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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Pope Suggests Trump Is "Not Christian"; Suicide Hotline Sent Vet Callers To Voicemail; Internal Investigation Shows VA Struggles With Staffing; GOP Candidates Chase Trump In S.C.; Sanders, Clinton Virtually Tied Going Into Nevada; Rubio and Cruz Spar Over "Lies" In CNN Town Hall; Pentagon: Russia Told To Avoid Specific Areas In Syria. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired February 18, 2016 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00] MARGERET HOOVER, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: For 65 percent of the GOPs is their own assessment. I don't think this tips the scale in any direction for South Carolina. It's another thing we're talking about now for the next 24 hours or however long it is, unless it continues to go back and forth.

But, you know, for 65 percent of the GOP primary electorate in South Carolina, that are evangelical, the majority of them aren't voting on values voters issues. I mean, there are a variety of other issues that are driving people to the polls. Most especially economic issues. Immigration, trade, that Donald Trump is speaking directly to. And frankly, answering in a way that nobody else in the GOP primary fielded, which is why he's winning.

So, you know, values voters, religious issues. Even though you have a large percentage that are evangelical voters, aren't voting specifically on values voters' issues.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN GUEST HOST: Margaret Hoover, thank you. Dana Bash earlier. Really a fascinating conversation and we'll keep talking about this one for sure. And we're going to be back to the race for the White House in just a moment. But first, a stunning report from the V.A. vets looking for help through a suicide crisis hotline that got sent to voicemail and many of those voicemails were never answered.

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[12:35:36] SCIUTTO: A suicide crisis hotline set up expressly for military veterans sent some callers to voicemail. Sometimes never even followed up. It didn't happen just a few times, either. The V.A. investigated itself after complaints, and found that nearly two dozen times, callers to the official veterans' affairs suicide hotline got a recording instead of a live person.

Drew Griffin, our Senior Investigations correspondent, he's covering this. Drew, really boggles the mind. A military veteran contemplating suicide, perhaps, takes the desperate step, courageous step to call a V.A. hotline, pushed to voicemail. This is really a significant failure, considering how many suicides we're seeing among veterans. DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Spot-on, Jim. You know the numbers are hard to pin down. But the V.A. thinks five veterans a day actually kill themselves. And it is -- it's really the job of these -- the reason this hotline was created in the first place. Trying to combat, if you will, the growing number of veterans that are committing suicide.

What this report found was a significant number of the calls made to the center it actually went or were routeded to backup centers. And some of those calls were sent to voicemail. What's worse, in the inspector general report, it determined that at one of the backup centers, 20 voicemails, Jim, were never returned, because the backup center, they didn't even know there was a voicemail system. The report also found callers were not always offered immediate assistance, and social workers connected to the hotline were working without adequate training. As you said, Jim, it just boggles the mind.

SCIUTTO: Drew, has the V.A. responded to the criticisms yet?

GRIFFEN: Yeah, the V.A. responded to this report, agreeing with all of the findings. But what's more, the V.A. was on top of this actually before the report came out. They have hired many more workers at this V.A. call center. They are trying to tackle this problem. But, again, it's just another fire that the V.A. is trying to put out in its medical system.

Investigative report out of Cincinnati this week, dozen of whistleblowers coming forward to complain about quality of care. The V.A. says now it's all over that, sending people there to find out what's going on. And address the concerns there. And just today, just this morning, Jim, an inspector general report out of Tucson finds that the V.A., at least $1.8 million in urology equipment. Then they didn't use it for five months. That resulted in $217,000 of taxpayer money that was wasted. But worse, for all those five months, the veterans who needed that equipment to be working for their urology exams, they didn't get that quality of care. It's -- it boggles the mind.

But Jim, I just want to make one more point if I may. If you're a veteran and contemplating suicide, call that hotline number. The number does work. It has helped 50,000 or so vets avoid a crisis. You need to call that number if you're in trouble. We should mention that, straight out.

SCIUTTO: No question. It's a good reminder we know these hotlines they save lives. Drew, I'm glad you brought that up and I'm glad you're covering this story.

[12:38:40] Back to another story we have been covering, campaign crunch time with the Nevada Democratic caucuses. Just two days away. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are hitting up Las Vegas. The polls showing the two neck and neck. And now Hillary is upping her game in an emotional new television ad. That's right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCIUTTO: Welcome back. We have been covering a really remarkable war of words between Donald Trump. You're seeing him there. And Pope Francis. Pope Francis on his flight back to Rome from a visit to Mexico, including the border with the U.S. saying that -- asked about Donald Trump's support for a wall, deportation saying that those positions are not Christians. Donald Trump, very quickly firing back, saying it's disgraceful for a religious leader to question someone else's religion.

Time in the broader race running out for Republican candidates not named Trump to make up ground in South Carolina. The first southern primary is now just two days away. And CNN's latest poll of polls shows Trump with almost double the support of Ted Cruz, who is speaking now to GOP women's club in Greenville, South Carolina. Trump still strong on Kiawah Island, as well.

He's now backed on average by 35 percent of likely South Carolina voters, Cruz far behind with 19 percent. Followed by Marco Rubio at 15. Jeb Bush at 10. Ben Carson, John kasich in single digits. Marco Rubio campaigned today with his newest high-profile endorser, that is South Carolina Governor, Nikki Haley. He said it is past time for Republicans to stop fighting and unite around one nominee. That person, of course, being Rubio.

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SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R) PRESINDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm as conservative as anyone in this race. But we can win, because we can unite this party. We have to come together at some point here. We cannot continue to fight with each other into October, because we lose if we do that. And we don't just have to unite the party. We have to grow it. We have to grow it.

That's why I'm so proud of the support of people like Tim Scott and Nikki Haley. Because they are people that aren't just concern as they're growing the conservative movement. They're taking our message to people that don't usually vote for us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:45:13] SCIUTTO: You're seeing live pictures now from inside the CNN town hall in Columbia, South Carolina. That is where Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and John Kasich will take questions directly from the voters of South Carolina later tonight. The time, 8:00 p.m. eastern. The place, only here on CNN.

In the meantime, I'm going to call on CNN Senior Washington correspondent, Joe Johns. He's in Chicago. And joining us from New York is CNN Political Analyst, the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Beast, John Avlon.

Joe, if I could start with you. Let's talk about the Democratic side of the race. Next contest for them is Nevada that's on Saturday. Those are caucuses, our latest polls there showing it's really neck and neck. How is Hillary trying to put some space between her now and Bernie Sanders? JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: I think you can say that they have really picked up the tempo. And just about every other hour or so, we're hearing something else out of the Hillary Clinton campaign, telling us about what's going on in the ground to try to sway voters. Not just in Nevada, but also in South Carolina, which is very important. A good example of that, just a few minutes ago, we got a dispatch from the Hillary Clinton campaign, pointing out that they have the endorsement the now of Billy Murphy, a very prominent civil rights attorney, who is representing individuals in the Flint water crisis, as well as the family of the individual in Baltimore, who was killed in police custody, sparking riots there.

So Billy Murphy is now on board with Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is also I think trying very much to get in the game, as well. He met just a little while ago, earlier today, in Washington, D.C. with African-American civil rights leaders to talk about endorsement. Not clear who is going to endorse, but in present was NAACP, the urban league, Reverend Al Sharpton and many others. They're pushing hard.

Now, as to Hillary Clinton's latest ad, I think is something we also have to point out. And ad running in Nevada right now. And it pulls on the heart strings, reaching out to Latino voters in a very sort of sentimental way. This is a 10-year-old girl, telling Hillary Clinton on camera that her parents got a deportation letter, and Hillary Clinton's response. Listen.

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HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I feel really, really strongly that you're being very brave. And you have to be brave for them too. Because they want you to be happy. They want you to be successful. They don't want you to worry too much. Let me do the worrying. I'll do all the worrying. Is that a deal?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: So neck and neck in Nevada. And you can tell it by the T.V. ads and everything else that's going on, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Joe Johns, thank you. John, if I could go back to the Republicans for a moment. In last night's CNN town hall, we saw Rubio and Cruz really in the same back and forth spat that Rubio today called self-destructive. Listen to how he described it today.

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SEN. TED CRUZ, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a strange election season. In many ways. Both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are following this pattern that whenever anyone points to their actual record, to what they have said, to what they have voted on, to what they have done, they start screaming, liar, liar, liar. I mean, it is the oddest thing. I can't think of any precedent in any previous Republican presidential election.

Now, from my end, I have not and will not respond in kind. If they want to engage in personal insults, if they want to go to the mud, I'm not going to say the same thing about them.

RUBIO: I've said he's been lying, because if you say something that isn't true and you say it over and over again and you know it's not true, there is no other word for it. And when it's about your record, you have to clear it up, because if you don't, people say it must be true. He didn't dispute it. And he's done it that a number of times. We saw what he did to Dr. Carson in Iowa which is wrong, we saw yesterday Trey Gowdy, somebody came up with a fake Facebook post saying Trey Gowdy was no longer endorsing me, a popular congressman here in South Carolina. So these things are disturbing and need to be addressed. And I'll address them. But that's not the core of my campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Rubio is not the only one who talks about the potential damage that this is doing to Republican candidates. This is very bitter verbal back and forth. I asked Donald Trump the same question on Monday and he said it will likely, in his words, hurt the Republican nominee, whoever that is, in the fall. Is that true? Do you believe that this is damaging Republicans? Does it matter? It certainly hasn't -- that kind of back and forth hasn't affected their polling numbers, at least in the primaries.

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No, I mean, look. This is a perennial complaint. But, you know, this is a South Carolina primary. The ghost of lee Atwater hangs over all these situations and it's going to be rough and tumble, and it's going to be dirty and it's going to be though and there is no crying in baseball.

[12:50:08] You know, the idea that now is the time for the Republican Party tonight. Now it's the time for the Republican Party to have knockdown drag out fight to see how the field can win to a couple of core competitors who represent different constituencies.

And so while I am all in favor of uniting a party and trying to unite a nation, and frankly, most of Republican nominees haven't seen too preoccupied with trying to reunite the nation. They have been preoccupying and pushing their own agenda and trying to kneecap the other cat. That's where we are in the cycle right now. So let's own it, and let's see how the people of South Carolina vote. It's a much deeper and more diverse state than it gets credit for.

But, you know, it's a surreal season when Ted Cruz is trying to take the high road.

SCIUTTO: John Avalon of The Daily Beast, Joe Johns in Chicago. Thank you.

We're covering more breaking news now.

The U.S. military asking Russia to avoid specific areas in Syria.

We'll tell you why in a live report from the Pentagon, just after this.

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SCIUTTO: We're following breaking news. A pentagon official has revealed that the U.S. military has asked Russia to avoid specific areas in Syria to ensure the safety of U.S. special operators on the ground.

[12:55:06] CNN's Barbara Starr joining us now with more. Barbara is this unprecedented for the U.S. in effect to give Russia intelligence here, the location of U.S. special operations on the ground.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well let's sort it all out a bit Jim. You know, this actually came out back several weeks ago when the U.S. and the Russians had a round up conversations about an agreement was already in this about to make they didn't have inadvertent confrontation in the skies with both countries flying war planes.

And then let's shift to U.S. special forces went into northern Syria on the ground. That has been publicly acknowledged and they told the Russians some information about it, because they wanted to make sure the Russians who may not always have the same standard of navigation that the U.S. feels they should have, they may not be as precise, they wanted the Russians to have an idea where the U.S. troops were located.

What we know from Pentagon Officials, they did not give the Russians specific high-grade intelligence. They gave them the broad area of where the U.S. troops are in northern Syria on the ground and asked them to stay away from that area. Jim?

SCIUTTO: U.S. and Russian forces are very close quarters in the air and on the ground there now.

Barbara Starr, in the pentagon. Thanks to all of you for watching today.

Coming up, much more on this growing war of words between Donald Trump and the Pope, plus we are waiting to see if Jeb Bush weighs in. all that and more coming up on Wolf. That starts right after this quick break.

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