implications for the 2020 race. "new day" continues right now. i know that i have made mistakes. i am sorry for harm i have caused. >> i know that not all of you are committed to my husband, but you've got to look at his win. >> can he deliver consistently and generate excitement. >> daniel pantaleo can no longer serve as a new york city police officer. >> this needs to be a never again moment. this needs to be the last time we see one of these tragedies. >> the police department based this decision not on the fact, but based this decision on the politics. >> pantaleo, you may have lost your job, but i lost a son. >> this is "new day" with alisyn came -- alisyn camerota and john berman. >> welcome to our viewers in the united states and all around the world. the breaking news this morning, a brand new cnn poll that shows

former vice president joe biden ascendant. he has expanded his double digit lead over senators bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, a significant number of democratic voters say the priority is beating president trump and biden is the guy who can do it. >> so biden's campaign is hitting that electability message hard in iowa. targeting voters there with a new ad. watch this. >> we know in our bones this election is different. the stakes are higher, the threat more serious. we have to beat donald trump. and all the polls agree, joe biden is the strongest democrat to do the job. no one is more qualified. >> so this ad sets up a contrast touting biden as strong, steady and stable, and slamming president trump as an erratic and vicious bully. all of this unfolds with just more than one week left to qualify for the next primary debate. how will this new poll impact the democratic contenders. cnn political director david

chalian joins us live from washington. he is breaking down all of these numbers for us. david, go. >> alisyn, good morning, you saw john showed you the horse race showing joe biden with the double digit lead. take a look at the change since the last poll conducted at the end of june, right after the first debate that the democratic contenders participated in in miami. joe biden up 7 since then. the only other major movement is this kamala harris drop of 12 points from 17% in the immediate after math of that debate when she landed a punch on biden now back down to 5%. this poll is sort of the bounce back. joe biden returning to his dominant place, kamala harris going back down into single digits. that first debate had impact, but it wasn't long lasting. i want to also show you something in this poll about the ideological break down that we are seeing across democratic primary voters. look at this, among self-declared liberals, the top

three, biden, sanders, warren, they're in a dead heat, battling over liberals. when it comes to the moderate and conservative democrats and democratic leaning independents, joe biden wins that group going away. this is going to be critical for joe biden's continued success in this race. now, we ask, who do you think you want as a candidate, somebody that can beat donald trump or somebody that shares your positions. a majority of democrats still, 54%, want somebody with a strong chance of beating trump, 39%, somebody who shares their positions. that's a bit lower than we have seen before. and take a look at some of the demographic splits on the issue, college educated versus noncollege educated white voters. if you're a college-educated voter in the poll, 65% want a trump defeater. white college educated, a key group for joe biden and bernie sanders, they're looking for somebody that actually shares

their position on the issues, more than a trump defeater. and another demographic split on this, age, if you are 45 or older in this poll, you want donald trump gone no matter what. that's what you're looking for in a candidate, 66% to 25%. if you're a young person, this is where the ideological poll comes in, you're looking for somebody who agrees with you on the issues, more than you're looking for somebody who has the best chance of defeating donald trump. >> david, stick around, don't go anywhere, alisyn and i both. shawn shawna thomas, washington bureau chief. joe biden didn't have a great first debate. he didn't have a great second debate. he went to iowa and had verbal stumbles, people say, and yet his lead grows. not shaken in the polls here. what do you see. >> his lead grows as well as everyone can see from your poll what senator kamala harris was able to do in the first debate didn't have lasting power in the polls. i do think it did have lasting

power when it comes to putting her from front of people. she got a lot of media coverage. the thing i come back to in this poll, it was 19% who didn't have an opinion or not sure. that's a 19% that maybe elizabeth warren can get, a 19% that someone else can get. when you start to combine the people in the 1% category or the 2% category, you start to see, like, there's still a lot of room for these people to grow. there's still something to fight for, even with joe biden's impressive showing in your poll. >> that's exactly right. the good news for joe biden is that he's at 30%. the bad news is that he's at 30 30%. if you do the math and add other people up once the field consolidates, he's at 30%. who knows what happens at that point, obviously it's early days. john and i have a debate about how early these days are. but what is the message to the white house i would say from this poll? >> well, it's clear that joe

biden is the candidate to beat right now, which frankly, the white house is known for a long time. they have always believed that joe biden would potentially pose the strongest challenge to president trump and that he has, based on what the numbers have shown consistently throughout this primary, he seems to be the person holding on to the lead in the democratic primary, despite what seems to be a desire among more liberal democrats to look at other people. but if you're joe biden, and you're looking at this poll, you see what his advisers are seeing as his path. yes, he is splitting the liberal vote among bernie sanders and elizabeth warren almost evenly. if you look at all the other categories, moderate democrats and if you look at independent leaning democrats, joe biden is the guy leading, and i think he sees his path in the middle there and so far it's been working for him. that liberal slice of the democratic party, it's still just a slice of the democratic party, and there is, if he can

consolidate the rest of the party, he might have the best chance of edging out the more liberal candidates in warren and bernie sanders that have been giving him, i think, the biggest race up until this point. >> and then when you talk about the electability argument, david, not only do you have the new ad going up in iowa, in august, which is significant, that the biden campaign is choosing to spend, shows the importance of iowa in their mind, saying you can feel it in your bones. you know that beating donald trump is the most important thing, but then you have jill biden using her inside voice out loud last night, as you say, david, in new hampshire where she makes clear that nothing else matters as far as she's concerned. listen to what she said. >> i know that not all of you are committed to my husband. and i respect that. your candidate might be better on, i don't know, health care, than joe is. but you've got to look at who's going to win this election.

and maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, okay, i sort of personally like so and so better, but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat trump. >> maybe not the flavor you like, but this is what you're getting for dinner. >> it's amazing. those comments were startling to hear because, you know, i have had biden aides tell me, you say electability is part of his rationale, it's restoring the soul of the country. listen to the candidate's spouse, look at the new ad where their dollars are being spent. they put up poll charts in their ad. i thought politicians usually say the only polls that matter are on election day. apparently not, they matter in the first television ad that the biden campaign is running because electability is a key argument that they want to make. they see a majority of the electorate is looking

somebody that can be the trump slayer in november of 2020. and joe biden is leaning into that as a strength. listen, this poll, the story of this race right now so far has been the durability of joe biden as the front runner in this race, and he is clearly trying to extend that advantage by leaning into this argument that he is the one that can defeat donald trump above all others. >> i heard you chuckling during that moment. also why the question of can you beat donald trump, sort of the break downs of it is so important. that actually signals that joe biden's message is probably the correct message for this election, that if you focus on beating trump, you win white college educated voters, you win other people who are committed to voting, and i find that really interesting that he's saying, okay, thgs the message i think will work, i am number one and your poll says that's the message people want to hear, how can you beat trump. >> jill biden may be on to

something, talking to liberal voters who they probably know disagree with joe biden, especially on the issue of health care, there are a lot of liberal voters who think he is wrong about that, and they would probably be tone deaf to ignore them or not speak to that. i'm not saying there's a strategy in what jill biden said, but there might also be value in doing that for a biden candidate to say to liberals, we hear you, we understand that you don't agree with us on this issue, but look at this other thing. i mean, it would be a mistake for biden to assume that the entire democratic party and it's obviously wrong that the entire democratic party is behind him on his approach to health care. >> can we put up the overall horse race again because there's one piece of math that people are doing, i think, when they look at these numbers, david chalian, saying joe biden is at 29%. if you add up bernie sanders and elizabeth warren, that equals 29%, so if you have all of the

progressives ban together, they are doing just as well. and that's true if you look at it that way. the other side is i'm not sure the bernie sanders voters and elizabeth warren voters are one in the same. >> they're not entirely one in the same. there is clear overlap, no doubt about that. i don't think you can add those together and assume that if one of those candidates were to drop out of this race that they would immediately consolidate all of that support. in effect, we see bernie sanders doing quite well with white, non-college educated democrats. that's also a place where joe biden, you know, lunch bucket joe or however he refers to himself, has appeal as well. so i don't think you can just combine them. you do see that disruptive appeal, that not restoring to something that has been. i think that's a common thread across those two candidates and you can understand that there is

combined a serious pierce of the electorate that the biden campaign has to consider as they plot out their strategies. >> speaking of other candidates, what do you think is happening with kamala harris, because she did have that breakout moment and so many people, her town hall, one of her first town halls on cnn was the most watched. so many people are interested in her. and intrigued by her, and so why do you think she hasn't gotten more traction in the latest poll? >> i mean, that's hard to tell because there's just too many candidates. you all joked about you all aren't sure where you are in the race, and i'm curious what that fight has been like. >> i'm losing. >> you're the man. it's fine. but it's hard to tell why she isn't breaking out. i think there's too much going on, and people don't quite know who she is. i'm not going to bring up your competitor's name. another news organization had another poll recently and i looked at the approval ratings

of people, they didn't do a head to head match up, they did approval ratings, and a lot of people don't know who people are. in that poll, 17% of people did not know, registered voters didn't know who elizabeth warren was, didn't know her name or who she was. for bernie sanders it was 4%. there's more people can learn. i didn't look at kamala harris's numbers. there's more people can learn about people. i think we're too early. she has a role on the debate stage. the field is winnowing itself in a way because of the debate coming up. we'll see if she can break out. a lot of people know who joe biden is, they know what he stands for, and they think he can beat donald trump. >> shauna thinks it's too early. >> we can't say it's a year away, the election anymore. i was in february, and we have seen races solidify, including the republican race which would this many candidates four years ago, solidify in august.

>> it hasn't solidified yet? >> i don't know. we have seen it happen before. what i do know is that senator harris, there's been sampling among voters, she had the entering into the race in january, the big first debate and voters have taken a look twice at least now and not stuck around, and i do wonder, abby, what's your take on this, if she's having trouble sustaining an argument once she makes it. >> yeah, i mean, you know, i think that what happened with harris is that you're seeing that sugar high from that debate wearing off, and she's going back to where she kind of was before the first debate when she was meddling in the 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 range, the 5 to 10 range, and part of it is because voters aren't sure if they want to settle on her. when you ask voters who they want to hear most about, they

say elizabeth war skpn kamala harris. there's -- elizabeth warren. and kamala harris. it's not to the point she has been able to get people to make a final decision on her, and you have seen something different happening with warren. she cruised along under the radar for quite some time. people thought she was dead in the water, even president trump thought she was maybe dead in the water, and you heard him regretting that a little bit over the last week. maybe i tried to hit her too hard too early but what she has been able to do is have a unique message to voters which says i have a plan for all of these various things and voters have in turn said so her they're willing to make her one of their top choices and kamala harris has not been able to do that in part because she's actually in a lot of ways battling for this joe biden lane, the moderate, i have tried to say to voters, you know, i'm not all the way where elizabeth warren is on some of these issues, but she hasn't been able to take the voters

away from joe biden. the electability argument is so strong. we want to get breaking news we're just getting into cnn coming out of brazil. i think we have some pictures we're going to show you. these are live aerials of a bus hijacking on a bridge in rio. an armed man is holding an undetermined number of passengers hostage. police are trying to negotiate with the hijacker. we were just told that at least one, maybe more of the hostages has been released. there's video right there. t the bridge is closed in both directions. police and authorities are trying to figure out a way to bring this to a peaceful end. >> we'll bring you more details as soon as they come into our newsroom rchlt planned parenthood is giving up millions of -- newsroom. meanwhile, planned parenthood is giving up millions

of dollars because of a new rule in the trump administration. we discuss this and the fight over the abortion coming up next. it's meningitis b... and you're not there to help. while meningitis b is uncommon... once symptoms appear, they can progress quickly and can be fatal... sometimes within 24 hours. before you send your teen to college... make sure you help protect them. talk to your teen's doctor... about meningitis b vaccination.

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forego about $60 million in federal funds rather than comply with a new trump administration gag order that would forbid its clinics from making referrals to doctors who can perform abortions. the new rule says while clinics may continue to talk to patients about abortion, they may not suggest where to go to obtain one. >> joining us once again, david chalian, cnn political director, abby phillips, white house correspondent, and shauna thomas, washington bureau chief for vice news. there's a political issue, abortion opponents see this as a win, and there's also an access argument here for low income women. what are they losing here by this action. >> well, they are losing birth control, and abortion opponents should be pro birth control. okay. if you're going to use logic, if you want to cut down on abortion, you should be pro birth control. and this will rob planned

parenthood of $60 million that goes towards birth control services, so this is just not good for any woman who wants to be able to control her own reproduction. >> and planned parenthood says they have some emergency funds to try to make up for this. but planned parenthood is where a lot of people go, as you point out, for information, for std testing and birth control, and that is, you know, i think about when i was younger and i was a teenager, i went to planned parenthood for information on birth control as did my friends can they're sometimes the only place for miles and miles and miles where women can get that. it is an issue, but i do think the other side, abortion is a fraught issue. especially when you bring in this idea of religion into it. and so it's one of those things where you can see if you are on one side of this argument, and you think planned parenthood should not have access to government money because government money should not go towards abortions, now, planned parenthood has always said those two pots are separated, they

make that clear, then you think of this as a win, and that is a win for the trump administration, especially going into an election. >> and planned parenthood will get federal money from medicaid. this is just one pot of money, they are losing, about $60 million, and if you're talking about the culture wars, and there's some information that the trump campaign in 2020 is going to lean into that, this is an area where they can tell some of their voters, we have succeeded, where other past republican administrations have not. if the goal is to fight planned parenthood. >> right. no doubt about the fact that this issue can work for both bases of the party. i mean, you can see how the trump administration, we want to message that to some voters. i would argue, though, john that if this election is going to be fought like the 2018 midterm election, where suburban women are going to make the difference here and we saw them in many

places move significantly to the democrats than where we saw them in 2016, i don't know how loudly the trump administration is going to want to state that message. it may be much more targeted to a core conservative base, but it is clearly not going to be, i would imagine one of their persuasion messages if they have any of those at all. >> and abby, give us a little bit more insight into this, does the trump administration really feel that depriving funds for birth control access is a winning message or strategy. >> combatting planned parenthood is a top priority for this administration. i mean, i think there's no other way to look at it. this is an administration that has been incredibly forceful on this issue, depriving planned parenthood as an institution, which is seen by evangelical christians as a vehicle for abortion of federal resources and that's what this is all about. it is a signaling exercise to the president's base, the

evangelical coalition, that he has had a hold on since the election, it is so important to them that this is something that the president's aides, many of whom actually have for their political careers, have been much more conservative on the issue than the president himself, have been pushing extremely hard and it is not a persuasion message for independents, but this is a white house and a campaign that is laser focused on holding on to the republican voters who have stuck with the president up until this point. and they know that they absolutely have to do that, even if they might want to persuade persuadable voters, they absolutely must hold on to the conservative voters who have been with the president up to this point. >> we ask all the time, with everything we learned about president trump, how is it that evangelical christians stay with him. how is it that conservative christians were up in arms over

bill clinton's behavior but they just are silent on donald trump's behavior. it's because of issues like this. this and judges, right. i mean, it is precisely because of this that he is able to remain, to have that steadfast loyalty from that constituency. >> david, shauna, abby, thank you very much. it's not only democrats trying to deny president trump a second term. one republican has already entered the primary contest. former massachusetts governor william well joins us next.

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democrats battle it out to be their party's presidential nominee. one republican is staging a primary challenge hoping to unseat president trump and he has some choice words about his opponent. joining me now is william weld, the former governor of massachusetts, governor, thank you so much for being with us. there's a new profile out in the "washington post" magazine overnight. and you told the post, when my obituary is written, this may be seen as the most important thing i've ever done. why? >> well, i think the country is kind of at a tipping point unless people stand up and are counted, and plant a flag and say what the president is doing is unconscionable, we're headed down the wrong path, and we may wake up in a year or two with our democratic institutions in turmoil. i mean, this is a president who right off the bat says a free press is the enemy of the people. well, that's right out of the play book of every would be dictator in history, and i'm

afraid that mr. trump has some of those inclinations himself. >> you say you are afraid of what is happening, you say you want to stand up and be counted, but so far it doesn't seem like many republican voters are standing up with you. take new hampshire where you staked a big part of your campaign, neighboring state to your north, there's a new hampshire poll that says the president is at 86%, and you're at 7%. if this is an important message, why aren't people following? >> i think if you poll the state, i'm talking to voters in new hampshire and around the country, unaffiliated, even democrats that can cross over in 20 states and vote for someone in the republican primary. if you get a larger elect rate, the results are going to be

quite different. that's my aim here. frankly, with the president now lose to go joe biden, 50-38 and losing also to sanders and warren and harris, i don't know why republican voters should say, well, let's get some more of that abuse that he heaps on us, and the impossible positions he puts us in, supporting his racism, et cetera, why they would pull the lever for mr. trump. >> what's he bring them? >> are you trying to beat him for real or are you just trying to damage him politically? >> my aim is to win the new hampshire primary and if that happens, i think all bets are off. that's never happened. it's true that the five presidents running for reelection who had a primary challenge all lost or dropped out. they didn't lose the primary, but they all lost for reelection. so history is not on mr. trump's side, but i think this is doable, base od on what i hear the ground in new hampshire. i'm talking to many more voters

than mr. trump up there. >> you also said, i don't think it's a stretch to say on some level mr. trump is a sick man, and i don't mean physically, i mean in his head. there's a lot of furies there. i demons. i'm not sure i understand what you mean by that, his demons. >> well, i think mr. trump responds to a lot of fear and anger that's inside his head. i mean, in the last month or so, he just has seemed to get less and less tethered to norms of acceptable behavior. his rant about elijah cummings across the border, i thought from vindictiveness to outright cruelty. and i think he's shown less control in the last four, six weeks, even than he had before. so that's another thing that could happen is the voters sort of sober second judgment of the community could say at some

point over time, because six months is a long time in politics, enough is enough, and i think the appropriate judgment of the american people is going to trend increasingly in that direction as we get closer and closer to february of 2020. >> mark sanford, former governor of south carolina is considering jumping into the primary race. they s he says if he loses to donald trump, he would vote for president trump in a general election against a democrat. will you vote for the president against a democrat in the general election? >> you know, i'm a big admirer of governor sanford. i like him a lot, but that's a major difference. mark has said that he would vote for trump against any democrat. i have said, and i mean it, that i would never support donald trump for president of the united states. knowing what we now know. i would not have said all of this right after the election in 2016, because we didn't know how mr. trump would comport himself in office but now we know that he comports himself as a small

child who if he doesn't get his way or perceive that he's getting his way, he does the same thing every time, he throws a temper tantrum. >> would you vote for a democrat, if that was the other option? >> i don't know what i would do, but that's down the road. i would not be supporting donald trump for another term as president. >> a lot of people look at you and look at your career and say you are not representative of the current republican party anymore. how do you respond to that? >> well, that's -- i think it's mr. trump who's the republican name only. he's not an economic conservative. i cut taxes 21 times but i also cut spending. i care about the environment. historically, the republican party cared about the environment. i'm not going to deny that it would be a bad thing if the polar icecap melted because that would huge rearranging of all of our seacoasts. i don't know why mr. trump is

blinking reality saying that's all a hoax. i mean, it's scientific fact that if we keep going up 2 degrees every year, by the time we get to 2040, 2050, that polar icecap is gone, and that's a fact. >> former governor william weld, thank you so much for being with us this morning. >> thank you, john. >> alisyn. he is british royalty of a different kind. why elton john is defending prince harry and meghan markle after their visit to france. it's tough to quit smoking cold turkey.

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from accidentally visiting sites that aren't secure. and if someone trys we'll let you know. xfi advanced security. if it's connected, it's protected. call, click, or visit a store today. a remote body of water in the north atlantic is on the brink of devastation. the saragasso sea is a habitat for turtles and fish yet its fragile ecosystem faces a serious threat from something we are all guilty of.

>> cnn correspondent arwa damon has this story. >> reporter: good morning. i thought i knew about plastic pollution. but it wasn't normal we got out there into the water that i began to really understand just how serious and dangerous it is, and it's not just dangerous to the wildlife but to us as well. it is humbling to be out in the deep blue, hundreds of miles from land. or in the sargasso sea, named after sargasso, the seaweed in the rain forest. under the cloud like mat, there is an unexpected array of biodiversity biodiversity but along with the awe is the shocking realization of what we are doing to it.

there are also tinier pieces, hard to see, but everywhere. i'm finding little pieces like this throughout. the pieces that you actually are located down there. each time we got into the water, we found countless plastic pieces, all different shapes and sizes. most plastic is not dumped directly into the ocean. much of what you see has been discarded on land, traveling thousands of miles and breaking up along the way. the sargasso sea in the north atlantic is the world's only body of water without shores. it's defined by the currents of the north atlantic gyre, currents that also carry with them our plastic filth, making one of the five ocean garbage

patches. >> i think this one is a good one to do first. >> wow, there's a big plastic on that side. >> we got it. >> alexandra dulip, and narine constant, are marine biologists. the sargasso provides a habitat for baby turtles and fish, in the oceans, degrading plastics becomes more poisonous as it combines with the manmade pollutants, all that toxicity ends up in the digestive systems of marine life and travels up the food chain all the way to our dinner plates. on board, collect water samples,

in this remote body of water and its broader campaign for a global oceans treaty. >> you can see quite a bit of plastic already just when it's in there. has this been fairly common in the samples coming up. >> most of the samples there has been something. we have seen a lot of plastics because they get entangled in the sargasso. >> the initial results of the study are alarming. green piece found similar or greater concentrations of micro plastic to what they found in the notorious great pacific garbage patch last year. >> we need to change our consumption, the patterns, the way we ruin the planet, the way we do things. >> you have a son. >> yes. >> when you see the way things are now, are you worried about his future? >> yeah, i am, a lot. because i think with this, and with climate change, what are we leaving them. it's insane.

>> being out this far from land, you can't help but be struck by how interconnected our world is. and how destructive we are being to marine ecosystems and with that, also to ourselves. >> and alisyn, the solution, according to conservationists and scientists that we have been speaking to is not just with recycling. only 9% of plastic produced has ever actually been recycled. what they say needs to happen is that it needs to be dealt with at the source, and that means that we really need to be pushing companies, corporations, and countries to stop producing single use plastic because as you can see in that report, it really does affect all of us, alisyn. >> it's so depressing seeing it, arwa, really, and all of us obviously can do our own little part of not using plastic

utensils and baggies or cutting back. it's gotten to the point when we see your report, we have to do something. thank you so much for opening our eyes to what's happening will in the sargasso sea. meanwhile, elton john is coming to the defense of the royal family after a visit to france. the music legend is telling the press to leave the duke and duchess of suggestion sssex alo. melissa bell is live in paris with the latest. so what happened, melissa? >> reporter: well, this comes in the wake of yet another round of british tabloid criticism of meghan and harry in the wake of their summer holiday which involved, according to the british press, too many trips on jets for a couple that put the fight against climate change at the forefront of their agenda, of their work, and in the wake of that criticism, what we have seen is elton john lashing out on twitter, and speaking directly to the very close relationship he'd had, you'll remember, with harry's mother, princess diana. anyone old enough to remember it

can remember, alisyn, can see him at the piano singing candle in the wind at her funeral. it was to her memory that he referred in a tweet, really protecting meghan and harry, and directly linking the sort of media intrusion that they are victims of to the one that ultimately led, partially to the death of princess diana. >> all right. melissa bell for us in paris. thank you very much for that. obviously the british press has been very tough on the duke and duchess. >> yes, and of course we have seen this horror story before, and how it ends when you're hounded by the press. >> i will say, in this case, though, it's about policy discussions they have been having and how they're living their life. >> yes, but, i mean, sometimes there are also hoards of them trying to be around them, and i think that they have done a good job of shielding their son thus far from all of them. all right. this might be the video of the morning, and by that, i mean nothing else matters, right, if

alligators can climb fences, then nothing else matters. this is in jacksonville, florida, outside a naval air station, and that alligator just climbing the fence simply climbing the fence. why is the fence even there, if alligators can climb over it. that's what i ask you. this military base made the point that they have a lot of alligators on the base, and that their defenses don't seem to matter to the alligators at all. they don't respect their security measures. a lot of people on twitter have been weighing in, noting at the kennedy space center, the fences are built in a way that they are angled out, so alligators don't climb over it. some people are aware that alligators climb fence. >> i'm glad we solved this problem, you and i are terrified that alligators are coming into hudson yard. if they can climb a fence, they can ride an alligator. >> can they hit the button. >> just like that. that was going up like this on its hindlegs and standing, so i guess they're much better at these things than we know previously. a more serious note,

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isis claimed responsibility for a horrifying attack at a wedding in afghanistan that killed 63 people over the weekend. a recent pentagon report described an increasingly insurge want islamic state on the rise in parts of the middle east. this despite president trump repeatedly boasting that the group has been defeated. joining me discuss barbara starr, and cnn international correspondent nick payton walsh. you've covered this report extensively here. we're talking about their power, their reach, and their influence and there is concern in this report that it's increasing. >> john, i think the keyword is what you just said, influence.

look, if you go to a map and you go back in time isis held a good deal of territory across iraq and into syria. there has been a very substantial u.s. backed effort, of course, to push and successfully push isis out of that physical caliphate as the administration calls it, so that is gone. but the issue now is the rise of isis' influence. this is an underground organization essentially from the middle east through china into afghanistan. tens of thousands of fighters and they are very much able to carry out these attacks in the areas where they are and their flauns, their ability to organize and carry out insurgent attacks may in fact be growing. the real lesson for the president perhaps and for the administration is insurgencies and violent ideology do not end on the battlefield. this is something that could take decades to deal with.

>> and as seen by that graphic, they have people, they have money and they have institutions still inside their control. and nick payton walsh of "the new york times" has a report out this morning that it talks about the presence it has inside refugee camps. >> look, you never really doubt why isis had support in the first place. they weren't an idea from a book that suddenly popped out from nowhere. this was the radical extremist of large amounts of muslims, suni muslim lms finding themselves frankly oppressed and brutalized over many years. isis was the most violent manifestation. isis were defeated, but you can't kill your way out of an

insurgency which really isis i would say was a nasty branding of. the problem you face now those underlying causes are still there. and now they're kind of extreme are in supporters and in terms of its fighters 2,000 or so held in makeshift and sometimes permanent prisons. nobody's dealing with that. nobody's working out where are they going to go to school, where are they going to live, be fed even. so those people are getting more and more extreme as the syrian curds lost many live are kind not being left to their own devices not gut given the support they hoped would come from fighting the fight with isis. turkey pressuring them on the other, and of course the u.s. military there kind of hamstrung with a cap on how many people they're supposed to have that in that area. it doesn't want to be there forever, anyway. but the real question is how do

they go to phase two after frankly all the killing and bombing? there was an obama administration plan to come in, rebuild. trump kind of got his hands on that, it didn't work out, and it began to fall apart and it seems like the u.s. kind of got bored of it thinking the fight was over. well, it'll come back frankly unless these thousands of people have somebody looking out for their interests. >> to that point nick was just making there, barbara, what's your sense of where this ranks as a priority for the pentagon and also the white house, and those two might not always be the same thing. >> they're probably not in this case. of course, we're headed into the 2020 presidential election, and u.s. troops are still in afghanistan, in iraq and in syria. president trump, of course, very publicly, you know, not wanting to be in what people refer to as these forever wars. he had made a point as prelz he

would bring the troops home. military advisers, top senior generals are convincing him apparently not so fast, not willing to draw down in any of those places. this is now going to be an interesting challenge for democratic candidates as well, can they say they will bring the troops home? if you have this undermined instability, if you have terrorist cells flourishing and with the possible, possible capability of being able to stage attacks against the united states, are you going to make the bet that you're going to bring them all home? >> barbara starr, nick paton walsh, thank you very much for being with us this morning. and thank you our international viewers for watching. for you "cnn newsroom" is next. for u.s. viewers a new cnn poll on the o2020 race and we some breaking news from south america. "new day" continues right now. joe biden commanding lead in this race nationally.

>> no other candidate has made any meaningful gains. >> the question is can he actually win over people who don't already support him as the field gets narrower. >> think about your candidate, his or her electability and who's going to win this race. >> we can atone, we can make amends. and when i'm president of the united states, we will. >> this is the first president who has defied the foundational principle of this country, we are all created equally. >> this is new day with alisyn c camrato and john berman. there is breaking political news this morning. a new national cnn poll shows former vice president joe biden regaining a double digit lead over the rest of the crowded democratic field. it's the first cnn poll since the cnn debates in detroit. biden's numbers are nearly double those of his nearest rivals, senator