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Trump, Megyn Kelly Hold Secret Meeting; Trump Supporters Drawn to "Trumpism" Religion; Clinton Courts African-American Voters Amid Anger at Bill Clinton's Crime Bill; New Details in Will Smith Murder. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired April 13, 2016 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00] BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT & CNN HOST, RELIABLE SOURCES: It happened this morning. It is significant because if you think of Trump's target Megyn Kelly has been on the top of his list. He has criticized her viciously, can't stand to watch her show. It would suggest to me at the same time he is talking about trying to unify the party, maybe he is even trying to make amends with one of his critics.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Ultimately, reading through the tea leaves, this could be about a highly promoted, highly promoted sit- down interview.

STELTER: Yes. Interviews of Trump aren't hard to come by. He is on television all the time. He has never sat down with Megyn Kelly, ever since the debate in August. Kelly challenged him with misogynistic comments he made about women. There has been questions about that ever since, partly because of her question. There is a lot of tension between the two of them. You can imagine a sit down between them, with Kelly talking to Trump would be highly rated. She has a primetime special booked in late May on the FOX Broadcasting Network. I'm sure she would love to have Trump as a guest.

BALDWIN: Brian Stelter, we'll see.

Watch Brian on CNN's "Reliable Sources" at 11:00 eastern on Sunday mornings here on CNN.

STELTER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: You've got it.

Coming up, my next guest calls it "Trumpism," and he says it's kind of like a religion with Donald Trump, him as the principal evangelist, preaching a so-called prosperity gospel to his faithful followers. We'll discuss what that means, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:36:05] BALDWIN: The Constitution may separate church and state, but faith and politics have long gone hand in hand. At election time, voters look for inspiration, a reason to believe, a need to put faith perhaps in some sort of savior. Donald Trump supporters may have found all three. Now this journalism professor who has attended a number of Trump

rallies is coining it "Trumpism." He writes in a "New York Times" piece, called "Donald Trump: America's Preach," quote, "Liberals giggle but believers want to feel it all, not just the manufactured hope of a political rally but also the lust, the envy, the anger of more honest selves, transformed by a might plane and the man inside -- "He owns that," moaned by a girl behind me, into something greater."

Jeff Sharlet joins me now. He's also the author and "The Family," a professor at Dartmouth.

Nice to see you, Jeff.

JEFF SHARLET, JOURNALISM PROFESSOR, DARTMOUTH UNIVERSITY & AUTHOR: Hi, Brooke. Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: To that quote, I chose, you talk a lot in the beginning your piece about the feeling, so much has been talked about, the anger at Trump rallies. But you stood there and you felt something. Explain that and why that is so rare in politics these days.

SHARLET: Well, I think whenever we see anger we see heightened emotion. That's our clue that we might be in the realm that religion works, which is also a realm of joy. And that's what -- when I started attending these rallies what I noticed is that when describe violence -- and there is much more imagination of violence than actual violence though there is that, too. They would do so with pleasure and the sense of release and the sense they were cutting through all the static and a noise that they were getting to the real thing. And I think that's very potent, very powerful, and worth understanding. Because as other politicians who have harnessed anger, but to harness anger and joy at the same time that's I think part what have explains Trump's unique appeal.

BALDWIN: Then you ultimately connect the dots and talk about the prosperity gospel. When I think of that, you think of "Mega Plane," Oral Roberts, as you point out, and the huge statue of the hands at the university. And the notion that these preachers can be (INAUDIBLE), and you can, too. You just have to invest as a follower. What are the parallels there with Donald Trump?

SHARLET: Well, for Donald Trump, it comes from the book that he has often talked about as the most important book in his life. Recently, he started holding up the Bible. Before that, it was the book called "The Power of Positive Thinking," by Norman Vincent Peale, this mid- century preacher that his father introduced him to, and was influential in this idea of how do you make yourself successful, you believe in yourself as successful, that God wants you to be successful and that God puts these successful business men among us as models for how to be. Trump believes this and has written about this and talked about this his whole career. That's where he comes in. And he is connecting it to the idea that when we see the preacher with the "Mega Plane" -- has a $65 million private jet, that's not a sign that somehow this guy is too worldly. That's proof that God has chosen him. If you can put your faith in him, God will choose you as with he will. BALDWIN: But you stood there, Jeff, and talked not -- not only the

supporters and quoting them around you, you even went to one of the bars and sat around with some of the folks, and these are folks who don't at all come from the same ilk as Trump. What is it about him that has them so enraptured?

SHARLET: Well, it's certainty, you know. That part that you read about there is not the manufactured hope of a political rally. If you think about the history of American politics, hope is always the driving engine. The hope might be for progressive change. The hope might be for a return to another time. Donald Trump doesn't speak in terms of hope. In fact, in his book, "Crippled America," he says, "This is not a politics of hope." Hope in Trumpland is for losers. Trump speaks in terms of certainty. He says at his rallies, "This isn't 95 percent going to happen. It's 100 percent going to happen."

So when I went into that bar in Youngstown and sat with a group of people, all of them Democrats, all of them voting for Trump, most of them union and they wanted to believe that Trump would bring back a steel mill. They don't want to home he would bring back a steel mill to Youngstown. They wanted it to be a certainty. As the prosperity gospel tells you, if you just put your faith in, it's not a spirituality, it's almost like a science, it's just going to happen, it is a fact.

[14:40:33] BALDWIN: Jeff Sharlet, on his piece in "The New York Times" magazine. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks so much.

SHARLET: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, why is America's reaction to the crack epidemic completely different than the current reaction to the heroin crisis? Is it race? We'll discuss.

Plus, just in to CNN, details of just how former NFL player, Will Smith, of the New Orleans Saints, how he died and what the coroner and his family's attorney are now saying.

Back after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:45:00] BALDWIN: Hillary Clinton is making a direct appeal to a key fraction of the Democratic party as her race against Bernie Sanders is heating up. Today, she spoke at the National Action Network's annual convention in New York.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: What I have tried to do, what I intend to keep doing, with your help, is to refuse to accept as normal the fact that black men today are far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men convicted of the same offenses.

(CHEERING)

CLINTON: And we have seen the toll that takes on families torn apart by excessive incarceration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Secretary Clinton's speech to the mostly African-American group today is taking on new urgency as critics really slammed her for supporting the 1994 crime bill that her husband signed as president, arguing the bill worsened mass incarceration are there are lasting effects to the black community to this day. That bill included $9 billion for prison construction, $8 billion for an additional 100,000 police officers. Opponents say it didn't do enough to address crime prevention and educational programs. According to the Justice Policy Institute, during the former President Clinton's tenure in the White House, prison populations nearly tripled the increase under President Reagan.

Let's have a conversation about this with CNN political commentator, Bakari Sellers, who support Hillary Clinton; and Marc Mauer, the executive director of The Sentencing Project, a non-profit organization that works for a fair and effective criminal justice system.

So, welcome to both of you.

Most importantly, Marc, as well, you testified in the '90s when this crime bill was up for consideration. Do you think that the Clintons have done enough since then?

MARC MAUER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE SENTENCING PROJECT: I think Hillary Clinton on the campaign trial has called several times for the end of the era of mass incarceration. I think it's encouraging. I think she acknowledged that her husband, as they put it, went too far in the crime bill. I think it's unfortunate that it happened but we are in a different moment right now. We need to move on.

Bill Clinton, of course, has made some contradictory statements. Last year, he half apologized, saying that the crime bill went too far. But last week, in his confrontation with the Black Lives Matter group, he was more or less giving a vigorous defense of the crime bill, which I think was not really grounded in research or evidence, but nonetheless, that's his current position apparently.

BALDWIN: You know, a bigger picture -- and I was reading this opinion piece from someone from the Cornell Law School. Bakari, I'm looking at you for this. And in New York, you look at what happened in the '90s with the crack epidemic, primary African-American communities, and this rush to imprison. And you juxtapose that to what is happening in the heroin epidemic. You have President Obama proposing $1 million in funding to address that. You have the current crop of candidates talking so much about the heroin epidemic and treating those who are addicted very differently. Do you see that as a difference?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's a stark contrast. Historical context is key when you are talking about the 1994 crime bill and the unintended consequences that came from it. The fact of the matter is that, yes, it did exacerbate mass incarceration. But it's a bundle of complexities. But to get to the heart of what you are saying, it's amazing that now we're treating this epidemic, this epidemic that many white Americans deal with, with such kid gloves. And the answer or the response that we hear is to treat them. Where in the mid '80s, crack was ravaging African-American communities and it was creating, quote, unquote, "sociopaths" that needed to be arrested. You see the difference in the dialogue. This is a lot of the yanks, the vitriol and anger that you have within my community, that you have in the African-American community. You don't have to be 40 years old or 50 years old to see the difference in the way people are treated. We have to begin to look at the way we treat those dealing with these issues, whether or not it's crack or heroin. We have to look how we sentence them, the way these people are entertained in the criminal justice system, and we have to untangle the mass of complexity that we have.

BALDWIN: Do you think that race is at the heart of this?

MAUER: It's hard not to come to that conclusion. Yes, maybe we've learned from the experience of the drug war of the last several decades, the failure of mass incarceration, and that's encouraging, but we've really seen this for a hundred years, drug wars playing out this way. In the 1930s, marijuana was perceived to be used by Mexican-Americans and African-Americans in so-called seedy parts of town. It was a demon drug. By the time the 1960s came around, millions of white middle class Americans started consuming marijuana. Attitudes changed almost overnight. It was the perception of the user rather than the drug itself that made a difference. That's no way to be developing public policy.

[14:50:10] BALDWIN: Final question, Bakari. Do you think this will hurt -- Bernie Sanders supported it at the time. Obviously, Hillary Clinton supported what her husband was doing. They both said it went too far now. But how much will this hurt her moving forward?

SELLERS: I think both of the candidates -- you stated it best, framed it the best way. Hillary Clinton and her husband supported it. Bernie Sanders voted for it and rearticulated his position for it again even as late as 2006.

But we're here now. We have 2.2 million Americans in the prison system. Which candidate is going to take on and build upon the Clemency Project? Because this president has granted clemency to more inmates and prisoners than the six previous presidents combined. Who is going to talk about ending the school to prison pipeline? Who is going to talk about investing in schools of higher education and not investing in prisons? I'm tired of rehashing the cultural war of the 1990s, I'm tied of talking about the rhetoric used in 1993, '94, because there are too many people, young male who look like me who are in prisons for crimes they shouldn't be in prison for. That's a travesty.

BALDWIN: I'm glad we are having the conversation. We'll keep it up.

SELLERS: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Bakari Sellers and Marc Mauer, appreciate your voices in all of that. Coming up next, is Donald Trump burning bridges with the Republican

Party that simply can't be repaired? He is officially at war with the GOP. We'll talk with someone who is advising him.

Plus, new details on the shooting death of former NFL star, Will Smith. What the coroner revealed moments ago, and what it could mean for the case against his alleged shooter, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:56:00] BALDWIN: Just in to CNN, key details right now could shed some light as far as what happened the night former NFL star, Will Smith, was shot and killed. According to the coroner's report, we know that Smith was shot eight times, and seven of the wounds to his back, one on his left side. New Orleans police now tell us they found two guns in addition to the one the suspect is accused of using to kill Smith. One of them a fully loaded .9 millimeter handgun inside Smith's SUV, and the other, a fully loaded revolver found in the Hummer driven by the shooter, Cardell Hayes, the man accused of fatally shooting Smith and wounding Smith's wife.

Smith's father is now speaking out saying he is confident his son did not get out of the car with a gun.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILL SMITH SR, FATHER OF WILL SMITH: Why would he hit somebody and keep going? That does not make sense to me. He got out of his car. He may have gotten out with a big mouth but he did not get out with his gun.

I'm going to miss his smile, his demeanor, his thoughtfulness for other people.

I raised a young man, a productive citizen, a person that care about other people. That was my job as a parent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Martin Savidge is with me now in New Orleans.

You attended the news conference where the Smith family attorney just spoke. What did he say?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, he talked about a lot of things. First of all, he updated us on the condition of Raquel. Raquel, of course, is Will Smith's wife. She was wounded in the attack. We hadn't heard anything more about her condition since I believe the last time was on Sunday. He updated us on her and then he also updated us on the depiction of this case.

Very quickly, before the attorney for Cardell Hayes jumped out and said, hey, wait a minute here, you have got this all wrong, it's not road rage. This was Mr. Hayes defending himself after some hit and run. The attorney for the Smith family says that's not an accurate portrayal. He says what Hayes did as nothing short of murder. And he described the wounds to both Smith, meaning Will Smith, and Raquel. Here's what the attorney said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER THOMPSON, ATTORNEY FOR SMITH FAMILY: Suddenly, two shots are fired. She is shot immediately in both legs and she collapses. At this point, following the shooting of her, either right immediately, or moments thereafter, the killer unloads six to eight shots into Will's back. So, in all, the killer shot Will Smith in the back eight times.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: The attorney described that Hayes rammed his SUV -- that was the big Hummer -- into the back of the Smith vehicle so strongly it shattered the back window.

And then there was the altercation. He said that the wife actually got out of the vehicle. That's Raquel. Goes to her husband and thinks she is defusing the situation, says come on, let's get away from this. They thought they had it all resolved. But then, according to the attorney, the gunman appeared behind them and opened fire, shooting her first, and then shooting her husband eight times, seven times in the back -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Awful.

Martin Savidge, thank you so much.

[14:59:38:] Top of the hour. You are watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me.

Once again an already unprecedented presidential election breaks the mold. The front-runner of the Republican Party is at war with the party fewer than 100 days from the national convention. Donald Trump directly attacking the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, reportedly saying Priebus should, quote, unquote, "be ashamed of himself" for a nominating system that Trump calls "rigged." He is reacting to his loss in the state of Colorado, not by popular vote, but by a state convention of delegates.