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Inside the Canceled Trump Rally; Trump Sloughs Off Responsibility for Rally Violence; South Korea Holds Military Drills with U.S.; Flooding in Three Continents; Reporter's Close Call during Live "Hit." Aired 3-3:30a ET

Aired March 12, 2016 - 03:00   ET

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

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NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Skirmishes at a Trump rally in Chicago after it is abruptly called off. The Republican front- runner says he's not responsible but his critics blame the tone of his campaign. That's ahead here.

Plus: a show of force on the Korean Peninsula as the U.S. and South Korea conduct military drills. We'll have a report from the scene.

And devastating floods disrupt parts of the U.S. Southeast.

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ALLEN (voice-over): It's all ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. We're live in Atlanta. Thank you for joining us. I'm Natalie Allen.

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ALLEN: Our top story is from Chicago. Punches thrown, police officers injured and people arrested. That was the scene at a canceled Donald Trump rally that turned violent in Chicago.

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ALLEN (voice-over): This fistfight took place after everyone was told to go home. Protesters started arriving at the arena before the U.S. Republican presidential front-runner showed up.

Some demonstrators were forcefully removed. At least five sections of the arena were filled with people against Donald Trump.

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ALLEN: CNN senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta was at the arena when the scuffles broke out.

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JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Things are finally back to normal in Chicago after a Donald Trump rally was canceled, resulting in chaos and a near riot inside this arena on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Essentially, what happened, it unfolded over the course of a few hours. There were hundreds of protesters gathered inside this rally with the purpose of disrupting this Donald Trump event and essentially, that's what happened. Donald Trump organizers came to the podium, announced that this event was being canceled. That is when the crowd inside this arena just exploded into chaos.

We saw fights breaking out between Donald Trump supporters, Donald Trump protesters breaking out throughout the arena. There were not enough police officers and security personnel on the scene to get the situation under control. Then we saw Chicago police, dozens of them, filed down to the floor of the arena, they were starting to escort these protesters outside of the venue.

At that point, you did see some scuffles, some fistfights breaking out outside of arena. There were a few arrests made. But overall, this could have been so much worse. There could have been a full-on riot that broke out here tonight on the streets of Chicago.

The event was canceled and protesters moved on. No big problems occurred as a result of the rally being canceled and the chaos that followed -- Jim Acosta, CNN, Chicago.

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ALLEN: Yes, it is quite fortunate it didn't get worse. Trump's critics have been quick to point out that only his rallies are having issues with violence but the billionaire insists it's not his fault. Earlier, Trump spoke with our Don Lemon and downplayed his part in what happened in Chicago.

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I got to Chicago a couple of hours ago. And we had 25,000 people scheduled for tonight. We're going to have a lot outside and inside, a tremendous gathering and real supporters. And at the same time, we had some protesters outside which was probably 2,000 or 3,000.

And I met with law enforcement. I don't want to see anybody hurt, Don. So I met with law enforcement and I think we made the wise decision to cancel.

Now it's pretty well broken up and no major problems. And we made a decision, even though our freedom of speech is violated totally, we made a decision not to go forward.

I don't want to see anybody get hurt. And you would have had some people possibly getting hurt or beyond. And so I made the decision, in conjunction with law enforcement, not to do the rally; we postponed it.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think that you were -- the protesters have been expected tonight at your rally.

Was your campaign prepared for this?

TRUMP: Oh, I think we were prepared. But, you know, you can be prepared as you want; when you have thousands of people, you don't want to see a clash --

LEMON: Yes.

TRUMP: -- and they were minor skirmishes but no major clash. So we --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: You've seen the pictures, I'm sure, of what happened inside of that really. I'm sure you've been watching and looking at these pictures.

What do you make of what you saw?

TRUMP: Well, I think it's a divided country. I think we have a very divided country, Don. And it's been that way for a long time and it's very sad to see. It is divided among many different groups. And, frankly, it's terrible.

You look at a lot of people who are upset because they haven't had a salary increase in 12 years. You know, if you look at the workers of the country, our jobs are being taken away. Our jobs are being sent to Mexico. And they are being to --

[03:05:00]

TRUMP: -- all sorts of other countries. And our factories are closing. We have a lot of problems. And we don't have a real unemployment rate of 5 percent. It's much probably closer to 25 percent because --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Do you think, Mr. Trump, with all due respect you think that --

TRUMP: -- as people give up looking for jobs, Don, all of a sudden, they're considered employed, statistically. And so, it's a lot of problems --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Do you think that's what caused that directly tonight, the scuffle?

TRUMP: Say it again?

LEMON: Do you think that caused the scuffle directly tonight because those people who were fighting tonight weren't fighting over jobs? TRUMP: Yes. I think it's largely economic. I mean, if you look at African American youth, they have a 59 percent unemployment rate, 59 percent. And it's -- yes, I think it's a largely economic problem, absolutely.

LEMON: Do you think it has anything to do with the tone that some have said that you have set by telling people to get them out or punch them in the face or they should be taken out on a stretcher?

Do you think that you bear of any responsibility for what's happened at this tonight in the rallies?

TRUMP: No, I don't -- I don't take responsibility. Nobody has been hurt at our rallies and we have -- I've had 25,000-35,000 people, more than that. We had one the other day, 25,000 in Florida and we've never had anybody hurt or certainly seriously hurt.

We have -- I don't even know if we've had anybody hurt.

So, you know, we've had a tremendous large number of rallies and massive numbers of people, nobody even close to us in terms of size -- and they're great people. But we will have protesters stand up and be very, very abusive, unbelievably abusive and, in some cases, swinging and, you know, punching and swinging and not a good situation.

And I think we've been -- overall, I think we've been very mild with protesters. And some will stand up and we'll just usher them out. And, you know, it is not me that ushers them out. It's the police force. And the police have done great jobs.

So, until today, we've really never had much of a problem.

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ALLEN: Donald Trump speaking on CNN a short time ago. While he doesn't appear to have any intention of taking responsibility, his opponents are leaping at the opportunity to knock him in a crucial week for the elections, which is coming up.

Trump's Republican rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz both going after Trump on the role his rhetoric plays in inspiring violence.

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SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLA., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to put aside the elections and sort of talk about that for a moment and just say, look, there are consequences to words. There's no doubt about it.

Let me back up and say this. It is clear from watching these images that there are people that are protesting tonight that are part of organized efforts to disrupt this event. This is not some sort of organic thing that happened. It's Chicago. There are a lot of groups that do this basically professionally in some instances.

And you can see there's this diffuse group of people there but you can tell that it is an organized and orchestrated effort. And I don't think you have a right to disrupt an event the way they've tried to do so just because you don't like what the person is saying, OK? That's number one.

On the other hand, I do think that Mr. Trump needs to own up to the fact that the rhetoric he has used at some of his events have also contributed to the climate that you've seen in other parts of -- other rallies that he's had. There are consequences to the things people say in politics.

There are -- you know, a president, for example, can't just speak their mind. There are real consequences. They can't just say whatever comes to mind. There are real consequences, the consequences to the words that someone speaks, whether it's a presidential candidate or ultimately as a president.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), TEXAS: I also want to mention something about the events this evening in Chicago. This is a sad day. Political discourse should occur in this country without a threat of violence, without anger and rage and hatred directed at each other.

We need to learn to have disagreements without being disagreeable, to have disagreements while respecting human beings on the other side. Any candidate is responsible for the culture of the campaign.

And when you have a campaign that disrespects the voters, when you have a campaign that affirmatively encourages violence, when you have a campaign that is facing allegations of physical violence against members of the press, you create an environment that only encourages this sort of nasty discord.

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ALLEN: Time will tell if Trump is to have similar problems at rallies in the future.

Joining me now is Jacob Parakilas, he's the assistant head of the U.S. and the Americas Programme at London's Chatham House think tank on international affairs.

Jacob, thank you again for joining us.

I want to first get your reaction to the protests that caused this major security concern and cancellation of the Trump rally. We just heard --

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ALLEN: -- his response and his opponent's response.

What's your take?

JACOB PARAKILAS, CHATHAM HOUSE: Well, it's obviously -- it's very dispiriting to see politics in the United States turn into such sort of displays of violence. I mean, what I'm reading is that, in fact, the police did not advise

Trump to shut down the rally, that he chose to shut down the rally. I mean, I think there's a tactic on Trump's side here to create the impression that he's the one who is under attack when, in fact, he's been the one sort of encouraging violence and he's been the one telling his attendees at his rallies to do violence to protesters.

So it's really -- it's really dangerous to see this kind of rhetoric and to see this kind of incitement to violence coming from the leading presidential candidate on one side of the American political spectrum.

ALLEN: And how do you think this will affect his campaign moving forward?

He, of course, said this protest was about people not having jobs. Clearly, the unemployment rate for the impoverished African Americans of Chicago is extremely high.

But we saw the crowd signs. They had signs about -- alleging Trump is a racist, signs that said "Love, not hate." This protest movement was much more than he alludes to.

PARAKILAS: Yes. I think -- I mean, you know, this will continue to be an issue for Trump as it goes forward. And it's really very difficult to predict.

How do you run a national campaign in an environment where tensions are so high?

I mean, we don't have a very good -- you know, we have to go back to 1968 to see a campaign which was surrounded by this level of sort of political protest. I mean, we don't have the sort of modern equivalent of what that means.

And, of course, the country was very different in 1968. The way that party structures and elections work was very different in 1968.

So I mean, there's not a particularly good model to understand what this would mean for the general election, what it would mean in terms of, you know, how the election would work, what we're likely to see. But I think it is very, very dangerous.

ALLEN: And let's talk about how much of this is the times and how much of this is Donald Trump's candidacy that's calling this divide, which he said we have a real divide in the United States, which is really spurning it on right now.

PARAKILAS: Look, I mean, we've had presidential elections in bad times before. Look at 2008. The world economy plunged into recession in the middle of the 2008 campaign and you didn't see -- and it was very divisive but you didn't see this level of violence.

And I think there's a sort of level of responsibility that Trump is sort of intentionally whipping up this kind of fervor to build a media narrative and to build anticipation around this campaign. I mean, you know, I just -- I think that there's a level of -- a level

of incitement there that really needs to be addressed, needs to be addressed forthrightly by the media and by Trump's opponents and by the American public at large.

ALLEN: Yes, and with the huge week ahead in the election process.

Jacob Parakilas, as always, thank you and I imagine we'll be talking again. Thanks for joining us.

PARAKILAS: Thank you.

ALLEN: Still ahead here, the U.S. has been closely monitoring North Korea's apparent search for a submarine like this. It may be lost.

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ALLEN: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM.

People in three of Germany's 16 states will vote on Sunday in elections that could see Angela Merkel's support erode.

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ALLEN (voice-over): Many Germans are frustrated with the chancellor's open-door migrant policy. Germany has accepted more than 1 million refugees and migrants over the past year. Anger is leading to a rise of the Far Right. The leader of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party laid out what she believes the nation needs to do.

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FRAUKE PETRY, AFD LEADER: We need to define who is in our state, who's going to go back and then we need to talk, after that, about migration laws. At the moment, we have the problem that we don't take these two problems apart and that the Merkel government is really afraid of sending a clear signal.

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ALLEN: Ms. Merkel, head of the Christian Democratic Union party, is expected to hold a final rally in a few hours.

Many of the refugees, of course fleeing the war in Syria. Next week, CNN takes you inside Syria. Our Clarissa Ward went into the heart of a country scarred by five years of war, isolated by devastation. You'll get an exclusive look inside the country's rebel lines and meet the people who call what's left of Syria home. Here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CLARISSA WARD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): We had to travel undercover to see a war few outsiders have witnessed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The Russian planes target anything that works in the interest of the people. The goal is that people here live a destroyed life, that people never see any good.

WARD: There are snipers all around here but this is the only road now to get into Aleppo.

WARD (voice-over): Aleppo was once Syria's largest city, now an apocalyptic landscape. Any civilian in the structure is a potential target, including hospitals.

WARD: Is it possible that they did not know that this was a hospital?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Everyone knows this is a hospital.

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ALLEN: Again, that was just a small portion of Clarissa's story, "Inside Syria: Behind Rebel Lines." You can see it only here on CNN.

We turn to Asia now, where U.S. officials say North Korea lost contact with one of its submarines earlier this week. No one knows where it is. The U.S. is unsure if the missing vessel sank or is adrift somewhere off North Korea's east coast. They believe it may have suffered some type of failure during a military exercise.

Meantime, more than 17,000 military troops representing South Korea, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand are taking part in joint military exercises. The drills on the beaches of South Korea come at a time of increased tensions there. Here is CNN's Ivan Watson covering it.

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IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is a show of force. The U.S. and South Korean militaries carrying on drills here on a beach, performing an amphibious landing. You can see the assault vehicles coming in right into the beach right now after exploding smoke to screen their arrival.

There are more than 17,000 U.S. and South Korean Marines and sailors as well as small detachments from New Zealand and Australia, that are all participating in these annual exercises. Now the South Korean government has called these the largest joint exercises ever.

This is the U.S. military and the South Korean military's chance to show off their military preparedness. And it's coming at a time of increased tension on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea says that it interprets these exercises as a precursor to a possible invasion and they've warned about a preemptive nuclear strike in response to this. The U.S. and South Korean governments say that they've sent messages

to the North, warning that this is purely defensive in nature. And given --

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WATSON: -- the timeframe of the eight-week series of annual military drills, this is an opportunity for the U.S. to reassure its South Korean ally within months of North Korea testing what it claims was a hydrogen bomb and firing a satellite into space.

These joint military exercises lead to annual cycles of tension between North and South Korea. The danger here is that both sides are armed to the teeth and, in case of a misstep, the risk of escalation is very, very high -- Ivan Watson, CNN, Pohang, South Korea.

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ALLEN: Major flooding is affecting three continents in the world right now and parts of the southeastern U.S., the rain is reaching historical levels. Derek Van Dam is up next to tell you what's causing the incessant rain.

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ALLEN: Meteorologist Derek Van Dam is here now because we were just talking about all the flooding that's going on, three continents and the southeastern United States is really getting hit hard.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: That's one of the locations. We've got flooding in Brazil, we've got flooding in Serbia. But first we'll focus in on the southern United States, like you mentioned.

This is one-in-1,000-year recurring interval, meaning there's a 0.1 percent probability of this happening in any given year across the United States. They've had over 500 millimeters of rain in a two-day period in Monroe, Louisiana, submerged roadways, backed up sewers, stalled cars, flooded homes, which you can see on your TV screens right now, 3,000 homes under mandatory evacuations, according to FEMA. Quite a mess.

Take a look at my graphics and I'll show you what's happened over the past 24 hours. Zooming into the Louisiana, here is Mississippi, there's Eastern Texas, southern sections of Arkansas. You can see the heaviest rainfall from Baton Rouge to the north and east and into the Shreveport and Monroe regions where they have had historic rains and it is this probability of occurrence -- we continue to talk about this -- in any particular given year, 1 in 1,000. That is a 0.1 percent probability that this kind of an event could occur.

Now this is the setup. We have a very deep, deep trough that's moved across Northern Mexico, the country of Mexico. And it's moving into Texas. It has allowed for the surge of moisture to come in from the Gulf of Mexico and that is what has inundated the Deep South with extremely heavy rain.

The National Weather Service issuing all kinds of flash flood emergencies, warnings and watches for many of these states. And all these individual dots you see on this particular map are all river gauges, indicating at or above flood stage, some of which are historic at this moment in time, 87 locations currently reporting flooding.

And it's not only the --

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VAN DAM: -- Deep South of the United States. It's into Brazil, as I mentioned earlier. You are looking at aerial pictures of Brazil and some of the extremely heavy rain into the Sao Paulo region, receiving over 50 percent of their monthly rainfall just in a period of 24 hours.

I'll leave you with some video coming out of Sao Paulo. Unfortunately, Natal, there have been over or at least 16 fatalities from this particular event. Mudslides and falling rocks have really caused havoc in some of the outskirts of Sao Paulo, something that we'll monitor for many days to come because that cleanup effort is going to be extensive.

ALLEN: All right, Derek, thank you.

A TV new reporter in California is lucky to be alive after a close call on air during a broadcast and he has his photographer to thank for saving his life. Here's CNN's Jeanne Moos with the story.

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JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Reporting can present dangers, whether from a tear gas canister or flying debris.

But what could happen in the parking lot of a Fremont, California, 7- Eleven while reporting on a train derailment?

ALEX SAVIDGE, KTVU: And obviously it was a chaotic and confusing situation (INAUDIBLE) --

MOOS (voice-over): No one was hurt, but you can't blame KVTU's Alex Savidge for his reaction.

SAVIDGE: My heart is --hasn't stopped racing.

MOOS (voice-over): Since his back was to the traffic, Alex credits his cameraman for yelling, "Get out of the way," before diving to safety.

SAVIDGE: This is the man. That's Chip Vaughan, who always has my back.

MOOS (voice-over): Turns out the elderly woman driving the white car turned right on red into the path of another car, got hit; then, police say, stepped on the gas instead of the brake.

SAVIDGE: She missed me by about this much.

MOOS (voice-over): Police took her license.

SAVIDGE: Every time I see that video it freaks me out.

MOOS: This is the kind of thing that usually happens to police, not reporters...

MOOS (voice-over): -- when officers are stopped on the side of the road.

Everyone reacts differently to a close call; for instance, the cameraman's wife.

CHIP VAUGHAN, CAMERAMAN: She said "Good, you'll be able to walk the dog when you get home."

MOOS (voice-over): In the business this is known as a live hit, but Alex could have ended up dead from this hit.

SAVIDGE: I'd just like to thank Chip first.

Thanks, buddy.

VAUGHAN: You're all right. You're all right.

SAVIDGE: Thanks. It was scary.

MOOS (voice-over): Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

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ALLEN: Terrifying. Crews looking out for each other. Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. "POLITICAL MANN" is next and I'll have our top story.