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New Details on Paris Attack; Republicans Set to Debate. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 14, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Family and others who he knew were connecting him with ISIS operatives who wanted to carry out an attack here in this country. That's what the FBI charges him with.

When the FBI contacted him and interviewed him, he lied about the source of this money. He said that he was being given money by a friend or a cousin in order to buy an iPhone. He also said he got the money from his mom. All of these, it turns out, were not true, and the FBI is now also charging him with making false statements to investigators.

We're still going over the documents that the FBI and Justice Department filed, and we will give you some more info on this as we get it.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we will stay in close contact as you go through all of that. Evan Perez, thank you so much for that, the breaking news on this Maryland man. Thank you.

And we roll on, hour two here. I'm Brooke Baldwin live in Las Vegas, a beautiful shot inside the Venetian Hotel. That's where it all goes down tomorrow night. We're watching the countdown clocks, 26 hours, 59 minutes, four seconds here ahead of the final Republican debate of this year, 2015.

And, listen, this is the first time that the front-runner, Donald, Trump has a lead quite like this. Check these numbers with me, because he's now officially crossed the 40 percent mark in this new national poll. This is Monmouth University released just minutes ago. In fact, the number, it is 41 percent, outdoing his next competitor's support combined.

Take note, though. When this poll was taken, remember, this started last Thursday, three days after Trump announced his plan to temporarily ban Muslims from coming into the United States. And I'm just going to throw more numbers at you. This just in, this ABC News "Washington Post" poll says that that ban is what many Republican voters want.

Nearly 60 percent here of Republicans surveyed support Trump's proposal. Another debate first here. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, he has stepped into the spotlight as Republicans' second choice for the nominee. As we talk so much about podium positioning on the debate stage because that's so key as well, if you're looking at it, Trump in the middle and there you see Ted Cruz just next to him.

Polls suggest that Senator Cruz has taken over much of Ben Carson's support nationally. And in the state with the first caucus, Iowa, February 1, Ted Cruz is pretty much neck and neck with Donald Trump there. You see Trump at the top, 28 percent, Cruz just behind him with 27.

Before we dig into all these numbers, let's just get the lay of the land with senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny, who is inside the debate hall, where it's less windy.

Lucky you, Jeff Zeleny.

But let's begin, let's lead with this statement that's just been released by Donald Trump's doctor, where he is apparently unequivocally the most healthy person who would be elected president, or something like that. Am I right?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Brooke.

Donald Trump is 69 years old and there have been questions about his health. So his doctor released a medical statement just a short time ago, not coincidentally right before the debate. It was actually dated December 4, but they are releasing it right now, that gives him a clean bill of health.

Let's take a look at this one line from it. He says: "Actually, his blood pressure, 110 over 65, and laboratory test results were astonishingly excellent. He has no history of ever using alcohol or tobacco products. If elected, Mr. Trump, I can say unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

So, Brooke, even Donald Trump's physician speaks in superlatives like he does. So, I'm not sure how he knows he would be the healthiest ever elected, but certainly he is giving him a clean bill of health.

If he would become the nominee, if he wins this Republican nomination, I certainly expect that he will be called upon to release actually more specific records, as opposed to just this statement. But, for right now, this puts him in line with all of the others.

But, Brooke, I can tell you, anticipation is building so much for this debate. You can see behind me here right now it's actually a setup for the undercard debate. That's Mike Huckabee, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, the former governor of New York, as well as Rick Santorum. It's a setup for that, but the main event has those nine other candidates.

Now, Brooke, it you take a look around here, this is an amazing hall. It was designed specifically for "The Phantom of the Opera." If you look at the top there, if you can see that, that's the amazing chandelier that comes crashing down in the middle of "The Phantom of the Opera."

It stopped its run here in 2012, so now it's a fixed position, so no worry that that would happen during the debate at all, but, Brooke, this is the most ornate of settings of all of the debates so far. It's certainly one of the most important ones, politically speaking, as well here, because those Iowa caucuses, as you said, are just a few weeks away, February 1, to kick off this whole campaign.

BALDWIN: I have said it before, I will say it again. We're going to blink and it's going to be Iowa time.

[15:05:02]

Jeff Zeleny, thank you so much. Beautiful chandelier there.

Let's dig deeper now, though, with CNN political commentator Michael Smerconish, who hosts CNN's "SMERCONISH" on Saturday mornings here on CNN. And also here with us -- we're in her city, actually -- conservative blogger Krystal Heath, author of this book "God and Government: Why Christians Must Be Involved in the Political Process."

So, great to have both of you with me.

Krystal, let me just begin with you. Just want to tee you up a little bit. Looking at the polling, the national poll, you have seen it. This is huge, that Donald Trump is above the 40 percent mark at 41. He's officially up in the Quinnipiac Iowa poll, though Cruz is nipping at his heels. He's doing really well. This is in the wake of what he said about Muslims and the ban in the United States.

KRYSTAL HEATH, AUTHOR, "GOD AND GOVERNMENT": Yes.

And I think he is doing well nationally, but this isn't going to be decided -- we're not in a national election right now. So if we look at the state-by-state polls with the primaries, where this is going to be settled, Cruz is rising and he's doing really well. I think we have a couple polls out now where Cruz is actually winning in Iowa.

We're seeing that -- I think it's either a New Hampshire poll I believe now where Chris Christie overtakes Donald Trump potentially. It's just incredible.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: In your heart, does this irk you?

HEATH: That Trump is -- it does a little bit, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

HEATH: I think he's not the best representation of conservative values and the GOP as a whole.

But I think there's an excitement with him that people really like and people like that he speaks his mind. I can appreciate that, but I also think there's some decorum that's lacking that others like Senator Cruz or even Senator Rubio would do a better job presenting on a national stage. BALDWIN: With regard to Trump and his comments on this ban of Muslims

in the United States, this is what I have for you, this new poll saying three of five Republicans back his plan. How -- when you're looking at all of the other candidates, and I realize we're talking primaries still, I'm thinking of who my audience would be, how do you thread the needle if you're other Republicans wanting to sort of draw a line in the political sand with Trump, yet at the same time the majority of those early voters potentially agree with Trump on Muslims?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think there's a tendency for some of us to say Donald Trump continues to lead the national polls in spite of these things he's said.

But we're looking at it in reverse. He's leading the national polls because of these things that he has said. I completely agree with Krystal in so far as we're all fixated on the national numbers, but it's not a national process. It's a state-by-state process. Politically speaking, today, I would rather be Ted Cruz than Donald Trump.

BALDWIN: Why?

SMERCONISH: Because I think that the momentum is on his side. I think that Iowa is going to reshuffle the cards of what's going on.

I'm also thinking about Jeb Bush having said two years ago that sometimes you need to be prepared to lose a primary to win a general. When I look at those numbers, they are a reflection of what the Republican Party has become. Don't forget that two-thirds of Americans don't agree with that sentiment. You may escape the primary process and set yourself up for a fall in the general election if you buy into what Trump has said on that issue.

BALDWIN: But I'm wondering about the general election and specifically with regard to Senator Cruz, because he's doing really well in Iowa when you look at just the sheer number breakdown with evangelicals. Off the top of my head, I want to say he's up at least 10 percentage points over Donald Trump. But in terms of a general election, there are pitfalls for him.

HEATH: There definitely are. He's just not -- because of what people like and the way he says anything that he's thinking, that I think could lead him to trouble, like we saw with the Muslim comment just this last week.

I think his unabashed way of saying everything, even to the point where his doctor says he's the healthiest person that could ever become...

SMERCONISH: Astonishingly.

HEATH: Astonishingly, as if his doctor knows every person that has ever been president personally.

BALDWIN: But are we calling Cruz moderate when you put him next to a Donald Trump? Because a lot of people would not say that.

(CROSSTALK)

HEATH: I don't think so. But I think, if you break it down, people say the GOP is split between conservatives and establishment. But I think that Cruz could actually be someone that the GOP can coalesce around as an alternative to Donald Trump, because conservatives already like him. The GOP, which says, hey, we don't want Donald Trump, is going to say, if Cruz is our way to not have Trump, let's go with Cruz.

SMERCONISH: I still see this as a matchup between the so-called maverick candidates -- and I put Cruz in that category with Carson and Trump and the establishment types.

I'm absolutely not surprised that, as Carson has fallen, Ted Cruz has picked up that support. And, remember, tomorrow night, as you watch, there really are two debates playing themselves out on that stage. I'm curious to see, are the establishment types going to look left and right and go after one another, because they are not going to...

BALDWIN: Within the establishment.

SMERCONISH: They are not going to pick up from Trump or from Carson or from Cruz. They are locked in their own world. Sooner or later, somebody needs...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Different kind of grab bag.

Krystal and Michael, thank you very much.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: ... in Vegas. Thanks for having us in your town.

Ted Cruz of course is emerging as really a formidable foe with Donald Trump, his biggest competition. But before his rise in the polls, before he launched his bid for the nomination, before the grassroots donations really began pouring into his campaign, Cruz was a lesser known junior senator.

[15:10:02]

Initially, he was at Princeton, went on to Harvard Law, an attorney, expansive knowledge of constitutional law and a fierce opponent of Obamacare. When the threat of a federal government shutdown loomed just a couple years ago, Cruz engaged in a now infamous, remember this, 21-hour filibuster that had more than a few obscure moments.

"Green Eggs and Ham," anyone? Here's a look back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will credit my father. He invented -- this wasn't for the restaurant. But he did it anyway. He invented green eggs and ham.

Some time ago, I tweeted a speech that Ashton Kutcher gave. Now, number one, just as a consumer, I'm a big fan of eating White Castle burgers. And I took the coward's way out and so went and purchased some black tennis shoes.

And so I'm not in my argument boots. I want to take the opportunity to read two bedtime stories to my girls. I do so like green eggs and ham. Thank you, thank you, Sam I Am.

I want to point out just a few words of wisdom from "Duck Dynasty." You five rednecks on a mower, it's going to be epic. Redneck rule number one, most things can be fixed with duct tape and extension cords.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you tell me, Senator Cruz, where do Chinese gooseberries come from?

CRUZ: Chinese gooseberries actually come from New Zealand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you tell me what part of the world's a Panama hat comes from?

CRUZ: Ecuador.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A camel's hair brush, you know what's it made of?

CRUZ: Squirrel fur. Happy, happy, happy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's stay on Ted Cruz here.

Joining me more to talk about the Texas senator, Todd Gillman. He's the Washington bureau chief for "The Dallas Morning News," just wrote a piece saying essentially he's planning to win.

Good to see you in person. Thanks for sitting down with me here on set in front of the Venetian. Talking, we were just with my last two guests, about the Quinnipiac Iowa polls and how Ted Cruz is really doing well among evangelicals and has been for a little while. How does he hang on to that and take it past Iowa?

TODD GILLMAN, "THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS": He has no problem hanging on to evangelicals. That's his lane.

Santorum and Huckabee are old news, retreads. They are not making a lot of traction.

BALDWIN: Trump has been trying.

GILLMAN: Trump has been trying. Carson has done a lot better in that lane, but obviously has been collapsing, as people get to understand that maybe he -- well, he certainly is a brilliant neurosurgeon, but doesn't know a lot of knowledge about foreign policy and a lot of the other things that you need to know if you're president. I don't think Cruz has any trouble holding onto the evangelicals, leapfrogging New Hampshire, where they're not a factor, into South Carolina and the South. Building off of that is more of a challenge, but, as I know your guests were discussing with you, it could be that the anti-Trump sentiment in the Republican Party is so intense that they would even hold their nose and swallow a vote for Cruz.

I'm not convinced yet that that's going to happen. I think a lot of people in the Republican Party think that Trump is going to collapse all by himself. And maybe they could find a different alternative than Ted Cruz.

BALDWIN: What about -- I think a lot of people are familiar with Cruz's politics, but what about personal? I was talking to Amanda Carpenter, who used to work for him, coms director. She said she was excellent, excellent, but you have heard from Donald Trump.

One of his jabs has been that he doesn't play well with others. I think it was Bush 43 who said essentially the same thing. Does he? What do you know, having covered him for so long?

GILLMAN: He's a very nice human being to the people who work with him, who work for him. They love him and they adore him.

He's a nice person. He does not play well with others. He went to the Senate and instantly antagonized all but maybe three of his colleagues, including everybody in both parties. He came out and called the leader of his own party a liar publicly.

He devoted the first chapter of his campaign biography to making the case that there was so much mendacity in the Senate that it was even worth it for him -- that it was important for him to expose that and talk -- people don't like that. He does not play well with others. He's somebody who doesn't just want to shake up Washington, but wants to play against it, who wants to show that those people are so evil and venal and mendacious that you need a savior like him to come in and mop it up.

It's hard to see the establishment overcoming that level of antagonism that he has created.

BALDWIN: To be able to embrace that.

(CROSSTALK)

GILLMAN: To be able to embrace that. Yes.

BALDWIN: I was sitting, I was re-reading Jeff Toobin's "New Yorker" piece from two summers ago on Ted Cruz, and fascinating details even reading back to his Princeton days. Right?

You have two different kinds of debaters. Ted Cruz was the parliamentary debater. Right? That's when you are not handed the topics ahead of time. You have to be able to think on your feet and know a vast array of subjects and kill it, and he did. He was like the number one debater in the country and went on to Harvard Law. This is sort of his milieu, if you will.

(CROSSTALK)

GILLMAN: It is, although I have to confess I debated on that circuit too.

(CROSSTALK)

[15:15:02]

BALDWIN: Here we go.

GILLMAN: Not nearly ever as good as Senator Cruz and never would have been.

But debating in the Senate and debating on a presidential stage, there's certainly a lot of overlap. There's the presentation, thinking on your feet, all of that, but there is much more substance at this level. Those of us who have done college debate or even seen it recognize that he has distinguished himself. He has moved beyond that. There's a lot of silliness and goofiness and just saying the most extreme thing.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: But he's not silly and goofy on that debate stage.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: If anything, he looks straight at that camera...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: ... heart.

GILLMAN: Now, he does have a tendency, as we -- college debaters say the most extreme thing, the argument to the extreme point, and he does that. But so does Obama, taking the straw man and then knocking that down.

He has a lot of skills that he developed very well that serve him well at this level. A one-on-one debate with Donald Trump would be fascinating. A one-on-one with Obama or Clinton would be fascinating, absolutely.

BALDWIN: Todd Gillman, I had no idea I was sitting in such the presence of a college debater. Nice to see you in person. Thank you very much, especially on everything with Ted Cruz. I appreciate it.

Make sure, let's just remind everyone, you can watch the final Republican debate of 2015 only here on CNN starting tomorrow night 6:00 Eastern live here from the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas.

Next, we were just talking about the president of the United States, President Obama today making this rare visit to the Pentagon, revealing a fact that the U.S. had not yet officially confirmed about a key ISIS fighter. We will have that for you.

Also ahead, I will speak live with a conservative writer who says Donald Trump is really, really a Democrat and would win if he would run as one. A Trump supporter disagrees, will join us live.

And breaking news involving Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Just days after we hear his own version of events in his own words, a huge development involving the charges levied against him.

I'm Brooke Baldwin, and you're watching CNN's special coverage of the CNN debate live from Las Vegas.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:20:45]

BALDWIN: Donald Trump will be front and center here on stage at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas when he faces eight of his Republican rivals tomorrow in the final debate of 2015.

The Republican front-runner has pulled thus far ahead of his opponents when and now, when you look at this new national Monmouth top poll, 41 percent support in the poll. That is huge, that he's now officially above that 40 percent mark. That is his highest number to date.

But imagine, if you will for a moment, if Trump had run as a Democrat. My next guest says that's not so hard to do, considering Trump's background and support for Democratic candidates in the past number of years.

He's Jamie Weinstein. He's the senior editor of The Daily Caller. We will chat with him about that. I'm also joined by CNN political commentators S.E. Cupp and Jeffrey Lord. Also, Jeffrey, we should mention, was also the former political director in the Reagan White House.

Great to see all of you.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: And let's just begin with you, hot seat in the middle here. Essentially, I read your piece twice over this morning in The Daily Caller. You point out how he was a registered Democrat for a number of years, '01, '09, had supported a number of Democratic candidates.

So, what are you telling me?

JAMIE WEINSTEIN, THE DAILY CALLER: Right. But it's more than that really.

I think it's much easier for Trump probably to convince Democratic electorate that he's a social liberal than evangelicals that he's a social conservative. He has a much longer record of being a social liberal thrice divorced in liberal New York City.

On foreign policy, he's vehemently against the Iraq War. He wants to bring America -- he sometimes says let's bomb ISIS, but he really wants to bring America back from the world. He could run as kind of the Bernie Sanders traitor to his class type candidate.

He's had a wealth tax. All these things appeal more to a Democratic primary electorate than a Republican primary electorate. My simple thesis is that had he made the strategic decision in 2009, not gone birther, because that probably would have been a problem.

BALDWIN: Oh, would have gone rogue.

WEINSTEIN: He could have had a better chance to win the Democratic primary than perhaps the Republican primary, which is not an insignificant chance as it is.

BALDWIN: Jeffrey Lord, I'm looking at you.

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: And he laughs.

What are you thinking?

JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: If you went to YouTube this minute, there's a wonderful audiotape of Ronald Reagan campaigning for Harry Truman and Hubert Humphrey when Humphrey was running for the Senate. This would be 1948.

He was a registered Democrat until four years before he ran for governor of California. And he was pretty ferocious. He called himself a bleeding hemophilic liberal.

So I believe that Donald Trump has sort of moved from that phase of life in his life, as had Ronald Reagan. And people are out there. A lot of this is about the supporters. It's not just Donald Trump. It's people out there. When you see this 41 percent number, this is a big deal here.

The people are rallying to Donald Trump because they feel strongly about this. They are not a bunch of xenophobic, bigot racists, et cetera.

BALDWIN: People are rallying behind Donald Trump and, yes, he is at that 41 percent. But this is also in the wake of what he said about Muslims and a ban in the United States. To me, that's a really, big, big, big deal, because we kept couching all the previous polls. Well, this is before what he said, but now he's said what he said, and he has an even higher support number.

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

Look, Donald Trump's bombast, at least his emotional position on foreign policy, is affirmed almost daily by world events and by a very lackluster foreign policy coming out of the White House and a failing strategy on ISIS coming out of the White House. So the language that he's speaking, while it's divisive and while at

least 60 percent conservatives and Republicans disagree with it, has definitely captivated not just the Republican base, but I think a lot of people in the middle too, who finally see someone up there seeming to take ISIS and terrorism a lot more seriously than the White House has seemed to in the past.

BALDWIN: It's significant. I have said it before and I will say it again. This is the first debate in the wake of San Bernardino and Paris. This is a national security debate. And I'm curious who has the most to gain, given the fact that that's really front and center as the issue.

LORD: One of the things that Donald Trump is known for -- I think even his enemies would say this -- is that he's competent.

[15:25:00]

And what have we found out here in the last couple days? That the government of the United States didn't even have the wit to check this woman's Facebook and social media things. They weren't competent enough to do this.

And there are people dead because of this. So his argument about you need to have competence, that's a big deal in this kind of situation.

BALDWIN: Who else beyond Trump?

WEINSTEIN: Well, obviously, Marco Rubio, this is right to his forte. He's studied up and shown kind of an expertise on foreign policy that many of the other candidates haven't show.

In fact, before Russia went into Syria, he predicted it at I think one of the CNN debates two weeks before it happened. That's kind of to his strength, obviously to the weakness of maybe Ben Carson, who has to prove he has kind of the foreign policy bona fides, which so far he has not been able to do.

BALDWIN: Let me switch gears. Final debate of the year. There are still nine. You have this undercard debate. Nine people on stage here.

Julie Pace of the Associated Press was telling John King -- this is her reporting -- that perhaps it will take a Romney or a Speaker Ryan to come out to have a come to Jesus with some of these candidates to winnow down the pack. Have you heard that?

CUPP: I have, and I don't think that's appropriate.

I don't think optically it's appropriate. It doesn't look very good for sort of party elders to tell other Republicans to bow out.

BALDWIN: You don't think something like that would happen?

(CROSSTALK) CUPP: Well, I'm not saying it wouldn't. I just don't think that that is an appropriate role for someone like Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney to play.

I think the field is going to be set until the first votes are cast. I think that's probably right. There are candidates who know they have no chance and maybe this is a vanity campaign. And certainly it would benefit someone like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz to winnow down the field, but at the same time, these national polls are really silly and I don't think a very good indication of where the field currently is.

BALDWIN: When will we have our true indication?

CUPP: I think you have to get through Iowa and New Hampshire to really know where these candidates stand.

I mean, I couldn't justify getting out before any votes are cast, especially since these polls are just really unreliable.

BALDWIN: Speaking of Iowa, it was Trump who said -- and I'm paraphrasing -- something like if I win Iowa, I run the table, meaning I will take them all. Where is he -- is he reading something? Does he have numbers that I haven't seen?

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: Where do you think...

(CROSSTALK)

LORD: If Iowa is seen as a potential difficulty for him, if he wins that, then I can see what he's saying, because he is ahead in the polls in some of the these other places.

And the fact of the matter is, once Donald Trump or anybody begins to gain a certain amount of momentum, if they win two or three or four of these things coming out of the block, then it becomes very difficult for anyone else to overtake them.

BALDWIN: OK. Jamie Weinstein, S.E. Cupp, Jeffrey Lord, thank you all very much.

WEINSTEIN: Thank you.

BALDWIN: So much to get through in these final hours before tomorrow night, but, meantime, next, shocking new details about how the Paris terror attacks, speaking of Paris, played out, what a witness said she saw the ringleader of those attacks doing as those shots rang out.

Plus, ISIS, as we have been discussing, front and center not only at the debate tomorrow night, but as President Obama meets today with leaders at the Pentagon -- what he says the U.S. coalition is doing to hit the terror group -- quote -- "harder than ever."

I'm Brooke Baldwin. This is CNN. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)