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tv   Charlie Rose  PBS  August 22, 2015 12:00am-1:01am PDT

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>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with donald trump. again, there is a provocative new piece about him and his supporters in the "new yorker" magazine. we talked to evan osnos, the reporter who are spent four months writing this piece. >> how did the donald trump phenomenon happen? and we spent time -- i went to half a dozen states either chasing the trump campaign or staying behind with his fans, seeking them out and having longer conversations than we usually get a chance to have on a typical campaign trail experience, saying what is really driving this fee mom non? >> rose: also cbs news colleague and foreign correspondent clarissa ward on
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syria. >> the reality is nearly 10 million syrians have been displaced, 4 million left the country. the syrians aren't in syria ria where there is a modicumin of security whereby some of the country's more educated people, people who have experience with running a country, running a state can come back into their country and start to work together to participate in a meaningful way and find a resolution to this crisis, how on earth can you find resolution to a crisis like this when half the country is displaced and 4 million don't even live inside syria anymore? >> rose: we conclude with a remarkable press conference by 90-year-old jimmy carter, the former president, talking about his cancer that has moved to his brain. >> we had an mri of my head and neck and it showed up it was already in four places in my brain. so i would say that night and the next day until i came back up to emory, i just thought i had a few weeks left.
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but i was surprisingly at ease. >> rose: evan osnos on donald trump and his supporters. clarissa ward on syria. jimmy caer on battling cancer. when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with america's conversation, donald trump. he continues his remarkable
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surge in the republican party, a recent cnn poll shows nearly a quarter of likely g.o.p. voters would back his nomination for president. trump's hard line approach to immigration reform is at the heart of his campaign and galvanized many of his supporters. new yorker staff writer evan osnos xplorers the factors motivating trump's unprecedented rise in the magazine's latest issue. the piece is called "the fearful and the frustrated," donald trump's national coalition takes shape for now. i am pleased to have evan osnos back at this table. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: let me read the conclusion from the piece at the beginning because you spent two or three months on this. >> yeah, that's right. >> rose: and your goal was what? your mission, intent, questions -- >> we wanted to understand how this happened. how did the donald trump phenomenon happen, and we spent time -- i went to half a dozen states either chasing the trump campaign or staying behind with
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his fans, seeking them out and having longer conversations than we usually get a chance to have on a typical campaign trail experience, saying what is really driving this phenomenon. i have to say, i came at this from not an angle i expected. i was reporting on the far right in america, ever since the shooting in charleston. we realized we need to understand what's going on on the extreme right. in the course of that, we realized, as one member of that community put it to me, we have been awakened, we have been brought out of our slumber. i said, by whom? they said, by donald trump. d you begin to see over the course of the next month and a half leading up to today that there was this extraordinary phenomenon going on within the far american right, which is, for the first time in five years, really since the decline of the tea party, they feel their moment has returned. there is a populous moment and donald trump is their standard-bearer. >> rose: who is "we"? it's a combination of
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loosely-organized entities. some are what we could describe as white nationalists, some anti-immigration activists, some border vigilantes. it is a proudly fierce crowd. this is a crowd that believes the united states is under threat culturally and economically from immigration. they believe that if we continue on the course we are now that the country is at risk and they've believed for a long time that republican party has not gone far enough on dealing with immigration and we've seen for the last months that donald trump has adopted an unprecedented array of options for immigration policy that they say this is our man. >> rose: did donald trump fall into this, or did he understand it from the get-go? >> donald trump, i don't think he fully imagined how much support there was out there for this possibility, for this kind
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of policy. but donald trump is expert, we all know, at reading his audience. he's done it brilliantly for 40 years, whether we're talking about markets, clients, thousand get people into his casinos, buildings, golf courses, and he got into this race and discovered quite clearly there was room phon -- room for an anti-immigration candidate that could go further than ever before. >> rose: was that the reason he got into the race? >> i don't think so. he said he got into the race for some reasons we know to be true. he's talked about before getting into politics and believes he's the best man for the job. he gave his announcement speech which was mocked, criticized and totally successful. if you look at the numbers, almost overnight, his favorability among very conservative republicans, the tea party especially, went from less than 20% to over 50%, he hit a nerve. he said in an interview shortly
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after that that the immigration was give ton me by the reaction. he said essentially i discovered at this point that was the issue. >> rose: does donald trump believe that provides enough people to win a nomination? >> this is the key debate in the center of the republican party has been for the last four years, did mitt romney lose because he didn't get enough traditional republicans, white-class working americans out to the polls or did he lose because he alienated latino and other minority voters? the g.o.p. narrative was we made a mistake but not reaching out -- >> rose: african-american, immigrants, hispanics? >> exactly. the g.o.p. report said next time we'll be a big tent and reach out to the big constituencies. one reason jeb bush who speaks spanish has a well established
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track record on immigration issues, with one of the reasons he became a consensus candidate was because he was a forward-looking vision for immigration, and donald trump was the e exogenous event that e party didn't expect and threw it upside down and threw campaign in a direction no one thought it would go. >> rose: and donald trump and what he said about romney's attitude about immigrants, hispanics, asians, essentially saying it was crazy and that he would lose because those people would not support him. >> absolutely right. there is a very revealing quote in the fall of 2012 where donald trump said that mitt romney's policy of self-deportation is maniacal, quote-unquote. he said it's driving away everybody who comes to this country for a better life. three and a half, four years
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later, he has not only adopted that policy but has gone 100% further and said this is his political pathway. i think this is the question we are all asking about whether or not donald trump is a durable candidate because he has adopted a strategy that may serve him well in the primaries, but there is no evidence that this will be able to carry him further than that. >> rose: you end the piece by saying if, as the republican establishment hopes -- that's a broad group there. you're almost saying the republican party, for the most part -- if the republican establishment hopes the star gazers eventually defect -- meaning they go away, the star gazers -- trump will be left with the hardest core, the portion to have the electorate that is drifting deeper into unreality with no reconciliation in sight. >> what happened is very
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interesting. >> rose: your final words. when you go out on the donald trump campaign trail, you meet two very different constituencies, one are the star gazers. these are the people who may have seen him on television, heard of him, he's been a fixture in american life for years and he's entertaining, fun on an afternoon in august. people come from miles around to see him. i've seen the line reaching around the block. >> rose: may be more than 30,000 this weekend. >> we'll see. there's an event in mobile where there may be tens of thousands of people. a woman was quoted saying i don't want to miss it because i've missed elvis and i've never forgiven myself. so there is an element that is entertainment and celebrity culture. >> rose: they are the star gazers. >> those are the star gazers. not to see they don't believe some of the things he's saying. he's appealing to the anti-establishment ethic of the moment.
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people are profoundly frustrated with politicians and you see this partly in what bernie sanders is getting. but then there is the other group beyond the star gazers, the people who are the hard core. this is the group for whom immigration has become not only a litmus test but an essential measure of presidential and political character and, for them, donald trump is saying something very meaningful. >> rose: was recognized as one of the two or three popular people in the latino community says, right now donald trump is no question the loudest voice of intolerance, hatred and division in the united states. >> you know what's interesting? if you go back historically, we have had this moment before. every time that the united states goes through a profound
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demographic shift, whether it's the great migration, african-americans moving up from the south, whether it was the end of jim crow, whether it is what we're now going through which is the end ofta white maf jort america, an america that will be much more pleurallistic, every time that happens there is a vacuum and in that vacuum there is the possibility of somebody stepping forward. we had father coughlin in the '40s. we've had other people who stepped forward and are willing to energize and animate -- >> rose: but all of these people are judged badly by history, in come says as racists, in some cases as antisemitic. >> donald trump has gone a lot further than anybody thought he would in this campaign. just in the last week, as jorge ramos' comments demonstrate, we are into a territory now where it's incumbent upon him to begin to explain perhaps for fully how
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his vision of immigration policy fits into the moral conception of america which a lot of us hold dear. i think that is the moment he's reaching now. it's no longer the early days of the campaign. he's been at this two month. it's been now getting to the point where people say what if this actually becomes policy? do you actually intend to begin to deport portions of is 1 million undocumented immigrants? do you believe that the 14th amendment does not apply to children who are born in the united states to undocumented parents? if that's the case, it is a profound shift in what we consider to be our essential national attributes and we should be having that conversation explicitly, not in the background, buried beneath what is the pop culture fascination for donald trump. >> rose: there is a link by some of the people you interviewed, and i should say this piece is essentially not about the people who dislike donald trump or who have strong negative opinions about this, didn't go out and seem to get a
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lot of quotes from him, this is about who's supporting him and who are they, what do they believe, why are they supporting him and what are their goals? >> we thought this was the time to understand the basis of his support. it's easy to throw stones at his candidacy. >> rose: find one person after another willing to criticize. >> not difficult. he has the outsized personality. we said what is actually beneath the basis of his support? and some of it is conventional political support, and some of it is not. >> rose: but mise question is, is it more negative, more far right, more extreme than the tea party? >> we know a couple of things about h his support compared to the tea party, in the beginning he didn't have any tea party support. after his announcement, his favorability with the tea party skyrocketed. monmouth university poll said he went from less than 20 to over 50.
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what's interesting is his supporters tend to be a little younger, poorer and less educated than the tea party. the tea party is actually, by and large, middle class, has an education, these are people who are a little further air long in life than we often shorthand them. >> rose: and my assumption is their argument is about government. >> they're enraged by politics and what government has failed to do and what government does. donald trump's voters are generally not exactly the same overlapping circle. he has two major sources of support. the "washington post," in their analysis of a poll, discovered the broad majority of his support comes from two groups -- one are men without college degrees, and the other group are people who believe immigration will weaken the future of the united states. >> rose: and you have quotes from people who had lost their jobs. one man, for example, worked at a factory and now he's parking cars, and they blamed immigration for that.
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jobs had gone to other places, e in the republican field has been alert enough to figure out how to galvanize that kind of economic anxiety without going so far into the realm of anti-immigration rhetoric that you will then find it hard to come back for a general election. and, you know, i've spoken to people in new hampshire, for instance, who say -- and this is new hampshire, not on the texas border -- and they say to themselves that the single greatest source of their economic distress, the fact their friends are working long past the point than they ever thought into retirement, when they're losing their houses, they attribute that economic distress to immigration. >> rose: ross perot made these
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arguments, too. >> he did and it worked for a while. one of the things we need to think about is whether or not perot is a precedent for trump's long-term viability. >> rose: or pat buchanan. i heard pat buchanan's name a lot on the campaign trail. i think there were people who liked him a lot last time, hadn't heard anybody singing that song for a long while and now hear trump singing it. >> rose: that was the force of america trump abd talked about in his book. >> i heard about pat buchanan a lot on this project. he wrote a book called "the death of the west," an apocalyptic vision of the future of the united states because of multiculturalism and diverse gages and immigration. and for a certain set of americans, that matched what they feared for their own future, particularly young white men. they looked out and said we'll not live the standard of living our parents enjoyed, we'll not have the kind of entitlements
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previous generations exengted, and they look for a source, an explanation for that, and the definition that they arrive at, and part of the definition is immigration as a reason, there is, if you go online today, charlie, there is a fascinating and, to a lot of us, unknown world of anti-immigrant web sites and opinions that are much more highly developed than -- >> rose: but in people who are supporting trump, it's the call of white supremacy. >> that is what it is. white supremacy is, for all obvious reasons, an ugly concept. we don't talk about it very much. it has actually been growing over the course of the last eight years. when barack obama was elected, the white supremacist web site, the main one called storm front crashed because of heavy traffic. the election of an
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african-american president was, for people on the far right, was an electrifying and disconcerting moment. they realized that the future they had been afraid of was coming true and, over the course of the last eight years, the department of homeland security has measured and documented a growing revival of the militia movement that existed in the 1990s, white nationalists as they call themselves now. these forces are reforming because they see in the future at a point when demographers say will be around 2042 when non-hispanic whites will no longer be the largest majority in america, that is the moment when this portion to have the electorate, the public, believes their rights and their power, their influence will be in decline. >> rose: what's interesting to me, too, is the idea -- two big ideas here. one, is immigration becoming a litmus test for conservatism,
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because just yesterday jeb bush said, the problem with donald trump, he hasn't been a republican, and i have been a conservative republican all my life. >> within republican circles today, immigration is the lit mutt test the way abortion and gun rights have been for the last 20 years. even if donald trump doesn't bam boston marathon the next president, he has exerted a force on the republican field we are already seeing so candidates like scott walker, chris christie especially who in the past may not have take an hard line on immigration, feel the need to borrow some of that energy. >> rose: and other hardline issues, too. >> absolutely. >> rose: going further on abortion and other issues because they feel that's where they have to scramble to. >> yeah, they feel there is only a couple of options with donald trump. you either hang in the
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background and do nothing, you challenge him head on like rand paul in the first debate which is hard to do because he lashes out hard, or you try to borrow his energy. people who follow politics, jorge ramos, for instance, who has a good sense of what's going on with latino voters in america, is mainstream candidates are pulled to the right in the way the party in the long run never expected to have to do. >> rose: what's interesting, too, about this, in this conversation, there are a lot of very good people supporting donald trump for whatever reason. >> absolutely. >> rose: and they're not white supremacists. >> right. >> rose: they're not neo-nazis, they are not militias. they are people who really find, because of the circumstances of their life and their economic insecurity, a sense of what's happened to america -- >> that's true. >> rose: -- and they don't really know what it is. but all of a sudden, somebody
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comes along, says, maybe it's this, and they respond to that. these are good, patriotic people and any conversation has to recognize that. >> absolutely. >> rose: no one should, in a sense, paint because some supporters are a certain way with a broad brush. >> that's right and we start the piece saying here are some of the reasons people are supporting donald trump. he is saying things that need to be said about the paid politician culture of america. people are fed up with it. he's talking about campaign finance in a way nobody else has. he's also coming at it from the outside in a way nobody else has. >> rose: but ronald reagan used to say and say often, i can't defend all the positions of my supporters. they are buying my positions, i'm not buying theirs. >> that's right. gary johnson who was, of course, the governor of new mexico for two terms as a republican and libertarian candidate in 2012 for president, he said, you know, anybody who goes out on
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the campaign trail -- and he's not running, he can tell you about tex persons -- he says anybody who goes out on the campaign trail discovers that there is a group of people out there who are available to be enraged on issues like immigration, for instance, and he said i had absolutely no doubt that donald trump's support income pazs a vast array of people who have no interest in this issue and they're in it for all the right reasons. they want somebody to shake up politics. but there is always that. >> rose: but worried about america's future in a broad sense. >> absolutely, and they feel these kinds of economic issues. but what he also said and he assigned a number to it, he said there is also that 8% which will always be there which is angry and willing to, in fact, pushes you as a candidate to want to say things that you may not otherwise imagine yourself saying -- for instance, going against immigration. so gary johnson said i used to go out on the trail and he said
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the biggest thing facing the nation is immigration and he said i don't agree with you. but he said that's there. he said that's the 8% and you bring in people who are attracted to donald trump for all kinds of positive reasons and that's how you get to a quarter of the republican comes about donald trump, and you quote roger stone saying his decision to become a birther -- this was several years ago, questioning the birthplace of president obama -- was a brilliant base-building move. so that question feeds into the idea of why. are these legitimate political beliefs of donald trump or are these political tactics by donald trump? because he's written books about dealmaking, saying you do what it takes to win. >> that's right. >> rose: either way, it's
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dangerous. >> he is enormously strategic, and that applies to his politics. we've seen this over the course of -- he's been talking about running for president since 1987. from 1987 today, he has been a democrat, republican, independent, now a republican. he has had an ability to figure out what people want and to meet them there, and what we've seen just between 2012 and today -- and you mentioned earlier the quote in the piece which he said, donald trump's words, that what mitt romney did was a disaster politically because he alienated people to come to this country for a better life. that was four years ago and he has a completely different view today. whether or not that's strategy, that's tactics, how far that carries past the primary, we have to wait and see. >> rose: and a lot of politicians change their mind for whatever reason. >> it's part of a game. >> rose: right. but i think what we set out to do and what this piece needed to do at this point was to say let's talk explicitly about what this turn towards a very strong
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anti-immigration policy will actually mean. who are the voters who are being activated and what is the policy that he's actually advancing. >> rose: your piece is stronger, stronger in looking at who is supporting him than it is looking inside of his mind. >> that's right. donald trump is -- he lays it out there. it's not hard to try to figure out what donald trump believes because he is available in that sense, he talks constantly about his policies. it's harder to ask him and to get a meaningful response about what does he -- what goes into those calculations. so you will see -- if you spend enough time on the campaign trail, you begin to see he has a repertoire of ideas and returns to it over and over again like any candidate does. but getting past that is probably not the way towns what his candidacy means. understanding what his candy means probably requires going
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out on the trail, going to half a dozen states and talking to people who -- >> rose: going back to your final words and i quote them again, if, as the republican establishment hopes the star gazers eventually defect, trump will be left with the hardest core, the portion of the electorate drifting deeper into unreality with no reconciliation in sight. is this some kind of passing moment with respect to the people on the far right as you describe them here and if they don't succeed here, they become more what? >> they become embittered. they feel disenfranchised to begin with. they actually have a very low expectation of politics. they don't think that conventional american politics will provide relief, and the fear is -- and i think it's a legitimate concern -- that as this group begins to feel more cornered, that they start to say our voices are not going to be heard in government in the future, that they will lash out
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and, if you talk to people who follow the far right in america, the analysts, the security analysts who pay attention to this, they say we are in the moment when we are going to begin to say more -- i'm afraid to say it, but more to have the charleston-type attacks when people feeling on the margins of american culture and politics in every way, that they begin to lash out. >> rose: and do you think donald trump has any covens this? >> he's not seeking it out. i don't think he's pursuing this. i don't think he's doing this with a desire to go after guys who are marginal, but he is benefiting from it at the moment and he's continuing to move down that path. there was an attack in boston the other night, two brothers from south boston who are alleged to attack an hispanic homeless man, broke his nose, beat him and when they were arrested, they justified their
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attack saying donald trump is right and that illegal immigrants should be deported. when donald trump was asked about this and about other threats of violence, he said, it's a shame, if it's true, but my supporters are very passionate, they're very passionate people, and that's as far as he went. >> rose: this is an extraordinary piece, in the "new yorker" magazine, august 31s 31st issue, in the news stands monday by evan osnos, one of the best journalists working today. the title of the article is called "the fearful and the frustrated: donald trump's nationalist coalition takes shape for now." back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: we turn tonight to syria. on sunday assad regime forces hit due ma, the air strikes among the deadliest raids.
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tuesday islamic state beheaded one of antiquity's top scholars. more than 250,000 syrians killed since the conflict broke out. a push to end the crisis with the u.n. security council calling for a resolution. clarissa ward has been to the country eleven times at some risk to her own life since the civil war began. i am pleased to have her back on the program. welcome. >> thank you. good to be here. >> rose: when and how will arlie and, unfortunately, iion, just don't think anybody has an answer. there is a real sense in the air the assad regime may be on its last legs and teetering, but there is no real sense of what may come in its place and what the new syria will look like. in my humble opinion and based on discussions i've had with people on the ground from all
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different slices of life, it doesn't seem like syria as we know it has a future as one large country joined together. >> rose: some questions like that are being raised about iraq as well. >> absolutely. i think what we're seeing in the middle east is really the rewriting of borders that essentially were written in colonial times anyway and that didn't necessarily pay attention to some of the sectarian and ethnic divides going on on the ground, and now we're seeing in the wake of the arab spring changes are happening, borders are being redrawn and we're seeing the sectarian divides getting deep around deeper, and the way they have divided themselves in syria and the number of deaths, it's impossible to believe there is any coming back from that, that we could look again at a united syria moving up of shiites and aloalawites and sunnis and christian, and you say let's take a more pragmatic approach.
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looks like president assad could carve out a state. and then you have in the east of the country you have, obviously, i.s.i.s. territory and aa long the iraqi border, unlikely to change. so you have to ask what's going to happen with the rest of the country? what will happen in the north toward the western part under control of mishmash of different rebel groups, many islamists, many not necessarily sworn enemies of the united states in the way i.s.i.s. is but certainly a concern to the united states, particularly al-nusra, al quaida in syria. so there's a shift on the ground in syria and damascus. i think everybody is wringing their hands here thinking, okay, if assad falls tomorrow, what comes in his place? what happens to damascus and
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whether you're russia or the u.s. or israel you're looking very closely and desperately trying to come up with a solution to that problem that so far i haven't seen one. >> rose: john brenner c.i.a. director said on council to foreign relations, my nightmare is to think of i.s.i.s. rolling intodinto damascus. >> people forget, if you look at thousand conflict began, it didn't start a year ago when i.s.i.s. marched into the iraqi city of mosul. cies" is a product of a vacuum created because of the impotence, because of the unwillingness and because of a lack of consensus among different parties in the international community in terms of how to deal with syria and the longer you have that lack of consensus and the longer you have that impotence, the more likely a scenario such as the night in one you just described is a possibility. >> rose: in syria you have al-nusra, i.s.i.s. and
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khorasan, too. there are others, some we don't even know, islamic groups. the i.s.i.s. by definition stronger than al-nusra or do we know. >> it has nor territory in syria and a large chunk of territory in iraq as well, but there is a very big difference between al-nusra and i.s.i.s., which is al-nusra has in more syrians in its ranks unlike i.s.i.s. which is drawing far on foreign fight,, and in conjunction with nat, al-nusra enjoy as lot of popular support among regular syrians. they haven't tried to implement a strict sharia law in the same way we have been seen i.s.i.s. trying to do. now, on the other hand, al-nusra, also unlike i.s.i.s., plays well with other rebel groups. they're part of this umbrella group that's had a lot of success on the battlefield
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called fatah, sponsored by turkey and qatar and others. so al-nusra is in a different position than i.s.i.s. because it gets along with other groups and enjoys popular support. it has a lot of less territory but wields considerable influence, and i think it's been very interesting to watch from my per supreme courtive as someone who talks to these people on a pretty much daily basis on the ground, you know, as the u.s. and coalition has stated their enemy number one here is i.s.i.s. and the deal or the goal is to try and destroy or diminish the capabilities of i.s.i.s., but, at the same time, the u.s.-led coalition has also been attacking al-nusra. >> rose: so many questions. let me refer to one that's obviously talked about a lot. what is the attraction of i.s.i.s., especially to the young people who are online and other reasons, other sources are drawn to go to syria to fight for i.s.i.s. or go to iraq and
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fight for i.s.i.s.? >> there isn't one -- i've interviewed them, i have spent a lot of time on social media talking to them. there isn't one single factor that i would say attracts everyone. it's different for each person. i would say several things -- first of all, i.s.i.s. has a propaganda campaign which has been incredibly successful, very sophisticated, you know, deeply unpalatable for the rest of us to watch. it's essentially tried to shock the maximum possible with brutality the likes of which we haven't seen -- >> rose: what's it gained? it gained several things. the way these online videos are directed, this isn't the stuff we've seen before with a sheikh with a big beard sitting in a cave reciting the qur'an. this is hollywood productions, slickly produced, graphics and
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music and rousing images. they are clearly targeting people who are younger, grown up online -- >> rose: who have no purpose in life and other qualities. >> there is that element, too. they're very much appealing to people who feel arrange, indignant, a righteous sense of indignation and what they perceived as social wrong in the west or foreign policy wrong across the world. so they're appealing on many levels. then on another level, they're also trying to address issues that we may not immediately associate with extremism, like inequality, for example. one of i.s.i.s.'s big draws, come and live in the caliphate and you will have a free house and you will have free food and you will have free everything and we will get you a wife. they're really trying to appeal to that. >> rose: what's the impact of this place that they have, the demeaning place they have put
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women? >> what's so interesting, of all the people i have been looking at who go and join i.s.i.s., the women have always been the most perplexing to me because, unlike the male recruits, the female recruits who come from the west tend to be smart, intelligent, educated girls who did well in school, who were popular in class, they're not criminals, they don't have criminal histories, they're not rejects, they're not outliers, so i was really trying to wrap my head around that. i thought to myself, why are these girls going? and the girls in general, as well, i should say are much less willing to talk on social media to journalists, so it's difficult to get a really good picture of what it is that's motivating them. but the more conversations i've had both with people on the ground and experts, it's become clear to me that, on a certain level, there is also a rough manhattan simple to this whole idea. these are young 15-year-old, 16-year-old, 17-year-old girls. it's not necessarily they are
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psychopaths who are drawn to the sort of gre images, they're drao the image. it's a form of rebellion. i may have gone when i was 17 and dyed my hairpinnic and pierced my tongue -- >> rose: which you did. well, no comment there. but for these girls, this is their form of rebellion. >> rose: and the question is, also, we've known. this why is it so difficult to find an alternative narrative that will resonate? >> well, i think we have -- well, i mean, i think there is an alternative narrative. what you've hit on with your question is "that will resonate." that will feel authentic. that won't strike the people who feel attracted to this or potential targets of i.s.i.s.' media campaigns, that won't
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strike them as phoney. there is a very real sense among the islamic community in the u.k. and across europe that people do not support i.s.i.s. but they're also tired of having to constantly apologize for i.s.i.s. this is what they're telling me, they're tired of being held accountable -- >> rose: why? they don't want to apologize for it because they don' don't t as product of their communities. they see it as a product of the west in the middle east as a product of islam. they don't even believe these people are muslims in the truest sense of the word and to a certain extent feel overwhelmed vis-a-vis trying to come up with ways to take control of the situation. >> rose: do they fear the consequences of what might happen? this brings me to what you and i talked about before, the paper today, you know, in the "new york times" and other papers, it's the story of khalid al-assad. >> yeah. >> rose: an 84-year-old man, 80 to 84, who was an antiquities
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scholar in palmyra, tried to stay when he could have left, knew i.s.i.s. and what it was about, was responsible or driven by the idea, i assume, of protecting some antiquities, and, yet, they gruesomely beheaded him and hanged the remains of his body -- >> upside down by a lamp post with a sign attached to it saying "this is a regime loyalist." this is how i.s.i.s. rule. they rule through absolute fear, and everybody gets the message. if you live in i.s.i.s. territory you do what you are told. the case of khalid al-assad is marl saddening. he was known as mr. palmyra. for 50 years, five decades, he was the director of antiquities in this beautiful ancient city. when i first heard the news
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about his execution, it was so troubling to me. we discussed this yesterday, why did he stay? hi didn't he run away? how on earth did he think anything good could come of him staying? >> rose: exactly, he knew he was facing the possibility hoism being killed. >> we couldn't say why he stayed. we know he was well into his 80s and involved in efforts to try to protect some of the antiquities, take the most precious ones and evacuate them to a safer place to keep them from getting into the hands of i.s.i.s. unfortunately, when you're talking to come back to tissue of young recruits and the islamic communities in all these different countries, particularly in europe, who are desperately trying to come up with ways to fight i.s.i.s., they look at an issue like khalid al-assad and they will say, now, why is the media paying so much attention to this one man who was killed, albeit in the most gruesome and horrific fashion, when three days earlier, 100 people were killed in a marketplace by
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bashar al-assad and the world hasn't done anything to deal with that. >> rose: who are they? i'm reticent to speak for any community, but when i have talked to muslims in the u.k. and france and other countries, the feeling that i get from them over and over again is you're obsessing about i.s.i.s. all the time. they are responsible for a relatively small fraction of the deaths that have occurred in syria and, in fact, there was after -- there was a study out just the other day that says the regime was responsible for over 80% and i.s.i.s. more like 12% of the deaths. so that's the track they are on. they are very much on the track of -- and you'll get the same thing if you talk to people in turkey and qatar, they say we understand that i.s.i.s. is incredibly dangerous, that it represent one to have the scariest threats and the most
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violent groups arguably since the nazis, but, at the same time, bashar al-assad has also killed many more people than i.s.i.s. has and they're still reluctant to deal with that. >> rose: and tha is that the reason in part these regimes, the saudis and, too and others, say you have to get rid of assad first and take on -- because as long as assad's there, you give the people who are on the other side some reason to rally? >> absolutely. i mean, that is very much, if you talk to anyone in saudi arabia or qatar or turkey or those governments, that's very much what they will tell you, that you cannot deal with the problem of i.s.i.s. without dealing with assad, and that i.s.i.s. wouldn't exist without assad, and that brings me on to the topic of the u.s.'s efforts to trito deal with i.s.i.s. and the arming of these moderate rebels only ground -- on the ground, so-called division 30. so the u.s. said to the rebels,
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who trained a modest 54 of them, the u.s. says we'll give you weapons and training, but you're not allowed to use them to fight bashar al-assad, you can only use them to fight i.s.i.s. what effect did that have? immediately, half the people were, like, you've got to be kidding me -- for three years i have been bombed and using loved ones to the bashar al-assad regime and i can't fight them? you have the 54 left, finish training, arrive in syria, and within days the other rebel groups kidnapped half of them, attacked their bases because they have no legitimacy in the eyes of the syrian people who see bashar al-assad as the really central problem that has started this ripple effect and led to the creation of groups like i.s.i.s. >> rose: is there a feeling in syria among the people who very much, after assad, turned on his own people who were part of the arab spring?
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is there a feeling they lost that opportunity and the united states is, in part, at fault because it was not there to support the moderate earl meant that did have a chance early on before the iranian supported hezbollah on his side and before they got more support from the russians? >> very much so, and i think people sometimes forget the context was a little different four years ago. four years ago was right on the heels of libya. so these syrians who went out in the early days to protest, post-egypt, post-libya. they had seen the no-fly zone and gadhafi being overthrown and they were excited. it was contagious, a spirit of change was in the air and they believed that the u.s. and the west and international community were going to support them as well. essentially, we created a moral hazard by intervening in libya
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whereby, when they went out and were greeted by a hail of bullets in the early protests, they thought this will be okay because this will prompt action from the international community and obviously the action never came out. >> rose: because the president didn't believe it had a chance to succeed. >> there are a number of different reasons. >> rose: well, i mean, that's what he said in terms of why he, at a significant moment -- and i'm not even sure the president today believes it would have succeeded. >> who can say. hindsight is 20/20 with these things. i think, though, we forget some of the details happening on the ground at the time. u.s. ambassador to syria at the time robert ford. i've spoke ton activists meeting with him in the initial days, and he was standing with them, and they really had the impression that the u.s. had their back, however naively that may have been for them to have had that impression, that's the impression they got. so, naturally, they were
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incredibly disappointed. >> rose: so what happened in order to stop the original question i asked? you know, what combination of things could lead to a result that is so scary to so many people which is a strong jihadist force taking over syria? >> i mean, the one thing i would say -- i don't think -- i don't have an answer for you. >> rose: i don't think anybody has. >> i don't think anybody has an answer, i don't. >> rose: let me just interrupt you. >> yeah. >> rose: the one thing they say, sit has to come from there. >> of course. >> rose: it cannot be a solution imposed from the united states. >> 100%. >> rose: it has to be a coalition of people who come together -- >> but auditory have that, you know, authentic consensus coming from within syria, the reality is nearly 10 approximately syrians have been displaced, 4 million left the country. the syrians aren't in syria
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anymore and this is a big part of the problem at the moment. until there is some place within syria where there is a modicum of security, more educated people, people we can persons of running a country, running a state can come back into their country and start to work together to participate in some meaningful way and finding a resolution to this crisis, how on earth can you find a resolution to a crisis like this when half of the country is displaced and 4 million of them don't even live inside syria anymore? >> rose: do you find more and more syrians are disillusioned they will ever have a chance to come back? >> most of the syrians i've talked to are speaking in bleak and pessimistic terms. they don't believe syria will ever be syria again. >> rose: and you wonder where the judgment of history will be in terms of at what moment did we lose the opportunity -- we
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being the people, not the united states or any particular country -- lose the opportunity to stop the disintegration of a country, and as we see the disintegration of the whole culture of a region? >> there is the history that goes with it, the beauty. i think, also, most viewers, they don't understand, they didn't visit syria before this all happened, so people don't necessarily have a sense of what an incredibly beautiful -- i mean, you know -- a beautiful, sophisticated country with an incredible rich archeological heritage, you know, very educated, interesting, friendly people, incredible food, a wonderful sense of hospitality. damascus had become one of the greatest hot spots for tourists. >> rose: yeah. so this is to lose, on a humanitarian level, it's horrifying to see 250,000-plus people dead, but it's also such a huge loss in terms of that kind of a society to see it fall
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apart and to know there is no way of rebuilding it and to know that it threatens to envelop an entire region. it's heartbreaking and mind boggling on a level that's hard to explain. >> rose: and what is their sense of the united states? i realize that's not one view, but -- >> no, there is not one view, and i should be clear, most of the time i have spent in syria has been in rebel-held areas. obviously, if you're in certain parts of damascus an and regime-held areas, it's a completely different perspective. i would say, ironically, on both sides or no matter what side of the conflict you're on, there is a huge amount of anger towards the u.s. there is a belief among rebels that the u.s. is now prifting towards assad. there is a belief amanage assad supporters that the u.s. has essentially supported turkey and qatar and saudi arabia, who
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have, in turn, supported islamist groups on the ground. so i think, unfortunately, the u.s. is in a position of being hated by most parties on the ground inside syria, rightly or wrongly. >> rose: thank you for coming. always great to see you. >> thank you for having me. >> rose: i've had the great pleasure of having you sit beside me on cbs this morning. >> such fun. >> rose: back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: we conclude this evening with jimmy carter, the 39th president of the united states. in a press conference on thursday, he talked about his cancer that has now been discovered in his brain. he previously had surgery to remove cancer from his river. he spoke frankly about his treatment, his life, his faith and his family. >> well, at first, i felt that it was confined to my liver and that the operation had completely removed it, so i was
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quite relieved. then that same afternoon, we had an mri of my head and neck, and it showed up it was already in four places in my brain. so i would say that night and the next day, until i came back up to emory, i just thought i had a few weeks left. but i was surprisingly at ease. you know, i've had a wonderful life. i've had thousands of friends, and i've had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence, so i was surprisingly at ease, much more so than my wife was. but, now, i feel, you know, it's in the hands of god whom i worship. the work at the carter center has been more personally gratifying to me because, you know, when you're president, you have the responsibility for 350 million people and the armed
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forces and budgets and so forth. i was able to do a number of good things when i was president, and i'm grateful and that was the high point of my life politically speaking, and i would say being the president of the united states, a great country, has made it possible for me to have the influence and contact with people and knowledge that has been the foundation for the carter center. >> rose: anything you wish you had not done or done differently? >> i wish i had sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued them and i would have been reelected, but that may have -- (laughter) -- that may have interfered with the foundation of the carter center, and if i had to choose between four more years and tare carter center, i would choose the carter center. >> rose: jimmy carter, age 90, talking about his cancer and what he faces. i have been covering him since he ran for president in 1975. what you saw there is the vintage jimmy carter, a man of
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confidence, a man of humor and a man who has a strong faith and is prepared to face whatever the future holds. jimmy carter, i think many people in this press conference would admire. thank you for joining this evening. for this and more episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org
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>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.
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this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. stocks routed, the dow dives, tech stocks tank as the blue chip index sheds more than 500 points to cap the worst week on wall street in four years. oil breaks 40. crude prices continue to crater falling briefly below that level. and there's one big problem for that commodity that isn't going away anyime soon. and needed repairs, bridges are crumbling but one b state found a fast fix to one of its biggest problems. the final part of our week-long series the big fix, tonight on "nightly business report" for friday august 21st. the correction many have been calling for is