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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Super Tuesday 2 Results; Obama Names Supreme Court Nominee. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired March 16, 2016 - 12:30   ET

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

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: -- under her total after wins in Ohio, in Illinois, in Florida, and in North Carolina. I'll get to Missouri in a moment.

[12:30:10] Bernie Sanders, 797 delegates. On the Republican side of the race, another huge night for Donald Trump, with wins in Florida, North Carolina and Illinois, and he now has 640 delegates. With Ted Cruz trailing behind at 405. John Kasich pulling in 138, he had that crucial win in Ohio. Marco Rubio, however, even though he's got the 170, a very disappointing night, dropped out perhaps not unexpected because of that loss to Donald Trump in his home state of Florida.

Remember I said Missouri? Well, it was just simply too close to call for both parties. So we're still waiting. Republicans and Democrats alike still waiting on Missouri. Hillary Clinton though, using her victory speech last night to focus on her likely opponent in the general election, Donald Trump.

Sure we've heard her attack Donald Trump before, but this time she mentioned him by name.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our commander in chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it. When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn't make him strong, it makes him wrong.

You know, to be great, we can't be small, we can't lose what made America great in the first place, and this isn't just about Donald Trump. All of us have to do our part.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Kristina Schake joins me now. She's the deputy communications director for Hillary for America. And obviously she's smiling.

KRISTINA SCHAKE, DEPUTY COMMUNICATIONS DIR. HILLARY FOR AMERICA: Yes.

BANFIELD: The first thing, I thought when you were going to be lining up to come up here with Michigan Sh-Michigan, right?

SCHAKE: Yes. BANFIELD: There must be some huge psychology for your camp with what looked like it was going to be a five-state. We're waiting on a 0.2 difference between candidate and Bernie Sanders from Missouri. But four states ain't bad.

SCHAKE: It was just protecting the night for Hillary. I mean she won substantially in Florida, in Ohio, in North Carolina. She just had an exceptional night.

And I have to say that she moved ahead again in the delegates. We are 300-plus delegates ahead of Senator Sanders, so she has a commanding lead this race.

BANFIELD: Which may be why she started using a lot more of that language she did before, she started to talk a little bit more like the candidate and that made it back fire.

So she's back to talking almost like the candidate again, moving into the general. But I want to throw out some voter turnout numbers on the screen because I think it's really significant to see this trend.

There are a lot of downward arrows under the Democrat, in each of the states that went to the polls yesterday, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, all down in voter turnout. Look at Ohio at the bottom 49 percent down. What?

And look at the Republicans, all green arrows. Every one of those states up, and up by a lot. And look at Ohio up by 75 percent. I get it, I know what was going on in Ohio, everybody talked about people coming out either for Trump, switching over from Democrats for him switching over from Democrats to block him. That could happen in the general as well.

SCHAKE: Well, you know, what happens in a primary isn't a great predictor of what's going to happen in the general election. You know, usually the party that's in the White House has lower turnout in the primaries, they're just tends to be more attention on the other side of it.

So historically, this is what happened and it's not a great predictor of what's going on happen in the general election.

BANFIELD: You don't think ...

SCHAKE: I think we'll have a ...

BANFIELD: ... predictor or what's happening or what's going to happen?

SCHAKE: You know, but President Obama lost Pennsylvania, he lost Ohio in that primary. He came back to win both of those states.

BANFIELD: A million votes different. A million, a million people is an election sometimes, right. Look at Bush/Gore.

SCHAKE: But, you know, I think it's important to keep in mind that the person who's received the most votes than any candidate is Hillary Clinton. 8.4 million Americans have come out to support her for president. That's 2.5 million more than Senator Sanders and hundreds of thousands more than Donald Trump. So she has the most enthusiastic voter based of any candidate.

BANFIELD: OK, so big smiles, and listen, I'm going to ask you the same thing I asked you yesterday, will you come back?

SCHAKE: Of course. Yes.

BANFIELD: So we'll keep those smiles remain.

SCHAKE: Yes.

BANFIELD: Kristina Schake, thanks for coming in. Appreciate it.

SCHAKE: Yes, thank you.

BANFIELD: Coming up, later this hour, we're going to talk to a supporter of Bernie Sanders about his path going forward. And we'll find out if the smiles are the same. Methinks no.

For such a non-conventional election year, we're certainly talking hearing a lot about convention, like we'd never heard before, especially on the Republican side. And that's because Republicans who do not like Donald Trump are running out of pre-convention options.

[12:34:52] So straight ahead, how that party leaders lost their power and why that could mean huge power for those delegates. We almost kind of expect are just obvious.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: John Kasich's win in Ohio sends the GOP further down the path toward a contested convention. And here's what that means. Right now Donald Trumps holds the most delegate so add his current front running rate. And all those states that he keeps winning, he may not in fact get that magical number. 1,237 when he walks in the doors to that convention. You just can't lock up the bid without those numbers. And if no candidates arrive with that convention in Cleveland, with majority, then it's called contested.

[12:39:58] Joining me now to discuss is CNN National Reporter, Maeve Reston. Maeve I have to congratulate you on what can only be described as a book that you just wrote and it's on cnn.com, all about how we ended up here and how the Republican establishment sort of had its eyes off the ball not thinking there even was a ball. But now that we are here, do you see an actual path that they're taking that could be something we're not expecting?

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL REPORTER: Well, I know just talking to donors today that there are a lot of discussions going on right now. What we do know last night is that we did still end up with a bit of a muddle. And that Donald Trump may not get to that magic number that you were just talking about.

And so the people around John Kasich and Ted Cruz, you know, see a path to go forward. Ted Cruz wants to win this outright as he said on our air this morning, but John Kasich would have a difficult situation at the convention. But basically what you have here is a -- it's all of these political strategists studying the rules, trying to figure out whether there's a path going forward for these candidates.

And there aren't a lot of people in the political world that even know these rules about how contested convention would work. So it's just an amazing moment where, you know, the establishment feels they that really blew it, that they didn't take on Donald Trump in time, and they tried to take him out in a three-week period with the Super PAC attacks. They didn't do as well last night as they wanted to. But this may go on for quite some time. And there's big money behind it.

The question today is whether people will keep investing in an anti- Trump effort because of what that ...

BANFIELD: Aha.

RESTON: ... that would due to the party.

BANFIELD: So there's the -- my next question. Investing in anti-Trump effort, there were anywhere between $40 and $50 million spent just in this last round in the anti-Trump effort. We all saw the ads with women reading the ugly, ugly thing that Donald Trump has said about women. It was powerful, but didn't affect yesterday. We've seen ads about foul language, it affect contest before. We've seen ads about racist, comments before that had no affect either. So with these kinds of attacks, pointing out this candidate's uniqueness, shall we call it, hasn't worked. Surely they have to be thinking about a completely different direction if they want to put their money towards having an effect, rather than good money after bad.

RESTON: I don't think that's -- well, I mean -- I don't think that that's necessarily true yet, in the sense that you think about Donald Trump, he's been building this brand for decades, and he's had a conversation basically unchallenged with the American people over the last 8 to 9 months. So what these donors felt they could do in this short window of time would start to halt his momentum, even if it was incremental, you know, stopping it in places like Ohio, they had hoped for Missouri, they had hoped to stop him in North Carolina.

And I think that what some of them feel is that they still have not had enough time to define Donald Trump, that these attacks are still potentially settling in Trump University, bankruptcy, the business deals and then a lot of people even though they know Donald Trump, the public figure don't know a lot about his background.

So the question is, will there be enough money there and people willing to put into this effort to keep going and keep trying to define him? And will that in the end destroy the party and its nominee potentially?

BANFIELD: Maeve, you have done an exhaustive job of putting this whole Donald Trump picture from June till now together. I encourage everybody to go on to cnn.com and read Maeve Reston's work. That's great thank you Maeve. Appreciate it. I want to get you back to our breaking new this hour. President Obama announcing a short time ago his pick to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. And guess what? I now have a chance to speak with Amy Jeffress. Why? Because she's a lawyer who once worked at the justice department with Judge Merrick Garland and she knows him personally. Thank you so much for springing in and doing this as such last-minute notice. Amy thank you.

I wanted to ask you about he whole Hail Mary notion of this announcement. The nomination process, I'm sure you know as well as anybody else is going to be rocky request if it's even going to happen. And I'm sure that Merrick Garland knows that, too.

With that in mind, qualify for me this moment.

AMY JEFFRESS, FRIEND OF MERRICK GARLAND: So I'm a lawyer, not a political expert, but I have to say that from a lawyer's perspective, he is absolutely an outstanding nominee. And I think that that came through in the ceremony this morning. He is eminently qualified to serve on the court.

And I don't think that anyone would argue with his qualifications. He's had decades of experience on the D.C. circuit, and before that decades of experience in private practice and at the justice department as a lawyer, which is a great qualification to be able bring to the court.

And so if just a wonderful day for those of us who have worked for him and for the legal community and I imagine for the court as well. He has personal relationships with many of the other justices. And I think that will serve him very well when we is on the court.

BANFIELD: And a personal relationship with Justice John Roberts, the chief justice which is pretty critical as well. Amy one question for you about something that a lot of people may not know about Judge Merrick, he made partner in a very prestigious firm in D.C. and he gave it up to be a junior prosecutors at the DOJ.

[12:45:06] I mean, you're giving up hundreds of thousands of dollars for maybe a few tens of thousands of dollars. And a lot of people pointed that move that he made as something that shows he is absolutely a public servant first.

So with that in mind, that should tell you something about this guy's cachet. Do you think this is a move that the president -- if it's not the Hail Mary or not successful Hail Mary, that it would at least show anybody who is against him is against a guy whose like perfect.

JEFFRESS: He really is perfect to the court and you make an excellent point about his going to the U.S. attorney's office to serve as a line attorney, a line prosecutor. You can imagine that that won him a lot of credibility with the office, and there are many people who knew him at the U.S. attorney's office in those days who are still very loyal and dedicated to him, and just appreciate how he did give up a partnership to go to that position.

But it does show his dedication to public service.

BANFIELD: Yes.

JEFFRESS: And, of course, I knew him initially at the justice department where I got to see that everyday, just the dedication of someone who is such a good lawyer and such an outstanding person as well to work for and to work with on a daily basis.

BANFIELD: And I called him Judge Merrick, and he's Judge Garland, because I'm still getting used to the two last names together, but he's no judge Judy. Let's put it that way. He is Judge Garland. Mary -- Amy, thank you. Never mind. I'm Carol -- thank you so much Amy Jeffress. I appreciate it.

JEFFRESS: Thank you.

BANFIELD: All right, back to the politics of the day. Donald Trump promising it's not going to come down to a contested convention, no way. He says he'll win plenty of delegates before them, believe me, I think he added.

Coming up we're going to look into the states that are still in play and also Hillary Clinton with her big night last night, depending on how Missouri ends up, it could be a sweep. She could shut Bernie Sanders out of one full night of major Tuesday.

We'll talk about Sanders pathway forward and where else he needs to win.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:01] BANFIELD: Presidential candidates are turning their attention to the contests in the week ahead. And that includes GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who is looking to these states on your screen after Super Tuesday Part 3. Trump picked up three more states as he inches closer to the delegate threshold needed to lock up with party's nomination.

In the meantime, a person with close ties to the race says he is not ready to support Trump. Neil Bush is the brother of Jeb Bush and President George W. Bush, and also works on the finance team for Senator Ted Cruz. And here's what he said to CNN's "New Day."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEIL BUSH, BROTHER OF JEB BUSH: I don't think he's a uniter. In fact I think he is the most flawed candidate the Republican Party could put up as its standard bearer, and I would worry very much about retain and control of the House of Representatives, and I think we've got an opportunity to not only retain and control, but to actually move forward with a positive agenda of reform if we had a real leader that could unite our party in a reaganesque kind of way, and Donald Trump is not the guy. I'm not really to go to the Donald Trump coronation.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BANFIELD: Let's talk more about the race with Scottie Nell Hughes. She's a Trump supporter and she's political correspondent for USA Radio Network. Hi Scottie.

SCOTTIE NELL HUGHES, USA RADIO NETWORK: hi. Good morning.

BANFIELD: OK. Morning. I'm sure you're very happy this morning. What a night for you and your camp. I want to read you something that Haley Barbour said. he former Mississippi governor and former NRC chief. He says of Donald Trump -- "A lot of people just want to send Washington the bird, and they think that he is the most perfect giant middle finger that they can imagine." I think that's sort of a funny way of saying that, you know, that Trump supporters are sick of Washington, but in the words of what we just heard Neil Bush, is that reaganesque? Is that really the kind of person we want to be in the White House?

HUGHES: Well, let me say this. If you sit and you look at it. Anybody right now doing this anti-Trump movement after (inaudible) is now in the pro-Democrat movement because it's obvious to the American people whether you're in the north, the south, the east or the west, whether you're a billionaire or blue collar worker, you support Mr. Trump. There is something about Mr. Trump that you can identify, and 7.5 million people, whether they've been lifelong Republicans or they just crossed over to vote for Mr. Trump have sat there and taken the abuse, have taken the beating by their colleague because I've never seen a more abused group than those that support Mr. Trump right now.

And I'd come from the Tea Party. We definitely put up with a lot of. These folks are supporting Mr. Trump are very loyal. And it takes a lot for them to push their button. And right now for any Republican right now to insult Mr. Trump, they have to realize 7.5 million-plus people support Mr. Trump, and you're insulting them as well.

Is that worth of risk right now by making comments like Haley Barbour made or like Sarah -- like the Bush boy did.

BANFIELD: OK. I hear you. And you know what? I think that's -- I think you're right. l think abuse is something no one likes. Button pushing, we don't like that and we definitely don't like insults.

HUGHES: Yes.

BANFIELD: With that in mind, I'm going to come right at you, Scottie. Your guy just sent out an Instagram about Hillary Clinton, and I think you can check off each one of those abuse button pushing and insult (inaudible). I'm going to show it and then I'm going to ask you about it in a moment. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Trump, make America great again. We don't need a punch line. Scottie, I don't know if you have a monitor in there. But I think you get the idea of what the Intagram was all about, mocking Senator Clinton and actually putting her out of context as well.

So with that idea of abuse button pushing and insults, isn't he doing exactly what he's so offended that has been done to him?

HUGHES: It's only been done to him, but listen to Hillary Clinton speech last night. If you were conservative and you are listening to it and you weren't scared of what her agendas going to be. She wants to sit there and talk about equality and want to promote everybody, unless you're a conservative voice, which is more of what we've seen the last eight years not only by the establishment Republicans, but by the Democrats as well.

[12:55:08] So while we're talking about Mr. Trump what he's doing, he's using social media, he's using some of the same games and tactics that have been used against conservatives to the last 10 years and he's just giving it right back to them.

And I'm sorry, I mean if that's -- if you're having to bully the bullies, then I rather have the strongest bully on the block. And according to the American people and the vote right now, Mr. Trump is definitely him, and I'm OK with that.

BANFIELD: All right, Scottie Nell Hughes, always good to have you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Look forward to talking to you again.

HUGHES: Thank you.

BANFIELD: All right, cheers. OK. So, on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders just lost four states to Hillary Clinton and we're still not sure about the fifth, because Missouri is just too close to call.

Hillary is leading there, though. Look at that little point two edge. Bernie is not dwelling on this, though, at this point. He's sticking to his talking points, he's staying optimistic those contests ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERNIE SANDERS, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Next week, Arizona has a very important election. We will win. We will win if the voters' turnout is high. Let's make it high. Thank you all very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Jonathan Tasini joins me now. He's a supporter of Bernie Sanders. He is the author of "The Essential Bernie Sanders." We should note Jonathan challenged Hillary Clinton in the primary contest for her Senate seat in New York in 2006.

Jonathan, thank you so much. Last week the headline was Michigan, for your guy, and you were all smiles and it was just a terrific day for you. And one week later the headline is landslide. This has to be psychologically very difficult for the Bernie camp

JONATHAN TASINI, AUTHOR, "THE ESSENTIAL BERNIE SANDERS": I'm still smiling, can't you tell?

BANFIELD: I can -- well, inside? TASINI: No. Look, i think in terms of the delegate math, yes, Hillary Clinton had a good night last night. She increased her lead. But I -- we keep saying and I know the people don't like this fact, but the truth is that Hillary Clinton did not concede in 2008 until June. Barack Obama lost a whole bunch of states. We still have California, Washington, Utah, which are next week caucuses. April 19th we have New York. There are a lot of states still to vote. We still have path to victory.

BANFIELD: Jonathan, she was never down as much. Like Hillary Clinton was not down as much as Bernie Sanders is. You have to admit it's a bit of apples and oranges.

TASINI: No, I don't think it's -- well, OK, I hear what you're saying. I think it is a tough climb still, there's no question it's a challenge, but there's totally a path to victory. I think your point you made before, which the Clinton campaign kind of dismissed, but I think is wonderful, your point, it was the low turnout. They are whistling past the grave-yard. Democrats really have to understand if we want to keep the White House, if we nominate Hillary Clinton, we have a greater chance of losing the White House because of the low turnout figures which you cited, which has true in contests before.

It's Bernie Sanders exciting the base, whose exciting independents who are crucial when we face Donald Trump. So, I think actually we still have a chance to make that argument with many, many voters around the country.

BANFIELD: Yes, we can put those turnout numbers up as well. I have them up a little time to go when I was talking...

TASINI: I think...

BANFIELD: ... for Hillary Clinton. But I tell you that the turnout was just unbelievable. In Ohio, Democrats were down 49 percent while Republicans were up 75 percent. A lot of people say that was Democrats moving over either to block Trump or support Trump. And no one actually knows the numbers.

But let me ask you this. Arizona is coming up next week, I think Utah as well on the map, California is coming ahead, he does very well in California. He's got a couple states where he does well.

And again I'm just looking at that turnout and wondering how much of that is the Bernie factor, and how -- what kind of a path does he have? What states are you looking at that could turn this around or change the metric for you?

TASINI: So both excellent questions. To answer both questions, one is I do think the excitement. You could just see this huge rally that Bernie brings out tens of thousands of people. Those are the people that we need in a general election and he is the kind of person that will excite them.

We do have to win states by big margins, probably 60 percent, 65 percent to catch up, no question about that. You mentioned Utah, you mentioned Washington, which is the 26th. Utah is next week on the 22nd. You still have California, which is huge, if I can say "huge" there's Connecticut, West Virginia. There's a ton of states out there where we can...

BANFIELD: Yes.

TASINI: ... stay up, map up and bring in lots of delegates.

BANFIELD: So still a lot of opportunity for you to come back and talk to me again?

TASINI: I look forward to it, Ashleigh, as always.

BANFIELD: Thank you, Jonathan, to see me. Good to see you. And good to see all of you as well. Thanks so much for joining us today. We have a lot to cover, though, with the Supreme Court nomination suggestion coming from the president this afternoon, to the follow up from the politics of super, super, Super Tuesday last night, and the fourth Super Tuesday next week, if you can call it that.

[13:00:04] Wolf Blitzer takes over the helm right now.

WOLF BLITZER: Hello. I'm Wolf Blitzer.