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"New Day" Interview with Donald Trump; Marco Rubio Fires Back at Trump; Sexual Abuse Victims Speak Out on Pope; Duck Tour Boat Collides with Bus in Seattle. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired September 24, 2015 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:31:16] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Brooke Baldwin. In his address to Congress today, Pope Francis urged the American people to embrace immigrants with noble intentions. This, as a man, who has built his campaign for president criticizing the U.S. immigration policy, is doubling down on his plan to build a wall and enforce mass deportations. I'm talking about Donald Trump. He talked to my colleague "New Day's" Alyson Camerota, this morning about his policy, the clash with the pope's message, and finally reason why voters have yet to hear his plan on how to defeat ISIS.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ALYSON CAMEROTA, CO-ANCHOR, NEW DAY: The pope said yesterday it will not be easy to look into their souls. Perhaps you will be challenged by diversity, but know they possess resources meant to be shared so don't be afraid to welcome them. What do you think of the pope's words?
DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: I think his words are beautiful and I respect the pope and I like the pope very much. I will say this. We have a country that is going through tremendous problems. We owe $19 trillion. So number one, we can't afford this process. We have tremendous crime problems. The illegal immigrants are coming in and you just have to look at San Francisco and so many other instances, California two weeks ago, where a woman who was absolutely decimated, killed, raped by an illegal immigrant.
CAMEROTA: Let's talk about your plan. It's a two-parter. You talk about building a wall.
TRUMP: Building a wall. That's right.
CAMEROTA: Then you talk about deporting the 11 to 12 million undocumented workers --
TRUMP: Illegal immigrants.
CAMEROTA: -- who are here, illegal immigrants who are living here. Let's talk -- that's the part that you have not been specific about. How would you specifically go about doing 11 million mass deportations?
TRUMP: Through good management and through a process. The process is, the bad ones go and they never come back. They are never coming back. The really good ones, and there are many, they will go and they will come back legally. They will come back on an expedited system.
CAMEROTA: Let's talk about what it looks like nowadays. Would you use the National Guard, the police, the Army?
TRUMP: I would use different things and it will be done effectively and warmly and humanly.
CAMEROTA: You know what this harkens to? This reminds me of, remember the case of Ilian Gonzales where the Cuban boy, there was this dispute he belonged in Cuba and federal agents went in, and splashed all over the media, and it gripped the nation because you watched federal agents pull this boy from his extended family. You are talking about doing that with 11 million people. Are you going to separate families?
TRUMP: No, we're not separating families. We're taking the families and taking them as a unit. It starts with, we build a wall and the wall will be very easily built in a very effective wall. It's going to have an open gate. People are going to come into the country through that gate. They're going to come in legal. It's going to be a country that's run -- it's going to be a country with a border. We're not going to have people pouring drugs across the border. Right now, the cartels are bringing drugs across the border.
CAMEROTA: Let's talk about another topic and that's climate change. The pope has said that he is clear that this is a problem that cannot be left to a future generation. Do you agree that climate change is a pressing problem?
TRUMP: No. I think that clean air is a pressing problem. You want to have clean air. You want to have clean water. That's very important to me. I have won many environmental awards. I'm not a believer in climate change. Now it's gone to global warming and climate change and extreme weather, that's the new one, because weather seems to be a little more extreme. But a lot of the big floods in 1890, they had had the greatest flood. In 1904, they had the greatest rainstorm. It's weather. And we have bad floods. I can't watch the evening news anymore. Every time you turn on the evening news, they show there's a big rainstorm. There's a tornado, there's this. You can't watch the news anymore. It's always weather. Frankly, it's been that way for so long and, honestly, weather changes, and you have storms and you have rain and you have beautiful days. But I do not believe that we should imperil the companies within our country -- by the way, China is doing nothing. If you look at other countries, they are doing nothing. All they do is talk. We're going to imperil jobs. And actually, the middle class and the lower classes are going to be -- the people with no money are going to be imperil led by doing this because it costs so much. If we have climate change or we have global warming, it's going to be of the nuclear form, because we have incompetent politicians watching over us.
[14:36:13] CAMEROTA: Now you have your sights set on Marco Rubio. You have been critical of him. And he's been critical of you. In terms of foreign policy, you are not offering any specifics about what you would do in Syria, about how you would fight is.
TRUMP: Marco Rubio wants to tell every single thing he knows to everybody so that the people on the other side so that the enemy can learn about it. I want to be unpredictable. An article was written a couple weeks ago about my business and they said he's so unpredictable he's impossible to fight. I know more about Syria than Marco Rubio knows about Syria. I know about us beating is and us knocking out is or trying to knock out ISIS and yet ISIS wants to go against Assad and Assad is looking at us and saying, I can't believe it, the Americans are killing my enemy. This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. We are run by incompetent people.
(CROSSTALK)
CAMEROTA: How do you know now more about Syria than Marco Rubio?
TRUMP: Marco Rubio sits behind a desk sometimes and reads stuff. He's in committees. That's all he does. I create jobs all day long. I'll know more about all of this than all of them put together. Believe me, we'll have a winning strategy. If Marco Rubio is good, how come we're doing so badly? He's a sitting U.S. Senator.
(CROSSTALK)
CAMEROTA: He's on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
TRUMP: I'm not in government. He is in government.
CAMEROTA: Will you clue in the voters as to what you will do, or do you just want people to trust you?
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP : -- but I have to, to a certain extent. If I win this thing, I don't want the other side to know what my views are, where I'm coming from, what I do. I watch Obama saying we're going to do this, we're going to do that. Every time they kill a mid-level accounting person from ISIS, they have a news conference to announce it, instead of being quiet about it for a few months and knocking off everybody. Then everybody else scrambles and you can't get anybody else. You got to be cool and you got to be unpredictable, and you just can't go in and say exactly, here's my plan. I do have plans. And by the way, plans are always subject to massive change. And they change. You have to win. I know how to win. These guys don't know how to win.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BALDWIN: Again, that was Donald Trump on the phone this morning with Alyson Camerota.
He mentioned Senator Rubio. Senator Marco Rubio is firing back in an interview with a Kentucky radio station calling Trump insincere and touchy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R-FL) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: First of all, he takes shots at anybody that gets close to him. Any time he hits a rough spot, that's what he does. He had a bad debate performance. He's not well informed on the issues. Can't have more than a 10- second sound bite on any key issue. He's been exposed and he's an insecure guy. That's how he reacts and people can see through it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Senator Marco Rubio's comments come after Donald Trump went after him in a lengthy attack in South Carolina during a campaign stop there. Trump turned sharp words towards Senator Rubio. After a strong debate performance last week, the Senator's poll numbers have been on the rise.
A heads-up for Democrats, here, in just three weeks, CNN and Facebook will be hosting the first Democratic candidates debate. That's Tuesday, October 13th, in Las Vegas.
Next, moments from now, all eyes on Washington and these crowds as Pope Francis will be leaving for the airport, taking off from Washington, D.C. and heading to New York. The crowds are building. We will take you there, live.
[14:39:46] But next, two survivors of abuse within the Catholic Church, they will join me here, on set, live, on why they are not exactly thrilled with the pope's remarks to those bishops yesterday. Some are calling them a, quote, "slap in the face." Their powerful stories, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: Refugees, immigrants, the homeless -- we have seen the pope advocating for all kinds of groups here. That's part of the steam for survivors who say the pope known for helping the underdog has overlooked them. I'm talking about survivors of sex abuse by priests, and many are angered after hearing Pope Francis say this to bishops translated from Spanish. The pope said, quote, "I know how much the wounds of these last few years have weighed on your spirit, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims, in knowledge that in healing, we, too, are healed, and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated."
Joining me now two women who survived childhood priest abuse. Barbara Blane, the founder of the Survivors Network of Abuse by Priests, known as SNAP, which now has 9,000 members and 60 chapters nationwide; and Joelle Casteic, who is a SNAP member.
Ladies, thank you for being with me here.
Just first to you, if you can tell me briefly part of your stories.
[14:45:41] BARBARA BLANE, ABUSE VICTIM & FOUNDER, SURVIVORS NETWORK OF ABUSE BY PRIESTS: The priest in my parish started abusing me in the summer between 7th and 8th grade. I thought it was all my fault. And I never told anyone until I was well into adulthood. And then when I did tell, I told my parents and my dad said we had to report it to the bishop. So we did. My dad didn't say we should report it to the police. So the bottom line is that he was permitted to remain in ministry and the church officials convinced my parents and to not go to police and it would be better for me not to. And so we didn't, and it took seven years before they arrest him from ministry. I eventually learned that he had done it to so many other girls and they knew he had done it to the other girls. But they didn't warn my parents or do anything to protect me. And that's the -- I mean, I can't reclaim my childhood, but I would sure like to ensure it doesn't happen to others.
BALDWIN: So that's how you feel.
And your story about what happened to you?
JOELLE CASTEIC, ABUSE VICTIM & SNAP MEMBER: Between the ages of 15 and 17, I was sexually molested by a choir teacher at my Catholic high school. And by the end of two years, I was pregnant and had an STD. The worst part was school officials knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop it. They knew he was abusing other girls and did nothing to stop it. And like many survivors from very conservative Catholic backgrounds, everyone blamed me. I must have done something and I was at fault. So in 2003, I was able to use California's Civil Window to civilly sue the diocese where I was abused. And at the end, when I settled, I got more than 200 pages of secret documents, including a signed confession from my perpetrator, signed confessions from school officials. They knew. They knew this guy was abusing people and they quietly let him move on where he could hurt other kids.
BALDWIN: I'm hearing your stories and seeing you as adults, but you brought your pictures so we can see what you looked like in your younger years when this was happening.
So now that we have the pope here. You can put them down. When the pope addressed the bishops, he seemed to -- let me quote it again -- he acknowledged, "the challenges they faced, the temptation to lick one's wounds to think back to by-gone times."
When you heard that, Barbara?
BLANE: It was really disappointing. It felt like a slap in the face.
BALDWIN: Why?
BLANE: Because the bishops have treated the victims horribly, and they have allowed a perpetrator to remain in ministry where they could and usually did abuse more children. So the very men who enabled our perpetrators and caused the devastation of so many lives are being praised by Pope Francis. I think that word courage should be held for victims that it should not be used for bishops.
BALDWIN: In that congregation.
Here's the gentle pushback on that as I read more about this pope. And you want you to respond to this. "The argument can be made he's taken more concrete steps. For example, he's created a system in the Vatican to remove bishops that led to the resignation of two American bishops. He has set up a council of abuse victims headed by the Boston cardinal, Sean Patrick O'Malley. And finally, he's expected to meet with sex abuse victim when is he travels to Philadelphia at the end of his tour."
So given those?
CASTEIC: Can we go back?
BALDWIN: Sure.
CASTEIC: Let's look at when you talked about the trials. The Vatican tribunal is a secret trial. The only bishop scheduled to go into that was a Polish archbishop who died before the proceedings could get underway.
BLANE: Just months ago.
CASTEIC: Yeah.
The resignations of the archbishop from St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Kansas City, St. Joseph, has had to do a survivors coming forward and exposing crimes. That had nothing to do with the Vatican. In fact, Robert Finn from Kansas City, St. Joseph was convicted of child endangerment for covering up for a priest creating child pornography. The pope let him stay in his job for two years afterwards, and he only resigned a few months ago.
[14:50:19] BALDWIN: What do you want? You have experienced had this. You're well read. You know all the facts and details. This is part of your life now. If you had the pope -- we know the pope is expected to speak with survivors. If he were to come to you and speak, what one thing would you say to him?
BLANE: I think what we want is we want the pope to protect the children. So we want him to turn over the records that he has a about sex crimes and criminals to police and we want him to demand that all the bishops across the world do the same thing. We want him to punish the bishops who have concealed and covered up the crimes.
Let's be realistic. When he says the commission and the group that he's setting up, which hasn't been set up yet, to the tribunal to investigate the bishops, that -- in one sentence, it's almost deceitful. It gives an impression that if he had a little more information, then he would do the right thing.
CASTEIC: The largest collection of evidence of child sex crimes, even those going on right now, is in the walls of the Vatican. That was put together in 2001 by Pope Emeritus Benedict. They have the files. They have every case of child sexual abuse comes to them. They can help put bishops in jail and adhere to the law.
BALDWIN: Joelle and Barbara, thank you both very much. I really appreciate it.
CASTEIC: Thank you.
BALDWIN: Thank you. Thank you.
BLANE: Thank you.
BALDWIN: We have to go now to this, breaking news here, we're getting out of Seattle. This is just into us here at CNN. Pictures here. A Seattle Ride the Duck Tour boat was involved in a collision here, according to the Seattle police. This bridge, the Aurora Bridge, is closed. You can see the aftermath as multiple first responders are responding to just awful, awful scene. A charter bus and Ride the Duck Tour boat colliding here.
We're trying to get more information as far as injuries are concerned. Clearly, this is just awful what we're looking at unfolding. We're going to get more information and take a quick break and take you back to Seattle. Victims being brought out on stretchers right now.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:56:55] BALDWIN: Breaking news on CNN as we're watching this accident in the aftermath unfolding. What you're looking at is the Aurora Bridge in the Seattle area. This is lunchtime there. I can tell you that by the first responders there, they are carrying victims out one by one on these back boards here on this bridge, which is 100 percent shut down to respond to this accident. You don't have it in this picture, you will soon as news choppers are covering the scene, but it was a Duck boat and a charter bus collided. We don't know how, we don't know why, but you can see both of them on the middle of this bridge. They have collided. We have now learned that at least two people died. Here's the Duck boat. You can see this is the back half of the charter bus. The triage has been created by multiple first responders responding quickly to victims. Nine people critically injured, at least two deaths.
We're anticipating a news briefing any moment now on what happened here. Just awful on this bridge. All lanes closed down to traffic. The injured, as we have been watching not just on stretchers, but taking them out on back boards. If you have loved ones in the area, we're being told, the injured are being taken to Harbor View Medical Center. It was a Ride the Duck Tour boat that was involved in a collision with a charter bus there in the Seattle area.
I have the Peter Valdes-Dapena with me, covers transportation vehicles for "CNN Money." He's jumping in. I also have Jonathan Gilliam on the phone, former FBI, to talk about the quick response here.
Peter, first, to you.
This is just happening. We don't know why or beyond the fact the buss came together. But Duck boat, you see them around.
PETER VALDES-DAPENA, CNN MONEY DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: These were designed as world war ii combat craft because you can drive up on to the beach. They were ideal for any kind of Marine invasion. Since then, they have found a lot of use as firefighters and things like that, but also, a lot of times, as tour vehicles, because it's fun to be in a vehicle that can drive on the land and go right into the water.
BALDWIN: Do you know if you buckle in on a Duck boat? Are there seat belts?
VALDES-DAPENA: Ordinarily, on most buss, there are. I don't know the answer in this particular case. On many buses, seat belts are often not required in vehicles like this that have a lot of seats.
BALDWIN: OK.
Jonathan Gilliam, are you with me on the phone?
JONATHAN, FORMER FBI AGENT & CNN CONTRIBUTOR (voice-over): Yes, I am.
BALDWIN: So I have one eye on Peter and one eye on the scene. We're looking as close as we really can to this triage situation that's now been set up right next to these two, the Duck boat and the bus. Talk me through.