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Trump Rivals Hope to Overtake him in Next Primary; Syria Peace Deal; Boris Johnson Advises UK Citizenss to Reject EU; New Dehli Protests Examined. Aired 2-2:30a ET
Aired February 21, 2016 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[02:00:00] ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN NEWSROOM SHOW HOST: Three states down, dozens still to go. Clinton and Trump take early leads in the 2016 race for the White House. We'll assess their chances of going all the way.
Also this hour, more carnage in Syria, while the U.S. Secretary of State claims a peace deal between the government and rebels is closer than ever.
And should they stay in or should they go? The British Prime Minister wants to keep his countrymen in the European Union, but a key party colleague, the Mayor of London, wants out.
Hello and welcome to our viewers here in the United States and of course all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church. This is CNN Newsroom.
Well, less than two days before the republican caucuses in Nevada and less than a week before the democratic primary in South Carolina. The U.S. presidential hopefuls are stumping hard. But Hillary Clinton took time to speak with CNN.
The democratic front runner says she's trying to ease voters' concerns about her motivation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, (D) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I understand that voters have questions. I'm going to do my very best to answer those questions. I think there's an underlying question that maybe is really in the back of people's minds, and that is, you know, is she in it for us, or is she in it for herself?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Republican Donald Trump also spoke to CNN and he made several bold predictions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As a candidate, I will bring over many, many dems. We're going to bring over a lot of democrats, we're going to bring over a lot of independents. Nobody else will.
In all fairness, the other candidates will never bring over independents. They will never bring -- and we're talking about the Reagan democrats. We're going to bring over tremendous numbers. We're going to bring over youth, Bernie's not going to make it in my opinion, and I never thought he would.
Hillary won't make it. You know, I mean, frankly, if she gets indicted, that's the only way she's going to be stopped. And I think it's going to be between Hillary and myself. They say that it will be the largest voter turnout in the history of the United States elections.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Well, Donald Trump plans to campaign in Nevada Monday. He spent Sunday in Atlanta talking to supporters and celebrating his big win this past weekend in the South Carolina primary.
Jeremy Diamond has more on Trump's day in Georgia.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fresh off his primary victory in South Carolina, Donald Trump on Sunday rolled into Atlanta with the momentum at his back. Donald Trump making his pitches here as that's going to be one of the big delegate pickups in the republican- nominating contest.
Donald Trump giving a classic stump speech here to the roaring approval of thousands of his supporters in this southern state. But Donald Trump didn't go after his rivals like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz who came closest to him in the primary in South Carolina. He did, however, talk about one of his former rivals. Listen in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'll give you a story of the one of the candidates, I won't say who, yet, but you can find out. One of the candidates, the head of a major, major, and the owner of a major, major pharmaceutical company is in charge of his campaign. Right? You know that, right? In charge of his campaign raises hundreds of millions of dollars. They've raised a fortune. They have a fantastic, like a lot of money. Pharmaceutical.
So, a friend of mine comes up to me, a doctor, he said, Donald, I don't understand it, the United States is the biggest purchaser of drugs in the world. They don't negotiate price. They're not allowed to. And I said what are you talking about, they're not allowed to. And I said that can't be, but let me check. Soon as I check in I realized why he's right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: Donald Trump there of course using one of the much-used lines against Jeb Bush, who, on Saturday night dropped out of the presidential race after a poor showing in South Carolina.
But Donald Trump has consistently used Jeb Bush as one of his foils on the campaign trail, talking about Jeb Bush being low energy. So, it looks like Donald Trump missing one of the key parts of his stump speech, is going to miss Jeb a little bit too.
CHURCH: And that was CNN's Jeremy Diamond reporting.
Republican Jeb Bush dropped out, as you heard, of the race after his disappointing showing in South Carolina. Now Senator Marco Rubio is hoping to get support from Bush's former backers. He said that despite angry words, the candidates are all slinging the job they seek requires love.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARCO RUBIO, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Even the Americans that don't agree with me, even the Americans that don't like me, even the Americans that protest against me, even the Americans that say nasty things about me on Twitter, I will cut their taxes too.
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[02:05:02] When I am your president, I will never pit you against each other in order to win this election.
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I will never ask one group of Americans to be angry at another group of Americans so that I can win.
(APPLAUSE)
Because, if you want to be president of the United States of America, you must love the American people, even the American people that do not love you back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Joining us now from Washington to talk more about the race for the White House is CNN political analyst Josh Rogin, he's also a columnist for Bloomberg View.
Thank you so much for being with us. So, a pretty incredible win for Donald Trump. He seemed unstoppable at this point. Is there any way he wouldn't be the republican nominee, given his wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina?
JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, if history's any guide, he definitely has the inside track. In modern history, there hasn't been a republican candidate who's won North -- New Hampshire and South Carolina and not gone on to be the nominee. That being said, this is a year unlike any other.
Now there's a resettling in the republican field with the exit of Jeb Bush, is the consolidation of the establishment support and money around Marco Rubio. As we head into the next contest, which is Nevada, in a couple of days, and then the March 1 Super Tuesday primaries, there will be a changing of all the strategies of these campaigns in accordance with those new realities.
But still, you won't see all the candidates go after Trump. There's still the battle to be the anti-Trump. And for that reason you'll still Cruz attacking Rubio, Rubio attacking Cruz, and so forth.
CHURCH: Right. And Marco Rubio says this is now a three-person race with Trump, Rubio, and Cruz fighting it out to the end. Is that your reading of where this is all going?
ROGIN: Yes, that's essentially true. The problem with that for Marco Rubio is that it's not necessarily to his advantage for it to become a two-person race very quickly. Ted Cruz seems to be on his way down. Marco Rubio seems to be on his way up, but for different reasons.
Each of the candidates wants to consolidate support amongst their pockets in different states before they go head to head with Donald Trump. So, it's a three-person race at least until March 1st. You can be sure that Ben Carson and John Kasich will stand at least until then.
Kasich is expected to stay in at least until his home state primary in Ohio on March 15th. And then you'll start to see a real whittling down to maybe two candidates.
CHURCH: Yes. I wanted to ask you about John Kasich and Ben Carson, when you think they're likely to bail out. As you mentioned, Jeb Bush is already gone. What does that mean, if once those three are all out of this race, how does that impact the other three?
ROGIN: Well, it's a guessing game at this point as to where each candidate's support would go if and when they drop out of the race. There was a clear overlap between the Rubio support and the Jeb Bush support. So, you could reasonably deduce that as Jeb's exit benefits Rubio.
After that, it gets a little bit more muddled. Trump is taking people from both conservative constituencies and moderate constituencies and independent voters and new voters.
So, the fact that Trump is not necessarily placed in one side of the Republican Party or the other side of the Republican Party means that he could absorb votes from anybody who drops out. So, if Kasich drops out. Those votes might go to Rubio, they might go to Cruz. They might go to Trump. I think that all remains to be seen.
CHURCH: And Josh, on the other side of the political spectrum, Hillary Clinton won Nevada on Saturday, and Bernie Sanders went down after losing the African-American vote. So, what does that likely say about what's going to happen to him going to South Carolina's primary on Saturday?
ROGIN: Well, the Clinton campaign has a big institutional advantage in South Carolina. The Clintons are known there, they have a lot of infrastructure there. They're very well liked there. So, even if she wins South Carolina, there's a path for Bernie Sanders to build support in the Super Tuesday states. He's focusing on those states of the Super Tuesday spot that could be considered more cosmopolitan, maybe a little more progressive.
He's focusing on Minnesota, he's focusing on Colorado, he's focusing on Oklahoma. He'll have a natural advantage in Massachusetts, where -- which is next to his home State of Vermont.
And what Hillary Clinton is going to try to do is she's going to try to shore up the Southern States. Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee. That's where she thinks she has the biggest chance of racking the most number of delegates heading into the March weeks.
CHURCH: Josh Rogin, always a pleasure to chat with you, thanks so much.
ROGIN: Thank you.
CHURCH: And staying in the United States. Mourners gathered in Kalamazoo, Michigan on Sunday to remember the six people killed in a shooting rampage. The suspected gunman was an Uber driver, and according to one source, he continued to pick up passengers between shootings.
[02:10:02] Walter Smith-Randolph with our affiliate WWMT sat down for an exclusive interview with one of those passengers.
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MATT MELLEN, UBER PASSENGER OF BRIAN DALTON: Alarm bells should have gone going on in my head.
WALTER SMITH-RANDOLPH, WWMT REPORTER: Matt is counting his lucky stars.
MELLEN: Pretty scary ordeal, especially to be so closely involved with it, I'm just happy to be safe.
SMITH-RANDOLPH: Mellen was a passenger in alleged gunman Jason Dalton's car while he was working as an Uber driver before allegedly opening fire on eight people across Kalamazoo County. Mellen says Dalton was acting strange.
MELLEN: Yes, he introduced himself as a different name. Then what Jason was that comes up for Uber.
SMITH-RANDOLPH: Sitting in the back of that Chevy Equinox was Dalton's dog.
MELLEN: He got maybe a mile from my house, he got a telephone call. And after that telephone call he started driving really erratically. We're running stop signs.
SMITH-RANDOLPH: Dalton allegedly hitting 80 miles an hour down West Main Avenue while sideswiping cars.
MELLEN: We were kind of driving through medians, driving through the lawn speeding along and then finally, once he came to a stop, I jumped out of the car and ran away. SMITH-RANDOLPH: Mellen said that's when he says he called police.
MELLEN: He didn't stop. He was just kind of looking at me like don't you want to get a ride to your friend's house? And I was like, well, yes, but I want to get there alive, you know?
