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Fear Factor Looms Over Republican Showdown; Bush Takes New Jabs at Donald Trump; Deadlocked Jury Resumes Deliberations; Cruz, Rubio Brawl Over Immigration. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 16, 2015 - 09:00   ET

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


[09:00:07] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Plenty of fireworks at the Venetian between the candidates. But the overarching theme of the debate night, the growing sense of dread in America. The word war was used 49 times, the term World War III was used five times. As for how to win that war? Well, the word tough comes to mind.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: America's at war. Our enemy is not violent extremism. It is not some unnamed malevolent force. It is radical Islamic terrorists.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We must deal frontally with this threat of radical Islamists, especially from ISIS. This is the most sophisticated terror group that has ever threatened the world or the United States of America. They are actively recruiting Americans.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: These are people that want to kill us, folks, and you're objecting to us infiltrating their conversations? I don't think so. I don't think so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's John Berman is in Vegas with the morning after.

Good morning, John. Tell us more.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Carol. Yes, this was a debate filled with substance. National security was the theme. It was also filled with electric moments of confrontation but also some notable moments of restraint. And if you watched until the end, there was some big news.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN DEBATE MODERATOR: This is the final Republican debate before the election year begins.

BERMAN (voice-over): There was serious substance, like Donald Trump's plan to ban Muslims from entering the country.

TRUMP: We are not talking about isolation. We're talking about security. We're not talking about religion. We're talking about security.

BERMAN: But also a serious strategy, namely the question, to throw down or not to throw down. The answer? A definitive yes to both.

JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners. But he's a chaos candidate. And he'd be a chaos president.

TRUMP: Jeb doesn't really believe I'm unhinged. He said that very simply because he has failed in this campaign. It's been a total disaster. Nobody cares.

BERMAN: Jeb Bush taking it to Donald Trump not just once.

BUSH: Donald, you're not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency. That's not going to happen.

BERMAN: Not just twice.

BUSH: If I'm president, I'll be a commander-in-chief, not an agitator-in-chief or a divider-in-chief.

BERMAN: But at least three times and maybe, just maybe, getting under his skin.

BUSH: You're never going to be president of the United States by insulting your way to the presidency.

TRUMP: You're real tough. Yes? Well, let's see, I'm at 42 and you're at 3 so, so far I'm doing better.

BUSH: Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

TRUMP: So far I'm doing better.

BERMAN: That was just one battle. Another? Between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio on several fronts. Domestic surveillance.

RUBIO: We are now at a time when we need more tools, not less tools. And that tool we lost, the metadata program was a valuable tool that we no longer have at our disposal.

CRUZ: Marco knows what he's saying isn't true.

BERMAN: Defense spending.

RUBIO: Three times, he voted against the Defense Authorization Act which is a bill that funds the troops.

CRUZ: Well, you know, Marco has continued these attacks and he knows they're not true.

BERMAN: And crucially, immigration.

RUBIO: It's an issue I've lived around my whole life. My family are immigrants. My wife's family are immigrants. All of my neighbors are immigrants.

BERMAN: The first time yet that Rubio has been pushed on his support for immigration reform in a debate.

CRUZ: You know there was a time for choosing, as Reagan put it, where there was a battle over amnesty. And some chose, like Senator Rubio, to stand with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer and support a massive amnesty plan.

He was fighting to grant amnesty and not to secure the border. I was fighting to secure the border.

BERMAN: Carly Fiorina suggested neither candidate is up to the task.

CARLY FIORINA (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: To wage war, we need a commander-in-chief who has made tough calls in tough times and stood up to be held accountable over and over. Not first-term senators who never made an executive decision in their life. I'll just add that Margaret Thatcher once said, "If you want something talked about, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman."

BERMAN: There was heat between Chris Christie and Rand Paul over no- fly zones in Syria.

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We would shoot down the planes of Russian pilots if, in fact, they were stupid enough to think that this president was the same feckless weakling that the president we have in the Oval Office is right now.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I think if you're in favor of World War III, you have your candidate. You know, here's the thing.

BERMAN: But for all the insults hurled, there were also hugs. Rhetorical.

CRUZ: We will build a wall that works, and I'll get Donald Trump to pay for it.

BERMAN: And quite literal, between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The current frontrunners who just plain refused to rumble.

TRUMP: Let me just --

DANA BASH, CNN DEBATE MODERATOR: Somebody who's a maniac one heartbeat away from the presidency.

TRUMP: But I've gotten to know him over the last three or four days. He has a wonderful temperament. He's just fine. Don't worry about it.

BERMAN: And finally, a revealing truce, perhaps, between Donald Trump and the party, his strongest disavowal yet of a third-party run.

[09:05:09]TRUMP: I am totally committed to the Republican Party. I feel very honored to be the frontrunner.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: You can almost sense a sigh of relief here among Republican Party officials. That is one thing they dread, the idea of Donald Trump running as a third party candidate. Trump ruled it out with the strongest language to this point in this campaign. It can also be a sign, Carol, that he feels pretty good about his position right now.

COSTELLO: He certainly sounds like he feels pretty good about his position right now.

John Berman reporting live from Vegas. Thanks so much.

As we've said, national security and ISIS fears taking center stage in Las Vegas. And the message from the candidates to American voters was clear. Be afraid. GOP rivals wasting no time unleashing round after round of hawkish rhetoric.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're at war, folks. They're not trying to steal your car. They're trying to kill us all.

CHRISTIE: Think about the mothers who will take those children tomorrow morning to the bus stop. Wondering whether their children will arrive back on that bus safe and sound.

BUSH: We need to restore the defense cuts of Barack Obama, to rebuild our military, to destroy ISIS before it destroys us.

RUBIO: This is the most sophisticated terror group that has ever threatened the world or the United States of America.

DR. BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Go ahead and declare the war. We need to be on a war footing. We need to understand that our nation is in grave danger.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. So let's talk about this. Eric Fehrnstrom is a former senior adviser to the Romney campaign and founder and principal at the Shawmut Group. I'm also joined by conservative pundit and former Navy SEAL Carl Higbie. He's also a Trump supporter.

Thanks to both of you for being with me.

ERIC FEHRNSTROM, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER, ROMNEY 2012 CAMPAIGN: Thank you.

CARL HIGBIE, CONSERVATIVE PUNDIT: Sure.

COSTELLO: Thank you. The purpose of this debate was to find out how each candidate would tackle ISIS. As "The Wall Street Journal" put it, quote, "The candidates had much more trouble agreeing on whether the most important tool in that fight is a plan or an attitude."

Is that fair, Carl?

HIGBIE: Well, I think both things are very important. The plan, obviously you can't have the right attitude. Like what Ted Cruz came out and said, and especially Donald Trump came out and said, look, I'm going to bomb them to oblivion, I'm going to care less for the collateral damage and I'm going to accomplish the mission finally. I'm going to target terrorists and if people are on the way, then so be it. But, you know, war is hell, and I don't want to do this, but that's what I'm going to do.

COSTELLO: So that's talking tough. And let me be more specific. So, Eric, what I mean by that is Donald Trump said we simply need to be tougher to fight is, quote, "The problem," Trump said, "is we need toughness. We need tough people." Is that the answer to the problem?

FEHRNSTROM: Well, look, it's a national security debate before a Republican audience, so it never hurts to come out strong in defense of the country. The press is never going to give Donald Trump points for style. But there's no question, he has the toughest policies. And those are the policies that are connecting with Republican voters.

I give Jeb Bush a lot of credit for challenging Trump on the Muslim immigration ban. He sounded like a leader who wanted to form alliances with moderate Muslim nations. He didn't want to scapegoat people. But I think it's notable that overall the criticism of that Muslim immigration ban from Trump was pretty muted. And I think that's partly because we have polling now that shows a majority of Republicans favor it.

But I think also there's been a realization by some of these candidates that everybody draws the line somewhere. And for Donald Trump, he drew the line at 14 American deaths in San Bernardino. For the other candidates, it may be 140 deaths or 1400 deaths. The point is, everybody draws the line somewhere. And I don't think these candidates are willing to unequivocally take that off the table as a wartime measure.

COSTELLO: Interesting. So, Carl, Ted Cruz suggested carpet bombing again but not carpet bombing cities like Raqqa. He wants to obliterate ISIS when we spot them from the air. Mr. Trump is OK with shutting down parts of the Internet to keep ISIS from recruiting. And there was this huge debate over whether it's OK to kill women and children to defeat ISIS.

As a military guy, what do you think when you hear these things?

HIGBIE: Well, I think the problem here is we need to recognize him, like you said, someone -- he's drawn the line at 14 deaths, some at 1400, some at 14,000. The problem is the American military has gone over there and endured these crises, they've endured these tragedies on behalf of the American people. And the American people need to recognize that. If you want to win a war, you have to kill the bad guys. And sometimes you have to kill not bad guys in between. And we need to be less discriminatory over collateral damage. Now --

COSTELLO: So get into that a little more because Ted Cruz is saying, no, we don't want to destroy entire cities but if we see ISIS out in the open desert, we want to kill them and obliterate them from the air, except ISIS doesn't exactly fight that way, does it? It hides in among civilians inside cities.

HIGBIE: It does.

[09:05:01] COSTELLO: So how is that an effective policy?

HIGBIE: Well, the fact is, they do operate. And where is France getting their targets from? They're getting them from us. The other issue, too, is because they're hiding amongst their civilians, their civilians need to know that, hey, we are going to also target where the ISIS is. And if they're amongst their civilians, we will bring the fight --

COSTELLO: So you yourself are OK with killing women and children because it's just collateral damage and that's just war.

HIGBIE: I'm OK with an acceptable amount of collateral damage. I don't know --

COSTELLO: What's an acceptable level of collateral damage?

HIGBIE: When the enemy is defeated. So if --

COSTELLO: What does that mean?

HIGBIE: It means that if ISIS is going to hide amongst its people, we need to bomb them to oblivion to -- so their civilians understand that guess what, we better get out of here or we better stop the fight -- stop the problem here ourselves.

COSTELLO: So, Eric, is that possible? Can civilians just escape ISIS and get out of there?

FEHRNSTROM: Well, look, I don't think that was a fair question last night. I'm a little surprised that Hugh Hewitt asked it. And it was asked of Ben Carson.

COSTELLO: Of Ben Carson, you mean.

FEHRNSTROM: Of Ben Carson. But, look, you know, Ben has a different set of problems, which are creating now problems for the establishment candidates. And that's because he's doing a slow fade into oblivion. Partly because people don't think he's strong enough, as Hugh Hewitt obviously believes, to take on the wartime challenges that confront us.

But here's the problem. We know half the Republican electorate wants an outsider candidate. If one of these establishment candidates is going to make a strong run at Donald Trump, they need Carson to be there at the end. Otherwise, you're going to see Trump continue to gather strength as he has in the most recent polling as Carson has slipped.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there. Eric Fehrnstrom, Carl Higbie, thanks to both of you for being with me.

HIGBIE: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Jeb 3.0? It's not just what Jeb said last night that caught our attention, it's the way he said it. More on Bush and the rest of the GOP field's body language, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:31] COSTELLO: New this morning, Jeb Bush addressing his back and forth sparring with Donald Trump after the final GOP debate of 2015. The former Florida governor directly attacked Trump's policy and called him, quote, "a chaos candidate".

Bush continued his rhetoric against the GOP front-runner during his appearance on CNN's "NEW DAY".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's not really a debate. It's a performance. You have to have -- take the moment to be able to say what you want to say rather than answer the question.

I was brought up in a family where you, you know, someone asked you a question, you answer it. You've got to avoid all of that. You have to be respectful of the question but get to the point you want to make.

In the case of Donald Trump, he's a bully. Look, I mean, you guys interview him all the time. I mean, he has his way and to push up -- post up against him a little bit and push back, you get a sense of, you know, he's not quite all in command.

Look, Donald Trump's not going to be president of the United States by insulting every group on the planet. You know, insulting women, POWs, war heroes, Hispanics, disabled, African-Americans.

You can't insult your way to the presidency. I think people have to stand up against that.

Look, people are angry. They have lots of anxiety for good reason. But preying on that is not how you win. You have to give people a sense of that we can fix these big complex things both in foreign policy and our domestic economy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The Bush campaign also took to Twitter following his debate performance, writing, quote, "Jeb put the Donald in his place and showed he's the only candidate prepared to lead as commander in chief."

In Jeb Bush's case, it wasn't just what he said, it was how he said it. Last night, we saw a noticeably feistier and more confident Jeb Bush.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's a very nice person but we need tough people. We need toughness. We need intelligence and we need tough. Jeb said when they come across the southern border, they come as an act of love.

BUSH: You said in September 30th that ISIS was not a factor.

TRUMP: Am I talking or are you talking, Jeb?

BUSH: I'm talking right now. I'm talking.

TRUMP: You can go back. You're not talking.

BUSH: I'm talking.

TRUMP: You interrupted me.

BUSH: September 30th, you said it.

TRUMP: Have you apologized yet?

No. Am I allowed to finish?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, one at a time.

TRUMP: Excuse me. Am I allowed to finish?

BLITZER: Go ahead, Mr. Trump.

(CROSSTALK)

BUSH: A little of your own medicine there.

TRUMP: You're trying to build up your energy, but it's not working very well.

BLITZER: Please, one at a time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK. With me now, body language expert Tonya Reiman.

Tonya, a more confident Jeb Bush this time?

TONYA REIMAN, BODY LANGUAGE EXPERT: You know, at times he is more confident. You can see that really shining through. But 90 percent of the time, he has a smile on his face, this nervous grin that says, "I'm really not feeling that strong right now." So he does jab back and with this interaction.

Here's the deal: nobody puts Trump in his place, especially not Jeb Bush. Trump can't be put in his place because he doesn't feel like he has a place to be put into. He doesn't have a box. COSTELLO: So, what's the secret in like foiling Donald Trump then?

REIMAN: You have to just go toe to toe and be prepared to take whatever hits your going to get and be prepared with your information.

Here's his weakness. He doesn't have the information. All he has is his tactics on how to cut somebody else down.

So, once you get to the point, stop saying you're going to put smart people in and tell me what you're going to do, he becomes flustered. One of the things we learned last night, is when he does get called out on something, that's when you see he gets a little flustered and a little a bit deer in the headlights.

COSTELLO: I think Rand Paul did a good job on that when he questioned Trump on the Constitution.

REIMAN: Yes.

COSTELLO: OK. Here's another example. Ben Carson, he was much more animated, especially when he was describing his foreign policy idea.

REIMAN: Yes.

COSTELLO: And his hand gestures were much more wild. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUGH HEWITT, MODERATOR: Could you wage war as a commander in chief?

BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, interestingly enough, you should see the eyes of some of those children when I say to them, we're going to have to open your head up and take out this tumor.

They're not happy about it, believe me. And they don't like me very much at that point but later on, they love me. Sometimes -- I sound like him.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REIMAN: Yes, see, to me, that wasn't him being more animated. That was him avoiding the question.

The one thing I have to say about him that he improved on, we've spoken about how he constantly keeps his eyes closed. Last night, I only saw that once or twice. I think he did really well. I think he's been practicing and I think that's really helped him to become more able to carry out the conversation as opposed to having to close his eyes and think through that thought.

[09:20:01] COSTELLO: Interesting.

So, Donald Trump did find himself in an uncomfortable position because a member of the audience, there were 1,400 people in the audience, some of them booed him at times, others heckled him. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: In my opinion --

(HECKLER)

BLITZER: Go ahead, Mr. Trump.

TRUMP: In my opinion we've spent $4 trillion --

(BOOS)

TRUMP: -- trying to topple various people that, frankly, if they were there and we could have spend that the $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges and all of the other problems, our airports and all of the other problems we have, we would have been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK. So, you could barely hear the heckling but it was much louder probably inside the Venetian, right?

REIMAN: And so, what does he do? Immediately, he does his lip purse. You know, that lip. And then he does a contemptuous look.

So, what that lip purse, when somebody goes like that, what that's indicative of is, you know, mental resistance. I completely disagree with what you're seeing, which was, of course, the audience member heckling, and then in addition, he lifts his chin up. That's the superiority gesture which he has now mastered, but he still gets lost. You see that there's like a point where he's not kicking through.

COSTELLO: It would be hard not get lost if someone --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: I have to leave it there.

Tonya Reiman, thanks for stopping by.

REIMAN: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Always enjoy it.

Still to come in THE NEWSROOM: are Republicans throwing a party now that Donald Trump says he is sticking with the Grand Old Party? Is he telling the truth? We'll talk about that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:28] COSTELLO: The embattled Chicago Police Department comes under intense federal scrutiny today over officers use of deadly force. Justice Department officials will meet with top police commanders as they launch a formal civil rights investigation into fatal incidents, including Laquan McDonald and many others. The potentially costly probe could reportedly take a year to complete. Chicago's interim police superintendent says the department welcomes the federal inquiry and promises full cooperation.

Jurors have resumed deliberations today in the trial of Baltimore Police Officer William Porter. He's the first of six officers charged in the April death of Freddie Gray, whose neck was broken while handcuffed in a police van.

The jury ended yesterday's deliberations by telling the judge they were deadlocked.

CNN's Jean Casarez is in Baltimore. She's covering the trial for us.

Good morning, Jean.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

Well, the good news is, the jury is here, they've been debilitating this morning for almost an hour. That makes almost 12 hours of deliberation.

But it was yesterday about mid-afternoon, a note, the jury comes in, it is revealed that this jury says they are deadlocked, that they cannot reach a decision. Now, there are four different charges. So, are they talking about every sing charge they can't reach a decision on? Only one, only two?

The note didn't say. It just said, we're deadlocked.

The jurors look stone faced, they look cold, meaning emotionally cold. William Porter, the defendant in court looked very nervous. His mother was there. The attorneys looked very upset at this, because you do want a verdict.

So, the judge instructed them as judges do, to go back and look at the evidence and talk and deliberate and see if they could arrive at a verdict. So, they went on for two more hours. There was a note, a little short while after that saying they wanted to leave at 5:30.

Then, there was a note at 5:22 yesterday. We don't know what that note said. But the reality is, they left a short time after that, they're back this morning. They are debilitating.

And early in the day they had asked for markers and note pads and speakers so they could listen to audio evidence.

And, Carol, I've got to tell you, I've watched this jury from the beginning. And initially they didn't know each other. They didn't talk. But I saw them warming up and starting to bond in that courtroom as the testimony and the trial kept going.

But now, obviously, a road block if people are on different sides on these issues.

COSTELLO: Interesting. OK, Jean, we'll check back. Jean Casarez, reporting live from Baltimore.

(MUSIC)

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

All is fair and love and war, right? Well, the same can be said in politics, at least when it comes to CNN's GOP debate. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz play nice.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio not so much. In fact, the two senators may have had some of the nastier exchanges of the night.

CNN's Athena Jones is in Vegas with the morning after score card.

Good morning.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

That's right. For all the talk about Donald Trump and Ted Cruz maybe getting into it, that didn't happen last night. It was Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz who really went after each other.

And this is something that's been telegraphed for several weeks now. Certainly, if you look at the e-mail blasts that have been going out from the Marco Rubio campaign, they've been hitting Ted Cruz on the issue of national security and other issues.

This is because these two are vying to be the Trump alternative, they're ranking in second and third, pretty consistently in several polls now. They also went after each other on immigration.

Take a listen to that exchange last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As far as Ted's record, I'm always puzzled by his attack on this issue. You support legalizing people who are in this country illegally. Ted Cruz supported a 500 percent increase in the number of H1-B visas to guest workers that are allowed into this country, and Ted supports doubling the number of green cards.

So, I think what's important for us to understand, is there's a way forward on this issue that we can bring our country together on. And when I'm president I will do it. It will begin by bringing illegal immigration under control and proving it to the American people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dana.

DANA BASH, MODERATOR: Senator Cruz?

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Look, I understand Marco wants to raise confusion. It is not accurate what he just said that I supported legalization. Indeed, I led the fight against his legalization and amnesty bill. And, you know, there was when commentator that put it this way, for

Marco to suggest our record is the same, it is like suggesting the fireman and the arsonist have the same record because they're both at the scene of the fire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: So, a pretty heated exchange here. The issue is that, of course, Marco Rubio is under fire, certainly.