Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Cruz-Kasich Deal; Ohio Murders. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired April 25, 2016 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:14] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Here we go. Top of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me.

This is how I see this today. The wild presidential election just turned into an episode of "Survivor" and Donald Trump's biggest rivals are using his own advice against him. Ted Cruz and John Kasich taking a page from "The Art of The Deal." They're joining forces now to guarantee a convention circus. In this bombshell move, Kasich and Cruz are teaming up to stop Trump from winning the nomination on the first ballot at a contested convention. They are now focusing their efforts on select upcoming primaries. Ultimately the goal is this, a contested convention that would give them a shot at the nomination.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: After discussions with the Kasich campaign, we made a decision about allocating resources. We decided to allocate our time and energy and resources on the state of Indiana. Governor Kasich decided to allocate his resources elsewhere.

GOV. JOHN KASICH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Resources. And I - I feel that it's very fair for me to be able to - to go to areas where I can spend my resources most effectively and - and the same is true for Senator Cruz. What's the big deal?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: What's the big deal? Donald Trump says it is quite a big deal. After getting wind of the plan, Trump took to Twitter and said this. "Wow, just announced that lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. Desperation."

At his moment, all three Republican candidates are holding campaign events. Moments ago, we heard from Trump, who was, shall I say, on a tear? You'll hear from him in a minute. He went hard after both candidates at a rally in Rhode Island. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you collude in business or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail. But in politics, because it's a rigged system, because it's a corrupt enterprise, in politics, you're allowed to collude. So they colluded.

And actually I was happy because it shows how weak they are. It shows how pathetic they are. But it takes two guys, long-time politicians, to try and get together to try and beat Trump and yet they're way behind. And I said to myself, that's pretty bad. That's pretty bad. And here's the key, I've only been doing this for ten months. I haven't even been doing it very long.

Kasich, we call him one for 41. I thought it was 38. He's won one race in 41 states. One! OK? States and islands. So I call him now - I have a new nickname for him, one for 41. Very soon it's going to be one for 46 or 47 on (ph) him. He's going to collapse like a rock.

Lyin' Ted Cruz will lose so badly to crooked Hillary, it will be one of the great defeats ever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Nickname after nickname after nickname. I have CNN Politics executive editor Mark Preston here. I mean he went on to slam how John Kasich was eating his omelet this morning. Tiny bites, tiny bites Donald Trump kept saying. On the deal though, when's the back story? When did this start?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Well, I mean, if you are to believe the Kasich folks, they wanted this to start months ago. And in some ways it might have been smarter to start this months ago.

BALDWIN: Ys.

PRESTON: And it might have been smarter to keep Marco Rubio in the race months ago in order to try to, you know, deny Donald Trump the 1,237 delegates.

BALDWIN: Ys.

PRESTON: But the deal was finally sealed last night and the reason being is that Ted Cruz, in order to win the nomination outright, would have had to win 100 percent of the remaining delegates, which is an impossibility.

BALDWIN: Right.

PRESTON: John Kasich was already well out of it at this point. They're just throwing everything at him right now in trying to win this.

BALDWIN: To go along with the analogy of "Survivor," the reality TV show, where, you know, you're on this island or what have you and you're, you know, pledging your allegiances. At the end of the day, you want to win. And you're going to stab somebody else in the back. Am I wrong?

PRESTON: No doubt. But what was interesting about today is, so they announced this pact last night that they're going to basically disarm in certain states to try to help the other one out. However, they don't (ph) sell the plan this morning. They basically go out and they say John Kasich is going to still kind of be in Indiana.

BALDWIN: It's like, if you want to vote for me in Indiana, go ahead and vote for me in India.

PRESTON: Then go ahead and vote for me. You know, if they wanted to really try to make this plan work, then they should go out and try to say that Donald Trump is bad for the country and bad for the Republican Party.

Brooke, after tomorrow night, after tomorrow night, there are only 10 more primaries left. I mean the clock is clicking. Donald Trump's expected to do very well tomorrow night and they're concerned that he'll do very well in Indiana.

BALDWIN: Mark Preston, thank you very much.

I want to stay on this here and talk more with Ron Nehring. He is the national spokesman for the Ted Cruz campaign, and Barry Bennett, senior adviser to the Trump campaign and former campaign manager to Dr. Ben Carson.

Gentlemen, nice to have you on.

Ron, to you first. I mean, just listen to Donald Trump in the last hour, his words, "weak," "pathetic," "collusion." As I mentioned, you know, criticizing how John Edward - or John Kasich was eating this morning. You heard all of that. Talking about your guy and John Kasich. Your response was what?

[14:05:14] RON NEHRING, NATIONAL SPOKESMAN, TED CRUZ CAMPAIGN: Well, you know, Donald Trump is trapped in the brand that he has created for himself. You know, the guy who calls himself, you know, Mr. Flexible and he's Mr. Unpredictable and this great negotiator. He's the most predictable person in this campaign. Everyone knew, you know, how he would respond, which is in typical matter that he responds to everybody, which is in this, you know, really small, petty, you know, insulting manner. And that's fine. That's part of the reason why the guy cannot get above 35, 40 percent of the vote anywhere other than in his home state.

And the reason why Donald Trump is not on track to win this nomination is because he's not on track to win the majority support of the Republican Party either directly or through the delegates who are elected through the grass roots process that we have throughout the entire country. So Donald Trump is in further trouble today because of a strategic decision that's been made on the part of the Cruz and Kasich campaigns to align our resources and those areas very strategically to ensure that Donald Trump does not become the Republican nominee so that we can save this country from a Hillary Clinton presidency. That's ultimately what this is about, saving the country -

BALDWIN: Barry -

NEHRING: From another four years or eight years of liberal leadership in Washington. BALDWIN: Barry, is Ron wrong?

BARRY BENNETT, SENIOR ADVISER, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: Yes. As usual, yes. Totally wrong. First of all, I mean -

NEHRING: Oh, that's not nice.

BENNETT: Hey, look - look at what happens tomorrow night and tell me about 35 percent again, OK? Look at California, where we're 27 points ahead of your guy in California. I mean this is ridiculous, OK? Two weeks ago, or last week, both candidates said out of their own mouths, Donald Trump will never get to 1,237, and now they're totally panicked that he's getting there. He's going to get there with or without this strange alignment with Kasich asking people to vote for him in Indiana but he's just not going to have a campaign there. I don't know what any of that means. We're going to do just fine. We're going to win.

BALDWIN: Ron, can you jump in and explain, I mean to Barry's point even, and Mark Preston's a second ago, it is a tad confusing if it's sort of like John Kasich is getting out of Cruz's way in Indiana, yet he's still saying today, but, hey, if you want to vote for me in Indiana, you can. It might confuse the voters, perhaps even the delegates. How does this help your camp?

NEHRING: Well, this is a very narrowly tailored, very specific plan that's been put into place here because we have - we recognize that no candidate's going to get to 1,237. No candidate's going to get to a majority of the delegates. Donald Trump is not going to be able to do it because typically at this point in the process the frontrunner is consolidating the Republican support behind him. That's why these late states typically don't have as much of an impact.

My home state of California has not been decisive, although it will be decisive in this go around. And Donald Trump can't consolidate that base because he's alienated just about everybody on the planet other than his very narrow - other than his very narrow base of support. And so where we want to be is in a two-person contest and that's what this creates. This creates effectively a two-person contest in places like Indiana and other states going forward. And if Donald Trump is so confident of victory, why does he burn so much energy just going after, you know, other people, you know, in this kind of petty way? When we've heard all last week - didn't we hear all last week how presidential he was going to be and how he was growing and how he was growing his campaign. Little did we know it would turn into the full employment act for Washington, D.C., lobbyists. But if he was - remember all last week -

BALDWIN: Wow, wow.

NEHRING: It was how presidential he was going to be and now -

BALDWIN: Let's -

NEHRING: He's right back into this petty, small attacks on people. It's pretty amazing. BALDWIN: Let's let Barry respond. Let's let Barry respond. And then, Barry, I have a separate question for you. But go ahead and respond to that.

BENNETT: Well, you know, I love this talking point that they have. And he can never get more than 35 or 40 percent. Well, it happens to be 10 percent more than Ted Cruz gets on average. You know, his - his negatives are so high, it can't beat Hillary. His negatives are three points higher than Ted Cruz's. I mean it's crazy. It's lunacy. No one's buying it and that's why you've seen in the last 10 days Ted Cruz's national polling numbers come down about 10 points (ph). While we went from up 10 points in California, to up 27 points in California. This race is all but over.

BALDWIN: Let's ask you - hang on, Barry, because I have to push you on - let's throw the numberings out for a second. Just in terms of Donald Trump the man, I mean this is a man who has said this is collusion, this is - this allegiance is weak and pathetic, but this is a man who wrote the book "The Art of the Deal." This is a man who has said in the past, everything is negotiable. This is a man who produced a very successful TV show all about alliance building.

BENNETT: Yes. Well, but this alliance is an alliance of convenience, not strategy. John Kasich is out of money. And his report the other day had him about a million, a million and a quarter on hand. He has not - he doesn't have enough money to fight in Indiana. I mean this is - this is all saving face. He chose two states to focus, which are both proportional states.

BALDWIN: But, come on, Barry, you're not really answering the question.

BENNETT: It makes no sense. I mean, it's not a strategic alliance. I think it's a stupid strategy.

[14:10:03] BALDWIN: OK. Ron, final -

BENNETT: I think from a personal point he's getting in bed with the establishment yet again.

BALDWIN: Ron, final word, and then we've got to go.

NEHRING: Here's what's going to happen. No candidate's going to win on the first ballot in - at the national convention in Cleveland. On the second ballot, you will see a massive drain of support away from Donald Trump. And Ted Cruz will emerge as the Republican nominee. That's what's going to happen. You can take it to the bank.

BENNETT: (INAUDIBLE).

BALDWIN: Ron Nehring and Barry Bennett, anyone's guess at this point. Thank you so much.

Tomorrow is a big day, though. We will be here covering it, of course. Five states holding primaries tomorrow. CNN's special live coverage starts at 4:00 Eastern here on CNN. Coming up next, she anchors one of the longest running news magazines

in history. Deborah Norville. What does Deborah Norville think about the media's role in Donald - Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, John Kasich, all of this, this election. We'll talk to Deborah live.

Also, questions swirl about the estate Prince leaves behind, as investigators get closer to learning how the music pioneer died and what he was doing in his final hours.

And a family killed in their own beds, execution style, as they slept. Who is behind this? A manhunt is underway. We have all those details for you out of Ohio. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:15:25] BALDWIN: Welcome back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Moments ago, we heard Donald Trump at his rally in Rhode Island calling his Republican rivals weak and pathetic for trying to team up and stop him from clinching the Republican nomination. There is no way for John Kasich or Ted Cruz to reach the delegate threshold before the convention in July, but it is still possible for Mr. Trump and that is why they're trying to stop him. So I am honored to have sitting next to me "Inside Edition" anchor Deborah Norville. She is currently the longest sitting anchor on any daily national news show. She also is the author of the new book, "Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Possible."

Such a fan.

DEBORAH NORVILLE, VETERAN JOURNALIST: Thanks. Nice to see you.

BALDWIN: Thank you for coming by.

NORVILLE: Crazy time in politics.

BALDWIN: Crazy time, especially waking up and seeing this news about this - this allegiance between Kasich and Cruz and - in your, what, 35 years covering politics and elections, back from back in the day when you interviewed Jimmy Carter down in Atlanta.

NORVILLE: Yes.

BALDWIN: What do you make of all this?

NORVILLE: Well, nobody's ever seen anything like this and it's almost as though, you know, what's kind of been a reality television campaign thus far -

BALDWIN: Yes.

NORVILLE: And it's as though Senator Cruz and Governor Kasich took a page out of the "Survivor" reality show.

BALDWIN: Exactly what I keep saying.

NORVILLE: You know, team up against the person on the island that you're trying to get rid of.

BALDWIN: Right.

NORVILLE: They're, obviously, not going to get Donald voted off the island, but they may be able to -

BALDWIN: Trying their darndest.

NORVILLE: Stop the juggernaut from him getting to the magic number of delegates.

BALDWIN: What do you make of the rise of Donald Trump? Who - who, you know, his senior adviser at the RNC meeting audio of him saying, he's just playing a role and, you know, there have been these thoughts that perhaps he's moved closer to the middle once he snags the nomination or would that -

NORVILLE: And I wouldn't be surprised if that happens.

BALDWIN: Yes, you're not alone in thinking that.

NORVILLE: But in terms of the - the rise of Donald Trump, I think it really - it dovetails with the rise of social media. If you look at it, there's sort of been three watershed moments in political coverage. In the '20s, radio brought candidates into people's homes, the voices anyway. In the '60s, we all remember the video of John Kennedy and Richard Nixon -

BALDWIN: The big debate. Sweating.

NORVILLE: And that brought the candidates into your home. And now thanks to social media, you don't have the network bosses dictating how a candidate is going to be portrayed or when they're going to be seen. The candidates are going directly. And Donald Trump has used social media to phenomenal success. And it's not I think - it's not - it is not a coincidence that Donald Trump has 7.7 million Twitter followers -

BALDWIN: Yes.

NORVILLE: And who's in the lead on the Republican side. And Hillary Clinton has 6 million Twitter followers and certainly she's in the lead. And when you look at the numbers for the other two, because I just did a moment ago, Kasich's got 308,000 and Ted Cruz has only a million.

BALDWIN: But isn't part of that celebrity? Trump celebrity. Wouldn't that play a role as well if all -

NORVILLE: Yes, but Hillary is a politician, too. Maybe she's a celebrity politician, been around for a long while.

BALDWIN: She's been around a little while. Yes. NORVILLE: But you look at Barack Obama, who no one had heard of to any large degree before he spoke at the Democratic Convention in Boston.

BALDWIN: Yes.

NORVILLE: Social media helped him to connect and also data mining helped him use information in a way that he was able to win the presidency.

BALDWIN: Had a presidential historian professor of NYU sitting in that seat a little while ago and he said, Brooke, the way Trump has used Twitter has forever now changing the game from here on out.

NORVILLE: Yes.

BALDWIN: Let me pivot, though, to Kelly Ripa.

NORVILLE: OK.

BALDWIN: Kelly Ripa, Michael Strahan, she is - she says she's going back tomorrow. Everyone will be watching. Listen, I'm a huge fan of both of theirs. How -

NORVILLE: If I were an advertiser, I'd want to be on the show that day because lot of people will be watching.

BALDWIN: A lot of eyeballs on that screen. Your - your response to all of this?

NORVILLE: Well, you know, she's worked there for 20 years.

BALDWIN: Yes.

NORVILLE: Respect is a beautiful thing. And I think when people feel disrespected, as it's obviously - obvious that Kelly did, they react in a way that maybe they wouldn't have in - in another situation. I don't think it would have been that difficult for ABC to have handled it in a different way so that Kelly could have been mad to understands that, you know what, this is a change that we think is good for the company, first and foremost -

BALDWIN: Strahan going to "Good Morning America" full-time.

NORVILLE: Yes, absolutely. But we love you. We love this show. We value you. And by doing it the way they did, I think the inferred message that she seemed to have taken was, I'm not as valuable as I thought I was. And she probably - my guess is she would regret the way she responded because some of the coverage about the way she reacted in that meeting has not been terribly flattering. Whether it's true or not, we don't know.

BALDWIN: Here's the thing, though. When you look at some of these headlines, Deborah Norville, "New York Post" calling Kelly Ripa a "diva screams sexism." "New York" magazine headline, "PSA: Kelly Ripa is not exhibiting diva behavior." Even Oprah defending her, "blindsided is never good," she told "Entertainment Tonight." "I don't know who's in charge, but somebody should have said this is going to happen. You shouldn't have read it in the paper, ever."

[14:20:09] NORVILLE: Yes. Yes.

BALDWIN: She has a point.

NORVILLE: Yes. It's all about respect. When you treat people with respect - I wrote a book about respect. When you treat people with respect, it always augers back to you in a positive way.

BALDWIN: It's (INAUDIBLE).

NORVILLE: And you are enabling that person to keep their dignity. It's really not that hard.

BALDWIN: It's everything.

Your book "Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Possible," how many years have you been doing this?

NORVILLE: Writing "Chicken Soup" books?

BALDWIN: All - all - like all of this amazing TV stuff?

NORVILLE: Or TV stuff? Oh, my gosh, since I was 19. 1978. The (INAUDIBLE), yes.

BALDWIN: Nineteen when you grabbed Jimmy Carter in Atlanta, got to ask him a bunch of questions.

NORVILLE: Yes.

BALDWIN: And that was sort of your - your big break.

NORVILLE: It was.

BALDWIN: I know you've written and talked about that. Of all of your years, you know, what - what one, huge lesson could I learn from, could folks listening learn from in terms of thinking it's possible?

NORVILLE: Oh, I think anybody can learn this lesson, and it doesn't matter whether you're trying to keep a job for a long time, stay in a relationship for a long time, don't take the bait. There will always be times when you can get into it with somebody. It's like a line from the Disney song, "Let It Go." Sometimes if you just let it go -

BALDWIN: Easier said than done.

NORVILLE: This too shall pass.

BALDWIN: Yes. Yes, this too shall pass. Deborah Norville, thank you so much.

NORVILLE: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: We watch "Inside Edition" week nights. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Coming up next, this manhunt underway in Ohio and beyond following

this chilling murder spree. Investigators calling the execution of 18 people sophisticated, preplanned. Relatives of the victims are now being warned they, too, could be targets. Who would have done this? Why? New details into CNN on that.

Plus, just when you thought the Patriots - the New England Patriots deflategate scandal had gone flat, a major twist today involving Tom Brady, a federal appeals court.

And Donald Trump, wait until you hear this. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:26:18] BALDWIN: Right now there is this manhunt underway for the gunman who killed eight members of this one family in Ohio. We know the final autopsy is set for today. But the youngest victim, 16 years of age. The more I read about this, the more details you hear, the more proof of how cold-blooded and calculating these killers were. All victims shot in the head at close range, most of them asleep at the time. And in one case, a newborn, just four days old, was spared as she laying beside her mother who was murdered. The shooter or shooters also spared a six-month-old baby and a three-year-old child. Want you to listen to this relative describe the scene she discovered at one house as she picked up the phone and called 911.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

911 DISPATCHER: Ma'am, ma'am, you've got to tell me what's going on.

CALLER: There's blood all over the house.

DISPATCHER: OK.

CALLER: My brother-in-law is in the bedroom and it looks like someone has beat the hell out of him.

DISPATCHER: OK.

CALLER: There's blood all over (INAUDIBLE) -

DISPATCHER: Ma'am, can you tell me what country that's in? Is it -

CALLER: Pike County.

DISPATCHER: It's Pike County?

CALLER: Yes, and they dragged them in the back room.

DISPATCHER: OK. OK. I need you to get out of the house.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: This is horrendous. Authorities found marijuana grow operations in three of the four homes where these murders happened, but they haven't said if drugs were specifically connected to the deaths.

With me now a bounty hunter, Zeke Unger. He has arrested more than 4,000 fugitives in his 30-year career.

So, Zeke, welcome back to the show. And, you know, just first out, when you hear execution-style killings, Pike County, Ohio, victims asleep, four-day-old next to the mother, what does your gut tell you?

ZEKE UNGER, VETERAN BOUNTY HUNTER: Well, it tells me that it was well orchestrated and we have to figure out what the motive actually was. We have marijuana grows which, as we know, are very lucrative crops. The question is, was - were these murders committed while they were robbing these grow operations? We still don't know that. We don't know how many shooters. We don't know how many targets we have. All the things to be determined as the investigation goes on. You know, most of everyone were shot. Why was one person beaten? Was there a personal vendetta against this person and they decide to take everybody out so there were no witnesses? There's a lot to be investigated here.

BALDWIN: On the marijuana angle, Ohio law enforcement linked this same county in 2012 to a major marijuana grow site with possible ties to a Mexican drug cartel. If the murderer, murderers, you know, have ties to real organized crime here, how does that change the strategy on the manhunt?

UNGER: Well, basically, we would be looking at multiple targets versus one target. We can't assume. We have to investigate, you know, these investigations, you can chase a red herring very easily. So what you want to do is you want to get all your facts in order and then you want to go looking for the specific people who are involved. Law enforcement is conducting a major investigation right now. We still don't know where the targets are. It's going to be a manhunt, but we have to identify who we're chasing before we go after them.

BALDWIN: But what kind of person shoots all of these, what, eight people, execution-style, and then spares the children?

[14:29:48] UNGER: Well, evidently somebody had a slight conscience. You know, the question is why, out of all those people, why was one of them beaten and what - all of the rest of them shot? It tells me that they either were trying to gain information from that person prior to killing them or that they had a personal vendetta with that actual person and everyone else was collateral damage so that there were no witnesses.