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New Day

California Chrome Attempting Triple Crown; World Leaders Gather For D-Day Event; D-Day In Twitter Age?; Hillary Clinton Memoir Leaks; Marking Queen's Role In World War II

Aired June 06, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Richard Roth is at the track where racing history could be made.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): California Chrome has been training fast for the Triple Crown. Even at 6:30 in the morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd love to see it. It's history in the making.

ROTH: California Chrome was quickly installed as the heavy early betting favorite for the third leg in the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes. He has already won the first two pieces of the crown including America's most famous race.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: California Chrome shines bright in the Kentucky Derby.

ROTH: In the Belmont, he will start from post position number two. The same game that racing Immortal Secretariat shot out of en route to a Triple Crown romp in 1973.

STEVE COBURN, CO-OWNER CALIFORNIA CHROME: I expect him to win Saturday, I really do.

ROTH: California Chrome and his connections are not Kentucky blue bloods. The horse was bred for $2,500 in California. The owners of California Chrome reportedly rejected a $6 million offer for the horse. The 77-year-old trainer grew up in Brooklyn.

ART SHERMAN, TRAINER, CALIFORNIA CHROME: It would be a dream come true for me.

ROTH: Dreams of a Triple crown have been crushed in the home stretch at Belmont many times before. Seven times in just the last 17 years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to be very close. Here's the winner. It's too close to call!

ROTH: It's been 36 years since the Firm won the last Triple Crown in 1978 making this the longest drought for racing glory ever.

JERRY BAILEY, BELMONT WINNING JOCKEY: You have to have speed to win and stamina. It's rare to have that packaged in one horse. ROTH: California Chrome also loves cookies and media attention. There are competitors who will try to spoil the party.

BILLY GOWAN, TRAINER, RIDE ON CURLIN: We tried to spoil the last two races.

ROTH: California Chrome will earn much more of the $600,000 share of the Belmont if he finishes first. A jackpot of future breeding rights for his offspring, which will make his small business owners, California blue bloods.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROTH: The Belmont is relatively quiet here on Friday morning. There are at least expected to be over 100,000 people on Saturday. No horses won the Triple Crown where here had been more than seven horses entered in the Belmont. There are 11 entered, Chris and Kate, to contest California Chrome who will be the heavy betting favorite. Back to you.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Richard Roth putting a jinx on California Chrome.

ROTH: No jinx.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Richard Roth could never be a jinx.

CUOMO: No. He's obviously a good luck charm. This horse has had so much going against it.

Now we're talk about history in the making. This is certainly history what we are seeing right now. This is live picture from France. This is the lunch that follows the commemorative ceremony about D-Day. It's tough to see on the screen, but we believe that President Obama and Vladimir Putin will be just a few people from each other.

BOLDUAN: Just walked up to get into position. Looks like he's next to Francois Hollande.

CUOMO: The woman in blue next to her would be Vladimir Putin on her left and we see President Obama to the right of the queen.

BOLDUAN: The only other woman would probably be Angela Merkel. We'll continue to watch and see if they can zoom in for us. They call it the family photo, if you will. This is -- they get together be these grand large gatherings of world leaders. It takes a lot of coordination to get these people in place. And where they stand in relation to each other is actually very important.

You see President Obama next to Queen Elizabeth. This is important. This is significant and then they'll go into this lunch. This would be the first -- is the first time that President Obama has come face to face with Vladimir Putin since the annexation of Crimea.

CUOMO: Let's see -- they seem to be taking separate routes. BOLDUAN: I misspoke earlier. The woman in blue is the queen of Denmark. President Obama helping Queen Elizabeth back up the stairs as they walk in.

CUOMO: So Putin kind of left in an opposite direction. The men aren't next to each other right now. This is worth obsessing over as detail. A lot of politics this at level comes down to gestures and proximity. Again, we see Vladimir Putin there.

BOLDUAN: Looks like we need another photo everyone. We didn't actually push the button. Maybe that's what's happening right now.

CUOMO: Apparently one more.

BOLDUAN: Let's blame it on someone. Someone blinked. Who is it? They're setting back up it appears for another take. About 18 world leaders gathering together for this lunch commemorating D-Day events, the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. You talk about present and future.

These are -- this is an important moment going forward western leaders gathering together with the G7 leaders sending a very clear message to russian President Vladimir Putin to back off in Ukraine and now they're sitting down for lunch.

CUOMO: We struggle sometimes with what the meaning of events are. Something like D-Day is so enormous. Hopefully the perspective of the tolls of war and -- and the history of alliance through difficulty with help Obama and Putin try to make sense out of the Ukraine. It is going in the wrong direction very quickly. You don't hear about it as much in the news these days.

BOLDUAN: This could be a turning point in those discussions, if you will, if they can get any kind of discussion going at this lunch. We have correspondents on the ground. We'll be following that throughout the morning.

CUOMO: Let's take a quick break here on NEW DAY. So what can we learn about Hillary Clinton from her new book? Talking about political history here, a look at the past and the potential future. There are excerpts trickling out in the well-orchestrated rollout of Hillary's message. Would she have made the Bowe Bergdahl swap and what does she say is her biggest regret in her time in politics, so far anyway? "Inside Politics will tackle all of this coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: A lot to talk about in the world of politics, that's for sure. We have past and present coming together in a big commemorative ceremony for D-Day. Let's get right to John King for "Inside Politics" on NEW DAY -- John.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": TGIF, Kate, Chris and Michaela. It's a busy day. Let's get straight to it. With me this morning to share their reporting and their insights, Molly Ball of "The Atlantic" and Maeve Reston of "The Los Angeles Times." The president, he's in France for the Normandy 70th anniversary. Lunch now with the leaders, we'll find out later if he and Vladimir Putin exchange any words. The president paying tribute to the heroes of the greatest generation. Also what would it have been like if we had the technology, Facebook and Twitter and the like, what would it have been like if that was available back then?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: In this age of instant commentary, the invasion would have swiftly and roundly been declared as it was by one officer, a debacle. Such a race to judgment would not have taken into account the courage of free men.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: A tribute to the brave soldiers there, but also a bit of a reflection from the president on his daily life I think.

MAEVE RESTON, "THE LOS ANGELES TIMES": Obviously he's feeling a little raw after the Bergdahl scandal this week and the way that that story has played out. It's been at such light speed the way things have developed here. Obviously he's under a lot of pressure.

MOLLY BALL, "THE ATLANTIC": And this is a president also who I think we've seen is constantly reflective on his place in history. Especially in his second term, he talks a lot about putting himself on his continue continuum with other presidents and this seems to be a part of it, right, looking at the ways that our age is different than today and trying to remind people that things may look different after the fact than they do in the heat of the moment.

This is something that I think is common to presidents in their second terms as well. George W. Bush and his people when his approval ratings were tanking in his second term, they frequently said, you know, this will all look different in ten years' time and that's true.

KING: The president paid tribute to those veterans at Normandy today. Back here in the United States, there is a bipartisan agreement in the Senate we want to note because we often say Congress can't get anything done. There is a bipartisan agreement at the Senate to move forward on veterans affairs reforms. Some new money and authority to hire and fire people. Some new facilities around the country.

We'll see if that one can pass the House. But Washington is sort of working at least on one issue this week. We'll see how that goes. Let's move to what would be a big day for our economy and the history of the Obama presidency. When the jobs report for last month comes out this morning, we will have finally recovered all of the jobs lost in the financial crisis and the recession from the beginning of the Obama term.

And yet, and yet, we have a brand new CNN/ORC poll out this morning that shows people are still so pessimistic when it comes to the economy. How long will it take? If you look at the pessimism of people, will there be another financial crisis, 69 percent say it's likely. Why are people still in such a funk?

RESTON: It's amazing when you're out there in these states that people just feel this deep sense of anxiety and sort of the feeling that things are going to fall apart at any moment. They also don't seem to give President Obama credit for the economic recovery. It's going to be really hard for the Democrats to convince voters that they should get some credit for that and we'll see how that plays out in a lot of those races. That might end up being the biggest factor for people who will actually turn out at the polls.

KING: Wall Street looks strong, the unemployment rate is down. Part of it I think is because they don't trust politicians. They don't trust the banks and any big institutions. Sometimes they don't trust us. Even when they see good statistics, they don't trust it's real.

BALL: That's not really a good statistic. That's obviously not keeping up with population growth. Not keeping up with the people that are retiring. It's actually an example of how little we've recovered and how long it's taken to get back to that. The number of people who feel like we're actually headed for another crash, I think that's a new thing.

I think there were people who felt this wasn't good enough and now there's a feeling maybe looking at the Wall Street numbers that we may be headed for another bubble of some sort. So I think we're feeling a return to that white knuckle feeling that it all could come crashing down.

KING: That drives conversations in people's homes and what they think about politics. Hillary Clinton's book due out early next week. Media organizations including CBS News have got an early copy of the book. Let's go through some of the highlights here. Starting with her views on the Taliban and the negotiations in her day about releasing Bowe Bergdahl.

She talks about how in the book whenever there were conversations about should we negotiate with the Taliban, should we have a prisoner exchange that Bowe Bergdahl was always part of that equation. We know that she thinks that President Obama perhaps could have gotten a tougher deal.

But here's what she says in the book, "I acknowledged, as I had many times before, that opening the door to negotiations with the Taliban would be hard to swallow for many Americans after so many years of war."

So Molly, she's kind of setting the table they are saying the book is "Hard Choices." That if you do this, you better be prepared for a backlash.

BALL: Well, to a surprising degree to me, this is a very defensive book. So much of it seems to be aimed at rebutting criticisms that she anticipates of her record in the State Department. So the time she's writing this, the failure to bring home Bowe Bergdahl is a potential foreign policy failure. So she's trying to defend herself, we couldn't have gotten it done, here's why and that looks different now that it has gotten done. We'll obviously be hearing her perspective on that when she is called upon to talk about it.

RESTON: At the same time, the way her allies and advisors just got right out there and said she would have pressed for a tougher deal is yet another example of what we're seeing her do in this book, distance herself from President Obama on foreign policy. That could be very important for her in 2016.

KING: Here's another example of that and I think the great challenge for her is how do you set yourself apart from him when you think it's important? Whether it's just a legitimate policy disagreement or you think it's important to you politically, to set yourself apart from the president, but do it in a respectful enough way that you don't alienate the Obama base in the Democratic Party.

Here it is on Syria, she says she returns from one trip convinced it was time to give more muscular assistance to the Syrian opposition, maybe some military assistance. She says the president's inclination was to stay the present course and not take the significant further step of arming rebels.

"No one likes to lose a debate, including me, but this was the president's call and I respected his deliberations and decision." Is that the way to do it? Essentially she makes the case that we disagree sometimes, but he always listened to me. I always got a fair hearing. He is the command-in-chief. That's the way it works.

BALL: Yes, I mean, this is not very surprising, right? We've always known that as secretary of state, Hillary was a relatively hawkish voice in the administration. That she was often pushing the president further than he wanted to go. So to hear her say herself that that was the case is not too much of a surprise.

But it is going to be difficult for her in a larger sense if and when she does run. This is always the difficult for any candidate following a two-term president. And it's the reason they so seldom win is you can't really run on change when you're implicated in the last eight years of the administration. But you do want to differentiate yourself.

KING: George H.W. Bush figured it out. Al Gore did not. Here's one other one. I find this delightful. Flash back 2008. John McCain picks Sarah Palin as his running mate. Here's what Hillary Clinton writes, "The Obama camp immediately issued a dismissive statement and reached out to me in hopes I would follow suit. But I wouldn't. I wasn't going to attack Palin just for being a woman appealing for support from other women. I didn't think it made political sense and it didn't feel right so I said no."

RESTON: Well, I mean obviously that was smart politically certainly. And it also gets to what she's trying to do here which is to broaden her appeal to, you know, beyond Democrats and to independent women. She's talked a lot about her experiences being in the spotlight in politics. How there's a double standard. So being a little bit protective of Palin actually, you know, maybe makes her look warmer and more charming.

KING: Kinder and gentler.

BALL: And I look forward to the Sarah Palin endorsement.

KING: You might be waiting a while on that one. Maeve and Molly, thanks for coming in. As we get back to you guys in New York, I just want to show you the front page of the Drudge Report this morning. I believe to be not true, but a great talker. Reuters report suggesting that no Illinois Democratic candidate could be as good for an upcoming Senate race than Michelle Obama. I think not, but there you go.

BOLDUAN: The president has said that and she has said that more ways than one. Not going to happen.

KING: Aren't they talking about maybe moving to New York? Maybe she really wants to follow Hillary.

BOLDUAN: She's got a while before she can move into the "I want a grandchild phase of her life". That's for sure.

KING: How do the locals say that, Mr. Cuomo? Forget about it?

CUOMO: Forget about it.

BOLDUAN: Sorry, John, it does sound better coming from him. Happy Friday, John. Thank you.

CUOMO: Coming up on NEW DAY, she's the only living head of state who served during World War II. We're going to tell you how Queen Elizabeth left her mark on the beaches of Normandy. It's a really fascinating story.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Welcome back to NEW DAY. Of course, today, we're marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day this morning. Several who served during World War II went on to become great political leaders of the 20th Century. They've all left or passed on or left office except for one. I want you to take a look at this photo? Do you recognize this young woman?

That is Queen Elizabeth II. Back then, she was 18 years old Princess Elizabeth. She was a mechanic and military truck driver in the women's auxiliary territorial service for the British Army. Of course, now she is 88 years old. She's the monarch and the only living head of state who actually served in World War II. Quite significant that she is there today and in such an honorable role -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. A fascinating story in how she actually did work during World War II. Michaela, thank you so much.

Coming up next on NEW DAY, much more on D-Day celebrations, commemorations, plus we also have this. A student put his life on the line to stop a gunman, and this morning he's being hailed a hero. We are going to be back live in Seattle with more details on that deadly college shooting. CUOMO: You know what's happening this Sunday at 9:00 p.m.? Don't you? "PARTS UNKNOWN," of course, Anthony Bourdain accepts a food challenge on Brazil. He dines on a poisonous blowfish with an unexpected side effect. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY BOURDAIN, CNN HOST, "PARTS UNKNOWN": What do you need to know about Salvador? It's a feast of the senses. You've got your color, your music, great taste, a level of just magic and sensuality and -- how can I put this delicate? The first time I came here I thought to myself, it looks like everybody in this town is either on their way to have sex or coming back from having sex. It's a special place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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