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Trump And Sanders Win Indiana, Cruz Ends Bid; Trump Laments Onslaught Of Negative Political Ads; Trump Declared Presumptive Republican Nominee; Sanders Touts Momentum After Indiana Win. Aired 2- 3a ET
Aired May 04, 2016 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: I appreciate it. Thank you, everyone. Great conversation. Our coverage of the Indiana primary and the 2016 presidential race continues right now with John Vause and Isha Sesay in Los Angeles.
ISHA SESAY, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Thank you, John. Appreciate it.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Thank you, Don.
Welcome from the United States and around the world. This is CNN's continuing coverage of the Indiana primary.
SESAY: Ted Cruz is out, Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
VAUSE: It was a decisive victory for Trump, 53 percent of the vote, a stinging defeat for Ted Cruz with 36 percent, John Kasich trailing with just 7 percent.
SESAY: This gives Trump 1,053 delegates, 184 shy of what's needed to clinch the nomination. Though Cruz had insisted he'd stay in the race until the convention, Tuesday night's results changed all of that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SENATOR TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And so, with a heavy heart, but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What Ted did is a brave thing to do and a great thing to do because we want to bring unity to the Republican Party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: While on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in Indiana with 52 percent of the vote. Sanders picks 43 delegates to Clinton's 38.
VAUSE: Let's take a look at the delegate total right now. Clinton on 2,217, Sanders, 1,443, 2,383 are needed to win the Democratic nomination. Sanders says there are still, still a narrow path to victory.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's going to give us a great deal of momentum because I think there are many in the media like you and others who have decided that the campaign is over. Well, I guess the people of Indiana did not quite agree with that assessment.
And I think you may be surprised to find out that the folks -- I'm not predicting, I don't know what's going to happen, but the people of West Virginia may not agree with that assessment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: CNN Politics reporter, Tal Kopan, joins us now from our Washington Bureau. Tal, thank you for being with us. This is an extraordinary night in so many ways, that unexpected announcement from Ted Cruz that he is suspending his campaign, effectively handing the nomination to Donald Trump.
TAL KOPAN, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: That's right. And you heard some of it in that clip. But watching Ted Cruz speak, it was clear that some of his supporters didn't actually know what was coming. And you heard them sort of calling out "no" as he got to the part of his speech where he was going to suspend his campaign, it was really remarkable.
You know, we can now say Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee. That is definitely a turning point in this campaign. He's sort of been flirting with it for a few weeks now, but it's a done deal essentially. He's the presumptive nominee.
John Kasich is by all accounts staying in this race, but mathematically out of it and showing no signs of surmounting enough of a challenge to prevent Donald Trump from clinching the nomination especially with Ted Cruz out.
Now there are all these states that he might have played at least a spoiler roll in that pretty much will go to Donald Trump, it looks like.
It's a turning point in the Republican side. The Republican Party is going to have to come to terms with the fact that this candidate that has been so polarizing is now going to be their standard bearer.
SESAY: Tal, on the Democratic side of things, Bernie Sanders refusing to bow out. He obviously got the win in Indiana tonight. The math is still against him. He says he's going to fight on, which throws a monkey wrench in Hillary Clinton's plans to try to pivot to November.
KOPAN: That's absolutely right. There were a lot of people befuddled. Turns out we have a Republican nominee before we have a presumptive Democratic nominee. Look, Bernie Sanders needs more pledged delegates that are actually left available on the board to actually clinch the nomination.
But of course, the Democratic primary has superdelegates. Hillary Clinton appears to have many of them locked up and there's absolutely no indication any of them might change their mind.
But Bernie Sanders can still claim if she doesn't get there with just pledged delegates, which if he does well in some of the states coming up that we expect him to, he might be able to do, then it goes to the convention and she needs those superdelegates to actually lock up the nomination.
Again, there is no indication that he would turn any of those superdelegates or enough of them, but he can claim that he still has that path to nomination. So even as she's going to try to pivot to Donald Trump, she's going to have to continue fighting these primaries.
And at the very least there's a chance she sort of limps into this convention on a losing streak instead of riding high on a winning streak, which is exactly the optics any candidate would not want.
VAUSE: Tal, thank you for bringing us some of the late details on what's happened on a very exciting night in politics.
SESAY: Indeed, Tal, appreciate it, thank you.
KOPAN: Thank you guys.
[02:05:02]SESAY: All right, let's bring in Andy Dean, CNN political commentator, and Trump supporter, and also Wendy Greuel, Hillary Clinton supporter and former Los Angeles councilwoman.
Andy, I think I saw you doing cartwheels down the hallway just a few moments ago. This is a big night for Trump supporters. First of all, talk to me about how he sealed Indiana and basically went on to lock this thing up.
ANDY DEAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right. A 17-point win in a state that was supposed to be friendly to Ted Cruz. It was supposed to be the firewall for Ted Cruz. He put all his eggs in one basket.
For Donald Trump to win by double digits, it's no surprise that Ted Cruz had no choice but to drop out. Hopefully, John Kasich will get the picture because at this point he really is embarrassing himself.
He's the sitting governor of Ohio, taking a paycheck from the people of Ohio, yet he's touring the country on some sort of bizarre -- it would seem to be a book tour, but he's not selling his book so I don't know what we're seeing.
VAUSE: Were you surprised that Hillary Clinton hasn't locked this nomination up yet but Donald Trump has?
WENDY GREUEL, CLINTON SUPPORTER: Well, I think Hillary Clinton has done an extraordinary job across this country and winning, as we see, the majority of those delegates. Not only the pledged delegates but the superdelegates that have committed to her.
I think she's one of those as a fighter and she has never taken anything for granted, and is going to come here to California and we're going to work hard to make sure she wins California.
VAUSE: OK, it's now official because the chairman of the Republican National Committee Reince Priebus tweeted this out, "Donald Trump will be the presumptive GOP nominee. We all need to unite and focus on defeating Hillary Clinton, #neverclinton."
And in his victory speech just a few hours ago, Donald Trump went out of his way to praise Priebus." Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to thank and congratulate the Republican National Committee and Reince Priebus, who I just spoke to. He's doing a tremendous job. It's not an easy job. When he had 17 egos and now I guess he's down to one, I don't know, there is a second? Is there a second? I don't know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Maybe one very big ego. Andy, is that the plan now for Donald Trump, to start being nice to everybody?
DEAN: I think he's being gracious in the sense that Ted Cruz is a tough competitor. He wanted to acknowledge that. There were 17 very tough competitors. I think Reince Priebus did a good job trying to navigate what is not an easy situation.
The good news is, it's May 3rd, May 4th depending where you are in the country and we've got two and a half months until that convention. That's a big deal. So to have that kind of prep time to make sure Trump gets the right VP pick is a wonderful thing.
SESAY: Just because Reince Priebus calls on the party to fall in line and unite behind Trump doesn't mean that's necessarily going to happen.
DEAN: I think the people have spoken in the sense that Trump has millions of more votes than Ted Cruz, he's dropped out. John Kasich right now is running fourth behind Marco Rubio. I think a commentator said it best, John Kasich is running fourth in a two-man race right now. I think it's only a matter of time before the party puts pressure on him and then I think people as well. He'll be out soon.
VAUSE: Wendy, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is facing a similar problem that Donald Trump is. It could be even harder for her because Donald Trump just has to convince the establishment to get behind him. Hillary Clinton has to convince those young, rebellious voters, who signed on to Bernie Sanders' revolution. They may not want to support steady as she goes.
GREUEL: Well, she does very well when you look at some of those numbers in comparison to Trump and some of those young people across this country, particularly among women. When you look at the numbers, that 29 percent of the women who support Trump and the rest of the women do not support him and are scared of that candidacy.
So I think it is important when you look at the numbers, she is far ahead on those issues which are important to families and about breaking down those barriers and really being the person who's going to solve some of the challenges that we face in this country.
SESAY: Are you among those who feel the longer Sanders stays in the race, the more he's harming her?
GREUEL: Again, I believe Hillary is a fighter and she's going to come to California and be able to say to the Bernie Sanders supporters and others, I'm the person who's the most experienced to be able to be president of the United States --
SESAY: We have seen the negatives go up in recent months with Sanders staying in and the attacks continuing.
GREUEL: As you've heard Sanders say, that he will support anyone against Donald Trump. And I do believe that Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee and the numbers show it, that those individuals will understand how important it is to elect Hillary Clinton as the next president of the United States.
VAUSE: OK, we've made the pivot to the general election. It seems Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump actually took a swing at Hillary Clinton tonight in his victory speech. It was all about the issue of coal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: And we're going to get those miners back to work. I'll tell you what. We're going to get those miners back to work. We're not going to be Hillary Clinton and I watched her three or four weeks ago when she was talking about the miners as if they were just numbers. And she was talking about she wants the mines closed and she will never let them work again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[02:10:06]VAUSE: And this was in response when Hillary Clinton said all those coal jobs are going to go away. On the campaign trail in West Virginia, coal country, Hillary Clinton had to apologize to a voter who confronted her about this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It was a misstatement because what I was saying is that the way things are going now, we will continue to lose jobs. That's what I meant to say and I think that that seems to be supported by the facts. I didn't mean that we were going to do it. What I said was, that is going to happen unless we take action to try to help and prevent it.
(END VIDEO CLIP) VAUSE: When you have to start out saying, what I meant to say, let me explain, you've lost. You're in trouble, right?
GREUEL: I think, again, she is not afraid of having tough conversations. What you saw in that interaction was her explaining what happened, and you can look at the fact checks which I have that show that, in fact, it was part of a longer conversation.
But more importantly, she had a plan that said, $30 billion, these are the things we're going to do to build our infrastructure and address some of the concerns where the coal jobs are being lost. Whether you support coal or not, they're just not going to be there anymore.
My grandfather was a coal miner. My relatives are coal miners, their jobs aren't there anymore. So you need to be able to provide the jobs of the future and that's what Hillary Clinton is talking about.
SESAY: The test is going to be how is she going to do that? It's well and good for Donald Trump to say on the stump as he did in his victory speech, we're going to get the coal miners working again. As we move toward this general election the question becomes how are you going to do some of these things that you say you're going to do?
DEAN: A couple of facts about the coal mining business, which maybe Hillary Clinton doesn't know because the tone in which she spoke of we're going to get rid of these coal people, put them out of business.
Right now when it comes to electricity in the United States, coal is the number one energy producer of that. So when people flick a switch, the odds are coal is the one to power that.
There are over 70,000 people who work in the mining business in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Their jobs are very important. They helped build this country. If she wants to talk about diversifying her energy portfolio, that's fine.
But what Hillary Clinton is really talking about is global warming. But the problem is she doesn't solve global warming because China and India are the true polluters. So if she can put the coal people out of business but that doesn't fix the environmental problems.
VAUSE: OK, is this general election going to be a race to the bottom? Yes or no.
DEAN: All politics is a race to the bottom, yes.
GREUEL: I don't believe so. I think Hillary Clinton is going to be classy in the way that she's going to address this and talk about the issues.
DEAN: Race to the bottom.
VAUSE: I'm with you. You're on the money. SESAY: Andy, Wendy, thank you so much.
VAUSE: A short break, but when we come back, Donald Trump finally has some kind words for Ted Cruz, from Lyin' Ted to a great competitor.
SESAY: Despite his huge delegate deficit, hear why Bernie Sanders says he'll keep challenging Hillary Clinton in the primaries.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[02:15:11]
KATE RILEY, CNN SPORTS: I'm Kate Riley with your "CNN World Sport" headlines. Despite winning, Bayern Munich have been knocked out of the champion's league by Athletico Madrid. They'll be ruing a missed penalty by Thomas Mueller that Athletico missed a spot kick of their own. Fernando Torres also missing. Athletico will play local rivals Real Madrid or Man City in the final.
Business as usual for new English premier league champions, Leicester City. Manager Claudio Ranieri held the morning training session after just hours after winning the title thanks to Chelsea's 2-2 draw against Spurs.
After training followed by lunch at a local Italian restaurant to celebrate their achievement. The league's not over, the Foxes have a home game on Saturday against Everton. After the match the squad will have the chance to lift the premier league trophy.
And as we count down to the Rio games this summer, the Olympic torch relay got under way in Brazil's capital on Tuesday. It's just starting out on a three-month tour of Brazil.
Embattled President Dilma Rousseff lit the torch and gave to it the Brazilian volleyball player, (inaudible) Claudino, who has led the Brazil's female volleyball team to Olympic gold twice.
Hundreds of people turned out along the torch's route. And that's a look at all your sports headlines. I'm Kate Riley.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CRUZ: From the beginning, I've said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory. Tonight, I'm sorry to say -- it appears that path has been foreclosed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: And with that the Republican field of U.S. presidential candidates is down to two. Donald Trump won convincingly in Tuesday's Indiana primary, 53 percent to Ted Cruz's 36 percent. John Kasich, who says he's not dropping out, got just 7 percent of the vote.
VAUSE: Trump now has 1,053 delegates, less than 200 shy of winning the nomination. For the Democrats Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton with 52 percent of the vote in Indiana, giving Sanders 43 new delegates.
SESAY: Overall, Clinton still has a big lead in the total delegate count, 2,217 and 2,383 are needed to win the Democratic nomination.
VAUSE: Both CNN's senior political analyst, Ron Brownstein, and Dylan Byers, CNN senior reporter for media and politics with us now here in the studio. Guys, thank you for being here this late, late, late hour. It never stops.
Donald Trump has some pretty big obstacles to overcome in this general election. He has to win over all these groups. He seemed to acknowledge that tonight in his victory speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We won with women. We won with men. We won with Hispanics. We won with African-Americans. We won with every -- virtually every category.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Perhaps, though, the biggest issue he has is with women voters.
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: And minorities both. Look, I think the most common misconception in this campaign has been Donald Trump is a Teflon candidate who is not affected by any of the things he's said.
He was able to put together a winning coalition in the Republican Party and it was not only deeper with his dominance among men and blue collar whites but broader than any of his competitors. That was in the Republican primary.
He starts the general election facing historically high negatives among several groups, millennials, in the 70s, all nonwhite voters in the 80s, and women around 70 percent. He has big challenges to overcome.
Particularly when you look at the fact that his negatives are highest among the groups that are growing the fastest in the electorate. He faces the challenge of the Democratic -- what I call the coalition of the ascendant.
The groups that are growing that are the core of the democratic coalition are today the groups that are the most resistant to him. That is what he now has to begin to overcome.
DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR REPORTER FOR MEDIA AND POLITICS: On Ron's point there's a big difference between saying that you're winning over all of these groups within the Republican primary, and winning them over in the general election. And you look at those negatives.
Among women, up to 70 percent negatives in some polls. It's easy to say that you're winning over Hispanics, that you're winning over African-Americans in a Republican primary, where there really aren't that many Hispanics or African-Americans.
VAUSE: But go back 2012, the Romney campaign and the "etch a sketch" moment. You shake it up, everything's blank, and you start all over again.
[02:20:06]It didn't work for Romney and you give it everything that Donald Trump has said on the campaign so far, is that is even possible?
BYERS: Yes, I mean -- look, and this goes back to what Ron's saying, we seem to be so taken aback at how much progress Donald Trump has made despite all of these incendiary comments. But what's been happening is for ten months he's been building basically an Oppo dump, an Oppo folder for the Hillary Clinton campaign to use in a general election.
That will be much more effective in a general election when you have so many minority groups, when you have women, when you have all these demographics who look at what he's said and are totally appalled by that.
BROWNSTEIN: I just want to give you one calculation. Given the changing composition of the electorate, if the minority share of the vote grows in 2016 along its historic trajectory and Hillary Clinton wins about the average of minority voters that Democrats have won since 1976, which is about 80 percent.
Donald Trump could win the same share of white men that Ronald Reagan won in 1984 and he'd still have to win 58 percent of white women to get to a majority. That's more than Ronald Reagan did -- sorry, that's more than Mitt Romney did in 2012 at 56 percent.
He would have to do that while facing negatives today that are around 70 percent. Donald Trump has proved to be a very skillful political operator, not one to get boxed into a corner, he's going to move and disrupt this race in all sorts of ways.
But the fact is that he begins in a deep hole in the general election that he will have to find ways to climb out of. Not that he can't but that is what he has to do.
SESAY: While in that hole he seems to be demonstrating a different tone as we saw in that speech tonight extending what would be an olive branch, if you will, to Ted Cruz. Take a listen to what he said and give me your thoughts on what we're hearing here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Ted Cruz, I don't know if he likes me or if he doesn't like me, but he is one hell of a competitor. He is a tough, smart guy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: OK, so let's just answer that question. For Donald Trump, what Ted Cruz actually thinks of him?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CRUZ: I'm going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth and he had a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook. His response is to accuse everybody else of lying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: I think we're shouldn't hold our breath for a Cruz endorsement of Trump.
BROWNSTEIN: I kept waiting for him to quote McCarthy, everything he said was a lie including "and" and "the." But look, not only what Ted Cruz said today about Donald Trump, which had more of a feel of kind of catharsis than strategy really did feel like he was going to get that off his chest before he got out of the race.
Mitt Romney, the last Republican nominee, saying about Donald Trump hare these are unchartered waters. Now there is going to be some unifying because Republicans really don't like Hillary Clinton and there will be a lot of pressure on people to fall in line.
But I think what you saw today, for example, John McCain's former top aide tweeting that he's supporting Hillary Clinton, you're going to see particularly, I think, on the national security side a lot of prominent voices defecting from the ticket. And that's going to be a challenge for Trump as he goes forward.
VAUSE: We saw this from Ted Cruz today throwing everything at the wall, this last-minute pitch to try and win Indiana. It was desperate. He went after Fox News. He went after Rupert Murdock and he went after Roger Ailes. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CRUZ: There is a broader dynamic at work which is network executives have made a decision to get behind Donald Trump. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes at Fox News have turned Fox News into the Donald Trump network 24/7. Rupert Murdoch is used to picking world leaders in Australia and the United Kingdom, running tabloids. And we're seeing it here at home, the consequences for this nation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: It's incredible. Still in the past Cruz has gone after the media, it's worked for him. Never gone after Fox News like that before.
BYERS: No, going after Fox News is a totally different piece. But look, he was looking at the same polls we were all looking at and he said, look, it looks like I'm going to lose Indiana. Now I have to win Indiana. So he went after Fox News. He tried to make the case, look,
there is a Republican establishment that's sort of in bed with the larger Washington establishment, Fox News represents that.
And if you're a true -- if you value the sort of conservative ideals that I stand for, you'll rally behind me and realize that they're the enemy. And it was the last-ditch effort. But he had no other choice.
For me that's a guy who has nothing left to lose and of course, now he's lost whatever he had left to lose. But I do think that was sort of a dangerous calculation because look, he's already the outsider in the Senate.
[02:25:11]Fox News, come 2017, after this election is over, they're going to be players. He has burned whatever bridges he had left with that network.
VAUSE: Bernie Sanders, he's staying in the race, he says it's good for the Democrats. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Any concern that by extending the Democratic primary, that it's going to set Democrats at a disadvantage in July?
SANDERS: Not at all. I have zero doubt that what we have done in this campaign, what we are doing now, and what we will do in the next six weeks, is good for the Democratic Party and it will result in a higher voter turnout.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Ron, very quickly.
BROWNSTEIN: Look, there's no doubt he has a constituency. 26 states with exit polls, he's won voters under 30 in 24, won independents in 23, won non-college blue-collar whites in every state outside of south except Ohio. I think he is wrong.
If you look at what's happening in the polling, Hillary Clinton's negatives, the perception of her among voters, I think there is no doubt that he is damaging her, even if he is energizing the Democratic base. He is taking a toll on her image with the public.
BYERS: What he's doing, in my view, he's building his leverage for the convention. I've created a movement, I have certain values that I stand for. What can I win from the Clinton campaign? What guarantees can I win from the Clinton campaign in order for them to win my support?
BROWNSTEIN: Superdelegates, sayonara.
VAUSE: Seeing what he can get. Ron and Dylan, thank you. Appreciate it. A break, when we come back, Donald Trump has a love/hate
relationship with New York tabloids. We'll tell you what they're saying about it now.
SESAY: Plus the California lawmaker warms up to the idea of a Trump wall in his state. But this one is to keep the candidate out, not illegal immigrants. Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[02:30:09]
VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. Wednesday's front cover of the "New York Post" celebrating Donald Trump's decisive win in the Indiana primary. The New York businessman is now the presumptive Republican nominee. Who's your daddy?
SESAY: "The Daily News" has a different take, they say it spells the death of the Republican Party. Indiana giving Trump a decisive win in the Republican primary.
VAUSE: Let's take a look at the numbers. Trump captured more than half the vote, 53 percent. Cruz said he gave it everything he had, came up short, 36 percent. John Kasich on 7 percent.
SESAY: The magic number of delegates to clinch is 1,237 and Trump now has 1,053. That is less than 200 delegates away.
VAUSE: Let's look at the Democrats right now. Bernie Sanders took Indiana 52 percent of the vote. He told supporters he's turning out new voters and energizing them as well.
SESAY: Tuesday's win, Sanders has 1,443 delegates. Hillary Clinton has 2,217. Joining us here in L.A. is the vice chairman of the California Democratic Party, Eric Bauman. Also here is James Lacy, author of the book "Taxifornia" and a Donald Trump supporter.
VAUSE: Joining us from Sacramento, California, Republican strategist, Rob Stutzman with the Stop the Trump campaign. I want to read a statement from the Never Trump campaign. They are pushing with all of this.
It reads, "If nominated, Trump will lose in historic fashion, threaten down-ballot campaigns, and likely usher in a Clinton presidency. This is indisputable when three out of four women view him negatively in solid red states like Utah and Mississippi in play." So Rob, do you, what else can you do?
ROB STUTZMAN, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST, "STOP TRUMP" CAMPAIGN: Well, we're going to press on here in California. Chairman Priebus, we understand, has declared Trump the presumptive nominee, however, we still get to vote in California. John Kasich has said he's pushing on. We'll be encouraging California voters to stop and take a second look at this.
They're going to get four weeks of looking at Donald Trump as their presumptive nominee and we're going to hope they have remorse and turn this thing around still before Cleveland.
SESAY: And James?
JAMES LACY, TRUMP SUPPORTER AND AUTHOR "TAXIFORNIA": Rob, you're not going to raise any money. You're not going to get anybody that's going to donate anything substantial. This whole Cruz campaign that was supposed to be so great, the fact that Cruz dropped out today shows he didn't have confidence in California.
His so-called 41,000 volunteers, Ron Nehring out there talking about how they're organized for a year. You're not going to do any better than the Cruz campaign can do.
The reality is that you're just going to speak on the media and try and get some free media because you're not going to have funding to do anything. Donald Trump's on his way, he's unstoppable, that's the way it's going to be.
STUTZMAN: Unstoppable to what, the nomination?
LACY: He's going to get the nomination. The sooner we pull together, the sooner that we pull together, people like you and me working together, the more chance we'll have to beat Hillary Clinton. That's the focus.
STUTZMAN: Jim, what's the message --
VAUSE: Sorry, I want to bring Eric in here because Eric, this was billed as Trump's -- the stop Trump campaign, the last stand, the Alamo, if you like. Trump went out of his way to talk about the barrage of negative ads that he was hit within Indiana. He said this just a few hours ago in his victory speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The 60,000 negative ads, most of which are absolutely false and disgusting, and I said, how can anybody endure this?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Eric, as a Democrat, when you hear 60,000 negative ads, $8 million in one state, and it didn't make a dent. Are you worried about that as a Democrat for general election?
ERIC C. BAUMAN, VICE CHAIRMAN, CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC PARTY: First of all, remember who you're talking to. You're talking to a Republican primary electorate, you're not talking to a general electorate in America where black people and brown people and women who are of a progressive and liberal and even moderate mindset are part of it.
And the reality is this. When Donald Trump is no longer in the Republican Party's border and real people have to discuss this, his sexist, misogynistic, racist commentary is going to come back to haunt him because most Americans don't agree with his positions.
Most Americans don't think that the way he speaks is something that represents America in a good and positive way.
SESAY: And James, to bring you in, that point was raised by Rob. Can he withstand the scrutiny?
LACY: Of course, he can.
SESAY: Now in the general election context --
LACY: This is almost a ridiculous argument. Jeb Bush's PAC spent $30 million to $40 million saying exactly what you just said --
BAUMAN: But he said it to Republicans. He said it only to Republicans. So don't obscure the issue here. I know you like to obfuscate, I know you like to play that game, but the reality is he said it to Republicans because that's who was voting in the Republican primary.
[02:35:03]STUTZMAN: There's been $100 million spent -- let me talk. A Democrat on one side, a Republican on the other, they don't want to let a Trump spokesman speak. There's been over $100 million spent in negative ads on Trump in this campaign for the whole time.
The Democrats are now going to try and spend another $20 million, basically repeating everything that's been said that was reported in the news.
And now Rob, you're going to try and go out there and raise whatever you're going to be able to raise, $200,000, $300,000, to put out ads that say exactly the same things the Democrats are going to say against our Republican candidate, and it's already been said.
You know what? It's been done. And Donald Trump got 62 percent, 63 percent of the vote in New York. If he came into California and contested Cruz, he'd get 60 percent. The polls said 54 percent to 20 percent. The last time we talked on this show you said those polls were outliers. Now we have a presumptive nominee --
VAUSE: One moment, Eric --
BAUMAN: The fallacy of these numbers is those are of Republicans.
VAUSE: Hold that. Over to rob. You get the right of reply, Rob.
STUTZMAN: Thank you. Look, what Jim's candidate has to start to demonstrate is how he's going to be the nominee that can unite a party. What you typically hear from Trump is what you see out of Jim tonight, a bunch of chest-thumping about winning this great prize of the Republican nomination, which he very well may be on his way to.
But Eric's already outlined the problem with the numbers once you get outside the Republican primary. And not only does he not have any appeal, we see these horrifically high negatives with general election voters.
But there is a sector of Republican voters, about 20 percent, who out of principle don't want to vote for Donald Trump. He's not a conservative. They're not willing to just go along blindly with a nominee that does not stand upon any type of conservative principles.
LACY: Look, it doesn't matter --
STUTZMAN: It does matter. How does Trump have to say to conservatives?
LACY: Reid crippled America. His tax plan is a Reagan-esque tax plan that's supported by Larry Kudlow. He supports the type of reductions in spending. He supports a strong military. Let me tell you something. There's a Rasmussen poll that came out --
STUTZMAN: He's an isolationist.
LACY: You never want to let me talk. Donald Trump is leading Hillary Clinton 41-39 nationally in the Rasmussen poll. You want to tell me --
STUTZMAN: You found one poll that show --
LACY: Rob, you told me a poll where I said that Trump was ahead by 20 points was an outlier.
SESAY: You both have to stand in a corner at the end of this. I want to bring up the Rasmussen poll and your opposition to Trump and talking about building a wall --
BAUMAN: Look, here's the reality. When you have something -- this is my favorite part of the Republican election this year because after Mitt Romney lost and the Republican Party spent $13.5 million doing a study to figure out why they lost, the three biggest things they were told is to tone down their rhetoric, stop bashing immigrants, and stop bashing gays.
So Reince Priebus tries to do that. Trump comes in and he starts in, we've got to build a wall because they're rapists and drug addicts and murderers. Ted Cruz takes -- a 30-foot wall is not high enough, a 50-foot wall is higher.
I called on Governor Brown and I said let's build a wall around California, protect California from his negative campaigning, and while we are at, we'll create thousands of good union jobs to build that wall.
VAUSE: With that we'll continue this next hour. You're coming back and you'll join us an hour from now. Thank you all. We appreciate you being with us.
SESAY: Thank you.
VAUSE: A short break.
SESAY: The Republican race may not come down to California but some Democrats, well, they hope their race could. Hear huh Bernie Sanders plans to win over golden state voters.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [02:42:37]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This country, which is very, very divided in so many different ways, is going to become one beautiful, loving country. And we're going to love each other, we're going to cherish each other, we're going to take care of each other.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: We're going to love each other. Kumbaya moment from Donald Trump during his victory speech a few hours ago. Joining us now for more on all of this, Dave Jacobson, a Democratic strategist and campaign consultant with Shellman Communications.
SESAY: And John Thomas, a Republican consultant and founder of Thomas Partner Strategies. Gentlemen, good to have you with us on a night like this. John, we're going to go to you first. It's Trump's.
JOHN THOMAS, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: It is. But you know, tonight I'm more thinking about three letters, a, b, c, anyone but Clinton.
DAVE JACOBSON, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Anyone but Cruz.
VAUSE: I like that better.
THOMAS: That's what keeps me going is we've got to defeat Hillary. It was good for the party, though, that tonight Cruz dropped out because we have a lot of uniting to do and we need time to do that.
SESAY: How do you do it?
THOMAS: I think we can. I think tonight you saw some of the party leaders struggling with that. But we're going to get in line, but I think the big bogeyman as we all agree that Hillary Clinton cannot be president.
JACOBSON: I think overall, you know, what I found fascinating was the tweet Donald Trump spit out just minutes before Ted Cruz dropped out of the race, calling him Lyin' Ted again.
And then you saw this enormous shift with the narrative of his speech, sort of the toned-down rhetoric, trying to be more presidential with this sort of unity narrative. You didn't hear Lyin' Ted in that speech.
VAUSE: On to the Republican Party elite, the leaders setting their hair on fire, running around, some of them are. There was this message from Mitt Romney, he put it on Facebook, the 2012 nominee.
He said, "Thanks to Ted for making a fight for conservatism, American leadership, and freedom." He couldn't even mention Trump's name like Voldemort or something. There's a long way to go before Trump wins these people over. THOMAS: We'll see how long. I think Mitt's probably in the five stages of grief. He's probably on the third or fourth, not the fifth of acceptance. That may be next week. Right now he's licking his wounds. He's trying to realize, no, what are we going to do? I think he'll get in line. I think the rest of the leadership will. If they don't they'll be out of a job.
SESAY: I don't want to rain on your kumbaya parade, but there are significant areas Trump deviates from Republican orthodoxy so there are potential problems down the road here.
THOMAS: There are. He's going to attack not just to the center, he's going to attack more to the left. That bodes well getting moderate, independent swing voters. It's tough in the party.
[02:45:04]I think what he's going to have to do is focus on Hillary Clinton and remind them that he's the only one that can beat her. That's how you bring them together.
Also get leaders like Romney if they'll come on board and get them to come on his team. He started to show that tonight. We saw that he was saying, look, we're a big tent. He was very calm, in control. He's a uniter. I think it will happen, just won't overnight.
VAUSE: OK, so the Kasich campaign not giving up. The campaign manager tweeted this out. Appreciate Reince and his hard work for the GOP, but until someone has 1,237 bound delegates there's no presumptive nominee. California here we come.
Dave, as you look at this from the Democratic side, this is the charge of the light brigade, isn't it? Damn the torpedos.
JACOBSON: I think the real is this guy's become the Ron Paul of the 2016 campaign. And they may have to change the platform or the rules at the convention to prevent John Kasich from being even relevant at this point.
THOMAS: It's purely fantasy land. I'm not sure why. He shouldn't have been -- Marco Rubio still has more delegates and Marco dropped out. John Kasich can go on. He's got a very lean and mean campaign. He doesn't need campaign contributions. He doesn't run television ads. He's going to go to the convention. If he doesn't drop out soon, he'll become a laughingstock.
SESAY: Dave to you and the Democratic side of things, Bernie Sanders staying in the race, keeping his eye on California. Take a listen to what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SANDERSTE: California is an outrageously expensive state in terms of media, you're right. And clearly we're not going to be spending $100 million or whatever it takes on media in California. We have to decide the best way to allocate our resources. I think that what the focus of our campaign will be, what it
has been up to now, that is we're going to do a whole lot of rallies. We're going to go to California. When we go to California you're going to see very large rallies up and down that beautiful state.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Large rallies, all well and good. The math is against him.
JACOBSON: Right. It hasn't translated to catching up in terms of Hillary Clinton's lead. She's 92 percent of the way to the 2,383 delegate number, 199 delegates to clinching the nomination. There's no doubt -- this was a major vindication for his message, right.
He's got a message that's resonating. People are angry about the economy, about income inequality, and his message appeals to them clearly. There's no doubt about that. He's poised to do well in some of these states moving forward, right.
We got West Virginia coming up next week. It's an electorate that sort of fits his base, white, sort of independent electorate that Hillary Clinton frankly did well in in 2008.
His challenge is he's winning these states late in the game, much like Hillary Clinton in 2008, but she was never able to catch up to Barack Obama. He has that same challenge.
VAUSE: You guys are campaign strategists, you run campaigns. This was an awful, awful week for Ted Cruz. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It finished on this really awful note where he was giving his concession speech.
He went to hug his father, I think, and his wife, look at this, Heidi Cruz, got an elbow in the face. When you've got a candidate who has had this many fumbles in one week, how do you feel?
THOMAS: It wasn't meant to be. You know, it wasn't meant to be. We knew it was over after New York. Tonight was the final night. That was not a way to go out.
JACOBSON: It was emblematic of what happened the other day, right. Carly Fiorina fell off the stage and Ted Cruz just kept talking as if it didn't even happen.
THOMAS: Donald Trump would have picked her up, for the record.
VAUSE: Talk to you guys next hour, thank you.
A short break. Ted Cruz, called everything from Lyin' Ted to Lucifer in the flesh. Let's face it, he's had a rough couple of days.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Man, everybody hates Ted Cruz. Even O.J. Simpson said, that guy's just hard to like.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[02:51:00]
PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Weather watch time. Pedram Javaheri with you for the Americas right now and this is what it looks like around the Midwestern U.S. with a storm system that is blazing through the region. It should bring in light showers.
Notice the most active weather is right over the sunshine state. The state of Florida getting strong thunderstorms the next 24 or so hours. It's this particular region across the southeastern corner of the U.S. where the active weather continues.
And there is a potential for some severe weather. Generally speaking, powerful winds and hail the main concern across the Carolinas, the second straight day this region has seen rough weather with storms beginning to pop up into the afternoon hours.
New York City, 12 degrees. Big difference working toward the south, at least for now. It's 23 down in Atlanta. Same score out of Denver, Colorado. And the western U.S. beginning to cool off. Western British Columbia cooling off thanks to this storm system and another one back behind it.
So we go into an active pattern around that region the next few days. How about down towards the Caribbean. Looking at generally quiet conditions. A few areas around San Juan, Caracas, Nassau, some see thunderstorms pop up.
It is among the wetter ties of year as we transition into this region of Port-Au-Prince and Haiti seeing heavy rainfall the last couple of days across this region. The month of May is the single wettest month of the year across that region. Showers possible around Salvador. Highs there around 29.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SESAY: Hello, everyone. A dramatic change in the field of presidential candidates after pivotal results in the Indiana primary. A solid victory for Donald Trump with 53 percent of the vote and a crushing defeat for Ted Cruz with a little more than 36 percent. He has suspended his bid for the White House. John Kasich far behind as you see there at 7 percent.
VAUSE: And still in the race. The magic number of delegates to clinch the nomination is 1,237. Trump is just 184 delegates away.
Bernie Sanders says he's got a bit of mojo back after winning Indiana's Democratic primary picking up 43 new delegates.
SESAY: But he's still way behind in the total count. Clinton has 2,217 and Sanders, 1,443. The magic number, 2,383 are needed to win the Democratic nomination.
Ted Cruz spent the past week doing just about anything he could to stop Donald Trump's momentum on the campaign trail.
VAUSE: But it was a week when it seems every --
(VIDEO OUT)
[02:55:10]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN BOEHNER, FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: -- I have Republican friends, I get along with almost everybody. But I have never worked with a more miserable son of a (inaudible).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The next president of the United States -- Ted Cruz!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh my god! Oh my god! Where did she go? Where did she go? She vanished instantly. It's almost as if there's some sort of demonic power about saying the phrase "the next president of the United States, Ted Cruz." Goh!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Oh, dear. It was a rough week.
VAUSE: It was. I haven't seen a week like that ever.
SESAY: As we said, he elbowed his wife.
VAUSE: Elbowed his wife in the head as well, accidentally we should add. As you said, he gave it his all. Left nothing on the field.
SESAY: Indeed. He needs a couple of days away.
VAUSE: Absolutely.
SESAY: Thank you for watching. I'm Isha Sesay, live in Los Angeles.
VAUSE: I'm John Vause. Our coverage of the Indiana primary and the 2016 presidential race continues after this. You're watching CNN.
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