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Cruz: Trump "Pretending" to be Conservative; Prince's Record Sales Hit All-Time High. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired April 24, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:31:24] VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Thirty-one minutes after the hour now.

There have been two shootings overnight. One at a high school prom in Wisconsin. Police there say a shooter showed up, started firing at students, leaving the building. Police say two students are now in the hospital. The suspected shooter is in custody.

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: The other shooting in Topeka, Kansas. Four federal agents were shot while trying to make an arrest at a motel. During the shooting, a fire broke out at the motel. Police say it's not clear whether the suspect is still inside or has escaped.

Today, a special tribute to honor Prince, his native city in Minneapolis, holding a series of memorials, movie screenings, performances, a block party. The First Avenue block party has been going on since 1:30 this morning. Also, the city is showing the classic film "Purple Rain" in Twin City theaters. The city is still working on a public memorial for him.

BLACKWELL: North Korea has released new pictures of its new ballistic missile launch. The claim the test was a success and they plan to continue with nuclear tests as long as the U.S. conducts joint exercises with South Korea. The U.S. officials say they are monitoring the situation closely. CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of those photos.

Donald Trump supporters say their candidate is being denied delegates, after Maine's GOP convention awarded 19 of the 20 delegates to Ted Cruz. The lone exception is the state's governor, Paul LePage, who accused the Cruz campaign of going back on a plan to have the delegates count match the results of the caucuses.

PAUL: In the meantime, Ted Cruz is slamming Donald Trump over that secretly recorded meeting with Trump's top adviser where Trump was described as, quote, "evolving".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We've had enough phonies already. I'm beginning to wonder if Donald's next book is going to be "the art of the betrayal, because what he is doing is he is laughing at the American people, and he is pretending to be something he is not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: All right, let's look ahead to Tuesday in the contest in the Northeast. Voters in five states will head to the polls and the results could potentially paint a clearer picture of who will be each party's potential nominee.

Joining me now is Jake Tapper, host of "STATE OF THE UNION" and "THE LEAD".

Jake, good morning to you.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, "STATE OF THE UNION": Good morning.

BLACKWELL: So, Donald Trump gained momentum after his New York win, but obviously it will be difficult to reach 1,237, the number of delegates to earn the nomination.

Are we learning more about the plan to get there?

TAPPER: Well, we are, and we're also hearing a lot still from the Trump campaign when it comes to complaints about the system. In fact, I spoke with Donald Trump, Jr. for my show "STATE OF THE UNION" which airs at 9:00 Eastern, and asked him about the plan going forward, given the fact that the Trump campaign rails against the delegate system so much.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, you don't like it, I understand, you don't like the system, but what I don't understand, are you going to try to woo delegates and then try to change it, or is your dad saying no, we're not going to do that?

DONALD TRUMP, JR., SON OF DONALD TRUMP: Well, listen, I think we're going do what we need to win to a point. But I think we want to win without having to do that.

You know, Ted Cruz has no chance of winning this without bribing the delegates. That's his game at this point, OK? He is mathematically eliminated, but that's his game from day one, he is not an appealing candidate to the general election voters. So, he'll try to get there, he'll do this, he'll lose more states than Mitt Romney because I can't name a single state that Mitt lost that Ted can possibly win.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, there you heard Donald Trump, Jr. continuing this very forceful accusation that what the Cruz campaign is doing in their wooing of delegates amounts to essentially bribery, although Donald Trump, Jr. not ruling out that the Trump campaign would do similar things if they need to, to get the delegates on board.

BLACKWELL: All right. Let's look ahead to the Democrats and Bernie Sanders on your show today. I mean, he lost New York by a greater margin than he hoped, of course. What does he have to do to regain momentum after this loss?

TAPPER: Well, I think he has to do very well in the states coming up. Obviously five states on Tuesday, as you know. In order to be able to overtake Hillary Clinton in these pledged delegates, he needs to really have some victories, especially some overwhelming victories, the kind we saw a few weeks ago when he was racking up 70 percent, 80 percent victories in some of these caucus states out west. He needs to deliver on that.

That's going to be a tougher thing for him to achieve, given the fact that Hillary Clinton is polling so high in places like Pennsylvania and other states, Maryland, that are going to have their contests on Tuesday.

BLACKWELL: All right. Jake Tapper, looking forward to the show.

TAPPER: Thanks, Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right. Do not miss it, Donald Trump, Jr. and Bernie Sanders on "STATE OF THE UNION" with Jake Tapper, 9:00 a.m. Eastern, right here on CNN.

PAUL: Still ahead, remembering Prince, the sports fan. You may not know how charitable he was. We're going to talk about what he did to reward his local WNBA team for a big win.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:40:04] BLACKWELL: Well, as dedicated as he was to the music, some are surprised to learn that Prince had time to be a sports fan, but he was a huge sportsman sports fan, especially basketball. When he wasn't as he is here courtside, there are stories of him watching games on a monitor off stage as he played guitar solos, having members of his entourage off stage holding up cards with the game scores on them, and not just the NBA.

You know, Minnesota Lynx star Renee Montgomery joins us from Minneapolis.

Renee, good morning to you. And we understand that he was a WNBA fan as well.

RENEE MONTGOMERY, MINNESOTA LYNX PLAYER: Yes, he actually was, which I mean I was surprised about as well.

BLACKWELL: So, tell us about Prince coming to the games and we understand there was a special invitation for the team after a game.

MONTGOMERY: Yes, well, see, I don't know if it was planned or not, but he was at our game. No one told us before the game, because I mean, who can focus if Prince is there. BLACKWELL: Yes.

MONTGOMERY: So we kind of found out afterwards, when I checked my phone after the game, a lot of people were like Prince was at your game. I was like what. He wasn't sitting front row or anything so I could see him. I think he was in one of the boxes. It was a great experience.

BLACKWELL: So, after the game, we understand there was an invitation to Paisley Park? Tell us about that.

MONTGOMERY: Yes, so after the game, we were celebrating and everything and we're on top of the world. Our GM comes in and tells us, hey, guys, I have a formal invitation for you. What is he talking about?

Prince has formally invited to you Paisley Park and also sent a limo to get there. Like one of those limo buses or something like that. And everybody was like, wait, we were like what. We had former plans and those plans went completely out the window. Once he invited us, that was our only plan for the night.

BLACKWELL: There's no night club that compares, there's no after dinner party, nothing that compares to Paisley Park.

So, tell me about what happened once you got there?

MONTGOMERY: So, you know, we -- the whole ride there, we're asking each other, is this really happening? Are we going to Paisley Park for a private concert. So we get there, and this is the part that makes me the saddest. We get there and we can't bring any ones, cameras or anything in.

So I only get -- you know, we only have our memories of this. We had no photos, nothing. He had a little display up that said congratulation champions, he put on a private show and put thought into doing this.

It was just, it was a surreal moment. This is Prince. This is not like, you know, just any like popular person right now. This is an icon. So I mean when we walked in, it was a surreal feeling.

BLACKWELL: So we have of course talked about how he was a basketball fan, him playing basketball, being pretty good. Have you ever seen him play?

MONTGOMERY: I haven't, you know. I've heard the same stories you have. And I would love to have seen him play some games. I would have played to play against him. I played a little bit of pig against Obama. So, to add Prince to the list, I mean, it would be amazing.

BLACKWELL: All right. Renee Montgomery of Minnesota Lynx, a really special memories, special experience, and all you have is a memory because notoriously private, Prince did not allow any photographs of the event. Thanks so much for sharing that with us this morning.

MONTGOMERY: No problem. Thank you for having me.

BLACKWELL: All right, enjoy your Sunday.

Prince's death has inspired fans to buy so much more music, now that you're hearing the hits on the radio, talking about them. His record sales have hit an all-time high.

PAUL: CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter breaking down the numbers for us.

How much are we talking what now, three, four days after we learned of his death?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Yes, according to one sources. On the first day on Thursday, more than 1 million songs were sold. Billboards expecting his greatest hits to hit number one on the top 200 chart in the days. If you look at on iTunes, even this morning, eight of the top 10, three days later, eight of the top 10 are Prince albums.

So, partly because he controlled distribution of his music, you can't find it on Spotify or Pandora and other services, people are buying up so many of his albums all weekend long.

BLACKWELL: So, there is this legend, I'll call it, that Prince has recorded enough music to release an album a year for the rest of the century.

PAUL: Wow.

BLACKWELL: Any way to know if that's true?

STELTER: From all accounts, it is true. We don't know the exact number of songs, but enough people close to him have said the vault contains hundreds and hundreds of unreleased songs. So, it's a matter of how and when and who releases them. That will be the question going forward.

Of course, he owned, you know, his recordings, he always fought for control with the music label, and, of course, that inspired many other artists over the years.

PAUL: I'm just chomping at the bit to hear what he did that he didn't release.

[07:45:02] BLACKWELL: I mean, the new renditions we're hearing to the older songs are so rich.

PAUL: Yes, fantastic, yes.

STELTER: Right.

PAUL: Listen, Prince's 2004 Grammy performance with Beyonce, a lot of people say, that helped her career skyrocket, and she's able to drop music without any notice, fans rushed to buy it, which she has done.

The lyrics behind the latest visual album, though, do have a lot of people talking this morning. What's going on?

STELTER: Yes. What Beyonce did last night is very interesting, and Prince would have appreciated it, the way she surprised people with the new album, an hour long sort of movie on HBO to preview it and premiere it, and then in order to actually access the entire album, you have to go on Tidal, which is a streaming service that artists own.

So, Beyonce and other artists have gravitated toward the service. That's actually the main place you can find most of Prince's music to stream. He was a supporter of Tidal as well.

So, Beyonce releasing the new album on title, and a lot of the lyrics suggest heartbreak. They suggest betrayal. It has people buzzing about her relationship. It also goes into depth about feminism and black identity.

This is a different Beyonce than we've seen before. And, of course, as you can imagine, the Internet blew up when this was released. The way that Beyonce is controlling her image, controlling her music and message is sorts of a reminder of how Prince was doing it years and years, and actually decades ago.

I think what he did is laid a path for many other artists in terms of controlling the way they release music.

BLACKWELL: It is. What we're seeing is Beyonce becoming very deft at controlling and creating appetite. And we remember, the first video "Formation", that was released on the eve of the Super Bowl. Think about how long ago that was.

Then, she announced the world tour. And then, well, where is the music? And here is comes this weekend.

STELTER: That's right. In order to access it, you have to pay for the streaming service. It won't be online any other place for a long time. Even the HBO movie, which is really remarkable, this hour-long movie she released last night, it's only going to be available on HBO for one day and then you have to go find it on title.

So, the way she is sort of using her power, her leverage as an entertainer in order to push people toward the service she wants, it's really remarkable to see, and then, of course, the message is interesting as well. She shows several of the parents of victims of shootings by police officers, as she also talks in-depth, as I mentioned about her own relationship, create a lot of intrigue, a lot of curiosity. Even though at the end of the movie, she shows Jay-Z and she shows their daughter, there's a lot of curiosity about the lyrics in here. It's got a lot of people wanting to listen over and over and over again to her new album.

PAUL: Yes, trying to analyze, I'm sure. Brian Stelter, we appreciate it. Thank you so much.

STELTER: Thanks.

PAUL: And you can catch Brian on "RELIABLE SOURCES". It's at 11:00 a.m. Eastern today, right here on CNN. That's where he'll be.

BLACKWELL: All right. He was one of the pilots that turned the tide of World War II.

PAUL: A look at the historic Battle of Midway in the words of a heroic Navy dive bomber.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:51:41] PAUL: I want to talk about one of America's unsung heroes of World War II that has passed away. Dusty Kleiss was the last surviving Navy dive bomber. He dropped 500 ton bombs on Japanese warships in the Battle of Midway.

BLACKWELL: CNN's Richard Roth spoke with Captain Kleiss in October, and they both looked back at his dramatic accomplishments.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The stories told by these hero pilots may rewrite all textbooks on naval warfare.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): American pilots changed the course of World War II. In the decisive Battle of Midway in the Pacific, the U.S. airmen destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers, halting Japan's military advance.

One of those hero pilots was Navy Captain Norman "Jack" Kleiss, a kid out of Kansas.

A year before Midway, Kleiss earned his famous when he avoided a runway collision.

NAVY CAPTAIN NORMAN JACK "DUSTY" KLEISS, WORLD WAR II PILOT: Dust came up in the air, and the tower said, "Unknown dust cloud, who the hell are you?"

ROTH: It wouldn't be the last time Dusty Kleiss would fly in by surprise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Suddenly, the trap is sprung.

ROTH: June 4, 1942, U.S. pilots catch the Japanese by surprise, not from Midway Island but aircraft carriers like Dusty's ship, "The Enterprise".

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Navy planes roar from the depths of our carriers.

ROTH: Dusty and his dauntless Douglas Squadron arrive while the Japanese were loading bombs onboard the carrier Kaga.

KLEISS: I went up to 20,000 feet and I looked at the big red circle on the Kaga, so I dived down vertically.

ROTH: Others missed but Kleiss was the second pilot to hit the Kaga.

KLEISS: I'd already planned exactly where to put my bombs.

(EXPLOSION)

CLEESE: The main bomb went down four decks below.

ROTH: Hurtling downward, he pulled the plane up above the ocean, as the Kaga erupted in flames.

Back on the ship, Dusty took a brief nap, and then joined in an attack on another carrier, the Hiryu.

KLEISS: It was a bonfire that could be seen ten miles away.

ROTH: Kleiss received the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his dive-bombing heroics.

KLEISS: I'm anything but a hero.

ROTH: On board, Kleiss would write in the naval log books and to his girlfriend, Jean, who he would marry soon after Midway.

Captain Kleiss would later say no one had the good luck he had in his century of life.

KLEISS: I figure, God, in his mercy, has given me the ability to do certain things.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIA BREAK)

[07:57:59] BLACKWELL: Riot police broke up rallies at a confederate monument in Georgia on Saturday. This happened after fights broke out between a pro-white group and number of anti-demonstrators. Eight of the counter-protesters who were arrested, as well as one member of the pro-white group who threw a smoke bomb at police.

PAUL: First Lady Michelle Obama told graduates at Jackson State University, take a deep breath and rise above racism.

BLACKWELL: She gave one of her final commencement addresses as first lady, that was on Saturday, urging the class of 2016 to take their social activism to the ballot box.

She also warned that rights can be stripped away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: We see it right here in Mississippi, just two weeks ago, how swiftly progress can hurdle backwards. How easy it is to single out a small group and marginalize them because of who they are or who they love. So, we've got to stand side by side with all our neighbors -- straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu, immigrant, Native American, because the march for civil rights isn't just about African-Americans. It's about all Americans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: President Obama will give several commencements speeches this year.

One of the high school in Arizona and another at the City College of New York, and a third at Howard University in Washington -- Victor's alma mater.

BLACKWELL: Yes, let me just say that wasn't initially in the script and I was about to add that after you said it. Somebody got on it and add that he will be also speaking at Howard University.

PAUL: Yes.

BLACKWELL: All right. We got that in.

Hey, the new CNN original series "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA", comedian W. Kamau Bell travels across the country and in the debut episode he tackles the issue of race in America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

W. KAMAU BELL, UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA: This guy said he was coming alone. Why did I believe him?

KKK: I'm going to let you know, I'm the imperial wizard of the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

BELL: Don't you think that by wearing the same robes that it's hard to separate those different Klans, like --

KKK: I have an opportunity to wear a Klansman's robe. Why? Because I'm white and I believe in the ideals, rituals, and beliefs of the Ku Klux Klan. I was raised that way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: All right. You can catch the very first episode in the series in just a few hours. "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA" with W. Kamau Bell, premieres tonight at 10:00 Eastern on CNN.

PAUL: We hope you make some great memories today. Thank you for sharing your time with us.

BLACKWELL: "INSIDE POLITICS" with John King starts right now.