Return to Transcripts main page
Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Will Trump Sign Republican Loyalty Pledge?; Will Biden Run?; Cop Killed: Manhunt Widens; Hungary Crippled by Migrant Crisis. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired September 03, 2015 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:31:35] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: No third party run? Is Donald Trump just hours away to agreeing to a pledge he said he would not sign? A big news conference here in New York today.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Joe Biden fuelling new speculation this morning that he could enter the race for president.
BERMAN: And investigators following new leads overnight in the search for three men suspected of killing an Illinois police officer.
Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm John Berman.
ROMANS: I'm Christine Romans. It's 32 minutes past the hour.
Up first, let's begin with politics. And Donald Trump, with his back against the wall, the Republican Party insisting the GOP frontrunner and all the other candidates need to sign a loyalty pledge vowing unconditional support for the eventual nominee while ruling out an independent or third party run. That's a pledge Trump has rejected in the past. But he is meeting in New York today with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.
Sources tell CNN all signs indicates Trump will sign this pledge now. He'll be holding a conference later this afternoon.
BERMAN: Yes, I don't know who's back is up against the wall here, because all the polls show that if Trump does run a third party, it would torpedo the Republican's hopes to win the White House. He has a lot of leverage. This pledge is unenforceable. So, we will see --
ROMANS: A non-troversy, you say.
BERMAN: I say a non-troversy and really just another news conference for Donald Trump, so he wins yet again.
Meanwhile, Trump and his Republican rival Jeb Bush escalating their feud and it's getting fairly nasty. Donald Trump told Breitbart News, "I like Jeb. He is a nice man. But he should set the example by speaking English while in the United States." Jeb Bush speaks Spanish fluently, speaks it at home. The former Florida governor fired right back, taking a dig at Trump in
an online quiz, on his Facebook page. All choices lead to either Bush or Trump. In one answer, Trump is described a candidate with clear Democratic tendencies.
ROMANS: All right. Vice President Joe Biden testing the political waters for a possible White House run. He spoke at Miami-Dade College Wednesday, sounding very much like a candidate, touching on subjects like affordable higher education, immigration reform and the economy. Afterwards, a few reporters asked him about his plans. They didn't get an answer.
We get more this morning from CNN's senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John and Christine.
After a summer of closed-door meetings and quiet strategy sessions, Vice President Joe Biden is hitting the road. And a wave of speculation followed him from Washington, all the way here to Miami, where he's taking a two-day trip. He seemed to relish in all these presidential size attention.
Look what he said during a middle of a speech here at Miami-Dade College.
JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look at the attention we attracted. Their interesting community college has impressed me greatly. And I hope that's what they're going to write about.
ZELENY: Now, the vice president did not say if he planned to run, but he gave a few hints of what the campaign message might be if he decided to go ahead with the race. He focused hard on middle class, income inequality, raising wages -- of course, all themes of this Obama administration.
But it also raises a challenge. Are voters ready for a third term of this administration? Or are they simply in the mode to move on?
But he first needs to take the temperature of Democrats. He was doing that at a fund-raiser on Wednesday night in Miami. Of course, a key and critical battleground state.
The fund-raiser was for Senate Democrats. But many of these donors would also be key if he would decide to go forward.
He is still mulling this over. He's going to decide, I'm told, within the next three weeks, by October 1st at the latest -- John and Christine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[04:35:06] BERMAN: All right. Jeff, thanks so much.
The White House selling the Iran nuclear agreement although it is essentially a done deal. Vice President Joe Biden, he made the case -- he will make the case for the plan. He's down in Florida as we just said. He is speaking to Jewish leaders there this morning. President Obama has does have enough votes to make sure that the Senate cannot block the measure now. At least 34 senators now publicly back the agreement. But the White House still sending top lieutenants to secure even more support.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: It is our belief, deeply, that this will make Israel safer. It already has made Israel safer. The amount of time to produce enough fissile material for one bomb was down to two months. We will now stretch that out. We've already stretched it out. We've reduced their stockpile. We have limited their centrifuges.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: So, what the White House is trying to do now is get 41 votes in the Senate. That would mean is that there could be a filibuster. The Senate would not have a final vote on the Iran bill, which means that the president wouldn't have to use his veto, and that would be much more of a political win for this White House.
ROMANS: But he is still out there selling.
BERMAN: Well, they're selling because they want to get to the 41. They don't want to have to veto.
ROMANS: All right. The House panel investigating the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks set to interrogate two of Hillary Clinton's top aides while secretary of state. Former chief of staff Cheryl Mills in the hot seat today, with former aide Jake Sullivan facing questioning tomorrow.
Sources tell CNN Mills wanted the hearing conducted in public, but she was denied. She is expected to be interrogated about internal communications between Clinton and her top staffers.
Another former State Department employee who worked on Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server, Bryan Pagliano, has informed Congress he will invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
BERMAN: The V.A. system for tracking requests for medical care is so unreliable, it is impossible for the department to know how many veterans still need treatment or whether those veterans are even still alive. This is according to the new report by the V.A. inspector general.
He found of the 847,000 vets waiting for care in the V.A. medical enrolment system, 307,000 have already died. That is more than one- third. As many as 10,000 applications by veterans for treatment have actually been lost in the last five years.
President Obama winding up his Alaska visit with the taste of the Arctic. He visited a tiny whaling village on the barrier island where 400 residents may be forced to move away because of melting ice is raising sea levels. The president warning the time to act on climate change is now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, the good news is we made a lot of progress in the last six years. But I'm here to tell you we've got to do more. We've got to move faster. We're not moving fast enough. And for the sake of our kids, we've got to keep going. America has to lead the world in transitioning to a clean energy economy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: President Obama, the first sitting president to cross the Arctic Circle. He is calling for an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions.
ROMANS: All right. Time for an early start on your money this morning.
European shares are higher, so are U.S. stock futures. Stocks rallied yesterday, recovering a bit from losses earlier in the week. It's been really a terrible August, a terrible period for stocks.
We saw a bounce yesterday of the Dow up 293 points, led by these two tech giants, Apple up more than 4 percent, Microsoft, a great day there. The third day in a row of triple digit point swings. That's scary for many investors, but apparently, this is not frightening to millennials. According to Robin Hood, that's a stock trading app that's popular with millennials, the number of new accounts doubled on August 24th when the market tanked more than 1,000 at the open. Remember that day, we were freaking out?
BERMAN: Yes.
ROMANS: Millennials are like, hey, I think I want to buy some stocks. Most Robin Hood users bought that Monday and Tuesday and others were shedding stocks.
BERMAN: Those millennials, when you live in your parents basement, you have disposal income, even when the market goes down.
ROMANS: They've been reading that they've got time and they need a nice pullback to get in after six years of going straight up.
BERMAN: It must be nice.
The search widens for three men suspected of killing a police officer. Investigators following new leads overnight. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [04:42:52] BERMAN: Three suspected killers on the loose this morning. Even as thousands of people turned out Wednesday in Fox Lake, Illinois, at a pair of vigils to remember slain police officer Joe Gliniewicz. The officer affectionately known was G.I. Joe was less than a month from retirement when he was shot and killed by three suspects who are still at large this morning.
Authorities acknowledge the killers could be out of town or out of state. There are no hard leads. More than 100 tips have come in by social media and phone. Authorities are hoping surveillance video will provide some answers.
Let's get more now from CNN's Ryan Young.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, you can feel the emotions in the city. You can really feel it. As you look behind us and see all the balloons and everything left for the guy they call G.I. Joe. We actually went to the candlelight vigil where over 100 people showed up to show respects to an officer who served so much time in the community.
But one thing was for sure, we heard over and over how the search will continue and how it has changed. In fact, we went up in a helicopter and we look from above, more than 500 feet above to see what officers would be dealing with, difficult terrain. You had inlets. You had marshland. You also had lakes.
And there's a heavy wood line area here. So, you can tell it would be very easy for someone to hide. But they have changed the way they are looking for the suspects. They have taken down the hard perimeter and now they are broadening that search with more than 100 investigators on the case.
So, throughout the day, we know that there is a 17-minute period where officers are really analyzing all the information they got. In fact, they are looking at surveillance video to try and see if they can get digital images to see if they can get a better description of these suspects -- John and Christine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: All right. Thanks for that, Ryan Young.
Authorities in San Antonio, Texas, are focusing now on a second video of a police shooting. The victim here, 41-year-old Gilbert Flores, he had his hands in the air when deputies fired those fatal shots. But the new video could shed light on why these officers acted so decisively.
We get more this morning from CNN's Ed Lavandera.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[04:45:00] ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, the way that 41-year-old Gilbert Flores was shot and killed by sheriff's deputies here in San Antonio has been described as disturbing and troubling. Investigators are taking a much closer look to determine if it was a justified shooting.
Now, the video that we have all seen is incredibly dramatic and disturbing to watch, but investigators and prosecutors say that there is a second video from a closer and clearer angle. And the sheriff says they believe that Flores had a knife in his hand at the time he was killed by two sheriff's deputies. That video image has been sent for further testing and enhancement to determine exactly what was in his hands at the time.
Could you tell it was a knife?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have an opinion on the view of the video. I have not dissected that video. We need clarity and closer shots. It needs to be enhanced. We're going to do that. I have an opinion, but I want clarity before I make a serious decision.
LAVANDERA: When you say dissection. The video needs to be enhanced?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Enhanced, closer view. Watch it over and over again. This is not something you watch one time like you're watching a sporting event and then have an opinion. This is something that really deserves clarity.
However, when we asked the sheriff with a knife was found at the scene, they would not confirm if that indeed had had happened. A source close to the investigation who had seen the second video says that Flores can be heard acting wildly aggressive toward the officers there at the scene. But they say it's hard to make out exactly what he is saying.
At one point, you hear the voice on the videotape. It's not clear that it's the officers' voice. But someone on that tape saying that it appeared that Flores was trying to get himself killed -- John and Christine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: All right. Ed, thank you very much.
Six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray will stand trial. The judge denied the defense' motion to dismiss charges against the officers. He also rejected their request to move Maryland State Attorney Marilyn Mosby from the case. The judge ruled the six Baltimore officers will be tried separately. The charges range from misconduct to involuntary manslaughter. Gray died of spinal injuries while in police custody.
ROMANS: Kentucky clerk Kim Davis will be in federal court this morning. She needs to answer a contempt citation. She has been defying several court orders to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. Davis refuses to do so, on religious grounds. She says she is answering to a higher authority, God's authority. This is a heaven or hell decision for her. On Wednesday, another couple was turned away from her office in Rowan County, Kentucky.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KIM DAVIS, ROWAN COUNTY, KENTUCKY CLERK: We are not doing marriage licenses today. Because --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?
DAVIS: I'm not doing marriage license today. We're pending appeal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Under what authority? Under what authority?
DAVIS: Under God's authority.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: God's authority. I knew you would say that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Pending appeal. She says the law here is pretty clear. This has been ruled on again and again and again. It is the law of the land. The people in her office should be granted marriage licenses. She won't do it.
All right. A migrant crisis, it is erupting in Europe. Thousands stranded in the streets. They are stopped and hungry, desperately trying to board trains for Germany. Meanwhile, the images spreading around the world of children dying in this crisis, starting to really, really, really gain the public's attention.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:52:06] ROMANS: All right. There's a picture this morning on so many newspapers that captures the pain and desperation facing thousands and thousands of migrants and refugees trying to get to Europe. That's a dead 3-year-old boy, a Syrian Kurd fleeing the war and poverty in the Middle East. He was trying apparently, his family to get to Canada, so many migrants now heading to Europe, they're living in limbo, they're living in squalor.
This is the train station in Budapest right now. They are waiting for days to get on a trains bound for Germany, where Germany is welcoming many of these migrants right now. These people are finally allowed into the rail station itself, but they're not allowed to go near their destination. This is a huge problem right now. You see the children who are dying in the process it simply breaks your heart.
CNN senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen is live in Munich, in Germany, where a lot of these people are trying to get, Fred. Germany is prepared.
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Germany is absolutely prepared, John. We have been seeing over the past one and a half days, outpouring of support with hundreds of volunteers coming here to the Munich railway station, bringing in supplies, bringing in even toys for children. The German system set up medical facilities here in anticipation of those people coming from Hungary to over to Munich.
But then the helpers had been frustrated because so few people have been coming. And the reason for that is because they are still stranded in Hungary in a chaotic situation, where at this point, the rail station has been open, however, no trains running to Munich, running to Germany there. It's only domestic trains, because the Hungarian government has said, it says, sure, the migrants get on trains, but only to refugee centers inside Hungary and get registered there. That's not something that many of them want to do that because they want to go to Germany, and Germany said that at least the Iraqis and Syrians come here and apply for asylum.
Generally, John, all of this is turning into more and more of a standoff between the Germans and the Hungarians. Hungarian prime minister has just been at the European Union saying there that he believes all of this is not a European problem, but it is a German problem. He says Hungarians are simply upholding law and order by not allowing them to move across Europe, but the Germans say, sure, all of that might be European law, but with the situation like this and crisis as big as this, you have to be flexible with how you enforce that law.
And, certainly, on Monday, that was the case. It was at that point allowing people to come to Germany and it wasn't really a problem for anybody here. Certainly, there were a lot of people here at the railway station, but the Germans were still coming to terms with it. So, right now in Europe, there's a lot of political chaos as to what exactly the situation is, as to whether or not these people are going to be able to move.
[04:55:02] There is a lot of friction between European leaders and there is a lot of suffering by a lot of people who are stranded there in Hungary, but in many other places as well -- John.
ROMANS: Fred, you know, I've got to tell you, though, I think the public sentiment has shifted here on just about every major newspaper I looked at this morning. There are images of sleeping children, suffering children, or the --
BERMAN: Dead children.
ROMANS: Or the image of this child who the Turkish police officer is taking off the beach, a dead 3-year-old.
So, you've got red tape and political wrangling. But I think the political sentiment, John --
BERMAN: Here.
ROMANS: Here at least, and maybe in Germany, maybe that's why Germany is being so open here, has shifted. This is a long, slow boiling crisis that has now reached -- really reached a boil here.
Fred Pleitgen, we'll talk to you about it again very, very soon. BERMAN: We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: Will Donald Trump rule out a third-party bid for president? He meets with Republican leaders this morning, a big news conference planned. What we're learning, ahead.
ROMANS: Joe Biden fueling new speculation that he may enter the race for president.
BERMAN: And investigators following new leads this morning, searching for three men suspected of killing an Illinois police officer.
Good morning. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm John Berman.
