Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Freed American Speaks Out; Toxic Water; Trump vs. Cruz. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired January 19, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That was a very nice introduction. I appreciate it very much.

It's so much fun and so interesting. I know the governor just made a very big statement that was appreciated by many, and that was amazing, actually. And he's a respected man. And when he speaks, people listen. So, I thought that it just came out over the news, his feelings about one of the other candidates. That's strong feelings.

So, that will be very interesting. I guess you agree too.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: I agree. I agree. And he's been mixed on the subject. He goes wherever the votes are, so he, all of a sudden, went over here and then, all of a sudden, he got slapped. So it's very interesting to see.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: CNN national correspondent Sunlen Serfaty live for us in Rochester, New Hampshire, where Ted Cruz will be campaigning in just a couple of hours.

So, with that in Iowa, with potentially a Sarah Palin endorsement for Trump later, not a great day for the Cruz campaign.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

Both these things are certainly a big blow to Ted Cruz, certainly blunting a lot of the momentum that he's seeing right now in Iowa. Now, for their part, the Cruz campaign speaking about the Iowa governor's comments today, really trying to brush this aside, saying it doesn't come as a surprise, even though, of course, it's noteworthy, Brooke, that he's being vocal and no longer remaining neutral in this race, as is tradition.

But the Cruz campaign always knows that his opposition to ethanol subsidies is something that carries a big weight with Iowa voters. It's a big vulnerability. His rivals really hammering down over the last few months on this issue. So, certainly, we will likely hear from Ted Cruz within the next hour when he speaks with reporters at his next stop about this, most likely will try to brush it aside similarly like his campaign has done this afternoon -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: I mentioned this big announcement that the Trump campaign has been teasing. This guest is unveiled I guess in a couple of hours. We heard this morning on NEW DAY," Sunlen, really just how the campaign would feel about that if it is an endorsement by Sarah Palin.

Here they were.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICK TYLER, TED CRUZ CAMPAIGN SPOKESMAN: I think it will be a blow to Sarah Palin, because Sarah Palin has been a champion for the conservative cause. And if she was going to endorse Donald Trump, sadly, she would be endorsing someone who has held progressive views all their life on the sanctity of life, on marriage, on partial-birth abortion.

He was a TARP -- supported the TARP bailout. It goes on and on and on. Donald Trump claims he's changed all those views, but I just -- I think if it was Sarah Palin, let me just say I would be deeply disappointed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Well, to follow that, didn't we just see a tweet from Senator Cruz himself saying, I love Sarah Palin?

SERFATY: That's right. We just did see a tweet from Senator Cruz, quite the opposition of what you heard from his communications manager.

Here's the tweet from Ted Cruz. He says -- quote -- "I love Sarah Palin USA. Without her support, I wouldn't be in the Senate. Regardless of what she does in 2016, I will always be a fan."

This was really interesting because this kind of created a little bickering, some coming from Bristol Palin, the daughter of Sarah Palin. She wrote today a long message posted online that was tweeted by Sarah Palin's official count. She wrote this about all of these rumors and this chatter of a potential endorsement.

"After hearing what Cruz is now saying about my mom in a negative knee-jerk reaction makes me hope my mom does endorse Trump. Cruz has flip-flopped, turning against my mom, who has done nothing but support and help him win others. Sure didn't. Shows he's a typical politician. How rude to that. He's setting up a false narrative about her. America doesn't need that."

Still, Donald Trump is very quiet on if this potential endorsement later today is potentially Sarah Palin. We're all waiting to see it on that, Brooke.

BALDWIN: We will see. Sunlen, thank you so much in New Hampshire for us. Let me bring in our CNN national political reporter, Maeve Reston.

And we will chat about what you have been digging on. But I would love to just hear your reaction on that first note I was discussing with Sunlen about now you have this governor of Iowa, this establishment Republican governor, who is saying Cruz, who is leading in his state, should be defeated.

I'm wondering, though, if that would backfire on him and really galvanize Cruz supporters.

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think it will have the effect of doing both of those things.

I think this is really, really significant because it's so unusual. This is an establishment figure, as you mentioned, in Iowa, very popular, really will make maybe people think twice about their support for Cruz.

BALDWIN: Yes.

RESTON: But, at the same time, we know that Cruz has a killer ground game in Iowa. This really will galvanize his supporters and potentially get them out there.

BALDWIN: OK. Let's talk Trump. And one way Trump is on the attack is immigration. It's the issue that really, as we remember some months ago, launched his campaign. He's now getting into the specifics, something we haven't heard a lot from his campaign, his inspiration hearkening back more than 60 years.

[15:05:05]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: President Eisenhower, who was a very nice man -- "I like Ike," that was his slogan, like mine is "Make America great again." His was "I like Ike."

And President Eisenhower, probably the number -- the real number is 2.3 million. Some people say it's 1.5 million -- went through this process.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of people think that was a shameful chapter in American history, though.

TRUMP: Well, some people do, and some people think it was a very effective chapter and what happened is when they removed some, meaning brought them back, when they brought them back, they removed some, everybody else left. And it was very successful, everyone said. So, I mean, that's the way it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And then he went to say -- quote -- "We either have a country, or we don't." And so the question is, you have been digging into this policy proposal from him. Trump is talking about this massive deportation. Did it work the first time around?

RESTON: Well, all of the experts that we talk to say that it did not, in fact, work. We actually also talked to people who were deported through this process back in '54 under Eisenhower and also people on the Border Patrol side.

And everyone basically says that this idea that you can actually deport 11 million people is just almost a sheer impossibility. You're talking hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. There would be potentially all of these effects that Trump has not talked about, like all of the children who are left in the United States who have a foreign-born parent being deported, the costs, how much you would have to put into Border Patrol.

This was not an operation that worked, according to the people who actually have studied this history. And it's another one of these examples of Donald Trump talking on the campaign trail about policies that a lot of times sound sort of pie in the sky, without offering much detail about how he would do it.

I will say, as Jake pointed out in his interview with Cruz a couple of weeks ago, this is a significant policy difference between these two men. Ted Cruz is saying that he would not send in jackboots to deport people. And this is sort of an interesting debate that will unfold over the next couple of weeks between these two men in Iowa.

BALDWIN: We will all be watching. Maeve Reston, thank you so much.

RESTON: Thank you.

BALDWIN: To the other horse race -- you got it -- to the other horse race on the Democratic side. A new national poll shows Bernie Sanders gaining on Hillary Clinton.

Take a look at his 11-point bump in the last month. While Clinton has been hammering his electability, you can feel the momentum in Sanders' own growing confidence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (VT-I), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: From the bottom of my heart, above and beyond ideas, if you want somebody who is going to beat Donald Trump, who is going to beat the other Republicans, I think Bernie Sanders is that candidate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: But has the media been missing out?

Dylan Byers is our CNN senior media and politics reporter.

And you say yes. Why?

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR MEDIA AND POLITICS REPORTER: Yes.

Well, look, the media underestimated Trump. Or sorry. Pardon me -- underestimated Sanders.

BALDWIN: It's a slip.

(CROSSTALK)

BYERS: It largely wrote his candidacy off.

I think many in the media assumed that Hillary Clinton was going to be the nominee. They certainly assumed that after Joe Biden decided not to run. And of course there's this extraordinary story taking place on the Republican side with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and everything that you and our colleagues were just talking about.

And I think the media has a sort of unshakable faith in the conventional wisdom. And the conventional wisdom says that if anyone can beat Hillary Clinton, it's certainly not going to be a 74-year-old Democratic socialist from Vermont who's railing against Wall Street, railing against the system and has all these sort of expensive progressive prescriptions for what ails America.

BALDWIN: But couldn't you also argue -- and I'm sure you have heard this from some other colleagues -- A, I do feel like we have been covering him and taking him seriously, but, B, that it hasn't been this Sanders surge that people are writing about, but rather that all along he's just slowly, quietly been gaining momentum and it's been this sort of steady rise?

BYERS: Well, I think it's very important to point out that there's been no shortage of reporters on the campaign trail with Bernie Sanders.

The complaint that his campaign has is that if you're to look at the media, if you're to look at his campaign announcement going out on page A-21 of "The New York Times," as opposed to page A-1, you're not seeing any sort of room for the possibility that he might be leading in New Hampshire and tied with Hillary Clinton in Iowa two weeks out from the Iowa caucuses.

And forget about whether or not he can win the nomination. He's obviously still trailing Hillary Clinton in national polls. The point is, is that this guy, this 74-year-old socialist from Vermont, is giving Hillary Clinton, this powerful figure who has been in public life for 30 years, who has tons of experience, he's giving her a run for her money in these first two states. And that's going to have huge implications for her not only in the Democratic primary, but also in the general election,if she wins.

[15:10:12]

BALDWIN: Dylan Byers, thank you so much.

BYERS: Thanks, Brooke. BALDWIN: Coming up next, moments ago, one of the Americans freed in

Iran spoke out for the very first time. It was an emotional moment. We will play it for you.

Also, the governor of Michigan admits the water crisis in his state is his Katrina. Tonight, as he addresses his critics at the state of the state, new lawsuits are coming over the toxic water in Flint.

And ISIS cutting the salaries of its fighters. Hear why.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. And this is CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:15:03]

BALDWIN: This is CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Just into us, Ben Carson suspending his Republican presidential campaign activities, at least for the rest of today and tomorrow, after some of his staffers were involved in a car crash. We're told it happened in Iowa.

A van taking these three campaign volunteers and an employee apparently hit a patch of ice, flipped the van. Three of them are in the hospital. One has been taken to a trauma center. Dr. Carson says he will be traveling to Nebraska today to be with the staffers' family. Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio just tweeted out their support. Updates as soon as we get them.

Meantime, a U.S. Marine held captive in an Iranian prison cell for more than three-and-a-half years is speaking for the very first time. Just a short bit ago at a medical base in Germany, he was asked, how was it inside that Iranian prison?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMIR HEKMATI, FREED PRISONER: Well, it wasn't good. I have spoke to that before. I was luckily able to get some of my stances on my treatment from prison.

And I do want to talk about that in more detail, and I will. I was at a point where I had just sort of accepted the fact that I was going to be spending 10 years in prison. So this was a surprise. And I just feel extremely blessed to see my government do so much for me and the other Americans.

QUESTION: How much warning did you get that you were going to be...

(CROSSTALK)

HEKMATI: Nothing, really. They just came one morning and said, pack your things.

QUESTION: Did you believe them?

HEKMATI: No, absolutely not. And I did not relax until we were outside of Iranian airspace.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: But we are now learning that not everyone was comfortable with the deal that freed him. It turns out the U.S. attorney general, Loretta Lynch, was a bit skeptical behind the scenes, had reservations about the prisoner swap setting a precedent.

Joining me now, Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institution and author of "The Future of Land Warfare."

Michael, welcome.

MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: First, just curious your reaction to hearing Loretta Lynch's skepticism, squeamishness, and the fact that how this could set a precedent.

O'HANLON: Well, I'm glad she voiced that concern. I'm not adamantly against this swap, but I think that, as my colleague and Iran expert Suzanne Maloney put it, maybe Iran got the better part of this deal at least.

And there's no doubt that we have to ask hard questions about whether four or five people taken for no good reason and then treated essentially as the equivalent of prisoners in a swap of people who were convicted of wrongdoing, whether that is really the kind of deal we want to go for and whether the precedent of essentially paying in one form or another for the release of innocent people is a precedent we want to set.

It's a judgment call. It's a tough call. I'm not adamantly against it, but I'm glad there was an internal debate.

BALDWIN: It was an internal debate having to sort of sift through in great detail all these different stories and cases to determine who should be released.

Can you walk me through or walk our viewers through how that was determined?

O'HANLON: Well, it sounds like the simplest point is that the individual Levinson, who perhaps had had some intelligence community background and may or may not have been freelancing in some sense, or at least where the Iranians could argue the , that was the hardest case for us to apparently succeed on.

I don't know how much we tried, but that would have been in a somewhat different category, because it would have played into Iranian fears that we ultimately really are trying to conduct espionage and even sabotage. And don't forget, of course, that it was the computer worm that ultimately destroyed a lot of Iranian centrifuges and there was some direct, hands-on role perhaps in -- or there could have been in a future case where you try to get some kind of a drive plugged into a computer that could do this sort of thing in the future once again. So, in other words, the precedent of some of the things we have done before, that makes the Iranians very nervous about an American they think has ties to the intelligence community. I'm not justifying or defending Iran's behavior, but perhaps that was why we drew a somewhat different line there.

BALDWIN: Michael, what about the -- Justice tells our correspondent Evan Perez only 21 Iranians were covered under the deal, and not one of them, we have learned today, not one has left the United States. Most are dual citizens. Presidential pardons means they are back to completely clean.

Apparently, the one who isn't a citizen has legal status. They have family here. Who are they and what are the implications for them staying on U.S. soil?

O'HANLON: Well, I'm not so sure we have to worry about their being dangerous to us. They are not violent criminals. They are people who were apparently trying to help Iran evade sanctions and trying to get technology through various kinds of black market or underhanded means.

If none of them are going back to Iran, maybe they don't really feel safe in anybody's country, don't feel fully committed to any country in terms of their loyalties or their past behavior.

[15:20:05]

I don't worry too much about their being here. We obviously have to keep a close eye on their behavior. I think we will. We should. And, by the way, if there are more Americans taken hostage, that's where Loretta Lynch's concerns really have to be voiced. We can't do this again. This maybe can be a one-time, a one-off thing, and if it works, maybe it justifies itself in the end. But it does raise some tough questions.

BALDWIN: Michael O'Hanlon, thank you very much.

O'HANLON: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, President Obama stepping up the response to the toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan. This is now just hours before the governor there is expected to give a major speech. What, if anything, can Governor Snyder say to restore the trust of tens of thousands of people whose water is tainted with lead?

And, later, shocking new figures about just exactly how many civilians have been caught in the crossfire in the war against ISIS and specifically the number of women and children forced into slavery by the terror group -- details from the U.N. report on Iraq next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:25:23]

BALDWIN: New details on the White House response to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. CNN has now learned the mayor of Flint, Karen Weaver, will meet today

with President Obama. Also today, some in Flint striking back against once again their leaders. Attorneys representing some families announced they have filed three lawsuits, the latest just this morning, those suits targeting Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder and other state officials.

The embattled governor, meantime, expected to tackle the issue later tonight as he gives his state of the state address.

So, joining me now, Nancy Kaffer, columnist for "The Detroit Free Press." She's been following this crisis in Flint and writing about it for months and months.

Nancy, great to have you on.

NANCY KAFFER, "THE DETROIT FREE PRESS": Thank you so much for having me.

BALDWIN: I want to just begin with what the governor of Michigan just said. It was this interview published yesterday in which he called this disaster in Flint -- he called a disaster and said it was fair to refer to it as his Hurricane Katrina.

(CROSSTALK)

KAFFER: We did an editorial, "The Detroit Free Press" here, a week- and-a-half ago with the headline "Heck of a Job, Governor."

So, obviously, we agree. Obviously, that's a reference to the botched Katrina response. So, it's really finally good to see some action happening, to see the National Guard and the Michigan State Police out going door to door to make sure families have water filters and bottled water and all the stuff that should have been happening in the first week after this crisis came to light.

This is months down the road and we're kind of doing this immediate disaster response stuff that should have been going on for months.

BALDWIN: I mean, to that point, I sort of wondered, had this happened, if you have taken what happened in Flint and plunked it down in some major East Coast city, this would have been totally different. Do you think?

KAFFER: Yes, it would have been.

And the other thing that we can't deny is that the response would have been different. It would have been taken probably a lot more seriously and a lot of stuff would have happened more quickly. But this kind of stuff doesn't happen in affluent communities, because folks have the ability to invest in plumbing upgrades. They have the ability to invest to, when things start to go wrong, call their elected officials and command their attention and respect.

There's so much to do with wealth and racial disparity going on here. BALDWIN: You wrote a column, apology, resignations over Flint are

good first steps, but you say that's not enough. We know that Governor Snyder finally apologized. There's been a bit of a sea change that Snyder and the water board dodged.

What does he -- at the state of the state tonight, what does he have to do to say, really do, to convince the people that he's still trustworthy?

KAFFER: I'm not sure there's anything that he can do.

Normally, state of the state, state of the city, whatever, is a time when people want to -- leaders want to tout their accomplishments and talk about what they are going to do next. He's going to have to spend a lot of this speech talking about what went wrong, how he plans to fix it, the long-term interventions, the billions of dollars that are going to required to be spent in this town to help alleviate the damage that's been done, to help upgrade the plumbing.

I talk to people who live in Flint who have said that they are never going to drink tap water again, that it doesn't matter how safe any test says it is, they are never going to trust tap water.

How do you get past not being able to trust tap water, which is something that here in America we're lucky enough to really be able to take for granted, clean, safe drinking water? The process, if that relationship is reparable between the city of Flint and its elected leaders at the state level, it's going to take time.

It's going to take time. It's going to take independently documented results showing the water is drinkable, and it's going to take the kind of intervention that's necessary to help kids who have been affected by lead poisoning moving forward and to help get the plumbing and sewage infrastructure up to snuff.

BALDWIN: Who are still affected. This is still happening today. Let me just remind all our viewers of that.

KAFFER: It is.

BALDWIN: Keep writing, keep shining the light, Nancy Kaffer, "Detroit Free Press." Thank you so much.

KAFFER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: You got it.

Coming up next, ISIS, the fighters have gotten their pay cut in half, this as the U.N. shares horrifying numbers about how many women and children have been taken as slaves by the terror group. We have that for you.

Also, more on this major development on the campaign trail today. The governor of Iowa says he wants Ted Cruz defeated. We have some new sound just in coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)