GWEN IFILL: The attacks in Charleston force us to another crossroads, al-Qaida takes
another hit, the president's trade agenda bounces back, and the Republican campaign
speeds into overdrive, tonight on Washington Week.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (From video.)
There is something particularly heartbreaking
about a death happening in a place in which we seek solace and we seek peace, in a place
of worship.
GWEN IFILL: Another mass shooting, this time in a church, revives recurring debates
about race, hate and the roots of violence.
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA MAYOR JOSEPH RILEY (D): (From video.)
The only reason
someone could walk into a church and shoot people praying is out of hate.
GWEN IFILL: The question's why, and what happens next.
In Washington, the president's trade agenda bounces back as the House clears the way to
fast track a big deal.
HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH): (From video.)
Trade is another one.
Where we find common ground we're able to work together and get things accomplished on
behalf of the American people.
GWEN IFILL: The CIA announces another al-Qaida leader targeted and killed, bringing to
an even dozen the number of strikes this year.
Is it making a difference?
And two more candidates join the presidential race.
But of the two, all eyes are officially on Jeb Bush.
FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR JEB BUSH (R): (From video.)
It's nobody's turn.
It's everybody's test.
And it's wide open, exactly as a contest for president should be.
(Applause.)
GWEN IFILL: Covering the week, Carrie Johnson, justice correspondent for NPR; Chuck
Babington, Washington correspondent for the Associated Press; Yochi Dreazen, managing
editor for Foreign Policy magazine; and Dan Balz, chief correspondent for The Washington
Post.
ANNOUNCER: Award-winning reporting and analysis.
Covering history as it happens.
Live from our nation's capital, this is Washington Week with Gwen Ifill.
Once again, live from Washington, moderator Gwen Ifill.
GWEN IFILL: Good evening.
The names, they're quite ordinary - Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda
Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, DePayne Middleton-Doctor,
Daniel Simmons and Myra Thompson.
Those are the victims of the latest inexplicable burst of violence, allegedly visited
this week by one American citizen against others - people who had welcomed him into a
weekly church Bible study.
The national sense of shock has been palpable.
SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR NIKKI HALEY (R): (From video.)
We woke up today and the heart
and soul of South Carolina was broken.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (From video.)
I want to be clear.
I am not resigned.
I have faith we will eventually do the right thing.
(Applause.)
I was simply making the point that we have to move public opinion.
We have to feel a sense of urgency.
It is not good enough simply to show sympathy.
GWEN IFILL: Attorney General Loretta Lynch launched a Justice Department hate crime
investigation into the shootings, which means exactly what, Carrie?
CARRIE JOHNSON: So that means the FBI and civil rights investigators are on the ground
right now in Charleston helping and looking over the shoulder of the state authorities
who are also investigating the shooting allegedly by 21-year old Dylann Roof.
The FBI has seized some computers in the Roof home.
They're going to be searching for his browser history, looking for his contacts on
social media and spanning out to interview his friends, family members and associates.
The key, Gwen, in proving a hate crime is being able to establish someone was motivated
by some racial animus or animus because of someone's religion or gender identity.
And in this case, we already have some clues according to some search warrants and law
enforcement sources that Dylann Roof was pictured wearing a garment with the flag of
Rhodesia and the Apartheid-era South Africa flag.
There's also a statement in the affidavit released today by state authorities indicating
after Dylann Roof allegedly shot and killed these nine people, he stood over one of the
victims and uttered a racial epithet before leaving the AME church in Charleston.
All these things are important clues toward establishing some kind of hate crime motive.
GWEN IFILL: We saw the president just now saying he's not resigned.
And that was in response to the fact that he came out yesterday and said, you know,
there ought to be - we ought to get over this gun violence, but I don't expect we will -
or he - I'm paraphrasing him, poorly.
But what can the federal government do if it is determined, A, that it is a hate crime,
and that gun violence is really at the root of it?
CARRIE JOHNSON: So at base this administration already tried and put a lot of capital
after the killings of 20 school children in Newtown, Connecticut toward a background
check bill and some other measures.
That did not succeed in Congress.
Congress wound up not doing anything with regard to that issue.
So what this administration has done in the meantime is pose what it perceives to be
some common-sense gun regulations that it can do via executive fiat.
Those are not really moving the dial though, Gwen.
And what the president said today was we need the American people to rise up and
influence and lean on their members of Congress to try to break a stalemate, to the
extent one exists, on gun regulations.
DAN BALZ: Carrie, what's the relationship between the federal hate crime investigation
and what the state authorities are doing?
CARRIE JOHNSON: Attorney General Loretta Lynch says the feds are working on a parallel
track with the state.
Often what that means, Dan, is that they'll allow the state authorities to go first, as
they have done in this case.
This defendant, Dylann Roof, faces nine murder charges at the state level, and a weapons
charge.
But federal authorities are looking over the shoulder of the state and may eventually
weigh in with a federal case either based on hate crimes or potentially even a domestic
terrorism charge.
That's down the line though, not something we should expect right away.
CHARLES BABINGTON: Carrie, killing non - innocent people, for whatever reason or
perceived reason, is a horrendous thing.
Would there be some difference in the way the case would be punished if he's convicted,
or prosecuted, if it's determined a hate crime or not a hate crime?
CARRIE JOHNSON: So in the South Carolina state system, these murder charges are death
penalty eligible.
And Governor Nikki Haley has already decreed that the state is going to seek the death
penalty against Dylann Roof.
The federal charges also carry very serious penalties - life without parole and the like.
But the role of the federal government here appears to be mostly sending a message that
this administration cares, that it views these acts, as accused, to be vile.
And it wants people to know that they view these acts as unconscionable.
And they're sending a message to people right now by broadcasting their involvement in
this investigation.
YOCHI DREAZEN: But so, if you have the state pursing death penalty charges, as Governor
Haley said they would do, and as you say the federal charges could also carry the death
penalty, well, what happens procedurally?
I mean, who goes first?
And if he's convicted, not to be too blunt about it, but who
kills him first?
CARRIE JOHNSON: So Attorney General Lynch said this week that they're looking at all
avenues at the federal level.
She says it's too soon to say whether the state or the feds will go first.
But of course, the states have gone first.
Dylann Roof is now locked up without the possibility of bond on these nine charges.
And that system has already moved into action.
So to the extent the federal authorities decide to weigh in with a charge that will
likely happen farther down the road.
I heard today from law enforcement sources, they're very eager to get into these
computers and see his browser history.
Right now, it appears as if he was acting alone, but they want to see what he was
looking at, what kinds of materials he was reading, what other influences may have acted
on him.
GWEN IFILL: And of course, there's a larger question of what "alone" means in our
society, but we can't address all of that tonight.
We'll be coming back to it.
Thank you, Carrie.
CARRIE JOHNSON: Thank you.
GWEN IFILL: Back to Capitol Hill.
This week, a reversal of policy fortune for the president, one that brings him closer to
his goal of pulling off a major 12-nation trade agreement before his terms ends.
Just last week, right at this table, we said this deal looked if not dead, ailing.
What changed, Chuck?
CHARLES BABINGTON: Gwen, what changed was that the pro-trade forces realized they made
a miscalculation starting this thing off.
It's not that unusual to try to put a package together in Congress that's going to get
some votes from each side.
And so when they originally put this package together they had something - the
fast-track authority that President Obama wants, that's primarily supported by
Republicans.
And they packaged that in the Senate with this Trade Adjustment Assistance, which is for
displaced workers and it's something Democrats generally support.
And they thought when we put these together we'll get enough votes from everybody.
It worked in the Senate.
It went to the House.
And it failed utterly because the Democrats there who so strongly oppose fast track
decided, the heck with it, we'll vote against our own program - this trade assistance
program - in order to bring the whole package down.
And they did that.
It shocked the people who had put this thing together, and then they were in a bind.
GWEN IFILL: So they came out of the bind, we assume, even though it still has to go to
the Senate.
But what shifted?
Did votes shift?
Did sentiment shift?
Did the leadership take charge of this and say we're going to force it through?
CHARLES BABINGTON: Votes hardly shifted at all.
It was almost an identical vote.
What they did is they decoupled what they originally had coupled.
So this time, instead of voting on this combined package - or, in the House they
actually voted for them separately - but they were still in one package.
They separated them.
They had to start all over.
They didn't want to go back to the Senate, but now they have to.
So they said, let's have a stand-alone vote, just on this fast-track authority.
And it already had enough votes in the House just on that part - it was the other part
that brought it down.
And you know, Gwen, it's a truism in Congress, members hate to take two different votes
on one tough issue.
Once a member's cast a vote on a hard issue, he or she almost always sticks with that
because they figure the worst thing is to go both ways.
So they had enough votes for fast track.
So when they broke it apart, they still had enough votes for fast track.
Now it goes to the Senate.
DAN BALZ: So what's the prospect in the Senate?
And what kind of procedural gamesmanship will have to go on to get it through there?
CHARLES BABINGTON: Yeah, Dan, the gamesmanship could be kind of complicated.
The supporters of Obama's agenda are somewhat optimistic because, as in the House, there
have been enough votes that have been cast already for - in favor of this notion of fast track.
If those votes can hold, then what should happen - just as it did in the House - there
should be enough votes for that.
But Democrats are still insisting, look, we're not giving up on this trade assistance
program.
We've got to have it.
If we can't have it in the same package, you've got to promise us that we'll get it in
another way.
And some of them - there's a big debate now, how are they - how do they get the
assurance that they'll get that if the fast track is passed alone.
CARRIE JOHNSON: Chuck, what are you hearing about unions potentially leaning on
Democratic members on these issues?
CHARLES BABINGTON: They're not leaning on them, they're pounding them.
Carrie, this is - the unions have been just really forceful - very, very forceful, like
no issue that I can remember in any recent time, vehemently against fast track, even -
you know, AFL-CIO wrote a letter saying: We want you to vote against this trade
assistance program, which they championed for years, because that's how important it is
to pull down fast track.
GWEN IFILL: Well, let me - let me play a little tape for you, because you were at a
press conference that Nancy Pelosi gave this week and you asked her about what it was,
because she is not with the president on this.
And you asked her about the nature of that disagreement.
This was her answer - part of it.
CHARLES BABINGTON: Absolutely.
HOUSE MINORITY LEADER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): (From video.)
This has been a long-standing
difference in the Democratic Party, having nothing to do with the president of the United
States, and everything to do with our bosses, the constituents we work for.
But again, we have deep friendships, deep respect.
And move on to the next subject.
GWEN IFILL: (Laughs.)
Let's move on here.
Nothing to see here.
CHARLES BABINGTON: Our boss is the constituents we work for - indeed, when a member of
Congress runs for re-election, that's the boss.
And what's happened, Gwen, in so many Democratic districts, and especially in the
all-important Democratic primaries in these fairly liberal districts is free trade has
gotten a really bad name, rightly or wrongly, especially since NAFTA.
And it's become an article of belief among many liberals and Democrats, and
especially union members, that this is a very bad deal.
So these Democrats in the House and Senate are under tremendous pressure.
And the great majority of them are voting against the fast track, against their
president on this.
YOCHI DREAZEN: Do you think Hillary will get some credit from union voters for having
spoken out against it, or some blame for having not done more to stop it?
CHARLES BABINGTON: I don't know how to answer that.
(Laughter.)
Hillary Clinton has been pressed repeatedly by reporters to take a stand on this.
You know, when she was secretary of State she defended this Asian treaty that the
president was trying to put together.
And remember, it was her husband who was president when NAFTA - he pushed NAFTA very
hard.
She studiously avoided a solid answer one way or the other.
Her Democratic opponents, Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders, mocked her.
And they said, we're adamantly against this.
Why don't you take a stronger stand?
GWEN IFILL: Well, and that's not over yet either.
CHARLES BABINGTON: No, it's not.
GWEN IFILL: The week began with a victory lap as the CIA declared it had killed a major
al-Qaida leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, their biggest get since Osama bin Laden was killed.
But as ISIS continues to grow in strength and al-Qaida affiliates sprout up elsewhere,
what was the lasting significance of the success really, Yochi?
YOCHI DREAZEN: I think, unfortunately, not that great.
I mean, this was a man who ran what is thought to be the most dangerous al-Qaida branch
in the world, which is in Yemen.
We talk a lot about Iraq.
We talk a lot about Syria.
We don't talk about Yemen as much as we should.
The fear among intelligence officials is that if a major attack takes place in the U.S.,
and in particular if an American plane is brought down, it will be because of a terror
group in Yemen, not Iraq or Syria.
And the specific branch of al-Qaida that Wuhayshi ran, the most dangerous person in it
was not him.
It was a bomb maker named Ibrahim al-Asiri.
What al-Asiri is able to do is the underwear bomb.
He specializes in making bombs not out of metal, out of liquids and out of powders,
things that metal detectors can't pick up, dogs can't pick up.
And when you talk to people in the TSA, CIA, FBI, they are genuinely terrified -
GWEN IFILL: That's what they're worried about.
YOCHI DREAZEN: That this is going to bring down a plane.
GWEN IFILL: Hmm.
CARRIE JOHNSON: Yochi, what are you hearing about the efficacy of the U.S.
intelligence in terms of targeting?
There have been some questions about whether they know who they're targeting at any
given moment.
YOCHI DREAZEN: It's interesting, because they took - after Wuhayshi was killed, they
said, we got another one.
Then it came out that actually they didn't really know who they were firing the missile
at and they just happened to get lucky that the person they killed was him and not some
innocent Yemeni - innocent Pakistani.
We think back a few months ago when they killed Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto,
again, they didn't know who they were firing at.
That same day, it came out they had killed another al-Qaida leader.
They admitted they didn't know he was actually in the building they blew up.
So it tells us that - we like to think of drones as these precision weapons, they never
make a mistake, they never screw up.
Sometimes when they have a success, they don't know who the person was before they fired
the missile that hit the building, which is kind of alarming.
DAN BALZ: Yochi, there's been so much focus for the last year-plus about Islamic State
and the threat from them.
This is a reminder that al-Qaida in various forms is still there.
Which is the greater threat, particularly to the United States homeland?
YOCHI DREAZEN: I think for us, living in the United States, it's al-Qaida.
It's not the Islamic State.
You know, we think about even their name, they're focused on holding the territory they
have.
There's a fear that people who have fought for them and have passports might leave.
So far, there's no sign that they want to do that or have done it or can do it.
Al-Qaida, all of its branches, we know they want to hit the U.S.
We know that that's what they've been focused on for decades.
The Yemeni branch, this bomb make, al-Asiri, he almost brought down planes over Detroit
and over Chicago, and a later plot in 2012 that, again, would have been over the United
States.
He came very close three different times.
I mean, that's the branch to worry about.
CHARLES BABINGTON: What is it about Yemen?
It's a pretty small country.
Why is there so much focus on Yemen?
Why is so much of this terrorism taking root in that country?
YOCHI DREAZEN: We think of Yemen, it's a country now that's ravaged by civil war.
It's ravaged by basically a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
And there's chaos.
The central government collapsed.
When it collapsed, the CIA and
the U.S. Special Operations Command pulled all of their personnel out of Yemen.
So if you're al-Qaida in the Yemeni branch, you're pressured at one point by the Yemeni
government and by the U.S.
Suddenly the government collapses, the U.S.
pulls out, this to you now is an open range.
And if you think of it - terror groups, it's almost like plants getting water.
Chaos is to them what water is to a plant.
Once it begins to sprinkle around them, that group just grows and grows.
GWEN IFILL: So we have some numbers that we can apply to this this week, in an annual
report that came out of the State Department about terrorist activity.
What does it tell us?
YOCHI DREAZEN: It's jaw-dropping.
Thirty-three thousand people died in terror attacks in 2014, up 80 percent from 2013.
The number wounded is up 35 percent.
Most of the deaths, as you might imagine, are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, but 33,000
people.
So we like to think there's a war on terror that maybe we're winning, maybe we're making
some progress in, but the death toll says the exact opposite.
GWEN IFILL: How do they quantify that?
As you know, there are such warring - so much at war about numbers.
Amnesty International counts differently than the Pakistani government counts.
How do they decide what qualifies as a terror attack and who qualifies as a true victim?
YOCHI DREAZEN: It's a great question, and the State Department numbers are, one, a
little bit squishy; and two, without question understated.
My guess is that if you were to take the broadest definition possible, somebody being
killed as a message by a subnational group - which is basically the definition the U.N.
uses - the numbers would be a lot higher.
And not to go back to domestic issues, but if we were to consider this act of - this
horror in Charleston as an act of terror, that - again, the numbers would go higher still.
GWEN IFILL: That's true.
It's all how you define it.
Thank you very much.
And we end with politics.
Dan has spent some time this week in Iowa, where the world's most engaged early primary
voters got to hear from another series of candidates this week.
But he also traveled to Florida, where former Governor Jeb Bush finally threw his
long-awaited hat into the ring.
JEB BUSH: (From video.)
So here's what it comes down to.
Our country's on a very bad course, and the question is, what are we going to do about
it?
The question for me - (cheers) - the question for me is, what am I going to do about
it?
And I've decided I'm a candidate for president of the United States
of America.
(Cheers, applause.)
GWEN IFILL: As campaign announcements go, how did this one measure up, Dan?
DAN BALZ: Gwen, you know, we measure politics week by week, and this was a pretty good
week for Jeb Bush, starting with that announcement.
Now, we would have to say it followed a not-so-good week the previous week, so up and
down.
But this was - this was a good week.
One of the interesting things about it was this was done at a community college, Miami
Dade Community College, and it was a big audience and it was a very boisterous audience
and it was a very diverse audience.
It had all of the energy that one associates with South Florida and Miami, and everybody
kind of fed off of that.
He made several, I thought, important arguments.
One was he stressed his record as governor of Florida.
He went into that in some detail, both as a way to talk about who he is but also as a
way to say I have executive experience, not everybody in this race does.
The second thing he did with that announcement and subsequently during the week in Iowa
was to try to convince people that he is a conservative, a true conservative.
He said in Iowa at the end of his opening remarks in Pella on Wednesday, "I am a
committed conservative and a reformer."
This is a question mark above his head with a
lot of voters in the Republican Party, and he was working on that.
But the other thing -
GWEN IFILL: He decided not to use the term "severe conservative"?
(Laughter.)
DAN BALZ: No, not severe.
He's learned a number of things from Mitt Romney.
GWEN IFILL: (Laughs.)
DAN BALZ: But the other thing, which was both explicit and implicit during the week,
was that this is - this is a candidate who will present himself as someone who would be a
good general election candidate.
He is trying to say to Republicans - and there are some Democrats who believe this -
that he would match up better against Hillary Clinton, who is presumed to be the - you
know, she's certainly the favorite for the nomination - better than his opponents because
he's prepared to do and say things that will expand the appeal of the Republican Party
beyond what it is today.
CARRIE JOHNSON: So, Dan, that brings us to immigration, which has been a problem for
Mr. Bush with some members of his own party.
How's he going to balance that?
DAN BALZ: Carrie, it was very interesting this week.
There was not a line about immigration in the prepared text of his announcement speech.
But about two-thirds of the way through it there was a disruption up in the balcony, and
a group of young people stood up and their - across their shirts it spelled "legal status
is not enough," which is a reference to his position, which is he's in favor of a path to
legalization for illegal immigrants but not a path to citizenship.
In Iowa on Wednesday he took the issue head-on and basically said this is an issue
that's killing the Republican Party.
He said, you know, I'm for a variety of things, including a path to legalization.
And he said, frankly, I don't see any other way to deal with 11 million people who are
now in the shadows; we have to somehow bring them into the open, and this is the way I
want to do it.
And he said as long as we let - we, the Republicans, let this issue linger, the
Democrats will use it as a wedge issue, and it has helped them in the last two elections
to win the presidential election.
And he said, I want to win.
CHARLES BABINGTON: Dan, talk about the obstacles that Jeb Bush faces to getting the
Republican nomination.
GWEN IFILL: Including his last name, perhaps.
DAN BALZ: Well, no, I mean, I think it starts - it doesn't end with that, but it starts
with that.
CHARLES BABINGTON: Ironic, isn't it?
DAN BALZ: And we've talked about that from the - from the beginning, when he first made
it clear he was likely to run for president.
There are people within the Republican Party, many of whom are great admirers of his
father, George H.W.
Bush, and some who are admirers of his brother, who's obviously
the more controversial of the two Bush presidents, who nonetheless feel two Bush
presidencies is enough and the country should move on.
And that is a very difficult thing to overcome.
I mean, there's no kind of argument you can make about that.
So, for Bush, he has to find a way around that to convince people.
And I think that his advisers believe that now that he's a candidate he can begin to
introduce himself as himself so that he's more Jeb than Bush, and he began to do that
this week.
He's talking more about who he is and what he's done, and his hope is that as people get
to know him they'll have a different view.
But you know, in many ways it's as difficult for him to do that as it is for Hillary
Clinton to reintroduce herself, as long as she's been in the public eye.
GWEN IFILL: We're going to have to leave it there for tonight, but that's really
interesting.
I get the feeling we may be talking about Jeb Bush again.
I don't know, maybe.
Thank you, everybody.
We have to go.
But, as always, the conversation will continue online, where you'll be able to find the
Washington Week Webcast Extra later tonight and all week long at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek.
Among other things, we'll talk about whether the St. Louis Cardinals hacked the Astros, or
maybe we'll talk about Donald Trump.
I don't know!
You'll have to tune in to see.
Keep up with developments with me and Judy Woodruff on the PBS NewsHour, and we'll see
you here next week on Washington Week.
Good night.
