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Inside Politics

Syrian Rebels Seize Control, Topple Assad Regime; Kirby: Collapse Of Assad Regime Hurts Russia And Iran; Trump Says Members Of Jan.6 Committee Should Be Jailed; How Kash Patel's Years As A Government Lawyer Fueled His Disdain For Washington Elites; Webster's Word Of The Year. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired December 09, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:33:43]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Regime change in Syria. After a rebel offensive swiftly ousted President Bashar al-Assad over the weekend, the brutal dictator and his family fled to Russia, where they have been granted asylum. The Assad dynasty, propped up by Iran and Russia, help power in Syria for more than 50 years.

Here to share their expert insights, CNN Global Affairs Analyst Kimberly Dozier, Retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt and Joby Warrick, author of "Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America's Race to Destroy the Most Dangerous Arsenal in the World".

Well, that's prescient Joby. I mean, you know, I certainly hope people who are interested in that pick up your book and see the way that you looked into your crystal ball. Given where we are now and your knowledge of Syria and the Assad regime and what's to come, what should we be thinking about?

JOBY WARRICK, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, this is very early days of people are extremely excited in Syria. And I've been talking to people who are just generally just delighted at the fall of Assad as they should be. But I'm thinking a lot these days about Libya and about how excited people were to see Gaddafi (ph) fall.

And there's a lot of similarities in that. You have different militia groups. Some with really difficult backgrounds and ties to terrorist organizations and just others are jockeying for a position.

[12:35:06]

I think we're in for a very rough period. This is a moment perhaps to welcome a change in leadership but not one to be completely relaxed and thinking that we're in good shape now.

BASH: General?

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT (RET.), U.S. ARMY: No, I completely agree. And I think the United States is probably going to take an overall policy of observe and contain. The last thing the United States wants to see is this, the spill over into the rest of the region.

It's going to be hard to keep everything inside that box of Syria. But the last thing we want to see is this spillover into Jordan, into Iraq, into some of our other allies.

BASH: So, the U.S. doesn't want to see that kind of spillover, toppling leadership that the U.S. supports and is allied with, of course. But then there's another question about the broader region, one that John Kirby, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, mentioned to John Berman this morning. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: How much power have Russia and Iran lost in that region?

JOHN KIRBY, WHITE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY COMMUNICATIONS ADVISER: A lot. Frankly, a lot. I mean, you look at Iran, with their so called axis of resistance. Hamas decimated, Sinwar's gone, Hezbollah, their leader's gone, Nasrallah's gone, and they're now in a ceasefire with Israel and now Assad, their other proxy in the Middle East, gone. And Syria's future very much as we said, an open question.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: General, just on that part of the impact on the region, what does this tell you about Iran, which is the most important country regionally when it comes to, you know, funding proxies?

KIMMITT: Well, they won't have to be funding too many more proxies. They seem to have really lost their major proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and now Bashar al-Assad. And one wonders where they're going to double down on.

My concern is their last major proxy in the region is Iraq. We've got a really strong balancing act going on between the Western nations and Iran with Prime Minister Sudani. I would not like to see them double down in Iraq because that's one of those areas that we have been making some progress over the last couple of years. And if Iran wants to make a final stand there, that's not going to work out well for the region.

BASH: And Kimberly, what about as Iran relates to its maybe chief competitor, Saudi, and Saudi's more and more aggressive talks with the U.S. Quietly maybe even with Israel, about trying to restart those talks to expand the Abraham Accords, which of course would require a ceasefire, hostages released and so forth with regard to Gaza.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, Iran has far fewer proxies on the ground to fight back against that. Iran essentially has overreached in backing Hamas and Hezbollah's fight against Israel to the death. It has given Israel the opportunity with U.S. backing to take out the lion's share of the Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, in Syria.

The same with the Quds Force guards that were helping organize those proxy groups. So Iran finds itself temporarily pretty defanged. But one thing I do want to add, though, Saudi Arabia and Iran are not on the outs as they once were. The Chinese rapprochement between the two is holding.

BASH: Good point.

DOZIER: So again, that actually presents an opportunity if Iran is going to be less bellicose and Saudi Arabia wants to push forward with some sort of expansion of the Abraham Accords, there's a chance for that.

BASH: Oh, that's so interesting. I want to just go back to Syria and to the leader who led this rebellion, Julani. And he gave a speech where he tried to, after the toppling of Assad, tried to redefine himself -- define himself as a pragmatic statesman, as many rebel leaders tend to do.

You're shaking your head, which I understand. Nic Robertson, my colleague, wrote a terrific analysis and said, "It is a message Julani will know is being heard in Tel Aviv and Washington. A message that says to them, 'Your interests are understood in the new Syria,' and an understanding on his part that these are the powers capable of bringing him down".

WARRICK: Well, this little background on Julani, I've been watching this guy for more than 12 years. He got a start by being sent to Syria by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State. After a while, he broke with Baghdadi, decided to this pledge allegiance to Zawahiri, the al Qaeda leader instead.

So that's his pedigree. He's a very smart guy. He's still very young. And he has spent the last, actually, 10 years trying to reform his image, trying to just say I'm not like these guys. I'm not necessarily in league with any of these jihadist groups. I'm my own guy.

[12:40:11]

And you must say at very least he's getting some very good coaching right now because he's saying all the right things and he's behaving, you know, reasonably even in the last two weeks since his offensive began allowing Christians in Aleppo to put up Christmas decorations, for example.

So he's doing things that are encouraging. Maybe it's real. Everybody I talked to say, hold on just wait and see. We're not there yet.

BASH: Just real quick because you were shaking your head.

KIMMITT: Well, I completely agree. He shaved his beard, but I'm not sure he's changed his ideology. One point I would make, though, is you've got to ask where the dominoes started to fall. And I don't think we can underestimate the killing of Soleimani in 2020 It's Soleimani had still been in the region. You wonder if this would

have happened.

BASH: Wow. So interesting. I could talk to you guys all day. Thank you so much for coming on and bringing in your insights.

Up next, the making of Kash Patel. We have new CNN reporting on how Donald Trump's pick to lead the FBI transformed himself from rank and file federal prosecutor to hero of the MAGA movement.

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[12:45:43]

BASH: An eye for an eye. Donald Trump once said it was his favorite Bible verse. But will the president-elect make good on his campaign promise to go after his political opponents? Well, here's what he said on NBC's Meet the Press about the January 6th committee.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: For what they did --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: -- honestly, they should go to jail.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you think Liz Cheney should go to jail?

TRUMP: For what they did --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everyone on the committee you think should go to jail.

TRUMP: I think everybody on the -- anybody that voted in favor --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you going to direct your FBI director --

TRUMP: No.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- and your attorney general to send them to jail?

TRUMP: No, not at all.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: It comes as we're learning more about Donald Trump's pick to lead the FBI. Kash Patel, a controversial figure with deep disdain for the so called Washington elites, used to be a midlevel Justice Department lawyer. One of Patel's former colleagues described him as someone who, quote, "sees enemies everywhere".

CNN's Evan Perez has some new terrific reporting. Evan, what else can you tell us about Kash Patel's unlikely rise?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, look, he goes from being a public defender in Miami to suddenly showing up in Washington. He's at the National Security Division at the Justice Department. And then he ends up catching the eye of the president of the United States because of some of the work he was doing in the intelligence community in the House. And sort of the -- you know, if you look at people on the left, right, people who are critics of Trump, people -- also some conservatives who are critics of Trump, you know, they cast Kash Patel as sort of like a villain, right?

And sort of his villain origin story, if you will, goes back to this episode in 2016, where he's in this Texas courtroom. He arrives without a suit and tie from Tajikistan. He comes to a -- for a terrorism case, and the judge really lays into him for no other reason, really, other than that he thinks he's a spy, quote unquote, "spy", from Washington.

He says, you're just another, one more non-essential employee from Washington. That's how he goes after him.

BASH: The irony.

PEREZ: Right, exactly. And now, you know, in retrospect that the people who were around him at the time can see sort of like, again, going back to the villain origin story, so to speak, they can see how that episode affect them and how he kind of got a lot of disdain for the Justice Department and the people around it.

BASH: And you talk about learning about his beginnings in law school and afterwards he struggled to get hired by anyone --

PEREZ: A big law firm.

BASH: A big law firms. And then he ended up going to the public defender's office and then later became an attorney in the Obama era. How did that, in addition to that story you told about his interaction with the judge, how did that shape his perception of what he calls Washington elites?

PEREZ: Well, his perception was that, you know, these people were not -- were Ivy leaguers who had much easier time getting into the Justice Department than he did. And, you know, certainly people who practiced with him said he had a really easy way with judges he had a good rapport.

But when it came to attention to detail, that was not his strong point. And when he comes to the Justice Department sort of that kind of thing, I think, keeps driving some of his interactions. There is this view of him as kind of unremarkable.

But later on, people are looking back and they see, like the 2016 episode where the judge ends up entering a order of ineptitude against everybody involved in the case, the Justice Department people involved in the case. And they can see how that sort of drove his sense of grievance. That is what they describe now in retrospect.

BASH: And you describe a meeting in the Oval Office when Donald Trump was president the first time. That really does capture his rise and the fact that people who were in senior positions kind of didn't see it coming when this junior guy just ended up really at the side of and having the ear of Donald Trump. PEREZ: Right. I mean he somehow gets the attention of the president in this case partly because of some of his work he was doing on Capitol Hill, where he wrote a memo, the now famous Nunes memo which found -- he said, found holes in the Russian investigation.

[12:50:10]

There were problems in that investigation, but he certainly got the attention of the president of the United States. And they -- then once he's in the NSC, the National Security Council, he somehow decides that he wants to be the person that's going to find leaks for Donald Trump.

And there's this effort to try to corral that issue when the -- some of the other people who were involved show up to the Oval Office and there is Kash Patel. The president of the United States puts Sean Hannity on the phone. All of these things are shocking to people who had no idea that Hannity was obviously well -- was well known to Kash Patel back and forth, and that Donald Trump knew him and trusted him in that way.

BASH: Yes. I encourage everybody to check out your story on CNN.com. Thanks for sharing some of it here. Appreciate it.

Up next, can you define 2024 in one word? Well, Webster's did. We'll explain next.

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[12:55:16]

BASH: If you could sum up 2024 in one word, what would it be? Well, after one of the longest and most polarizing election battles in our history, Merriam-Webster has declared the 2024 word of the year, no need for a drumroll -- polarization.

Not so shocking, I guess. Webster picks its top word each year based on the frequency of online searches and usage. Here's the actual definition. "Division into two sharply distinct opposites, especially a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum, but become concentrated at opposing extremes."

Well, that sounds pretty 2024-ish to me.

Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central will start right after a break.

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