Obama: "We Will Defeat ISIS"
HARLOW: At his end of the year news conference, President Obama sought to reassure Americans that the United States would prevail against ISIS. The President spoke about his strategy for combating the terror group before heading to San Bernardino to visit with families of victims that were lost in the terror attack.</s>PRES. BARACK OBAMA (D), UNITED STATES: We're going to defeat ISIS. And we're going to do so by systemically squeezing them, cutting off their supply lines, cutting off their financing, taking out their leadership, taking out their forces, taking out their infrastructure. We're going to do so in partnership with forces on the ground that sometimes are spotty. Sometimes need capacity building. Need our assistance, need our training. But we're seeing steadily progress in many of these areas.</s>HARLOW: CNN's Global Affairs Analyst Kimberly Dozier is with me, as is CNN intelligence and security analyst, former CIA Operative Bob Baer. Thank you both for being here. Bob, in that press conference yesterday, we heard the President also note that ISIL has already lost, this is his quote, "ISIL has already lost about 40 percent of the populated areas it once controlled in Iraq and its losing territory in Syria." Does that, though, Bob, translate into a decreased threat here at home?</s>BOB BAER, FORMER CIA OPERATIVE: Poppy, I think it's just the opposite. These people are committed as they lose ground, they're going to get more desperate. They're going to blame the United States. And I think they're going to try to make more attempts here. Even the President said, the ISIL threat is not going away. It's going to be here for a long time. And he's right. But I think again, the more desperate they get, the more likely they're going to strike here.</s>HARLOW: Kimberly, I'm interested in if you agree -- well, let's just address that, do you agree with Bob, the more we choke them off in Syria and Iraq, the graver danger it puts us in here, just because they blame it all on America?</s>KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, I think what's going to happen is, the more they get pushed in Syria, they will migrate. And they've already started that process building up in Libya and other parts of Africa and the Middle East. So the threat will change and migrate, not disappear. And Pentagon planners are already looking at this and watching this evolution. That's why they talked about building up some of the U.S. special operations bases overseas to also bolster them with intelligence to track these movements. But, yes, it's going to be a problem that's with us, as they've said, for a generation. It's as if the American public is just waking up to that and wants a solution now when nobody is saying that's possible.</s>HARLOW: Bob, to you, I mean, Hillary Clinton spoke about shutting down ISIS in terms of their online recruitment. And that also sounds like what we've discussed by Republican front-runner Donald Trump in the debate which you just heard before the break. Here's what he said on Tuesday night.</s>TRUMP: ISIS is recruiting through the internet. ISIS is using the internet better than we are using the internet and it was our idea. We should be using our brilliant people, our most brilliant minds, to figure a way that ISIS cannot use the internet. And then on second, we should be able to penetrate the internet and find out exactly where ISIS is and everything about ISIS and we can do that if we use our good people. I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I assure as hell don't want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our internet.</s>HARLOW: Bob, is that possible, what he proposes, to shutdown access for ISIS?</s>BAER: No, it's not possible, the internet is just a wild chaotic place and they can appear in chat rooms, encrypted apps, all sorts of ways you can get news. And then you have the question of news organizations like al Jazeera which covers the war in Syria. That has an enormous effect on the Middle East when you see all the slaughter and the bombing. And people are taking sides on al Jazeera. And that in itself recruits people. So, Trump is oversimplifying this. You know, we as Americans look to the internet way too much for our explanations, for understanding of the world, and to defeat a movement like ISIS. ISIS is caused by really, you know, root problems in the Middle East. Until you address those, you can't fix it. It's not something you can fix on the internet.</s>HARLOW: But Kimberly, you can understand, American's desires for answers. You've got 60 percent of Americans polled are not confident in the President's strategy against terrorists, again terror. So they're looking for something else. Donald Trump puts it out there. As Bob said, it's not possible. But isn't it possible to better battle ISIS online?</s>DOZIER: Absolutely. In that you can be more aggressive in reaching out to, would be recruits and doing the same thing that ISIS is doing, identifying people they might be interested in, and wooing them to something else. At this point, the question is what is that something else. That hasn't been created. That's one of the reasons that you hear people from the Hillary campaign talking about building a safe zone in the north of Syria where you can start to see a counter government forming and that can be a draw. That can have sort of an attractiveness to young people saying, OK, there's another side to this. There is someone fighting for the Syrian people, not just ISIS. Because that's often how it's sold to young recruits. Come here and defend the Syrian people. And that wins them over. We don't have a narrative to counter that.</s>BAER: I agree.</s>HARLOW: Narrative -- it's so critical here. Kimberly Dozier, Bob Baer, thank you very much. Up next, Jeb Bush goes toe-to-toe with Donald Trump and uses some of Trump's vocabulary.</s>JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Just one other thing -- I got to get this off my chest. Donald Trump is a jerk.</s>HARLOW: Could Bush back out of his pledge to support Trump if Trump becomes the nominee?