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Bangkok Bombing; Trump Tops Polls; New Poll Numbers; Amazon Cruelty; Trump Jury Duty. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 17, 2015 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:06]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I'm Ana Cabrera. Thanks for joining me.

We begin with breaking news out of Bangkok, Thailand, as the death toll is rising after a bomb that exploded in a popular tourist area. An area described as the Times Square of Thailand. Take a look at the brand news video caught on a dash camera inside a car. And listen as that bomb goes off.

So you can see that flash of the blast. Sparks fly. A witness inside the car was not injured. But look at some surveillance video that captures that same moment from a street angle. Again, you can see, again, the flash, bright orange, chaotic scene follows that. People running down the sidewalk. Police say at least 18 people were killed, including some Chinese tourists. More than 100 others are injured. And this bomb went off in the heart of Bangkok, near a very popular Hindu shrine, during rush hour.

Let's bring in CNN's Saima Mohsin.

And, Saima, the timing and location here are key.

SAIMA MOHSIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. As you just mentioned there, Ana, this is in the heart of Bangkok. It's at an intersection that's incredibly popular amongst locals and tourists. The shrine itself is hugely popular.

Now you mention there, it is a Hindu shrine, but Buddhists, seek (ph) members and Hindu members over (ph) Bangkok's considerable Indian community go there to worship. And, of course, 7:00 in the evening, people are heading home from work. They want to go and give - pay their respects at the shrine. They bring flowers, incense sticks. It is, of course, the end of the summer holidays as well and people take their families there. This is a popular location for people coming from all over the world as well. A major tourist hot spot.

Ana.

CABRERA: So who or what are behind it? Are investigators saying this is terrorism? MOHSIN: They're certainly calling it a terrorist attack. But who is

behind it they simply don't know. They said they don't want to speculate so early on. We've seen a number of attacks in Bangkok over the years. But, of course, that's when the military stepped in. Last year we had those anti-government protests there. I was there covering both. And this was all around this area, Ana. It was on lockdown by thousands of protesters. But the shrine was never targeted.

And then, of course, the military stepped in, in a coup in May last year and we've had a major security presence since then. Nothing major since a couple of grenade attacks last summer. We did see a pipe bomb in January this year and people are saying that was a warning shot that things may escalate. And today that's what we've seen in the heart of Bangkok.

Ana.

CABRERA: All right, Saima Mohsin reporting live in Bangkok for us, thank you so much. Again, 18 people killed.

Now to politics. And, who else? Donald Trump. He is not the most likable Republican, according to a new poll. Most people don't even think he won the recent debate. But Trump is still the top choice for the GOP nomination. A nationwide Fox survey finds Donald Trump firmly on top. A commanding lead over the two other anti-establishment Republicans. 25 percent, you can see, to Ben Carson's 12 percent, and Senator Ted Cruz in third with 10 percent. This in spite of the fact that more people said Trump did the worst job in the recent GOP debate and he is seen as the least likable of the Republican candidates.

Let's talk all about this with Maeve Reston. She is our national political reporter.

And, Maeve, the poll finds people don't necessarily like Trump. They don't think he won the debate. But he's still on top by a lot. So how do you make sense of that?

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, I was at the Iowa State Fair this past weekend with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush and what's really interesting is when you actually talk to voters about him, they love him. They love the way that he channels what they say they're thinking. But once you start digging down with them and asking them what they imagine when they think of him in the Oval Office, there are a lot of people that back away a little bit and say, yes, he's my first choice right now, but I'm still looking at all the other candidates and I'm not sure that I would ultimately vote for him for president.

So I think what's important to remember, as we all look at these polls, is that support right now is not that firm. And there are still a lot of other candidates out there who have yet to air commercials, who have yet to show voters really what their background and credentials are. And when you see those guys up against Trump and compare their records, voters might be singing a different tune as we get a few months down the line.

CABRERA: Right, it is still early and a lot of people haven't made up their mind.

RESTON: Right.

CABRERA: Now, Trump did release some details, some policy details on his immigration reform plan. I want to take a quick look at that in addition to that wall he's been saying he wants to build along the Mexico border. He also says he will deport millions of illegal immigrants and he's going to put an end to birthright citizenship, which, of course, is the law that makes those born to illegal immigrants on American soil U.S. citizens. It's part of the Constitution. So, Maeve, is he planning to repeal the 14th Amendment?

[14:05:27] RESTON: Well, I think that would be a very difficult task that he has ahead of him if he thinks that that's actually something that's realistic and would actually make its way through. That's the thing about Donald Trump is that a lot of the details of how you work with Congress in Washington, what some of these policy changes are required, he doesn't talk about that. This was the most detail that he's put out on any policy that he's talked about so far. And, of course, this is the issue that is really galvanized voters around him. But if you think even about the idea of deporting that many people, I mean that is just a massive undertaking. That would be incredibly expensive.

CABRERA: Right.

RESTON: And no one else has really been able to figure out how to do that yet. So we'll have to keep listening and seeing whether voters feel that these plans are realistic. A lot of people out there, obviously, like what he's saying. But, you know, down the line, when the rubber meets the road, it's kind of a different story.

CABRERA: What he sees is what he wants to do, what he plans to do, but not necessarily how he plans to do it.

RESTON: How he'd do it.

CABRERA: And that's what we'll wait to see. Yes. Maeve Reston, thanks so much to you.

Let's get back to our new poll numbers. It's not just Trump that has people talking. But take a look at who else is with him in that top tier. There's Trump, followed by Ben Carson, then Ted Cruz. Three candidates who have all built their campaigns by criticizing the party establishment.

And look who's falling behind, Jeb Bush, 9 percent, down from 15 percent in an earlier Fox poll. Also slipping in this survey, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Senator Marco Rubio. So, clearly, the establishment candidates are in decline. The outsiders appear to be on the rise.

Ross Douthat is here. He's the op-ed columnist for "The New York Times" and a CNN political commentator.

So, Ross, thanks so much. When - you know, when you look at what's happening, this movement, and who Trump is representing, I mean, all of a sudden GOP is the party of populism led by a billionaire. How does that happen?

ROSS DOUTHAT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, right. Well, I mean, part of what's interesting about Trump, right, is that if you look in - if you dig into his polling numbers, and look at who supports him, he isn't just a candidate of the Republican Party base. So, you know, when we talk about the GOP, if we go back to 2012 and look at, you know, Mitt Romney and his various rivals, there was a pretty clear narrative where very conservative voters weren't wild about voting for Romney and they went from Gingrich to Santorum after stopping off with Cain and Bachamann and so on.

With Trump, it's a different story. He does have a fair amount of support among very conservative Republicans, but he also has a lot of support among self-described moderate Republicans. He's not - he's got a lot of support for evangelicals, but he's also got a lot of support from the less religious. So he's a distinctive candidate and he's picking up both that sort of right wing - real right wing populism, but also a little bit more of the sort of Ross Perot radical center, you know, the kind of voters who aren't deep dive (ph) and ideological but are just fed up.

CABRERA: Right. But how do you make sense of that?

DOUTHAT: Well, this is - I mean if you look at his pitch, right, what he is trying to do is make a pitch on issues where the establishment in both political parties tends to discount public opinion. And immigration is the prime example of that. If you compare how Americans feel about immigration to how leaders in Washington behave about it, the country is clearly a little bit to the right of Washington, D.C.

But the same is true on some of the issues he's talking about. Other issues he's talking about. He's always harping on trade, right, and talking about how we're getting a raw deal from our free trade agreement. How we're losing to Mexico, losing to China and so on. This is another issue where there's a strong elite consensus that's pro- free trade and then there are a lot of Americans who don't agree with that consensus and don't feel represented by either party.

And you could go down the list. He's talking about Medicare and Social Security, for instance, in a way that Republicans never talk about. Republicans usually talk about reforming those programs.

CABRERA: Right.

DOUTHAT: Trump is saying, don't touch those programs. And that resonates with a slice of Republican voters who often depend on Medicare and Social Security. So again and again -

CABRERA: Well, he doesn't tip toe on issues.

DOUTHAT: Right.

CABRERA: He seems to go out on a limb and speak his mind and that does seem to have an appeal. I want to ask you about Ben Carson, because he's moved up a lot in the

polls. He's number two right now. And we haven't been talking about him a whole lot. His style is sort of the anti-Trump. He hasn't had a lot of time speaking in front of people, at least on the media stage. He didn't say much in the debate. But he's in second place.

DOUTHAT: Yes, and that's - that's been a surprise to a lot of debate watchers, myself included, actually, that, you know, if watching the debate sort of as a pundit who knew something about Ben Carson going in, a lot of people said, well, he didn't get a lot of time to speak. He seemed a little bit out of his depth and so on. But it seems like he came across to a lot of voters as both a very decent, intelligent person, also as a very interesting one. I think his Google searches spiked and he obviously has a fascinating and inspirational story.

[14:10:19] I would guess, based on where his appeal has been in the past, that he is getting more - more - a more ideological base of support than Trump. He's been a big favorite on the conservative speaking circuit. He's been very vocal in attacking President Obama and so on. So he may be more case study in sort of the more traditional conservative populism as opposed to Trump's mix and match, say whatever I feel like kind of thing.

CABRERA: Well, we'll have to wait and see where this all goes. Ross Douthat, thanks for your time.

DOUTHAT: Sure.

CABRERA: Still ahead, just moments ago, Carly Fiorina, also rising in the polls, slammed Donald Trump over hormones. Hear what she had to say.

Plus, crying in the workplace. Employees ratting each other out. Just a couple of the scathing allegations against Amazon. And we're going to speak live with someone who has worked with that company.

And another passenger plane disappearing carrying 54 people. We'll tell you what's just been discovered. I'm Ana Cabrera, in for Brooke Baldwin today. Stay with me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:15:24] CABRERA: The ruthlessness of U.S. corporate culture under the microscope today brought to light by a "New York Times" article that makes scathing allegations about what it's like to work at the online retailer Amazon. Now in this article, former employees describe themselves as amabots (ph) working in a dystopian workplace that uses humiliation, cut-throat competitiveness so brutal one former employee said, quote, "nearly every person I worked with I saw cry at their desk." Another employee, just diagnosed with breast cancer, was reportedly warned of potential performance issues. And yet another employee, a new mother, who came in early so she could leave a little early to pick up her child, which was apparently approved by her boss initially, was later considered a problem because colleagues reported she wasn't working hard enough. Now, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos did respond to "The New York Times"

article with a memo that he sent to all of his employees and it reads in parts, "'The Times' claims that our intentional approach is to create a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter heard. I don't recognize this Amazon and I very much hope you don't either." He goes on to say he wouldn't want to work at that type of place either.

And joining me now to discuss more about this is Mark Cohen, the director of retail studies and adjunct professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Business.

CABRERA: Mark, I know at times you've worked with Amazon in sort of a partnership role. You've had students who have gone on to work with Amazon. Was this article surprising to you?

MARK COHEN, DIRECTOR OF RETAIL STUDIES, COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL: I found the article completely unacceptable. I just can't connect the experiences that I've had with Amazon and the experiences I've had in the retail industry with the comments that were cited.

Let me just say this. I started in the business as an executive trainee alongside 37 other people at Abraham & Straus, now Macy's, then a division of Federated. Four months in, four people were still employed. Everyone else had either been fired or had quit. What became very apparent to me was that the retail business is not for everybody. It's -

CABRERA: And that was a different company. That wasn't Amazon.

COHEN: That wasn't Amazon, but that was a retail business and it was a high-performance retail business. Fast forward to about 2003, I was the chairman and CEO of Sears Canada. We spent about a year working in teams with groups of people from Amazon, mid-to high-level executives, on a mutually interesting project. We were quite taken with the talent, professionalism, toughness but fairness of their folks.

Now fast forward to today. I've got quite a few of my very best students in the last few years who have gone on to work for Amazon. Many of them stay in touch and I just haven't heard any complaints.

CABRERA: No complaints at all?

COHEN: That - well, they talk about how tough a business it is. How tough a company it is.

CABRERA: It is a lot of hard work.

COHEN: But that's kind of the contact sport that retail represents.

CABRERA: I mean being a journalist myself, you don't want to take anything out of context. So are you - do you believe that there's any truth to "The New York Times" article?

COHEN: Well, the venyets (ph) that are described may or may not be true. In a very large organization, there's always the possibility that someone behaves badly, that someone does the wrong thing. That's unfortunate if, in fact, those characterizations are true. But at the end of the day, the implication the article brings to bear is that the company's culture is built around this exploitation thesis, which I think is completely false.

CABRERA: Where do you draw the line between toughness and a toxic environment?

COHEN: Well, toxic environments don't retain talented, successful people. Amazon is loaded with talented and successful people. I know their turnover has been cited as high. That's a characteristic of high-performance companies.

CABRERA: Well, not to mention, Amazon does have some success going for it, when you look at the numbers themselves. I mean they've recently eclipsed Walmart in terms of market valuation and they are on track to expand to 50,000 employees in the next three years or so. So they must be doing something right.

COHEN: The company didn't exist 20 years ago. The company today is one of the most important, powerful forces, almost a force of nature in the retail industry, and in related businesses that they have founded, like cloud services. They are going to be an extraordinary paradigm shifter for consumers for the foreseeable future. They employ an enormous number of very powerful, committed people, but not all of whom are suited for their business. And we're hearing some complaints, which may or may not be grounded in facts, that are certainly not, in my view, indicative of the company's culture.

[14:20:09] CABRERA: Let me play devil's advocate because we've also recently talked about companies like Netflix giving unlimited parental leave, for example. In this article, it says Amazon doesn't give any paid parental leave, at least to fathers. So there does seem to be a conflicting nature of two different companies in this - in this realm of the retail realm, the tech world, and Netflix is also a thriving company.

COHEN: Well, Amazon has chosen from day one to be a very lean and performance focused enterprise without perks, without benefits of any consequence. Their focus has been on building businesses, making them successful. They've chosen that and the people that join them either buy into that or not. They've chosen not to create an environment loaded with other things like parental - like child benefits -

CABRERA: The parental leave, right.

COHEN: Parental leaves of that sort and they are not requiring people work for them as a matter of involuntary servitude.

CABRERA: Sure.

COHEN: So the folks who sign up and are suited for that kind of high- power, high-pressure role, if you will, seem to enjoy every minute of it. The folks who find it less than suitable are folks who tend to leave on their own.

CABRERA: Take it or leave it.

COHEN: That's right.

CABRERA: If you sign up, you know what you're getting into.

COHEN: That's right.

CABRERA: All right, well, Mark Cohen, thank you so much for offering the insight. We so much appreciate it.

COHEN: Thank you.

CABRERA: Good to have you here.

Up next, not your average day on jury duty. The Republican front- runner Donald Trump taking a break from campaigning to fulfill his civic duty today in Manhattan. Now, here's a question, what happens if he actually gets picked to serve?

Plus, make America great again. Donald Trump answering the questions behind his campaign slogan. When was the last time America was great? We'll discuss his answer, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:26:16] CABRERA: Donald Trump stepped off the campaign trail today checking in instead for jury duty in New York. Now, Trump arrived in a stretch limo. He was swarmed by the media and the presidential candidate says he's happy to take a break from the campaign to perform his civic duty. Trump has been summoned for jury duty in New York five times before but did not show up and one of his advisers telling CNN it was because the jury summons were sent to the wrong address.

And I want to talk more about this with CNN legal analyst Danny Cevallos, joining me here in New York.

So, Danny, why would anyone choose Trump to be on a jury?

DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Look, jury selection is astrology. It's reading tea leaves. But there are some general principles. I mean who would - who would want to choose Trump for their jury? Well, you might think that he would be tough on crime, so possibly a prosecutor might want him on the jury. If you're a big corporation being sued maybe by a - one guy who slipped on a banana peel in your supermarket, you might want Trump on your jury because he, you might think, would side more with the corporations.

But there's one thing that this sort of thought of jury selection has taught us over the decades and centuries that we've used it, it's not reliable. He might instead - he's very much an academic. He attended an ivy league school. He might be one of those people that strictly applies the rule of law and you might want him for that reason. But there's no real rule hard and fast why you would keep him off this jury. All jury selection, the smarter jury selection practices are, you read that individual person, you treat them like an individual and you see if there's a connection, you see if they're the kind of person that might take your side of the case favorably or not favorably. All these other traditional stereotypes are fraught with peril.

CABRERA: I mean celebrity, presidential candidate, these high-profile people, though, any reason that they wouldn't make a good candidate? For example, this guy has an agenda.

CEVALLOS: You might think, if you're an attorney and you have a client who you don't want their story to be out there, maybe they don't want any kind of publicity, you might not want Trump on your jury for that reason alone, if it's a sensitive matter. But as a general rule, I mean celebrities are human beings subject to jury duty like anybody else. And we've seen it happen before where celebrities make it through that jury selection. They end up on a jury and they end up doing their duty. And again, it just goes to show that jury duty is not just for some of us. It really is for all of us.

CABRERA: And last question real quick, five times, he got summons, didn't show up, says it was sent to the wrong address. Is that a good excuse?

CEVALLOS: That comes up all the time and the answer to that question is, there's no hard and fast rule. It's up to whatever individual judge is hearing the contempt hearing or whatever else. They make a determination how full of nonsense is this particular individuals explanation for missing jury duty and it's really all over the place. If he has a good enough excuse, then it will fly. If it doesn't, it won't.

CABRERA: All right, we'll see. Thank you so much, Danny Cevallos. Good to have you here.

And just in to CNN, a Democratic source tells us there are concerns inside the White House now of a possible Joe Biden White House run. Hear why and who's against this idea.

Plus, the search for a missing plane in Indonesia has now been halted for the day, but we're now learning the airline had many safety violations in the past, at least the airline, and was even banned from flying in Europe. So, stay with us.