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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Last GOP Debate; South Carolina Democratic Primary; Supreme Court Nominee. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 25, 2016 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Stage tonight. The Republican Party should not accept a candidate to be their nominee that won't release their tax returns given his shady financial past, Mr. Trump. It should come from every corner of the party, not just me and Mitt Romney. You're buying a pig and a poke if you don't do this.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Lindsay Graham and his turn of a phrase. Appreciate your time, senator.

GRAHAM: Adios.

BOLDUAN: Thank you.

And thank you all so much for joining us "AT THIS HOUR."

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Eight and a half hours to go until debate time. Don't miss a single minute. LEGAL VIEW with Ashleigh Banfield starts right now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Live pictures for you from the University of Houston. We've got them coming for you. It is the scene of tonight's Republican presidential debate. Feast your eyes, folks. It's going to be a barn burner.

Hi, everybody. This is LEGAL VIEW. But politics is really leading every single headline, it seems. We are just hours away from that last Republican debate before the biggest single day of this presidential nominating season. And it may well be the very last debate with five men standing.

Will Donald Trump try to portray that this race is over? That his rivals are just no longer relevant? Or will he try to put those rivals away once and for all? Do the rivals continue to savage one another? Or do they go all-out against Donald Trump? Whatever happens, you're going to see it right here on CNN beginning at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

And my colleague, Sunlen Serfaty, has a debate preview for you now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We'll be totally prepared. And, you know, people have not done very well against me.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The GOP frontrunner is set to face off with his four remaining rivals tonight in the last debate before Super Tuesday.

TRUMP: So far, everybody that's attacked me has gone down.

SERFATY: Donald Trump already has more than double the number of delegates than his closest competitors, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, combined.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There has never been a candidate like Donald Trump, in a whole lot of ways.

SERFATY: Trump notably absent from last night's Fox News town hall hosted by Megyn Kelly, where the freshman senators continued to argue that it's only a matter of time before his ballooning lead pops.

CRUZ: We're the only campaign in a position to beat him on Super Tuesday, to win the nomination.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Majority of Republican voters are not supporting Donald Trump. And, obviously, once this race begins to narrow a little bit, you'll - you'll see more of that support consolidating.

SERFATY: This as 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney warns about a bombshell to come in Trump's tax records, asking all of the candidates to release them.

TRUMP: Tax returns are very complicated. I have many, many companies. I have, you know, tremendously - you know, I have a very complex system of taxes. But we'll make a determination over the next couple of months.

CRUZ: I'll release the remainder of what we have this week. I've released already I think five years' worth. But I - look, the nice thing is, I haven't made enough money that my tax returns are not that interesting.

RUBIO: I'll release them. They're not very complicated.

SERFATY: Up for grabs on Super Tuesday, Cruz's home state of Texas. The senator of the delegate-rich state securing the endorsement of its governor.

CRUZ: We can't be fooled by PT Barnum. The time for the clowns and the acrobats and the dancing bears has passed.

SERFATY: Meanwhile, at a rally in Houston, Marco Rubio is now targeting Trump by name.

RUBIO: Donald Trump has actually alluded to the fact that he thinks parts of Obamacare are pretty good.

SERFATY (on camera): And that was a small but important shift for Marco Rubio, who typically avoids taking on Donald Trump directly. Now, as the frontrunner tonight, Donald Trump will be right here at center stage, likely to take some fire from his rivals on either side.

Sunlen Serfaty, CNN, Houston, Texas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: They get more exciting as we move from debate to debate. So that's why we bring in the Republican think thank to try to get ahead of what's about to happen. Jeffrey Lord is a Donald Trump supporter and a former White House political director under Ronald Reagan. S.S. Cupp is a conservative author and blogger and all around very smart person. Ana Navarro is a former Jeb Bush supporter who says she's been sitting political (INAUDIBLE) since George Bush dropped out of the race. Nonetheless, has plenty to say about everybody else. So all three political commentators.

And I'm going to start with this little gem. You guys, you just heard Sunlen Serfaty talk about that infamous now 2012 endorsement that Donald Trump gave to Mitt Romney. Now he's dissing him, he's tweeting that he's the worst politician ever. So we've seen that sound bite. But we went back and we did some unearthing of a tape. I sat down with Donald Trump right after he endorsed Mitt Romney and it turns out I didn't even remember it at the time, I had asked him this question, guys, about personality and character, and what that means to the presidency. I need to play this for you now.

[12:05:04] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's a great guy in person. He's got a great personality, family, everything. I mean -

BANFIELD: But can you help him bring that to the little screen?

TRUMP: I - you know, I don't know. I mean I'm not sure. Maybe it doesn't translate, but that doesn't make him bad in terms of what he does. He's - he'll be a great president. You know, the sad part about the world in which we live, if you do well in television, you maybe can get elected to something, but that doesn't mean you're going to be any good at what the big picture is, which is running a country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: I was shocked by the short hair until I heard that last part of the sound bite and I want to play it one more time in case anybody missed it. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The sad part about the world in which we live, if you do well in television, you maybe can get elected to something, but that doesn't mean you're going to be any good at what the big picture is, which is running a country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: I just have to open the floor to Jeffrey Lord.

Jeffrey Lord.

JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I just knew this was going to happen.

BANFIELD: You did?

LORD: Yes. Ashleigh, you know, in all seriousness, I really don't think this kind of thing makes a difference. I mean the American people know Donald Trump. Maybe they like him. Maybe they don't like him. But they certainly know him. And I honestly don't think that things like this change anything at this point. I mean, after all, votes are being counted. He came in a close second in Iowa. He won New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada in blowouts. What's to say?

BANFIELD: OK. So, S.E. Cupp, I want you to weigh in on this. And I'm just going to hold up real quickly like three quarters of a page. Don't worry about reading it. I just want you to see the size of the piece here that "The New York Times" dedicated today to all of the things that could possibly slow the Trump juggernaut. And, S.E., nothing has worked. I don't know that any of these five things that "The New York Times" outlined, I don't know that my interview from 2012 where he says, TV can get you elected, but it doesn't prove you're going to be good at running the country. Does it make a whiff of difference, S.E.?

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it doesn't seem to with Trump's supporters. They don't see bothered by the fact that he's changed his mind, that he's said contradictory things, that maybe even outright lied about some things. They don't seem to care. They defend him no matter what.

But, you know, when Mitt Romney talks about Donald Trump releasing his tax returns, he's absolutely right, and that could be devastating for Donald Trump. If it had happened months ago, it's a little late for all of this stuff to just be unearthed now. I mean we haven't even gotten to the fact that Donald Trump is sitting as a witness in a fraud suit against him where he's accused of defrauding thousands of students out of money at Trump University. We haven't even gotten to that yet. And he's already won three states. So I think the time to really talk about Trump's baggage, and he's got plenty of it, was probably a couple months ago. I don't know at this point that it - that he's stoppable.

BANFIELD: And people have been talking about it for plenty of months. In fact, even Howard Stern interviews are unearthed today with him raiding women and making these derogatory comments about women but no one seems to mind.

Let's talk about good old fashioned politics then because maybe that's what might be the strategy that could work, and maybe not. So, Ana, here's the deal. There's a letter that's come out from a congressman today from the office of Representative Trent Franks, and he's asking - he's pleading, and he's got a whole bunch of under signatories as well, colleagues of his, for Cruz and Rubio to do something about Donald Trump, to unite, to somehow figure out between the two of these fellas, one of you take the top of the ticket, the other one take the bottom of the ticket, and move forward and do something about this. Is that going to make a lick of difference? And how would that work its way into the debate tonight, Ana? ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, I think that's -

that would be called wishful thinking, happy thinking, maybe meditation-induced thinking. Right now I think there's absolutely nothing that indicates that Cruz and Rubio are going to give themselves a big fat hug, sing Kumbaya and go out and hold hands and, you know, raise their hands together on a stage and say, "we are your ticket, Republicans." There's - you know, they are bogged in a mano a mano with each other, which I think has distracted them from going after Trump. Cruz has been doing it much more so than Marco, but I was happy to see that Marco has taken that up since yesterday, since last night. I hope he continues on the debate stage.

But, look, the bottom line is this, nobody's dropping out. Nobody's going to drop out before March 15th. When you've got polls that show that Marco is losing Florida, when you've got polls that show that Cruz is - it's very tight in Texas. And when you've got polls showing that Kasich might have a chance in Ohio, each of their respective states, nobody's going to drop out. And I think we're going to have to wait it out through March 15th.

BANFIELD: OK.

NAVARRO: And for those of us who do not want Trump to be the nominee, hope and pray that that is still enough time to unify and consolidate the anti-Trump Republican vote.

[12:10:07] BANFIELD: Well, certainly no one's going to be dropping out in the next few hours before that debate stage gets heated up.

LORD: No.

BANFIELD: So, guys, we've got five men still standing. It's a far cry from 17. Jeffrey Lord, that means, as each person drops out, and the field gets smaller, your talk time on a national debate stage on national television gets bigger. And it is no secret that this is not Donald Trump's strong suit. He's going to have to spend a lot more time making his case and making sense. You can start with the bumper sticker comments that he's famous for, but then you've got to get down to the nitty-gritty. How is your guy going to survive when the debate gets more tricky?

LORD: Well, I think that he'll do his debate in his style. And I think - I mean we've now had - I mean I've lost count of how many debates we've had. I - again, I'm not really sure, other than whatever drama is being played out between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, what this is going to do to Donald Trump. He's had everything, including the kitchen sink, thrown at him. And I just don't think it's going to make a difference at this point.

CUPP: Yes. Yes, Ashleigh, I mean, if you remember one of the debates where Donald Trump clearly had trouble answering the question about nuclear triad, he didn't really, I think, understand what the question was, it doesn't matter. I don't think his supporters need him to be an intellect, you know, a great intellect or a great political heavyweight who knows the ins and outs of who the -

BANFIELD: I think you're right.

CUPP: The Kuds are and who the Kurds are.

BANFIELD: I think you're right.

CUPP: And I mean it just hasn't seemed to be that important.

LORD: Ashleigh -

BANFIELD: I think he - he single-handedly, guys, has -

CUPP: (INAUDIBLE), you know -

BANFIELD: Has single-handedly redefined campaign strategies and politics. And I think it's stuck and it's going forward. And this is part of a new model.

NAVARRO: He hasn't - you know, Ashleigh, he hasn't made the time (ph) -

BANFIELD: I have to leave it there, though. Ana, Ana, I'm sorry, I'm flat out of time. I have to leave it there.

NAVARRO: It's a different standard for him.

BANFIELD: But I do want to thank all of you and I'm going to have all of you back, as well. Jeffrey Lord, S.E. Cupp, Ana Navarro, thank you.

LORD: Thanks, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Also, quickly, don't miss the final Republican debate before Super Tuesday. Wolf Blitzer, my colleague, is one of the best in the business. He's going to moderate this. It all takes place tonight, 8:30 p.m. Pop your popcorn. Get whatever you need, because it's going to be great.

And the Republican debate isn't the only epic battle as well before Super Tuesday. The Dems have a big showdown, and that's coming in South Carolina on Saturday. It could set the tone for Super Tuesday for them. Coming up, Clinton and Sanders, polar opposites, their approaches to court the palmetto state voters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:16:24] BANFIELD: Two days to the South Carolina Democratic primary in - there you have Hillary Clinton giving a speech in Kings Tree, South Carolina, in a state where she is up 28 points on Senator Bernie Sanders. The latest NBC/"Wall Street Journal"/Marist poll showing that she comes in at 60 percent support over Sanders' 32.

Let's listen.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: About it. But as president, what I want to do is to lift up programs like this at the local level, because we're going to need a lot of them. Because if we're going to be diverting people, as you say, who commit low-level offenses, nonviolent offenses, then we need places for them to go. If people are addicted to drugs or alcohol, we need to get them into treatment and recovery, not just in the revolving door of going in the jails, sobering up, going out on the street, getting picked up again. That costs money and it doesn't solve any problems. So let's work together from the federal, state, local level, government, business, faith groups, community groups. Let's all work together to try to lift up and help people. I think it's got to be our goal.

Thank you.

Yes, this little girl right here. Yes, yes, here we go. I think somebody is coming around. Here we go.

BANFIELD: All right, so, again, this is just two days away, the South Carolina democratic primary. I'm still amazed with almost a 30-point lead over her, you know, her opponent, she's still spending time in that state.

It is a South Carolina primary. It is critical for the Democrats. And it means that both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are still crisscrossing that state, kissing the babies, clamoring for every single, solid vote. Maybe not. Bernie Sanders is not doing the same thing that Hillary Clinton is doing. He instead today is in - what? Yes, northern Ohio and Flint, Michigan, and Chicago. And that is a long way away from South Carolina.

It might have something to do with that whole, I don't know, Hillary Clinton smashing him in the polls in South Carolina. She's sending out her most popular corner man, too, the former president of the United States, Bill Clinton. He's got campaign events in five South Carolina cities today. And, as well, he's doing the same thing tomorrow. This is also the state where African-American voters will really make a massive difference in how the headlines will be written after this primary.

And with me right now, from Columbia, two state representatives, both Democrats, David Mack endorses Hillary Clinton and Cezar McKnight backs Senator Bernie Sanders.

Gentlemen, thank you again. This is great. I love having you both on. You both have divergent opinions, but I want you both to weigh in on the Bernie factor today. Has he written off South Carolina? Has he just decided that it's too far a spread for me to bother, I've got to move on? And does that have an effect?

David, I'll start with you.

CEZAR MCKNIGHT (D), SOUTH CAROLINA STATE HOUSE: No, I don't believe Senator Sanders has written off South Carolina. Of course not. You look at the numbers and you may say that he has a deficit behind Secretary Clinton. But let's bear in mind, when he first announced that he was going to run for president, he was in the single digits, around 5 or 6 percent in South Carolina. So for him to climb out of that hole and be where he is speaks volumes to the fact that his message is resonating with African-Americans and other members - and other residents of the state of South Carolina. BANFIELD: Representative Mack, why is Hillary Clinton still there?

Does she really need to be there? Doesn't she have bigger fish to fry, Super Tuesday?

DAVID MACK (D), SOUTH CAROLINA STATE HOUSE: Well, I think - I think it's being sincere, it's reaching out to people, being consistent with the message and the nation is watching. The nation is watching. So, you know, I'm a Hillary supporter. And let me just say very quickly, I love Bernie Sanders. It sounds funny coming from me, but I really do. He's sincere. He's very good, has a good voting record, but I think the key is logistics. Who's best able to get the job done? Not to mention foreign policy, which is key, which he has experience in. So that's why I'm one of her supporters. But I believe that being here in South Carolina sends a message to the whole country.

[12:20:32] BANFIELD: So, Representative McKnight, if I can get you to weigh in on Senator Sanders' strategy as he moves into a really tough - I'm just going to pop past your state, pop past South Carolina and Saturday and talk about Tuesday. Because Tuesday is a big, big deal. And you need a lot of money to cover nearly a dozen states in Super Tuesday. You need a lot of ground game. You need a lot going on to make it through Tuesday. What is his strategy to get through that big, massive states coming down the pike?

MCKNIGHT: Well, you also have to remember the fact that Senator Sanders did extremely well in fund-raising, in that had a ground swell of smaller contributions that added up to millions and millions of dollars. So his financial ability to make - to cover the ground that he needs to cover for Tuesday, I don't think you can call into question. His strategy is going to be basically to barn storm, to do what all persons who are running for president at these times do, they go from state to state, they don't sleep - they hardly, if ever, sleep. And if they do get to sleep, they do it on buses and planes. So I don't see that being a problem for Senator Sanders.

He's been up - he's clearly been up to the challenge and he's been doing that for a while now. So I'm encouraged by it. So I don't want people to think at all that he's written off South Carolina. I'm pretty certain he will be here between now and Saturday. And beyond that, he has a bunch of surrogates on the ground and a bunch of people that are in the game for him to get the message out. And I think it's resounding with people.

BANFIELD: Well, I appreciate the both of you taking the time to come out and talk to us. Representatives David Mack and Cezar McKnight, thank you both. Appreciate it.

MCKNIGHT: Thank you. Thank you so much.

MACK: Thank you.

BANFIELD: And coming up next, you thought the election was getting strange? The first name being floated for a possible Supreme Court nominee turns out to be a Republican. And Senate Democrats have been making a lot of noise outside the court at this hour. And when I say that, I mean literally. They are making noise on the steps of the Supreme Court. What are they saying and why? Tell you in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:27:01] BANFIELD: So just a few moments ago there was a pretty sizeable group of Senate Democrats who decided to head outside. And not just anywhere outside, they went to the front of the Supreme Court building and actually stood on the steps and very vocally made some demands. They want the GOP to meet with President Obama's eventual choice for nominee for the Supreme Court. They want them to hold hearings. And they want them, most importantly, to have a vote. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid spoke against the Republicans, urging them to do their job, and what he says, stop ignoring the Constitution.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HARRY REID (D), MINORITY LEADER: We felt it was extremely important to make sure the American people understand that we have obstruction that is on steroids. Never in the history of the country has there been anything like this. There would be no hearings, there will be no vote. They will not even meet with the nominee, no matter who it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Right now the latest buzz is surrounding this man. And if you don't know who he is, you're going to hear a lot about him, Nevada Republican Governor Brian Sandoval. A source confirms to CNN that the White House is vetting that governor, although he himself hasn't actively been involved in that process.

CNN's senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, joins me now to sort of work through some of the pratfalls and the arcanity (ph) of how you get a new guy or girl.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Right.

BANFIELD: I want to just read for you what the governor sent out, what his communications director sent out after all of this hit the news yesterday. They said, "neither Governor Sandoval nor his staff have been contacted by or talked to by the Obama administration regarding any potential vetting for the vacancy on the United States Supreme Court." Is that unusual that a potential candidate doesn't even know that he is one?

TOOBIN: Not at this stage, because this is still very early. The first stage in vetting any Supreme Court would be nominee is to look at the public record. What opinions have they written? Brian Sandoval, among other things, is a former federal district court judge. They're going to want to look at any opinions he wrote when he was - when he was a judge, which might be a clue to his judicial philosophy. Frankly, I don't think Brian Sandoval has much chance at all of being nominated by Barack Obama to the Supreme Court.

BANFIELD: Because he's a Republican? TOOBIN: Well, not because of that generically. This is a guy who

endorsed Rick Perry for president four years ago, who was a Marco Rubio delegate in Nevada just the other day. That is not what the Democratic base elected Barack Obama to do, to appoint to the Supreme Court. I think this is mostly a matter of political positioning of the Democratic Party, mostly engineered at this point by Harry Reid, the Senate leader, saying, look, we are going to consider Republicans, we're going to consider Democrats, we're going to consider a very diverse group of people. And we're open-minded and the Republicans are slamming the door on anybody in advance. I think that's the frame that the Democrats want on this story.

[12:30:00] BANFIELD: All right. So when Harry Reid is saying, "I'm urging the Republicans to stop ignoring the Constitution," is it really that simple? I get it. The president's job is to bring forth those nominees and then