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Trump Calls Senator Warren 'Pocahontas'; Will Democratic Party Unify?. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 25, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Chaos there with anti-Trump protesters in Albuquerque, New Mexico, breaking through barricades.

They lit fires. They smashed a door, threw rocks outside this venue that Trump was at last night. Police responded with pepper spray. They did not, however, make any arrests.

We do have now CNN's Paul Vercammen. He's outside the Convention Center.

But, first, I want to get to Sara Murray. She's inside the Convention Center. She has been listening to the speakers who are speaking ahead of Donald Trump.

What's been happening there, Sara?

SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Brianna.

We have heard from a number of people who have children or relatives who were killed by undocumented immigrants, and this has kind of become a stable of Donald Trump when he visits areas that are near to the border, when he visits areas that with heavily Latino populations.

He really lays into this as one of his campaign issues, the idea that undocumented immigrants in the United States are dangerous, that they are a threat to the country. And I think that this going to be part of his message or going to be part of his message against Democrats as we get into the fall, the sense that people feel less safe now than they did before.

And we will see how effective that is. It's also the kind of thing that could potentially run up Hispanic turnout, as Democrats turn out against him in the fall.

KEILAR: Paul, you're outside. I want to ask you what you're seeing here. We're so curious, especially the day after this rally in New Mexico, and police there have really been anticipating certainly some chaos, certainly preparing for it.

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They have.

And if you look right over to my left, mounted police officers, mutual aid officers coming in from throughout Orange County sheriff's deputies. You can see even the horses have face guards on just in case. They have taken every precaution imaginable, and they have said that anything who decides to go ahead and break through a police barrier or become violent or destroy property will be arrested.

And as you look at these officers, Brianna, I know you know Orange County well. Just beyond, that's actually the outskirts of Disneyland, in specific, the California Adventure. So they have really hit the streets of Anaheim today with a lot of firepower, and we have not seen with this extreme police presence any of the violence that marked Albuquerque last night.

Police saying they were very grateful for the fact that this is a noon event, middle of the day, and that they felt that anybody who is extremely rowdy wouldn't be using the cover of darkness to go ahead and perpetrate some violence, so, so far so good and calm.

And I will go ahead. Jordan (ph), go ahead and wheel over there. There have been these shouting messages, for lack of a better term, between anti-Trump demonstrators and Trump supporters. Many of those Trump supporters, by the way, are street preachers we see throughout Southern California getting on megaphones and shouting their various opinions.

And we have got to be careful here, because some of the signs that we have seen have been filled with expletives. But as we said, so far, so good and calm here on the streets of Anaheim, Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Sara, I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you about Donald Trump's fund-raising efforts.

I know that he has this big ticket event tonight, right? He is fund- raising, which is sort of a change from the beginning of his candidacy.

MURRAY: Yes, you're absolutely right, Brianna. He has first one of high-dollar fund-raisers tonight. It is expected to raise somewhere between $5 million and $6 million.

Of course, this is an about-face from the Republican presidential primary, where Donald Trump who he was self-funding his campaign, he wasn't going to be beholden to big donors. Now that's shifted in the general election.

And what we're already hearing is a little bit of angst among some Trump loyalists about this is working out, working with the RNC to raise money, because a number of them still don't really trust that the RNC has Donald Trump's best interests at heart, that this is the kind of fund-raising agreement that will work to Donald Trump's benefit and not just fill the coffers at RNC.

Now, of course, the RNC disputes this. They say they have built one of the best fund-raising teams in the history of political fund- raising and that this is what you are going to need to take on Hillary Clinton in the general election, but it just says there are still some tough feelings between people who are close to Donald Trump and the Republican Party, even as all these folks need to work together going into the general election.

KEILAR: Sara Murray, Paul Vercammen, thanks so much for covering this event inside and out there in Anaheim, California.

Hillary Clinton is getting some tag team help against Donald Trump. Senator and fellow Democrat Elizabeth Warren slamming Trump for his comments a decade ago where he said that he hoped a housing market crash would happen so that he could profit from it. Here's Warren.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Donald Trump was drooling over the idea of a housing meltdown, because it meant he could buy up more property on the cheap.

[15:05:01]

What kind of a man does that? I will tell you exactly what kind of a man does that. It is a man who cares about no one but himself, a small...

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

WARREN: ... a small, insecure money-grubber who doesn't care who gets hurt, so long as he makes a profit off it.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

WARREN: What kind of a man does that? A man who will never be president of the United States.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now Trump firing back at Warren. Watch what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Oh, Hillary Clinton has somebody. Did you ever hear of Pocahontas, huh?

It's Pocahontas, Elizabeth Warren. She was going out.

(BOOING)

TRUMP: She's probably the senator that's doing just about the least in the United States Senate. She's a total failure. She said she was an Indian.

She said because her cheekbones were high, she was an Indian, that she was Native American. And we have these surrogates, people like her, total failures.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KEILAR: With me now, we have CNN political director David Chalian.

We have senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson and chief political correspondent Dana Bash.

Dana, we're seeing certainly that Donald Trump is recycling this attack line from when Elizabeth Warren was running for the Senate. It didn't really work for Republicans then, and she has certainly been someone that a lot of Democrats are mobilized by. Is she becoming Hillary Clinton's secret weapon?

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: She certainly seems to be, right?

She is and can say the things that Hillary Clinton can't for lots of reasons, won't or can't. And just the fact that Hillary Clinton is running for president, it's a completely different game. And Elizabeth Warren is kind of not only unleashed, because she's not on any ticket.

She also knows that she does have a following and she's not afraid to kind of rile them up and use her position to do so.

There are a lot of people out there who are just obviously very much anti-Trump doing the attagirl to her. But, at the same time, this is not bringing anybody in the middle towards one side or the other. This is all about red meat, and not just for the liberal side or the Democratic side, but also for the anti-Hillary, anti-Elizabeth Warren Republicans who are already supporting Donald Trump.

KEILAR: And, Nia, he's struggling with women. They really don't like him sort of as a group. And he needs to -- maybe he's not going to overtake that with Hillary Clinton, but he needs to cut into her margin a little bit.

But here he finds himself in this feud with three women, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and Susana Martinez in his own party. How do you think that that is going to play with this key constituency?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It likely won't do him any good, do him any favors.

I think Dana is right . On the one hand, he's going after these liberal figures, Hillary Clinton and then Elizabeth Warren, in pretty nasty ways, because this is what this race is.

But then in going Susana Martinez, that is the real surprise. Here you have a woman who is the first female governor of New Mexico. She's the chairman of the Republican Governors Association. She was a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention in 2012, a real rising star, someone who can explain Republican Party philosophy and conservative philosophy to different groups, Latinos and women.

And there he is cutting her down in her own state. Hillary Clinton in a speech she just gave picked up on that and said, listen, Donald Trump has a history of insulting women. He's even picking on Susana Martinez, the governor of New Mexico, here. So, I think that is, I think, making a lot of people sort of scratch their heads. Why is he going after her, someone who could technically be an ally at some point? She has been critical of him in the past. In 2012, she was also critical of Mitt Romney.

So, here, you have someone who says he's a negotiator, and can sort of make deals, but is certainly not in any place where he seems like he's going to close any deals with Susana Martinez.

KEILAR: One of the things, David, that so many people say about Donald Trump is his opponents had these attack lines against him and nothing really sticks.

Clearly, the Clinton campaign think that they can attack him, not as having really business know-how, but as kind of being a predator in some of his business practices. Do Democrats think that they have really found what is going to stick to Donald Trump?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: They think that they found one thing that may be effective for them, because, as you know, Brianna, when you cover campaigns, there's nothing like a negative frame that works well as the kind that also reinforces your positive frame.

[15:10:00]

So, by going after Trump and his past business practices, where it may have hurt somebody in the middle class, Hillary Clinton gets to down double down on her message that she wants to talk about, her case for helping the middle class.

Now, Donald Trump, as you have seen, embraced this. And he said, OK, you want to come after me for my business practices. I'm going to remind everyone that I was in business and not a politician, because that's what the country clearly has been yearning for this cycle. And I'm going to remind everyone that, yes, I did what it takes to be successful and I want to do that for America.

So, it really does seem like this battle line is being formed in a way where both sides see advantage in some way to get to their core message, whether or not they're receiving the attack or launching it.

KEILAR: You have to wait and see who is going to win on that.

I want to ask you about how Trump, David, responded to these protests, this chaos that we saw last night in New Mexico. He said -- quote -- in a tweet -- "The protesters in New Mexico were thugs who were flying the Mexican flag. The rally inside was big and beautiful, but outside criminals."

So, he's calling protesters thugs. We certainly know that there was people breaking barricades, which the police were very upset about, but he's sort of re -- he's hearkening back to his comments about criminals coming from Mexico. It's not exactly what you would expect of someone who might be trying to pivot to the middle a little bit for a general election.

CHALIAN: Right.

I think, here in this context, he was using the word criminal for any laws that they may have broken last night in their protesting.

KEILAR: Yes.

CHALIAN: But, yes, he raises the fact that they were waving Mexican flags, because this is his ability to take that opposition and wear it as a badge of honor to help solidify support among his core boosters.

So, he says, great, I'm going to go somewhere. I'm going to have all these protesters outside. That's going to rally my troops. And I think we saw that last night in hearing from Trump supporters coming out of that event what they thought of the folks who were protesting.

It's not -- it's clearly not, you're right, Brianna, a strategy of sort of reaching out and expanding, as much as it is fortifying your base, which, by the way, his bringing together the Republican base right now is clearly what has him in the hunt with Hillary Clinton in a lot of these polls, while she continues to have a lingering Democratic nomination race for the time being.

KEILAR: All right, David, Nia, Dana, stay with me for just a moment.

Breaking today, the State Department finding that Hillary Clinton is at fault over the use of her personal e-mail server. How does this impact her campaign?

Plus, her opponent, Bernie Sanders, speaking live. Will he take her on over this, over the e-mails? We will be listening in for that.

We're also getting some breaking news, a major power outage in Seattle. We're just getting in our first live pictures there of Pike Place Market actually. We will have details next.

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[15:16:53]

KEILAR: Well, Seattle is experiencing right now a major power outage.

We have some live aerial shots for you over the city. The power company there says they experienced an equipment failure. We're still trying to get some details on that, but they say that the power should actually be back in about 30 minutes.

Traffic is stalled there. We will have updates for you as we get them.

And I want to take you now to Cathedral City in Riverside County, California. You can see Bernie Sanders there at the podium speaking live. Let's listen in.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (VT-I), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But this is the truth.

The truth is that no president, not Bernie Sanders or anybody else, can do it alone. We are now in the process of taking on Wall Street, which has endless supplies of money. I mean endless. We are taking on corporate America, which, if they want and what they have done, shut down factories all over this country and moved to China if they can make $5 more in profit.

We are taking on wealthy campaign contributors. Do you think most candidates have meetings like this in Cathedral City?

AUDIENCE: No!

SANDERS: They don't. They are busy going to some billionaire's mansion and getting $50,000 a person for the campaign, which reminds me, while I'm here, anybody got $50,000 to contribute? No, I don't think so.

I don't think so. But that's what the difference is between our campaign and the other campaigns. Now, you want to hear something? It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Donald Trump tells us -- who knows -- he lies all the time, but he claims, he claims to be a billionaire. We will take him for his word.

He is soliciting funds from Sheldon Adelson, a multibillionaire. So what you have got is a multibillionaire supporting a billionaire. That is not what American democracy is supposed to be about.

Democracy is one person, one vote. Now, it is true that Wall Street has the money. Corporate America has enormous power. The corporate media will tell you what they want you to know, not what the American people need to know. And we have wealthy campaign contributors directing what happens in Congress.

That is all true, but there is another truth. And the other truth is that, when millions of people stand up and fight back, we have the power and we can win.

[15:20:02]

KEILAR: Bernie Sanders there in Cathedral City, California.

And as Bernie Sanders battles Hillary Clinton, the State Department's independent watchdog, the inspector general, has released the findings of its critical report on Clinton's e-mail server.

The bottom line is that she broke the rules and that, despite claims to the contrary, they could find no evidence that Clinton and her team ever sought legal permission to use the private server.

This is coming as Clinton took the stage in California. She was stumping with a little help from actress Jamie Lee Curtis, but she did not reference the e-mails.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JAMIE LEE CURTIS, ACTRESS: How do we make a decision about who is going to make those decisions on our behalf when life hinges for this country and (INAUDIBLE)? How do you make that decision?

I want to make that decision based on someone's experience, someone's strength, someone's intelligence, someone's attention to detail, someone's open, generous heart that has dedicated their lives to public service, who has worked on behalf of people, minorities, women, who has a woman's heart, a warm, deep, loving woman's heart.

And it's about time in this country that we had a woman running this country.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CURTIS; So, I am going to play my woman's card. I'm going to play all of our women's card. We are playing with a full deck, and we are going to welcome Hillary Rodham Clinton as the next president of the United States.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: All right.

Let's bring back our panel now, with Jeff Zeleny joining us. He's our CNN senior Washington correspondent. We have Dana Bash, CNN chief political correspondent, and Nia-Malika Henderson, CNN senior political reporter.

Jeff, Hillary Clinton not is obviously going to mention e-mails there at a rally, but do you think that this is going to be a problem for her? Does this really have to escalate far beyond this to affect her campaign?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, this issue has been out there for more than a year.

Most people who, you know, have already have a problem with this or do not have a problem with this have probably made their minds up, but this is a scathing report from the inspector general.

Hillary Clinton told you last summer in July, I believe it was, in that interview in Iowa that she followed the rules, that she did everything permitted.

This report is contradicting that in its entirety. They said, in fact, she did not alert people or have permission to use this, so this -- now, the Clinton is trying to say, oh, this is old news. There's nothing to see here. That's not necessarily true here.

This is a very direct report saying that in fact she did not have permission and they did not follow the rules here.

Now, are Democrats going to suddenly be worked up by this? Perhaps not, but look for Donald Trump to seize this and run with it. Now, Bernie Sanders hasn't, and we don't think he's going to. His advisers say he's not going to weigh in here.

That may be one of the biggest mistakes that he makes. His supporters believe he should have done this. He has always said, look, I'm not going to go there.

KEILAR: Yes. He so colorfully said basically enough with your -- you know word, the e-mails...

BASH: Damn.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: ... at the debate, so he sort of -- you know, he took it really off the table there.

Dana, and I actually -- I want you all to weigh in on this a little bit, but, Dana, there is this war going on inside the Democratic Party. You have Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She slams Bernie Sanders, and really for what his supporters did in Nevada.

There was some chaos there. And now you have some senators who are talking about removing her from the DNC. When -- are you seeing this as really a groundswell? Like, do you really think that Debbie Wasserman Schultz could be on her way out?

BASH: I wouldn't call it a groundswell, but I definitely, based on my reporting, Jeff's reporting and others here, would call it a real conversation.

And it really does go to the heart -- I mean, there are lots of issues and lots of -- several sort of factions of Democrats have different issues with her, but when it comes to the current moment in time, it is all about Bernie Sanders and about the fact that he has been at war with her since the beginning of his candidacy, did not think that the party treated him fairly when it came to the scheduling of the debates, how many debates there were and many other issues.

So, what we are certainly hearing, both from senators on Capitol Hill, is -- and others -- is maybe some tepid support, but at the same time, there are those who are going out there saying, wait a minute, we're not going to just throw her under the bus to placate Bernie Sanders.

[15:25:03]

You saw very important, not just members of Congress, but female members, starting with the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, the dean of the Senate women, Barbara Mikulski, saying, we strongly support her.

And I just got off the phone with a Democratic National Committee man who was talking about the fact that she has a lot of support inside the DNC. Has there been talk about maybe her going to another job? Yes, of course, but that at the end of the day, there is concern about two things, one, her being looking like she's sort of sacrificed on the altar of Bernie Sanders.

That was the words of this source. And, two, this is going to be another problem for Hillary Clinton,because, as Jeff can tell you -- and you know this, both of you guys -- that she is -- if she does become the nominee, it is going to be up to her to help decide who is the head of the DNC, so it's another issue that she's going to have to deal with.

KEILAR: What would this look like, Nia? And as we're so close to the convention at this point in time, what would this look like if Debbie Wasserman Schultz were to go? It's important to note, as Dana does, that there are a lot of folks supporting her still, but what would that look like? How would that play out for party unity even if it's something Bernie Sanders might want to see?

It certainly doesn't paint a pretty picture of what would be going on in the party.

HENDERSON: Right.

From what I'm hearing -- and Dana and Jeff have certainly done some of this reporting as well -- the Democrats I have talked to said the scenario would essentially be, if she does go, it would be after the convention. And typically, when you install a nominee of a party, it is their choice to put someone in new.

Now, all along, it's obviously been the thinking that Debbie Wasserman Schultz would stay there, but in some ways it has been sort of an open secret in Washington that the White House hasn't always looked on her tenure there positively.

And even Hillary Clinton and people in her circle have oftentimes had problems with her tenure. So, what I have heard is that it would happen after the convention, and in some ways, it would -- it would possibly be sort of a unifying thing of, this is something that Bernie Sanders seems to want, has been pretty adamant about it, and that even Hillary Clinton might want, that, after the convention, they would install somebody new and it would sort be a symbol of party unity in some -- I think, to the average voter, you know, the average general election voter, stuff like this could in some ways be in the weeds.

But it would be a scenario that plays out in the summer before Debbie Wasserman Schultz's primary. Remember, she's up for election. And so she would have time to pivot towards that.

But we will see. Again, here we are talking about the Democrats and unity, when all the thinking was that the Republican primary and the Republican Convention would be a mess, but the Democrats obviously have work to do of their own, particularly with this post that Debbie Wasserman Schultz has at the DNC.

KEILAR: Yes, drama on both sides here.

Jeff, Nia, Dana, thanks to all of you for being on the panel.

HENDERSON: Thank you. KEILAR: And next, moments away from Donald Trump speaking live in

Anaheim, California. This is one day after violent protests erupted at his rally in New Mexico. We will listen in live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)