted to get everything shut down. but he left not even getting a suspension of additional production, which means that while this drags on, the north korean problem is getting worse they have 30 weapons already and will probably have more. also just the scene of what we were going through and this was taking place in the metropolitan hotel, this old french cloal colonial hotel a century old, feet from where the president and president and kim are meeting a bomb shelter that was heard to heard guests into when the americans were bombing north
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vietnam of working out one more cold war problem on the site where ho chi minh and others plotted against the americans and the french is pretty remarkable. >> brennan: there are so many remarkable moments we saw one of them in that piece earlier but, david we have to point out, you were the reporter who had the guts to ask the very first question of kim jong-un and he answered. >> he answered. the question with to the most brutal dictator in the world, what could go wrong? luckily i am back here to talk about it, luckily, fortunately. >> we didn't know what happens there were a small group of white house reporters. >> some shout at president trump, the day before he got irritated by shouted questions but we wanted to engage kim jong-un, this was one of the few chances even if they had gotten a deal he would not have appeared at a news conference i asked him whether he was confident he would get a deal. >> and he said it was too early to tell and he was right and said he was not pessimistic and hopeful but we saw hours later i was there in the dining room for lunch, the press corps was let
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in and the lunch would start around noon, half an hour later they still hadn't happened, and we realized that this thing had gone offer the rails and things were not going well and sure enough within fi that wetons had chack to the press hold and then they canceled the lunch and any signing ceremonies, there were no deal. >> brennan: that's not just your analysis, that's on a public schedule there was a signing ceremony. >> so with would it be an understanding to say, jeff, it was disappointed even though john bolton said it was not? >> yes, john bolton did an admirable job of masking his own obvious feelings regarding this summit. yeah, i mean i would just issue one corrective to david's excellent supper, david stanger's excellent summary, he talk about they brought the president halfway around the world, the president brought himself halfway around the world. no one really thought this was going to work. this was not precooked, that would be aver knack dollar way of describing out summits are made. but you are exactly right. you are supposed to bring the
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president in to sign the document and maybe argue a little bit but this was -- this was another thing entirely and this is the down side of 0 an entirely spontaneous presidency and president who doesn't actually listen and acknowledges he doesn't listen to his own intelligence chiefs when they tell him, this is not going to work, this is not going to work, and so on, and so the outcome, it was bizarre scene .. but this was predictable, utterly predict only. >>able. >> 30 years of negotiation at the lower level we ever got two a real estate july summit, let's flip it around and start top down .. this is where the president felt his personal relationship with kim jong-un whatever that is, i know, no one is sure of what it is and he thinks it is good and that would be the closer and make the deal happen, it is not going to work -- >> and over personalized it in that regard. he is showing people the letter from kim jong-un as if, i have a rapport with him, i will be able to make this deal. >> brennan: paula, the other personal relationship the president had we heard a lot about this week was his former
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attorney michael cohen who is testifying when he was negotiating despite the 12-hour time difference he watched the testimony. >> absolutely. and the typing was deliberate. this is an effort to undermine the president and lay out a road map for house democrats to now pursue various investigations. most important thing we learned from this hearing is that the president's legal problems have metastasized far beyond this special counsel investigation, and what he should be most concerned about is what is going on in the southern district of new york somewhere federal prosecutors we knew they were looking into campaign finance violations, they have several cooperating witness whose implicate the president in directing this scheme to violate campaign finance laws, but now we also have learned there were other investigations that we still don't know about, in addition to the fact that they are looking into the president's last conversation with michael cohen. he couldn't even discuss what the two men talk about, because that is the subject of an ongoing investigation, raising questions about possible
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obstruction or even witness tampering. >> brennan: and the judiciary committee chairman in the house said today for im, all this apts to obstruction of justice and in fact i think he is calling about 60 different individuals to try to come testify. where does this go next? >> you are really going to shift the focus from the special counsel, everyone is going to be on high alert once again for that final report, but what is going on in manhattan, that is what is really going to matter. those crimes are also probably more easy to prove since you have cooperating witnesses and at times they may not be the sexiest crimes possible tax fraud or insurance fraud they are easier to rove. house democrats are going to go full steam ahead calling all of these witnesses and, witnesses and continuing to seek corroborating documents for what michael cohen said, seeing if they can confirm his story. but so far, it appears that the special counsel's report may not come for a few more weeks. >> brennan: and we heard from adam schiff the chairman of the house intelligence, this allegation of money laundering
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on behalf of russia through the trump organization but he admitted he had no proof of that so far. >> that's a pretty big bomb to lob without any corroboration, i also take issue with his claim that he has evidence of collusion. he seemed to be conflated contact with collusion. he says what happened at trump tower was collusion. he is pointing to e-mails. nothing was exchanged there. the same with the meeting, paul manafort had with the russian exchange polling data, we know there was contact, we know that but we don't know what they did with that polling data. so we certainly have evidence of contact, but a criminal conspiracy? so far, there has not been sufficient proof for anyone to be charged in that. >> brennan: we are going to take a really quick break and come back in just a moment. >>
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cbs cares. employee: it's a bioh, it's huge.ty. i know, it's huge. boss: and the salary... employee: oh my god, yes. said he toon took kim kim at his we are back now with our political panel, david familiar more 0 are a i want to ask you about the president's speech the longest of his presidency just yesterday at cpac, a lot of different headlines in there. >> >> brennan: yeah but for you, what stood out? what was the purpose in this almost two hour long speech? >> i mean it seemed lroh a lot s
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talked about before and even the investigations into his campaign conduct and so on, and, but what struck me was the length of this event, but also the setting of the event, you know, with the crowd that really does seem to genuinely support the real estate and really love the president. it seemed like he was coming back from a summit that had collapsed he had a hearing with michael cohen when he was out of the country and hard for him to come back like he would like to do and a lot to get off his chest so he went through bit by bit all of the folks who he felt as a threat to him, and that's what he does, which is attack. >> it was a greatest hits compilation, and i was thinking watching it, i was thinking he had been so buttoned up comparatively speaking in hanoi. >> you have to hit your marks and say certain things and he is not disciplined in that way. he gets in front of a home audience, a home field advantage, and everything pores out. >> all of the oppressed observations he wanted to make. >> >> brennan: including profanity.
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>> including profanity and everything, it was the longest speech in presidential history if you want to call it a speech if you want to call it a speech in terms of organization but the longest speaking event in the president's history tfnt oddity sheer president who we thought might be using hanoi as a way to divert from the cohen testimony, and then he shows up basically having to divert from the fact that he had come back from hanoi with nothing against, you know, a tiny, tiny country that has a fraction of the power of the united states, so he is as david said back to his greatest hits. >> one hour and 50 minutes to get to north korea in the speech. >> brennan: but i interesting, david, because the "washington post" is, the headline today saying the acquiescence to trump is now the gop's defining trait. is that how you read that speech yesterday before cpac? >> i think one of the remarkable things about the republican party is that in the runup to
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the election, you had all of these people trying to separate themselves from presiden presidp and now they have determined he is their candidate for the next election so they have to line themselves up and i think the long historical question here is, is the republican party going to be over the long-term more like a party that president trump has defined or more like the traditional republicans that president trump defeated for the nomination? and i don't think they really decided internally within the party the answer to that and i think much of it depends on how the investigation turns out. >> brennan: and, paula, you are seeing the republicans line up behind the president and defending hip against these investigations as well you have kevin mccar he the republican leader out there on the attack against adam schiff. >> absolutely. and look at the cohen hearing, right? everyone else was seeming to addition for that role of fixer, the republicans weren't able to really, except for one exception, grill him on the substance of his allegations, many of which were extremely
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damning and said they just went after his credibility, sort of doing what cohen use to do, used to do for the president. >> brennan: jeff, switching gears a bit, but perhaps not, a grammatically. >> a jury is -- >> brennan: the president press conference in hanoi he was asked about a number of things, a number of topics including what is happening a in israel right now and his friend, the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu indicted. typically ahead of an election an american president would say i don't want to wade in. >> yes. >> brennan: the president jumped in. >> the president jumped in. netanyahu who is like many foreign leaders more trumpian as he watched this new model of leadership, and i think president trump is quite nervous about watching what happened to a prime minister of an allied company under indictment. we are fating an interesting moment, netanyahu has been president for a decade, and this is just a second run he might be through. that's not good news for donald
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trump. it is about net i can f the many similarities they have is don't count either man out. don't count netanyahu o
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armando: i am a veteran, i lost both legs in vietnam. announcer: as america's veterans face challenges, dav is there. armando: my victory was getting my benefits and a good education. announcer: dav helps veterans of every generation
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get the benefits they've earned. wade: i'm a veteran, i didn't want to admit it, but i have ptsd. announcer: so veterans can reach victories great and small. wade: my victory was finding help and learning that i wasn't alone. announcer: support more victories for veterans, go to dav.org. >> brennan: that's it for us today. thanks for watching. we will see you next week. for "face the nation", i am margaret brennan. >> captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org
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>> dr. stanley: remember this: cannot change the laws of god. when he has visited you in some form of adversity and he brings you through that, that's like he has increased the strength of the foundation of your life and your faith in him. [music]
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pie you can eat all by yourself. watermelon and oranges. >> reporter: no one has this kind of reaction over fresh fruit alone. >> thank you so much. i can't believe you. >> reporter: whether she knows it or not, ruby is satisfying some much more basic needs here, to be remembered, to be cherished, especially by a child. that is what seniors are truly hungry for and that is what ruby brings every time she sets foot in a nursing home. who needs a lamborghini when you have home delivery of the happy you can handle. steve hartman on the road near harrison, arkansas. >> and that's the "overnight news" for this monday. for others the news continues. we have the morningsing news and of course cbs this morning. reporting for thum broadcast center in new york i'm
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david begnaud. ♪ march madness. big winter storm. means millions of people are expecting snow. also tonight investigating the president. a top ranking democrat is planning to ask for documents cles to the president. protests in california after a district attorney tells people she is not going to prosecute two police officers for the shooting death of an unarmed man. with isis on the verge of defeat in s,