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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Trump Blasts Rigged Delegate System; Democrats Battle for New York; Ecuador and Japan Rocked by Earthquakes; Defense Secretary Carter Lands in Iraq; Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired April 18, 2016 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:31:04] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Critical point in the battle for New York. Tomorrow voters head to the polls in the race for president. Who is up? Who is down? And who is crying foul this morning?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news now. A frantic race to find survivors after powerful earthquakes strike Ecuador and Japan. Live team coverage ahead.
BERMAN: Yes. Bonkers night in Brazil. That country votes to impeach its president. What happened? How it happened and what it means to the markets and your stock portfolio. We'll tell you in a few minutes.
Welcome back to EARLY START, everyone. I'm John Berman.
ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. It is 31 minutes past the hour this Monday morning.
Just 24 hours away from now the big dance in the Big Apple, the New York presidential primary. Hometown billionaire Donald Trump hopes to crush opponents Ted Cruz and John Kasich here. And the polls do show him well ahead.
Trump campaigns across the state today, which no doubt means new attacks against his own party. Trump furious about his new losses over the weekend in the race for delegates, getting swamped by Ted Cruz at the Wyoming state convention. It is a system Trump says is rigged.
More on that this morning from CNN's Chris Frates.
CHRIS FRATES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John and Christine. Donald Trump firing up his fellow New Yorkers ahead of the crucial primary here on Tuesday after what was not a great weekend for Donald Trump. He lost to Ted Cruz in Wyoming, losing all 14 of those delegates at a state convention there. Similar to what happened to him in Colorado where he lost to Ted Cruz about a week or so ago at the state convention there.
And Donald Trump saying these state conventions are rigged, saying that they're not primaries or caucuses where the voters go to vote and calling the big bosses out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have a system that's rigged. We have a system that's crooked. We have a system that's got a lot of problems. And we have a system that doesn't allow the people to vote, in many cases, and if they do vote their vote isn't really representative of what it should be. We have this delegate system which is a sham. So in Colorado the people are going crazy out there because they never got a chance to vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FRATES: Now the Republican National Committee firing back and saying that the candidates have known the rules for months. In fact, this is the same process that they used to nominate Abraham Lincoln back in 1860, so there really should be no surprises.
But Ted Cruz, using his victory in Wyoming to take a little poke at Donald Trump, tweeting on Sunday, quote, "Donald, over 1.3 million people just voted in Utah, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Colorado and Wyoming. You lost all five in a row by huge margins. #NoWhining."
So Ted Cruz, I think he had a little bit of a victory lap after his big win in Wyoming on Saturday, and he better enjoy it if you believe the polls because Donald Trump winning by double digits here in New York. A recent "Wall Street Journal" poll showing that he had 54 percent support. Ted Cruz, on the other hand, had just 16 percent, so it's a tough slog for him.
Donald Trump looking to take all 95 delegates here on Tuesday. If he can win by 50 percent statewide in each of the congressional districts, he could go a long way toward getting to that magic number of 1237. Of course, Ted Cruz and John Kasich trying to stop him -- John, Christine.
ROMANS: All right, Chris Frates. Thanks, Chris.
John Kasich polling second in New York. He hits the ground hard today with town halls in Syracuse and Schenectady. Ted Cruz, a distant third in New York polls, is looking past tomorrow to next Tuesday's contests and there are a lot of those. He's got a rally today in one of those states. Maryland.
BERMAN: The Democratic candidates, they are in intense battle just one day to go here in New York. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both campaigning in the city today. Hillary Clinton, she was on Staten Island this weekend taking shots at Bernie Sanders and arguing that she has a long history of fighting corporate interests starting with the healthcare battle when her husband was president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I really tried hard. And I got my head handed to me by the drug companies and the insurance companies. You know I love it when all the -- when all these other folks, including my opponent in the primary talks about taking on the interests and -- where were you? I mean, really. [04:35:09] We were fighting tooth and nail trying to get universal
health care coverage passed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders in the latest polls by 10 points or more, even so Sanders drew a huge crowd in Prospect Park in Brooklyn to hear him speak over the weekend. His campaign claimed more than 28,000 people were there which would make it his biggest rally yet.
CNN's Brynn Gingras has more from Brooklyn.
BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, a political revolution of feel the Bern. This is what the crowd of 28,000 people in Prospect Park were yelling when Bernie Sanders took the stage. And while he was a little hoarse and looked a little tired, he certainly was revved-up to this crowd and really sticking to the talking points that he's focused on throughout his entire campaign especially here in New York and also at that Democratic debate on CNN.
And those were how he really differentiates himself from Hillary Clinton, including foreign policy, trade policy, minimum wage, environmental issues and then of course the big one, the way he is fundraising his campaign and how that is very different from Hillary Clinton in the fact that he is not taking large campaign contributions. He's not really in bed with the 1 percent. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Here is a simple truth which everybody understands whether you are progressive or conservative. And that is you cannot have a super PAC raise many millions of dollars from Wall Street or special interests and then tell the American people with a straight face that you're going to stand up to the big money interests. Not true.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GINGRAS: And you can hear the applause from that remark from Sanders. It really resonated with the 28,000 supporters here in Prospect Park. And we had a chance to talk to some of them. One gentleman came all the way from Norway just to hear Sanders speak here in New York. So it kind of gives you an idea of how global his message is at this point.
And that's one thing Bernie mentioned when he wrapped up his speech. It is important to get out and vote because he usually does well when voter turnout is high. So we'll see what happens come Tuesday -- John and Christine.
BERMAN: All right, Brynn Gingras in Prospect Park.
Bernie Sanders, he will be on CNN live later this morning, 8:30 a.m. on "NEW DAY." ROMANS: All right. To Brazil now. Dramatic events unfolding
overnight in Brazil after five hours of scuffling, shouting and even singing, lawmakers in Brazil had voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff. A two-thirds majority in favor of impeachment was reached in Brazil's Lower House last night. The motion now goes to the Senate. If it is approved there, Rousseff will have to step down for six months to defend herself in a trial. She is accused of hiding a massive budget deficit to win re-election in 2014.
BERMAN: In just hours, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments challenging President Obama's executive orders on immigration. These actions would protect up to five million immigrants from deportation. The justices must decide whether the 26 states challenging the president's orders have suffered sufficiently to sue, whether they have standing could be the big issue there.
This morning, the Senate is working to finalize legislation that would mandate new security at major airports across the country. New consumer protections for air travelers and new regulation for drones. Drone regulation here coming as we learn of what appears to be the first collision between a drone and a major commercial airliner. This happened Sunday to British Airways in Heathrow in London. The plane was not damaged. It landed safely.
ROMANS: All right. 39 minutes past the hour. Time for an EARLY START on your money. Oil tumbling, bringing stocks down around the world. Dow futures are down about 0.5 percent here. Right now stock markets in Europe are lower. A big loss in Tokyo overnight as well.
Some of America's fastest growing jobs pay less than $25,000 a year. Among the 10 jobs projected to employ the most new workers in the coming years, half of those pay less than 25 grand a year. Three quarters pay less than a typical annual wage of $35,540/ Food prep and service workers make less than $25,000 a year on average. Personal care and home health aides make just more than $22,000 a year. Retail sales jobs, retail jobs are also among the fastest growing with low wages.
The key to break out of these low-wage positions is education. Most of these jobs don't require a college degree. Starting salaries and lifetime earnings significantly higher for those with a college diploma.
But when you look, John, at how fast low wage jobs are growing in this country, it is one of the things that feeds the unease in the political arena right now. Right? People feel -- some people feel like if you get a college degree, some of the jobs available to you are these low-wage jobs. So that -- I think that statistic there is one thing that you're seeing on the campaign trail.
BERMAN: Yes. Jobs increasing but economic pressure is not.
ROMANS: Exactly.
[04:40:00] BERMAN: All right. Happening now. Searching for survivors after powerful, powerful, powerful earthquakes strike in Ecuador and Japan. We will take you there live next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: Two countries, 9,000 miles apart, both struggling to cope with devastating earthquakes this morning. Right now there's a state of emergency in Ecuador where a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 270 people this morning -- this weekend, rather. Emergency officials admitting they can't even calculate how many people are missing.
BERMAN: You know, Japan, aftershocks are hampering the rescue efforts as a powerful earthquake two days apart rocked the southern part of that country. Dozens are dead, thousands more without food and shelter this morning.
We have these breaking stories covered, CNN in both nations. We're going to start with Boris Sanchez live in Ecuador.
Boris, give us the latest.
[04:45:01] BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John and Christine. You said it. 272 people killed. At least 272. More than 2500 people hurt. Both those numbers expected to continue rising because it's very difficult to get into rural areas right now, especially on the coast. The hardest hit areas are on the coast here in Ecuador. This is one of them, the city of Guayaquil.
You can't really get an idea of the scope of the damage to this bridge behind me but it is one of the busiest bridges in the entire city and it essentially just fell to the ground. It fell on the car actually and killed the driver and hurt a person inside.
Infrastructure is the biggest problem in Ecuador right now. It had been raining for several weeks straight because of El Nino here. And that weakened the roads. Now the earthquake has decimated them so it's very difficult to get into the hardest hit areas, and it's really difficult to get an idea of what structures are still potentially sound. We've heard reports that many people are actually sleeping outside because they are scared to go inside their homes.
The other issue right now is communication. It's very difficult to get a hold of loved ones in those hard hit areas. As we move forward, though, about 10,000 soldiers, 4,000 police officers are on the ground getting ready for another day of digging out from under this earthquake.
To give you an idea of just how deadliest powerful this thing was the deadliest earthquake in Ecuador's history killed about 1,000 people. It was 7.2 on the Richter's scale. This one was 7.8.
The president of Ecuador of course was at the Vatican this weekend. He had to cut that trip short to get back to his country and try to shore up the situation. The recovery effort underway here but as you mentioned, Christine, it's going to be very difficult to get a full picture of just how bad this earthquake was until we dig out from one of the rubble. BERMAN: You do get a sense the death toll there could rise.
Boris Sanchez for us in Ecuador, thanks so much.
Want to turn now to Japan, where two deadly earthquakes have killed more than 40 people. More than a thousand people injured.
CNN's Matt Rivers is live from Kumamoto, Japan this morning. Matt, what are you seeing?
MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's show you an example of the damage that came from the earthquake that occurred on Saturday. You said there was two, one on Thursday, one on Saturday. This damage comes from Saturday. This a home here that was a two- story home up until Saturday. But this foundation actually during the quake began sliding down this very steep slope behind me. It ripped apart this asphalt here. This parking lot.
There's now a trench that's probably about a meter and a half deep. It honestly looks like something out of a movie set. This is the kind of damage here that this really intense earthquake on Saturday preempted by the one on Thursday did to homes just like this one in southwestern Japan.
BERMAN: Matt, what is the latest on the rescue efforts there? Are they still ongoing?
RIVERS: Very much so. And there was some good news this afternoon. They were actually able to find two of the 11 people that officials said were trapped when we checked in with them this morning. Two people were found this afternoon, which was great news for rescuers because they faced an uphill battle battling terrible weather conditions and very difficult scenes like this one here.
And then also they have been dealing with people who were trapped in landslides that were triggered by this earthquake. That's where we spent most of our day today watching dozens of hard-working soldiers here from the Japanese Self-Defense Force dig through that rubble and try and find more survivors. Two were found today. The hope is that before nightfall here, which will happen in an hour or so, perhaps more can be found.
BERMAN: It's remarkable they still are finding people alive there. A piece of good news and happiness. Matt Rivers in Kumamoto, thanks so much.
ROMANS: So two earthquakes on opposite sides of the Pacific, hours apart. Are they somehow related? Is this a start of a quake epidemic? It's a big question people have been asking.
Want to get to meteorologist Pedram Javaheri for the answers.
PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: John and Christine, let's break this down because people wanting to know, of course, if this is indeed related. And the USGS scientists have said over and over again no direct relation to this. It's all random chance. I mean, you take a look at the number of major quakes we've had so far in 2016, that's 7.0 to 7.9, it's five. We had one in Alaska, one in Russia, Indonesia, and of course in the past several days, Japan and Ecuador joined the list.
But statistically speaking, that is precisely how many we should have through the first four months of the year, with a 15 per year average being what is considered normal globally speaking. But again these plates are constantly in motion. The Nazca Plate, the Oceanic Plate that is diving underneath the South American Plate, it is moving constantly and it's moving at a rate of about 2.5 or so inches per year, which by the way is the equivalent to the rate that your fingernail grows every single year, so it gives you an idea of how quickly these plates are constantly moving towards one another.
And of course once they slip, you get the rebound effect. That's the shaking that you feel and that's what a 7.0 occurred over this region on Friday into Saturday caused across the area. But when you talk about 7.8, you know, the aftershocks, typically, you typically bring that one order of magnitude less.
[04:50:02] You would expect a 6.8 aftershock in the coming couple of days. That has yet to happen so of course a lot of people still all on alert across this region.
ROMANS: All right. Pedram Javaheri, thanks for that.
A big drop in oil prices rippling around the globe. Will it hit Wall Street this Monday morning? We're going to get an EARLY START on your money next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: Breaking news this morning. Defense Secretary Ash Carter just arrived in Baghdad. This was an unannounced stop on his tour of the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. He is there to meet with U.S. troops and Iraqi officials including prime minister, and show a continued U.S. commitment to that nation.
With more on what that means CNN international correspondent Arwa Damon joins us by phone. Arwa is in Baghdad.
Good morning.
ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John. And key among the things that will be brought up is what more can the U.S. bring to the table in terms of enablers, that is air support, that is artillery strikes.
[04:55:08] There's also the possibility that perhaps more Apache helicopters will be brought into the battle. Does the U.S. perhaps at this stage willing to undertake a bit more risk? Crucial in all of this is the key battle ground of Iraq's second largest city, the city of Mosul. As America's top man on the ground in Iraq, Major General Gary Volesky, told us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GEN. GARY VOLESKY, U.S. ARMY MAJOR: All I want to make sure is, is that Daesh continue to have pressure put on them. That we continue to enable the Iraqi Security Forces to get after Mosul because once Mosul is cleared of Daesh, they don't have a piece of terrain they can stick their flag in and say there's Daesh and Iraq is part of something we own. And that, in my mind, is one of the most clear symbols that enables them to do what they want to do, and they're going to lose that.
DAMON: But if you want to defeat them, you want to make sure that they also no longer have the capacity to regroup and come back as something worse than what we're seeing them as today, which is what they've done in the past.
VOLESKY: And my assessment is that takes a whole of government approach. It takes engagement across all of the -- what we would call our elements of national power. And is that something that is easy? No. This is the most complex environment I've been in. This is my fifth rotation here. I've not seen at this complex. It's hard but it's not impossible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: And John, Volesky is in charge of the Iraq course and when it comes to the battle against ISIS and defeating ISIS in Iraq is not just a military component as you heard from the general. There also has a political one as well. At this stage the Iraqi political spectrum is in quite a mess with a divided parliament and the possible threat that the government itself could collapse. Things that secretary of Defense Carter is going to want guaranteed of the Iraqi government -- John.
BERMAN: Arwa, I know from speaking to the generals there over the years, too, that dealing with the political leaders in Iraq is such a chose for those military figures.
Arwa Damon for us in Baghdad. Thanks so much.
ROMANS: All right. Let's get an EARLY START on your money this Monday morning.
Oil prices diving. Crude falling more than 4 percent right now. OPEC members could not agree on a production freeze which would have lifted prices.
Stock markets around the globe responding. U.S. stock futures -- slipping stock markets in Europe. Stock markets in Asia all falling. But we expect Brazil stock market to rally today after the impeachment vote against its president. Investors there cheering political change and the potential, they think at least now, for more business friendly policies.
Alexander Hamilton is staying on the $10 bill. But Andrew Jackson is being replaced by a woman on the $20. Treasury Secretary Jack Liu expected to announce these changes this week. Treasury officials telling this to CNN, a woman representing the fight for racial equality will eventually replace Andrew Jackson on the $20, but that change likely won't come until the year 2030 due to counterfeiting measures.
Liu announced last summer he was looking into putting a woman on the $10 bill but that created this firestorm from the legions of Hamilton fans.
BERMAN: The new legions of Hamilton fans.
ROMANS: He was the nation's first Treasury secretary, of course. Hamilton will stay. But a scene representing the women's suffrage movement is expected to be added to the back of the $10 bill. And I'll tell you the Treasury Department surprised by the reaction, the big reaction to all of this about changing these bills.
All right. Another reason people are so crazy about Alexander Hamilton is that hit musical on Broadway, making ground making money moves of its own. A deal reached this weekend will dole out profits to original cast members who helped in the show's development.
The deal has been in the works for the past few weeks. It was proposed by actors who wanted a portion of the profits which could reach upwards of $500,000 per week. Producers already get a cut. The musical is of course the hottest show on Broadway. Tickets are sold out for the rest of year. And it has made Hamilton a household name.
BERMAN: And making actors money and saving Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill.
ROMANS: I wonder if more people know who is the first Treasury secretary, not the current Treasury secretary.
BERMAN: I would say. I would bet on yes.
ROMANS: That's right.
BERMAN: EARLY START continues right now.
It is all happening right now. Right here in New York. The intense battle for president. The New York primary 24 hours away. Who's up? Who's down? Who's crying foul this morning?
ROMANS: A frantic race to save survivors as powerful earthquakes strike in Ecuador and Japan. We are live covering these stories the way only CNN can.
And what a night in Brazil. Bonkers. Breaking news there. The House -- the Lower House votes to impeach the president of that nation. We could see economic upheaval. Not just there, but spreading around the world as well.
Good morning, everyone. And welcome to EARLY START. I'm John Berman.
ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. It is Monday, April 18th, it is 5:00 a.m. in the East --
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