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Victim's Father and Boyfriend Urge Gun Control; Interview with Jim Gilmore; Hillary Clinton Speaks to DNC as Poll Numbers Slide; Bernie Sanders Overtakes Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire; Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired August 28, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:04] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right. The next hour of NEWSROOM" begins right now.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow in today for my friend, Carol Costello. 10:00 a.m. Eastern, 7:00 a.m. Pacific. Thank you so much for being with me this Friday.

We begin in Roanoke, Virginia, and a site that will always be haunted by a horrific crime is reopening this morning for business. Bridgewater Plaza, the site of Wednesday' televised murder of two young journalists will reopen today. This as we are getting a new glimpse into the troubled mind and the bleak home of their killer.

Police say after gunman Vester Flanagan committed his murders on live television, he texted a friend saying that he had, quote, "done something stupid." That is according to documents seeking a search warrant.

Take a look at this. These are images we've received from inside of Flanagan's apartment. His refrigerator covered with photos, all of himself. His one-bedroom apartment stark and drab, his bed stripped of even sheets.

We're also hearing more from the father and the boyfriend of the slain reporter, Alison Parker. Just a few days after the devastating shock, they are launching a self-described crusade for gun control.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS HURST, ALISON PARKER'S BOYFRIEND: I don't know why this man decided to target the love of my life and Adam Ward, who was deeply loved by Melissa Ott, but I can tell you that this is happening over and over and over again, and people that I report for, my community, is telling me that this is happening over and over and over again.

A critical incident occurs, people who were not supposed to die are killed senselessly. We are all upset. We all then decide we really need to talk about this and then we forget about it. And then it happens again and we talk about it and we forget about it.

I think the tide will turn. There will be a point where we in this society have decided that enough is enough. I hope and pray that this is the event that causes that tide to turn. ANDY PARK, FATHER OF ALISON PARKER: I want to address the members of

the committees involved in the Virginia General Assembly, and I want to -- I want them to look me in the eye and say, gee, you know, we can't support any kind of other measures with regard to gun control. I want to see them do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: CNN's Polo Sandoval is in Roanoke, Virginia, with the latest -- Polo.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Poppy. I can tell you that all of this new flurry of evidence now is answering several questions, but also leading to others. You see this morning investigators are left wondering if it was, in fact, Flanagan's initial intention to commit suicide or was it his final desperate act as police were closing in?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VESTER FLANAGAN, ROANOKE SHOOTER: Reporting live in the newsroom, Vester Flanagan.

SANDOVAL (voice-over): This morning evidence of an apparent getaway plan found inside 41-year-old Vester Flanagan's rental car. A search warrant revealing that Flanagan had a wig, a shawl, sunglasses, along with multiple license plates, a to-do list, six Glock magazines, and a pistol. But the gunman was unable to evade police shooting himself as they closed in on him on the side of a Virginia highway.

This is video of his one-bedroom apartment obtained by NBC. You can see the refrigerator covered with photos of himself.

Possible warning signs of the anger fueling his murderous attack on Adam Ward and Alison Parker live on air started surfacing over a decade ago. In 2000 he was fired from a station in northern Florida.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was concerned about just his mental status and whether he need counseling.

SANDOVAL: Then in 2013 he caused a disturbing scene after being fired from WDBJ lashing out at co-workers including victim Adam Ward.

JEFF MARS, GENERAL MANAGER, WDBJ: On the way out he handed a wooden cross to the news director and he said you'll need this.

SANDOVAL: Prior to being let go, internal documents showed co-workers complained he made them feel threatened and extremely uncomfortable and the station's manager says Flanagan was asked to seek mental health assistance.

PARKER: I'm not saying let's take away guns. I'm just saying let's make it harder for people with mental issues.

SANDOVAL: In an interview with "NEW DAY'S" Chris Cuomo, Parker's father says gun regulations have to change. PARKER: There has to be a way to force politicians that are cowards

and in the pockets of the NRA to have sensible laws so that crazy people can't get guns.

SANDOVAL: A father's crusade for stricter gun laws.

Met with a rally against gun violence at the vigil in front of WDBJ's station Thursday night.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL: And despite all of this new information that is surfacing with respect to the killer, it seems, Poppy, that really most of the people in this community, if not all the people in this community, really want to focus mainly on the victims here, and if you look behind me, you'll actually see proof, several Mylar balloons and really what is a makeshift memorial that is expected to only grow.

[10:05:12] And as for the folks here at WDBJ, we are told that they are expecting a visit from the Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. It could happen in the next few hours. He's expected to meet with station management and then also to meet with some of the news team that -- I'll tell you what, Poppy, thye continue working through the tears to honor their fallen colleagues.

HARLOW: They have been just remarkable, somehow holding it together to deliver the news to the community as they need it, despite losing their beloved colleagues.

Polo, thank you very much.

Well, the families and the co-workers of the victims say that they have received an outpouring of compassion from around the world this week. But for the father of the slain reporter, Alison Parker, there may be no support more meaningful than this, hearing from other fathers who lost children to gun violence. One man lost his 24-year- old daughter in the massacre inside of the Aurora movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. The other father mourning the murder of his son in a shooting spree near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Last night our Don Lemon brought them together to discuss their shared grief and their resolve.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD MARTINEZ, FATHER OF UC SANTA BARBARA SHOOTING VICTIM: If we don't talk about our children and if we don't put a human face on these tragedies, then it's all about the shooter and all about the shooter's message, and what gets lost in the conversation is the real cost to people like us. You know, and that the rest of the country shouldn't wait until it happens to their kids.

LONNIE PHILIPS, STEPFATHER OF AURORA SHOOTING VICTIM: We didn't get involved right away after Aurora, but we wished we had gotten involved after Columbine, maybe it would have saved our daughter. I don't know. But after Sandy Hook, we had to get involved. We had no choice. We had to do something for our daughter, and we have. We've got some laws passed in Washington, and we got background checks there. They've been passed in Oregon now. So we're taking a page out of the NRA playbook and we're going after state for state.

PARKER: The Second Amendment was introduced and passed when we were using muskets. You know, the -- you know, and the army and the militia had the same weaponry and they couldn't hit each other, you know, 100 miles -- 100 yards away. So it's -- you know, again, I'm not trying to -- you know, I'm not advocating let's take everybody's guns away. Let's just keep them out of the hands of crazy people.

MARTINEZ: Well, 74 percent of the NRA members support criminal background checks on all gun sales, and yet we can't get a vote in Congress to pass universal background checks on gun sales. It's proven in states that have universal background checks, there's fewer domestic violence homicides, there's fewer police officers shot and killed.

Background checks have been shown to -- they're not 100 percent solution. No solution is 100 percent. Seat belts in cars do not save 100 percent of the people in traffic accidents, but that's not a good argument to say that we shouldn't wear seat belts. Seat belts make a significant difference. No one is here to say that universal background checks will stop every act of gun violence, but we need to do better in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: As you see, three fathers going through unbelievable grief coming together there.

I want to bring in Jim Gilmore, he is with me, he's a former governor of Virginia. He's among the GOP contenders running for president. He is also on the NRA's Board of Directors.

Thank you for being with me, Governor.

JIM GILMORE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: The father of Alison Parker, you just heard him there, one of the victims of Wednesday's shooting, says he is for the Second Amendment, he's not trying to take everyone's guns away but he spoke specifically to you and other policymakers, saying we need politicians to be braver and something needs to change.

Do you agree with him that something needs to change?

GILMORE: Well, I think standing up for the Constitution is an act of bravery, Poppy. First of all, I want to express sympathy to this father, to this boyfriend. I think it's a terrible tragedy, but it does need to be remembered that we in Virginia have background checks. This fellow, this criminal, went through a background check. So nibbling away at the Second Amendment rights of all Americans is not the solution to this problem at all. We have to stand for the rights of the Constitution. You can't -- HARLOW: Well, he didn't say -- he didn't say take away their Second

Amendment rights. That's not what he said.

GILMORE: No. No, he didn't. He talked about nibbling away inch by inch, and I'm sorry for his loss but we can't allow the criminal activity of a person like Flanagan to be leveraged into this diminution of our rights under the Constitution and under the Second Amendment. So that's the problem we've got.

The assertion here is somehow a background check will solve everything. You have to blame the perpetrator. You have to find out if a person is mentally unstable and begin to get that person under some type of control. You know, they may not appear to be that way.

HARLOW: So he --

[10:10:09] GILMORE: But family members and other people will know if a person is unstable and potentially dangerous.

HARLOW: So here is an example. The FBI background check policy, the national policy now is three days for a background check to clear. We've seen instances where they don't clear, where there's some confusion, someone is allowed to buy a gun. Look at the South Carolina church shooting.

Let me get your reaction to this. In an interview with "The Huffington Post," Senator Chris Murphy, who will be a guest on this program later this hour, had this to say about Congress. He said, "Congress' silence in the face of this rash of mass shootings has become complicity. We are essentially sending a message of quiet endorsement of these murders."

What is your reaction to that?

GILMORE: My reaction is this, before the person was even caught yesterday, the left-wing in this country was trying to reduce our rights under the Second Amendment. Governor McAuliffe was out there calling for gun control. Hillary Clinton, who is basically the sponsor for Governor McAuliffe, was calling for gun control. The president was calling for gun control.

Gun control is not the answer. You're now diverting attention away from the real problem.

HARLOW: Then what is the -- what is the answer?

GILMORE: The real answer at this point is more community-based mental health which is what I attempted to do as governor. But the main thing we have to do is be resolute about standing for the rights of all Americans, even in the face of criminal conduct that would create an excuse for diminishing those rights. And I want to say one more thing to you, Poppy. I have been the candidate for president of the United States which has stood up to Donald Trump when he's tried to attack us on the 14th Amendment. He wants to take away birth right citizenship in this country, so I have stood against that.

HARLOW: So --

GILMORE: And I want to say to you right now, I want to just issue a challenge to Donald Trump. I will debate him -- I'm challenging him right now to a debate on the issue of the 14th Amendment and standing for that, and I'm on this show today to stand for the Second Amendment. As a conservative I stand for the Constitution and we're going to resolutely stand for that and we're not going to allow either Donald Trump -- on trying to attack an insular minority like Latinos or this criminal who has done this terrible tragedy.

We're not going to allow these things to be leveraged by the American left wing in the elimination of American civil rights under the Constitution.

HARLOW: All right. Let -- you bring up community mental health, and I think, you know, across the board so the many people agree that more needs to be done on the mental health side. Let me read you this quote from an op-ed in "The New York Times" by Nicholas Kristof. He writes in part, "We should address gun deaths as a public health crisis. To protect the public, we regulate toys and mutual funds, ladders and swimming pools. Shouldn't we regulate guns as seriously as we regulate toys? Does he have a point?

GILMORE: No. He's absolutely going in the wrong direction and continuing this approach of blaming the gun instead of blaming the criminal. Yes, we need to regulate. We need to regulate criminals. We need to get criminals off the street whether illegal aliens or whether they're people like this that are going to use any instrumentality. A very reliable source of news the other day just pointed out this past Sunday that a disturbed young man killed his father with a knife.

Nobody is calling for knife control and we shouldn't be approaching gun control. It is a distraction to the problem. It will not eliminate the problem. Criminals do not obey the law. They do not obey record checks. In this particular case the criminal did obey a record check.

HARLOW: But I do want to -- I do want to point you, sir, before I let you go to this one Pew study. OK. Across, you know, party affiliations here, this Pew study just in July of this year, what it found is that the vast majority of Americans -- I think we can show it here, 79 percent of Americans right now favor laws preventing mentally ill from owning guns.

What does that -- does that signal to you that Americans want new laws on that front?

GILMORE: Yes, but it also is not the answer. We have laws in Virginia that says that a mentally ill person is not entitled to possess a firearm. So what's really going on here -- and we have background checks. All the things that these bereaved fathers are calling for because they have lost out of personal loss which I'm very sympathetic to is not the answer. It is not the direction. We need, instead, to begin to focus on criminals, and this man was a criminal. We need to be strong and I'm a former prosecutor, a former attorney

general, we need to be strong on criminal justice, and we need to be strong in terms of mental health focusing and trying to get people under control who are dangerous. These are the answers. We've already demonstrated with this case that more gun control is not going to solve all of these problems. So I'm speaking today because I want to be a voice for the freedoms and liberties of the American people both on the Second Amendment and on the 14th amendment.

HARLOW: All right.

GILMORE: I have support birth right citizenship in this country. Donald Trump is wrong. I challenge him to face me on that matter. But also on the 2nd Amendment we simply can't be stampeded by a criminal act like this as dreadful as it is into affecting the lives and liberties of all the American people and I stand for the Constitution.

[10:15:07] HARLOW: Former governor Jim Gilmore of Virginia. I thank you for coming on the program, sir.

GILMORE: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: Still to come, Hillary Clinton speaks to the Democratic National Committee in just hours, but Joe Biden supporters are asking their members to, quote, "keep an open mind." We are live from the DNC in Minneapolis next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: As Hillary Clinton struggles with sagging poll numbers and speculation that Vice President Joe Biden could jump into the race for the White House, she will make her case today before a key group of potential supporters, the DNC, the Democratic National Committee. Clinton is set to address the DNC's summer meeting later this morning in Minneapolis. That is where we find our CNN senior Washington correspondent, Joe Johns.

Good morning to you, Joe.

[10:20:02] JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy, eight Democratic candidates are expected to speak here. They're going on alphabetical order. Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected around noon Eastern Time.

One person who will not be here is Vice President Joe Biden. He is still trying to figure out if he's going to run for president. However, some of his most fervent supporters are here, and they're making their presence felt. They're holding discreet meetings, the Draft Biden effort is, to try to tell DNC members as well as superdelegates to the convention that they ought to keep an open mind. It's still too early to anoint a frontrunner in the race. That, of course, is a reference to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

So these are small meetings, 15 to 30 people. They last about an hour. The general message, of course, is try to hold your horses until Joe Biden decides to get back -- decides to get into the race -- Poppy.

HARLOW: The quote, right, Joe Johns, from the Draft Biden camp was, you know, keep an open mind. Is that right?

JOHNS: Yes, that's the whole -- that's the bottom line. It's keep an open mind, make sure that you don't jump the guns here until Joe Biden decides what he's going to do. It's also a little bit informational, too, if you will. They want to tell people what Joe Biden is doing over the next several weeks, he's going to have a very busy schedule trying to push the president's proposal on Iran as well as meetings with the Pope who is coming to the United States, so he's got a very full plate and the estimate here among the Draft Biden Movement is that he'll make a decision around the first week of October.

HARLOW: All right. We'll be watching. Joe Johns in Minneapolis for us, thank you.

You heard it, Hillary Clinton speaking just around noon there.

Joining me now, Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center and co-author of the upcoming book, "The First Primary: New Hampshire's Outsized Role in the Presidential Nomination."

Thanks for being with me, Andy.

ANDY SMITH, DIRECTOR, UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE SURVEY CENTER: Good morning, Poppy.

HARLOW: Let's start with New Hampshire aptly so. A recent "Boston Herald"-Franklin Pierce poll shows Bernie Sanders now leads Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, 44-37. Now, you know, neighboring Vermont, so that's probably part of it here. But he had been trailing her by nearly 40 percentage points in March. That is a sharp reversal. Why?

SMITH: I think there are a couple of things going on. First off, there is among Democrats a growing sense of dissatisfaction with Hillary Clinton and also historically in New Hampshire, 35 percent to 45 percent of the Democratic electorate here favors the non- establishment candidate. This goes back to Gene McCarthy in 1968 but more recently with Bill Bradley in 2000, Howard Dean in 2004, even Barack Obama in 2008. So it's not surprising that there are a bloc of Democrats that are looking for someone other than the mainstream establishment candidate, which is Hillary Clinton.

That said, Sanders has been doing better in part because he's been campaigning more effectively than Clinton. Clinton has not been in the state as much as Sanders. She certainly hasn't been able to draw the crowds that Sanders has here and in other states. But I think it's critical to remember that it's August. We have seen these sorts of things happen time and time again where a candidate will bump up in the summer or in the fall but they will -- their support dissipates as voters actually decide -- start to decide who they're going to vote for and who they consider to be best for their party in November.

HARLOW: Yes. Maybe the voters aren't paying attention to every single tiny detail just yet like we in the press are. Maybe they're taking their time deciding as --

SMITH: I would say in New Hampshire -- even in New Hampshire they aren't paying attention.

HARLOW: Yes. It's a very important point. OK. Let me ask you this, I thought it was very interesting to hear from Hillary Clinton this week completely pivoting on the e-mails, changing her tone, in her own words, quote, "taking responsibility for her use of personal e-mail at the State Department," even former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm who heads a Hillary super PAC came in and said this is the pivot that she needed to make. How does that change the game?

SMITH: Well, it will be a long time to see the impact of that, but I think that it's a necessary thing for her to do. With any sort of a political scandal or political problem like this, the first thing you have to do is take ownership of the issue and then start to control the message that comes out about that issue, and she has not been doing that to date. It may be a little bit late for her to be able to take that control back because we're seeing this issue now in the hands of the Justice Department, the FBI, and certainly congressional committees which will continue to push this for the next several months. So it's not going to go away that quickly.

HARLOW: And we do point out one of the things that stood out a lot in the Quinnipiac poll that came out this week is Hillary Clinton's sort of slumping numbers, right, but at the same time to be fair here, she is still leading by a pretty big margin in -- you know, within the candidates thus far. Are we making much ado about nothing here?

[10:25:15] SMITH: Well, she is leading in national polls but she's been very close with Sanders in New Hampshire and actually now trailing in a couple polls in New Hampshire. I would pay more attention to the early state polls where there's an actual campaign going on than in the national polls. The national polls tend to lag the early state polls by several -- by a week or two weeks, so I think that we are not making too much of it in that Clinton has some serious problems, but polling right now is no way indicative of what voters will do in February or when the actual votes start to be counted.

HARLOW: Yes. All right. Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Thank you for being with me. Congratulations on your new book. Appreciate it, sir.

SMITH: Thank you very much.

HARLOW: Of course. Still to come here in the NEWSROOM, a senator calling out his congressional colleagues saying they need to do more after the violent murder of these two journalists. He'll join me live next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)