Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Interview with Christine O'Donnell; Stopping Trump. Aired 3- 3:30p ET
Aired March 17, 2016 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:00:07]
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hour two. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. So great to be with you.
Wow. We have a lot now to -- a lot of developments. He promised he would not go there, and now Ohio Governor John Kasich is firing his very first shots against the man who is leading the Republican race for president, Donald Trump.
Governor Kasich is going after what Trump said to CNN's Chris Cuomo.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If we're 100 short, and we're at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we're way ahead of everybody, I don't think you can say that we don't get it automatically. I think it would be -- I think you would have riots. I think you would have riots.
You know, I'm representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Kasich today now tweeted this.
"Donald Trump said there could be riots if he's 'denied' the Republican nomination in a contested convention. That is more unacceptable language."
He goes on, "This implicit acceptance of violence is the kind of rhetoric that is pulling people apart. A true leader, a true leader, urges peaceful debate over violence. Leadership requires responsibility. I have faith the American people want civilized debate over violence. It is what has kept our nation the strongest in the world" -- Governor Kasich there today, his shots again Trump -- he finishes with.
Now I'm going to bring in the co-author of "Why You're Wrong About the Right," CNN political commentator S.E. Cupp, chief political analyst Gloria Borger. And Todd Gillman is with us as well, Washington bureau chief for "The Dallas Morning News."
Awesome to have all of you on. A lot of new pieces to sort of chew on this hour.
Gloria, let me just turn to you first. Reading all those tweets from John Kasich, you know, he's always said I want to be the adult in the room, I want to remain above the fray. Is this as attacky as John Kasich is going to get?
GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Attacky, yes.
BALDWIN: You like that?
BORGER: That's about right. He does sort of want to remain above the fray. But he's got to take on Donald Trump.
I think he's never really done that before. And he hinted before he won Ohio in a bunch of interviews, including with Anderson Cooper, that he would have more to say about Donald Trump. I think this gave him an opportunity to say it.
And I wouldn't be surprised if it gets more and more strident if Trump continues along this vein. I think Kasich has no choice. He's running against Donald Trump.
BALDWIN: S.E., what do you think? Do you think he needs to say more than this?
S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, welcome to the fight. It's only been nine months. I don't think it's particularly courageous for John Kasich to call Donald Trump out on what a lot of us have been calling him out for months just conveniently after he put, you know, 66 delegates in his back pocket.
BALDWIN: Right.
CUPP: I don't think it looks very genuine for John Kasich to have said, well, now enough's enough. No, enough was enough a long time ago. But John Kasich is trying to mount what looks like an impossible campaign for the nomination. And I think it's a little too late.
BALDWIN: So number one, it's the news there with John Kasich. Number two is the news that some folks do seem to be getting behind Ted Cruz, including of all unlikely people Senator Lindsey Graham.
You talk to Dana Bash, Lindsey Graham is the same man who once joked about Ted Cruz's murder on the Senate floor here and how no one would have been convicted for that. Here you go. Here's the interview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So you are raising money for him. Are you endorsing him?
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Well, I think I...
BASH: Is that effectively an endorsement?
GRAHAM: Well, what I'm saying, John Kasich I think is the most viable general election candidate. I just don't see how John gets through the primary. This is an outsider year. He's seen as an insider.
I think the best alternative to Donald Trump to stop him from getting 1,237 is Ted Cruz. I'm going to help Ted in every way I can. I'm going to raise money for him in the pro-Israel community. And if I were in one of states coming up in terms of voting and I didn't like Trump, I would vote for Cruz.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: So, Todd, to you, Mr. "Dallas Morning News," having covered Senator in Texas here, to quote Dana Bash, with this enthusiasm from Senator Graham, are pigs flying today?
TODD GILLMAN, "THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS": It's unbelievable.
Well, on the one hand, it's unbelievable because Graham has been so antagonistic towards Cruz and vice versa. But really if you step back from it, the beef that so many Republican senators have with Ted Cruz has been over tactics and over the sense that he's been self-serving and self-promotional and not necessarily ideological.
There's obviously a huge gap between Graham and Cruz over immigration policy and the Gang of Eight legislation, for instance, but on the other hand, I think Graham -- Graham clearly has been one of the most outspoken anti-Trump voices in the field, was until he was forced out. I don't think an endorsement like this makes a big difference, per se, by itself.
[15:05:01]
But if it's emblematic of finally, you know, a swing towards Cruz among senators and the establishment, that definitely would help Cruz, although it would be awfully odd after he's been so alienated to the establishment.
BALDWIN: It does seem like a marked shifting of the tide. And so you have Senator Graham and then you Senator Harry Reid. And he spoke today.
Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MINORITY LEADER: I have to say this about Cruz. He at least has some principles. I don't like what he stands for, but he stands for something, none of -- very little of which I found I agree with. So, I'm not as turned off by Cruz because he stands for things.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: S.E., it was one thing to have Lindsey Graham. This is a leader of the Democratic Party. Pigs are like doing the Macarena.
CUPP: Yes. And that's what this meeting at the Army and Navy Club today of
conservatives trying to figure out how to get around Donald Trump, this is exactly why, because there is a sense, a real sense that Donald Trump has no conservative core, recently came to the Republican Party, has no allegiance to the party.
I don't have to remind you that the RNC actually made him sign a pledge that he would run as a Republican just a few months ago. So, you know, for people who want to protect the future of the Republican Party, the future of the conservative movement, there's real fear that Donald Trump will destroy both of those on his way to the nomination.
And so people like Ted Cruz, who, you know, it's right a lot of people didn't like his tactics, but you still can trust that he's a conservative at his core and a constitutional conservative at that, and that is reassuring to people even like Lindsey Graham or people like me.
BALDWIN: OK. Marco Rubio, as we know, he's out, dropped after losing Florida to Trump. Back to his day job. Back on Capitol Hill today. Found himself in the thick of a scrum. He was asked a lot of questions.
Really, the headline was he says he doesn't want to be anyone's vice president. Here is Senator Rubio.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I mean, I think that's going to happen now that the race has narrowed even further. And hopefully there's time to still prevent a Trump nomination, which I think would fracture the party and be damaging to the conservative movement.
QUESTION: Would you consider being Cruz's vice president?
RUBIO: No, I'm not going to be anybody's vice president. I'm just not going to -- I'm not interested in being vice president. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. I'm not going to be vice president. I'm not running for governor of Florida. I'm going to finish out my term in the Senate over the next 10 months. We're going to work really hard here.
And we have some things we want to achieve. And then I will be a private citizen in January.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: So, Gloria, just turning to you on that, you said before he's a young guy, he's a bright guy, he's got a bright political future potentially, so there's that.
BORGER: Sure.
BALDWIN: But I also really wanted to ask you about your reporting. You had a source in the room, this closed-door meeting, Republicans who are all sort of getting together, trying to figure out, how can we stop Trump from getting to that 1,237 number to get the nomination? What did you learn?
BORGER: Yes.
They want to do anything they can. And they stopped short of calling for a Cruz/Kasich ticket, which did come under discussion there. But what they did was, they said, look, we have to stop him from getting to 1,237. There was absolute consensus in that room. There was a lot of discussion and disagreement over whether these folks are to actually support some kind of a third-party candidate.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: ... stop Trump, but they can't figure out how they're going to do it.
BORGER: Right, and they didn't go there for third party because they didn't want it to look like they were pro-Hillary by doing that, but look at what we have. Take a step back.
We have got the establishment meeting somewhere constantly trying to figure out how to stop Trump. You have people who identify themselves as the last of the Reagan revolutionaries meeting somewhere trying to stop Trump.
In the meantime, you have Donald Trump marching towards the nomination and nobody can figure out a way to do it or agree on what's the best way to do it.
BALDWIN: Todd, they have had, you know, 10 months that Mr. Trump got into this race in June. They have had 10 months to figure this out. As Gloria is reporting, they still don't have a path to do that.
GILLMAN: Trump has benefited all along from the splintered field.
Even now that it's down to three people, he by far has the best possibility of clinching the nomination. I ran the numbers yesterday. He only needs -- only -- but he needs 60 percent of the remaining delegates. Cruz needs nearly 90 percent. Kasich need no chance. He needs 115 percent of all the delegates remaining. There's no chance, even if everybody collapsed and pulled out.
The only way to stop Trump I think at this point is to force a contested convention, to deprive him of that clinching number, and hope that he doesn't encourage these riots that he's now warned us might occur if he's denied the nomination.
But it's very possible that there is a tipping point in public perception. How do you deprive a guy who has the most delegates going into the convention and is this close to the finish line? How do you deprive him? It's going to be very, very difficult.
[15:10:12]
BALDWIN: Todd Gillman, Gloria Borger, S.E. Cupp, thank you all so much.
From that to this. This is one of the biggest questions of the day. Can Donald Trump actually defeat Hillary Clinton in a general election? A man who helped get President Obama elected says, you know, watch out. We will discuss that.
Plus, she was a Tea Party darling who made national headlines.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTINE O'DONNELL, CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST: I'm not a witch. I'm nothing you have heard. I'm you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Now Christine O'Donnell is back and she has a lot to say about the 2016 presidential race, including how she really feels about Donald Trump. She joins me live.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
O'DONNELL: I'm not a witch. I'm nothing you have heard. I'm you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[15:15:06]
BALDWIN: Remember that? This is one of the more...
(LAUGHTER)
BALDWIN: She laughs, laughing about it. One of the more famous moments of the 2010 Tea Party wave.
Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell put out that ad after it surfaced that she dabbled in witchcraft in the '90s. And while some of her Tea Party colleagues are supporting Donald Trump for president this year, O'Donnell is joining me today to wholeheartedly denounce Donald Trump.
So, so lovely to see you. Thank you so much for coming in.
O'DONNELL: Thank you. Thank you.
BALDWIN: And let me just point off the stop, because we haven't really seen you in a few years, you took some time away to took care of both of your parents who were ill. They have both since passed. My condolences to you.
O'DONNELL: Thank you.
BALDWIN: And just thank you for coming back and spending some time with us.
O'DONNELL: Yes, yes. It's funny because people have called me, especially when Sarah Palin
endorsed Trump. And I was just like, you know, I have no desire to get in the fray, but now it looks like he's going to be our nominee. I can't sit back anymore. I can't hold my tongue. So...
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: Let's not hold our tongues.
O'DONNELL: Right. Right.
BALDWIN: Let me know. It's safe to say you are not a fan of Mr. Trump's.
O'DONNELL: No, I'm not a fan.
BALDWIN: Why?
O'DONNELL: And the funny thing is, every time I post something on Facebook about him, people call me an establishment hack. And that's such a joke.
The commercial you just ran should say, hey, that gives me street cred as anti-establishment. For the record, I never approved that commercial. It was leaked. Three million people saw it before everyone -- I did. So that shows you I earned my credibility to speak against Donald Trump without being called establishment or in anybody's pocket.
BALDWIN: What don't you like about him?
O'DONNELL: Well, first of all, I get the reason why people are flocking to him. The average middle-class American, especially the white male or the immigrant who's come here legally and had to work hard and pave their own way...
BALDWIN: Like the father we just spoke with, Republican women.
O'DONNELL: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
They have been told to sit down and shut up, to take a back seat to political correctness, and every time they get pushed aside to make room for what is politically correct, and they see our leaders ignore them, this anger is bubbling and it's finally erupted.
But here's the thing about Donald Trump. He doesn't lead them. He's like that French leader who said, find out where my people are going so I can lead them there. He's actually following something that has already happened. He did nothing to liberate the middle class from political correctness until he decided to run for president.
And then it's only giving voice. He's not actually doing anything, except inciting riots. Well, let me take -- loosely, I say that, because I don't blame him for the violence. But at the same time, as a candidate, your words will...
BALDWIN: Matter.
O'DONNELL: ... have consequences. Your words will inspire certain behavior.
And he's a calculated man. He knows exactly what he's doing. He knows the impact that his words will have.
BALDWIN: It's interesting, so you get this anger and there are a lot of people that are passionate.
O'DONNELL: I get it.
BALDWIN: You get that. You understand why people are flocking to him, but are you saying that you feel like his words and his promises are empty?
O'DONNELL: Oh, they are definitely empty.
And let me just distinguish. I get why middle-class -- average middle-class Americans, especially the white male, I get why they're flocking to him. What I do not get is why the evangelical leaders are. And many of my friends are behind him. And I have thought about it a lot, because it's -- it's caused tension in our friendships.
And it's crazy because, you know, as a conservative, you kind of get used to agreeing to disagree and liking the people anyway.
BALDWIN: Well, why do you think your evangelical friends like him?
O'DONNELL: I think it's one of a couple things.
First of all, these are the same people who for decades fought against pornography because it exploited women, fought for the sanctity of human life. Donald Trump openly mocks the disabled. The first casino in America with a strip club was Donald Trump's.
BALDWIN: So, why do they like him? Why do they like him?
O'DONNELL: So, they either -- it's one of three things. Either they're hypocritical and they have to tell everyone, including me, that the issues we fought for, for the past several decades don't matter when it comes to immigration, you know, that they have decided to put all that on hold, and securing our borders is -- because that's the real only issue that he can explain.
That's the only real issue he actually has a policy for.
BALDWIN: So they're hypocrites, number one. Number two?
O'DONNELL: I'm not calling them hypocrites. I'm saying maybe, wink, wink.
BALDWIN: OK.
O'DONNELL: But -- or, number two, their anger is blinding them to reason. And they, too, are so angry at everything that's been going on that they can't -- that they're letting their emotions cloud them from the truth about what's going on with Donald Trump, or -- which unfortunately this is one of the reasons why so many people don't like Christian political leaders -- they just want to be around winners, you know, so they're putting all that aside because they want to be around a winner.
[15:20:05]
And that's a shame.
BALDWIN: We pulled a clip, because I hear what you're saying about Donald Trump. But he was talking to Wolf Blitzer in 2010. This is when you were running, and he spoke about the Tea Party, really commending the movement that was the Tea Party then. Here was Mr. Trump.
O'DONNELL: Right.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: There's a lot of great things happening in the so-called Tea Party movement. And I will tell you, it's got people thinking. It's got people on the Democratic side and the Republican side thinking.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And these candidates like Christine O'Donnell and Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, what do you think about them?
TRUMP: Well, I'm not saying -- I'm not particularly talking about any candidate. I'm just saying the Tea Party has the Democrats and the Republicans starting to think for the first time in a long time. This country is going to go down if they don't change their policies, and they'd better change them fast.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: So, obviously, that was a huge compliment to the movement that you were a huge part of.
O'DONNELL: Right. Absolutely.
BALDWIN: Do you think that the Tea Party then created this opening, planted the seeds for the Donald Trump we know today? Candidate Trump? Possible nominee Trump?
O'DONNELL: Well, that clip perfectly encapsulates my point, in that he gave lip service to the Tea Party. He had 2012 in mind. What has he done since then?
He's funded Mitch McConnell's path to destroy the Tea Party. He funded Nancy Pelosi's campaign. What did he do once he decided he didn't want to run in 2012? Again, he didn't give anyone in the movement a second thought until he wanted to run in 2016.
You have to look at his actions. He has been inconsistent. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do if he gets -- the nominee. BALDWIN: I want to keep you over commercial break.
O'DONNELL: OK. Sure.
BALDWIN: I have so much more for you, if you will to hang out on who you're maybe thinking of endorsing. I give you the opportunity live here on CNN, what you think about Donald Trump with women, what you think about the possibility of a brokered convention. Lots to talk about.
O'DONNELL: Yes.
BALDWIN: Don't move a muscle.
Christine O'Donnell, she's back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:26:35]
BALDWIN: We're back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.
We are in the midst of this fascinating conversation with Christine O'Donnell, conservative commentator, former Tea Party candidate, former Delaware candidate for Senate just a couple years ago. She's back with us. She's back on TV, and just being incredibly candid, which is so refreshing -- thank you so much -- on the current state of play that is this 2016 presidential race.
O'DONNELL: Right. Right.
BALDWIN: If you have missed the last couple of minutes, not a fan of Donald Trump at all.
And so where we left off, I wanted to ask you, you haven't officially endorsed anyone.
O'DONNELL: No.
BALDWIN: Care to?
O'DONNELL: Well, at this point, I mean, it's pretty much Trump or Cruz. So, if it makes a difference, then, of course, I would endorse Cruz.
But I haven't so far because, honestly, with what's going on, I don't want Cruz to leave the Senate. He has been a bulwark. He's been one of the only ones who has kept his campaign promise. And people have to keep in mind that Republicans had control of Congress for much of President Obama's terms and they have done nothing with it.
So I kind of worry about what's going to happen without...
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: We were talking during commercial, just speaking of Congress, and you were saying it's fine to share, just you were saying you would fear a Trump presidency more than a Clinton presidency, depending on which way Congress is being run.
O'DONNELL: Absolutely, absolutely.
And, again, the key here is who controls Congress. If we have people like Ted Cruz in the Senate and if we can elect some more people who I don't care if it's Republican or Democrat, as long as your litmus test for what you get behind is the Constitution and making America solvent again, I don't care what party you're with, as long as you're not going to play the game.
And if Hillary Clinton does what her husband did in the '90s, when Newt Gingrich pretty much ran the show and Trent Lott, and all President Clinton did was sign his name to that beautiful conservative legislation...
BALDWIN: Oh, there sure were many a million jobs created in the Clinton presidency.
O'DONNELL: Sure. Well, that's my point, is because of what the Republicans did in Congress.
So, Clinton, if you look at some of her policies, she's a moderate. She's not a far-left liberal. She's appealing to the far left right now. I'm going to get in so much trouble for saying that. I'm not saying I would vote for Hillary Clinton, by any chance.
I'm saying I don't know what I would do if Trump became the nominee.
BALDWIN: On Hillary Clinton, we have heard from Donald Trump. He has repeatedly said that Hillary Clinton lacks the strength and stamina to be president.
Hearing that, just as a woman, is that a sexist comment?
O'DONNELL: Absolutely, absolutely.
And, again, I have gotten in trouble for saying this. I -- as a woman in politics, Hillary Clinton has proven that she has the strength. It is not easy to be a woman in a man's world. And face it, the political arena is definitely still a man's world.
I'm not saying I support her policies. I'm saying it's easy to take shots at someone. Like, people -- the other day, when people were criticizing her for yelling. What does Trump do all the time? But it's OK? It's OK when Trump yells and screams? It's not OK when Hillary Clinton does?
There is definitely a double standard for female candidates.
BALDWIN: What about just the debate behavior on the Republican side, getting down to pant-wetting, hand size, you name it?
Just watching sort of -- sort of from afar, with your perspective, having sort of been out of the limelight for a couple of years, thoughts?
O'DONNELL: It's -- it -- it is great for ratings.
