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Trump Accuses Sanders' Supporters of Steering Up Trouble; Women Secretly Record Reality of Life in Syria; Voters in Germany Get Ready to Head to the Polls as Anti-Immigration Party Looks to Steal Support from Chancellor Angela Merkel. Aired 12-12:30a ET

Aired March 13, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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


NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Natalie Allen.

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm George Howell. This is CNN.

ALLEN: More outbursts at rally for U.S. Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump as he accuses Bernie Sanders' supporters of steering up trouble. A rare look inside the self-declared ISIS Capital, women secretly differently record the grand reality of life in Raqqa, Syria, and voters in three German states get ready to head to the polls as an anti-Immigration party look to steal support from Chancellor Angela Merkel is all ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. Thank you for joining us. We're live in Atlanta. I'm Natalie Allen.

Red angry faces, blue rude language the race for the White House is getting even more colorful.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's going on? Is someone's burned?

ALLEN: This was the scene outside of Donald Trump rally in Kansas City, Missouri on Saturday. Police used pepper spray on these anti- Trump protesters. Inside, demonstrators unfurled flags while Trump supporters scream and jeered at it. The Republican frontrunner has been roundly criticized for reporting his crowds to wrap up protesters like this but on Saturday, he took a different approach.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I hope these guys get thrown into a jail. They'll never do it again. It will destroy their record. They'll have to explain to mom and dad why they have a police record and why they can't get a job. And, you know what, I'm going to start pressing chargers against all these people, OK?

And then we won't have a problem and I don't want to do that. I don't want to ruin somebody's life. They are probably good kids. You know, they're probably good kids. I don't want to ruin people's lives. But the only way were going to stop this craziness is that we press charges.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ALLEN: Earlier on Saturday, Trump almost found himself sharing the podium with a demonstrator.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I do it myself I know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, oh, oh.

(CROSSTALK)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: That was in Ohio. Secrets Service Agents stopped the man from rushing the stage. The 22-year old protesters later release a statement calling on people to non-violently shutdown every Trump event. This all comes after rapid protest in Chicago prompting Trump to cancel a rally on Friday. CNN's Jeff Zeleny reports those protest in Chicago reverberating across the political factor.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: There's protest here in Chicago. We're front and center on the democratic side of the campaign trail today as well. Bernie Sanders was campaigning here in Chicago and later in Champaign, Illinois. And Hillary Clinton was in Missouri. She took a very force full tone against what happen in Chicago against Donald Trump's rhetoric.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you play with matches, you can start a fire you can't control. That is not leadership, it is political arson.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: Now political arson, those are her words here but it could be a preview to what's to come for the general election. If Donald Trump should become a Republican nominee and if she becomes the Democratic nominee, this could be for the framework of their argument going forward. But Donald Trump accused Bernie Sanders supporters of sort of instigating the protest in Chicago.

Now, I was at the rally last night, outside the rally and saw several people holding Bernie Sanders signs. But Bernie Sanders issued a statement late today sayings, "This campaign, in no way, organize this at all." He said some of the supporters were simply standing up to the, you know, divisive rhetoric from the Trump campaign that they didn't like. But Bernie Sanders says he is not responsible for organizing this counter protest. But certainly, another day of Donald Trump dominating the conversation on both sides of the aisle. The democratic candidates speaking pretty harshly against him.

ALLEN: So who is responsible for the violence and protest at Trumps rallies? Many pundits, republican and democrat, are blaming Trump himself. CNN's Poppy Harlow spoke with conservative radio host Ben Ferguson and former Reagan staff, Jeffrey Lord about the angry tone of Trump's campaign.

BEN FERGUSON, CONSERVATIVE RADIO HOST: He loves the back and forth. He loves the trash talking. He loves talking abut people living on stretchers and punching them on the face and, hey, if you hit him, I'll pay for your legal defense team. He even said that from the podium one day.

So this protesters and a lot of them are coming out and their acting, you know, in a thuggish way. I think that's very clear from what we saw last night. They are there to get into a fight. But let's be clear, there are also Donald Trump supporters including that older man who sucker punch an individual that are showing up and excited to be on the middle of this. They want to get into a fight. You could see that last night and Donald Trump has ratcheted this rhetoric up to a point where it's now boiling over. And as a leader and the President of United States of America or trying to become the president, you cannot be a part of this and be taken seriously. This is where I look at Donald Trump and I say, what are we doing? Why is this individual this close to the White House when he's been advocating for violence and now somehow claims that he's not responsible for this?

JEFFREY LORD, FORMER REAGAN STAFF: When we talk about this subject, we have got to hold the people who do these acts responsible. And as I said earlier today, you know, this is what goes on with the American reg (ph), Hubert Humphrey for having to say it's worth pushing the politics of joy and they did exactly the same thing to him, exactly the same thing. Went to his rallies like this, caused all kinds of havoc, got tossed out by the Secret Service. I mean if there was anyone least deserving of that kind of treatment, it would have been Hubert Humphrey who was a wonderfully giddy old man.

ALLEN: Well, Trump has pushed back against his critic claims that he's responsible for the sort of outburst we're seeing at his events. CNN compiled a timeline to show how Trump's rhetoric has evolved to leading all the way up to the boiling point in Chicago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I was nice. Take your time. The second group, I was pretty nice. The third group, I'll be little more violent. And the fourth group, I'll say, "Get the hell out of here."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's up? He should have been -- maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.

TRUMP: When you see somebody getting ready to throw tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. OK, just the knock the hell - I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. Do you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They'd be carried out of a stretcher, folks. Guards are very gentle with them. He's walking out like big high five's, smiling, laughing. I'd like to punch them in the face, I tell you.

In the good all days, they'd ripped him out of that seat so fast. Yeah, get him out. Try not to hurt him. If you do, I'll defend you in court. Don't worry about it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not going to lie ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe that you've done anything to create a tone where this kind of violence would be encouraged?

TRUMP: I hope not. I truly hope not.

We have to be politically correct. Oh, please, don't hurt him. They're allowed to get up and interrupt those horribly and we have to very, very gentle, very gentle. They can swing, they can hit people, but if we hit him back, it's a terrible, terrible thing, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you regret saying any of those things especially the things that you have said about punching protestor, sending them out on stretchers?

TRUMP: You know, I don't regret it at all. Some of these protesters were violent. Yeah, I'm not happy about that and I would always express my feelings about that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Meanwhile, there were two Republican caucuses on Saturday. Texas Senator Ted Cruz won the most delegates in Wyoming nine. Frontrunner Donald Trump gain one, so did Marco Rubio. For the senator did better in Washington D.C., he wanted to convince them there and gained 10 delegates.

Trump is still leading the pack with a total of 462 plus delegates. Cruz has 371. Rubio, 165. One thousand two hundred thirty-seven delegates are needed to win the Republican nomination.

Tuesday marks five years since the Syrian civil war erupted. We will explore some of the most critical and unexpected consequences of the conflict next here, plus Germans are set to vote in a couple of hours. Will the migrate issue affect the support for Angela Merkel?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALLEN: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. The political future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is nonnegotiable. Syria's foreign minister made that clear while speaking with the reporters in Damascus ahead of Monday's peace talks between his government and the opposition.

The U.N. is backing the talks in Geneva and it says, negotiations will include plans for a new constitution and presidential elections. The transitional government is also a key demand from the opposition. The government is rejecting those ideas. The talks aim to diffuse serious brutal five years civil war. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh explores five unexpected effects of serious years of conflict.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: For five years, the west has fought to stay out of another Middle East quagmire. And so, on five occasions, the things they've never imagined happened. It took thousands to die from bombing before the first White House red line was even crossed and that was a use of chemical weapons, siren, and Damascus' suburbs. Unimaginable to so many but really happening in 2013 that there is something you could feel on YouTube (ph).

Syria gave up its chemical weapons but so too did many on a bomber's red line. Many months later, radicals or this is Syria here it at Hatay Airport, we watched dozens of forwardness from Libya, Mauritania, Egypt insist that we're charity workers. Turkey let many like them cross into Syria advises took route rights on Europe and NATO's doorstep.

It's in the nature of wars to spread chaos and just across the border in Iraq, another game happening. Do you see this (inaudible) obscurity that didn't shield them from ISIS were brutalized.

(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

When then used to sex slaves, children as soldiers, men just murdered. It is still unclear how many died. U.S. officials think it maybe genocide.

It took four years of desperation sparked the largest refugee crisis since World War II but even the rise or fall of the Soviet Union did this. Unable to see an end to the war or a future in the Middle East, they left for Germany, Greece or anywhere in between or beyond risking life, bringing out the worst and the best of those outcomes.

One small fact also exposes how the war is hamstrung our humanity. We don't know how many people who've died in it, not since January 2014 when the U.N. lost counts or 100,000. They've been unable to verify enough information.

Even in this the most filmed in social media posted war yet, the after chaos stops one place of dignity. Some say 470,000 have died. Five years in, still impossible to know what the number will stop at. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Beirut.

ALLEN: Two Syrian women wore hidden cameras for Swedish newspaper expressing to show the world what life is like inside Raqqa, the self- proclaimed ISIS capital. They want to warn you some of the video is graphic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ISIS practiced the most brutal form of Sharia. They crucified people, take their enemies' women as sex slaves, punish men and women by flogging them on the streets and in public squares and they'll behead their prisoners.

(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: And we have more in on the Syrian conflict all this week. CNN's Clarissa Ward is taking you inside the country and into one particular area, Aleppo. You'll get an exclusive look inside Syria behind rebel lines and you'll meet the people who still live there.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We had to travel undercover to see a war few outsiders have witnessed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are snipers all around here but this is the only road now to get in to Aleppo.

WARD: Aleppo was once Syria's largest city, now an apocalyptic landscape.

Any civilian infrastructure is a potential target including hospitals. Is it possible that they did not know that this was a hospital?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone knows this is a hospital.

WARD: Be sure to watch our special coverage Inside Syria: Behind Rebel Lines here on CNN.

ALLEN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is crossing her fingers ahead of Sunday's election. In a few hours, voters in three states will elect their regional parliaments. The vote is seen as a test for Miss Merkel's open migration policy. She's trying to win support for European Union proposal to return economic migrants to Turkey and give more economic support to that country.

Merkel has been loosing support to an Anti Immigration part called Alternative for Germany. Our Attika Shubert met with the leader of that party and asked her what the right-wing movement really stands for.

ATTIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As campaign ads go, it's a soft sell. Here is the images of idyllic German life for our country for our security. No mentions of specific issues or policies, the AfD or Alternative for Germany is selling an idea. The only political party, it says, willing to standup and defend German identity and values especially on the refugee crisis.

FRAUKE PETRY, AFD LEADER: We have a level of being Nazi, of being brown which is something very, very bad in Germany, something which frightens most people in society. And we say, hey whatever the label is, let's discuss content.

SHUBERT: AfD leader Frauke Petry is a chemist turned to politician, the new face of Germany's conservative movement.

She talked to CNN on the campaign trail as extra security, patrol the grounds of the local sports center which she was speaking. Petry has received threats and protest follow her campaign but her party stands to make big gains on a policy that advocates stopping migration altogether at least for now.

PETRY: We need to define who is allowed to stay, who's going to go back. And then we need to talk about after that about migration laws. And at the moment, we have from the (inaudible), don't take this two problems apart, then that's the American government afraid of (inaudible).

SHUBERT: Germany is under pressure. Last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to the country to taken more than a million asylum seekers, initially (inaudible) or welcoming refugees. But then, came New Year's Eve in Cologne. Refugees and migrants were blamed for the mass sexual assaults on scores of women and then came the backlash, arson attacks on refugee's shelters. In one case, an angry mob blocked a bus full of refugees from moving to town.

Recent poll showed that are wamping (ph) 80 percent of Germans no longer support Merkel's refugee policy but many do not want to be lumped in with far-right anti Islamic groups either as audience members made be clear to Petry during the rally we attended. The AfD filled that gap but Petry still struggles to define where the party stands.

A local paper quoted her saying, "Police should use firearms if necessary to stop people from crossing the border illegally." That sparked magazine covers accusing her of inciting violence.

SHUBERT: In the head line here, they hate preacher. What do you make of it?

PETRY: Yes, it hurts. It hurts because what I really want to say doesn't get through anymore. We need to be very strong about that and punish everyone who is sort of involved in violence.

SHUBERT: But precisely by providing a conservative alternative to the powerful center block of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Frauke Petry believes the AfD is here to stay.

Attika Shubert, CNN, Berlin.

ALLEN: And still to come here on CNN NEWSROOM, a Swedish artist dreams up a whole new purpose for marbles.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALLEN: Believed or not, the unusual heavy rain is over for a month to the Southern U.S. The flood threat remains high. I'm here with Derek Van Dam staying on top of this story. You've had a find a few exciting story.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN WEATHER ANCHOR: Yes, across the world, we were focusing in on the deep south of the United States, specifically Louisiana, Mississippi and into Arkansas where we've had remarkable flood in but the heavy rain as you mentioned is over but the flood threat remains because a lot of the smaller streams and the local bayous across the area are going to take several days for that to start to recede. So people's livelihood are still in danger and the clean up is really only beginning now.

Take a look at some of the footage coming out of that region and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. There is some of the rescues, citizen rescues, actually taking places at the moment, people helping others in this moments of crisis. You can see just how deep the water actually is and, yeah, this is a very different situation where all 64 parishes in Louisiana are considered in state of emergency. In fact Governor Edwards, monitoring the situation and taking boats and helicopters to assess just how serious it is in is state.

From this graphic, we've highlighted the states that got hit the hardest this peak with the heavy rainfall events. Texas, the most amount of rain recorded there are 281millimeters but certainly the weather there, well the weather, is not the best choice of word I would say but certainly the highest amount of water in Monroe, Louisiana, 531 milliners. Can you imagine that in just a period of 72 hours? In fact, we still have our flashflood warnings in place for many locations, from Texas to Louisiana, all the way to Western and Central Kentucky.

There is storm system rotating in a counterclockwise spacing away from the flood prone areas, but remember, the small lakes, the small rivers and streams still have several days before they recede, floor continues. The bulk of the precipitation moves northward into the Ohio River Valley. They could pick up maybe 25 to 50 millimeters of rainfall, so the bulk of the energy of the storm system starting to dissipate as well.

Now taking you to western half of the United States where they're also getting hammered by some heavy rainfall, we have this thing called the Pineapple Express that's happening to tropical moisture and still bringing extremely heavy rainfall to the West Coast of the U.S. including California. Some scary close calls with a Department of Transportation crew that was working at this side of this cliff. You can see that truck nearly feel over, very scary situation. Now, I'm going to end in Chicago because you got to see these annual, well, parade that takes place in Chicago but it's not the parade that draws spectators, the 400,000 people, it's the green dye in the Chicago River. Natalie, have you see this before?

ALLEN: Yes, in fact, today.

VAN DAM: It's a tradition since 1962. The parades took place today. You'll be happy to know and I was quite questioning this myself, it is an organic vegetable-based dye that is actually safe for the river and it is not ...

(CROSSTALK)

VAN DAM: You got -- I mean you're wondering. You're saying green is not a natural color in a river.

ALLEN: Right, right. It's not natural.

VAN DAM: And in a downtown setting but ...

ALLEN: ... for bear either but they'll be drinking a lot of green beer. VAN DAM: That's right.

ALLEN: All right. Thank you, Derek.

Well, how about this, well, a musician in Sweden has created a remarkable new instrument using a toy marble. Here's how he did it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARTIN MOLIN: My name is Martin Molin. I make music and I make machines that also make music. The machine is called Wintergarten Marble Machine. Wintergarten is my band and the marble machine is my machine. Also the basic concept of the marble machine is that you lift marbles up and then you let them fall down in different pathways and then you lift them up again like this, play with music. There's 2000 marbles in the machine and they make sound by falling on top of music instruments. And what I did with my marble machine is that I made it programmable so that I can easily control where and when marble will fall. You have kick drum and a snare drum higher and cymbal and electric bass and also vibraphone. And my favorite (inaudible) vibraphone.

When I was constructing this machine, I wanted it to sound like pounding and the like hard and be able to like play loud and say sounding nice. That was part of the project. Actually, I wrote a song only for the machine. You know, it was only for the video but I am putting a background (ph) as a normal song. I have no choice the radio stations will pick up on it at all. (Inaudible), I think.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: He's a creative musical genius. Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. Our top stories are after this.

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