Return to Transcripts main page

Wolf

Donald Trump Unloads on the Media; A Conversation with Jane Sanders. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired May 31, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:01] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump unloads on the news media, takes a swipe at Democrats in the race for the White House. He held a news conference a little while ago to announce that at a January event, he raised $5.6 million for veterans. Besides lashing out at reporters, he also ridiculed the Democrats over their drawn out primary season.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have no idea what's going to happen on the Democratic side, but they're certainly having difficulty. I don't like to see people having difficulty, but anybody has to have it, let it be them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF: All right, joining us now from Burlington, Vermont is Jane Sanders. She's the wife of Senator Bernie Sanders. Jane, thanks very much for joining us.

JANE SANDERS, WIFE OF SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS: Good to be here, Wolf.

BLITZER: I don't know if you had the chance too much Trump's news conference, but if you did, what's your reaction to what he said about the news media, his criticism of the Democrats?

SANDERS: I didn't really watch but I saw it in passing a little bit and pieces. You know, I mean I think that he used the news media quite effectively by acting, some would say inappropriately or just in a very annoyed way. He seems to get coverage by being the way he is. So, I guess it's working for him. I don't think it's working for the American people.

BLITZER: It's worked so far for him. They said today, he's going to continue that same strategy going forward. You must be disappointed thought that Jerry Brown, the Governor of California endorsed Hillary Clinton today saying this, "This is no time for Democrats to keep fighting for each other. The general election has already begun. Hillary Clinton, with her long experience, especially as Secretary of State, has a firm grasp of the issues and will be prepared to lead our country on day one. Next January, I want to be sure that it is Hillary Clinton who takes the oath of office, not Donald Trump."

What was your reaction to Jerry Brown's endorsement? SANDERS: Well, not surprising. I mean throughout the country, Bernie

has side to take on the governors, the senators, the congressman, the Democratic establishment in each race. He's won 20 states and there's a number of them up this week, this coming week, that I think he'll win as well. And California may very well be one of them and that might be why he's weighing in now on behalf of the Democratic establishment.

Bernie is going to be quite ready as well and one of the things that is surprising, maybe I shouldn't say surprising, but it's because it's been consistent. Everybody has said since the day that he announced that he was running until today, that he doesn't have a chance, whether he won a string of eight in a row or five in a row, it didn't matter. Always, the second sentence was, "But he doesn't have a chance, but the presumed nominee is Hillary Clinton." So we've heard that for a year and we'll hear it for another week. But I think that you'll see he's won quite handily recently and there are number of states, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, New Jersey , Puerto Rico, California that are -- they need to have their voices heard. And as a Democrat in the state ...

BLITZER: I was -- sorry for interrupting. They will have their voices heard a week from today. There's no doubt about that. But given the nature of the system that the Democrats have, proportional -- a delegate allocation even if he wins, there are going to be almost equally, assuming it's not a land slide, they're going to be almost equally divide up the delegates and there's no way he can overcome the deficit he has right now especially since she has so many more superdelegates.

SANDERS: Well, I think CNN and MSNBC should listen to the Communications Director of the DNC who says, don't count those superdelegates until they actually vote. You don't count the delegates, the pledged delegates, until they actually vote. So, yes, he's 272 votes pledged delegates behind Secretary Clinton and it is a steep climb. But the fact is, he's won a number of races, a number of elections by large margins, by 70, 75, 82, 86 percent. We'll have to see what happens on Tuesday.

It's tough, but it's doable. You don't quit before the final vote is counted. And as a Democratic governor, one of the things that surprises me about Jerry Brown is that we have -- Bernie's election has brought in many, many, many more people into the Democratic process, a lot, close to a million people registering in this election that hadn't been registered before. It will help all the down-ballot races that there is a contest this next Tuesday.

BLIZER: I noticed that over the weekend in a T.V. interview, he didn't rule out the possibility if Hillary Clinton does get the Democratic presidential nomination and she asked him to be his running mate. He didn't rule that out. How would you feel about your husband being the vice presidential nominee?

[13:35:01] SANDERS: I think that what we're focused on right now, and honestly, we're not even thinking about it is that we're looking at the presidency. I mean, Bernie's whole focused, his work, his life's work, is to be able to do as much as he possibly can to help the working people of America. He's done that as a senator from Vermont, he's done it now as the candidate for president, he's moved the entire agenda, you must admit, I mean. So we're -- the best place for him to be is the presidency. And until we know otherwise, that's our focus.

BLITZER: There was a dramatic moment on the campaign trail. You saw it yesterday. Senator Sanders was speaking at rally in Oakland, California when at least four protesters tried to rush the stage that prompted the U.S. Secret Service to jump into action. How worried were you -- how worried are you about those kinds of incidents? I'm sure you were.

SANDERS: Well the Secret Service are fantastic. I mean, they are just unbelievable in terms of being aware and protecting of him. So I'm very thankful for that. I think I heard it from breaking news and I called up the -- I didn't see it. So I called up the campaign. I said, "What's going on?" They said everything is fine. So, there was only maybe 60 seconds of concern.

BLITZER: Yeah. But it's pretty dramatic whenever you see -- I covered the White House, I've seen the Secret Service in action.

SANDERS: Yeah.

BLITZER: Whenever they have to do something especially with your spouse, a presidential candidate, you get nervous understandably.

SANDERS: Yeah.

BLITZER: So fortunately, keywords, everything was fine. Jane, thanks so much ...

SANDERS: Yes.

BLITZER: ... for joining us. Jane Sanders is the wife of Senator Bernie Sanders. We'll see what happens next Tuesday and you're absolutely right not just California, there are several contests coming up a week from today. Jane, thank you very much.

SANDERS: Thanks, Wolf. Bye, bye.

BLITZER: And later today, Hillary Clinton will join our Jake Tapper live to talk about the campaign in California. Donald Trump's financial contributions to veteran groups, its policies, that airs live 4:00 p.m. Eastern on "The Lead with Jake Tapper" later today.

Up next, more on the breaking news, Donald Trump calls out Hillary Clinton. The news media Republicans weren't ready to back in as their nominee. We'll be right back with much more coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:41:43] BLITZER: Donald Trump blasting the news media today in a heated press conference. His plan was to announce that the counting of the $5.6 million in fund raising for veteran's groups here in the United States. He spent a lot of time launching an all out assault on the political news media, if you will, calling a political journalist, not all of them, but many of them he said were sleazy, dishonest and among the worst human beings, he said, he has ever met.

Joining us once again, our chief political analyst, Gloria Borger. She's in New York. Here in Washington, CNN's political director, David Chalian, and CNN senior political reporter, Nia-Malika Henderson.

Gloria, any of these controversies surrounding Donald Trump right now so far, no matter he said, no matter how outrageous people seem to think it is, doesn't seem to hurt him politically. What about the donations to the veterans groups, the new revelations about Trump University, any of these can have a significant impact?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, with Donald Trump supporters, Wolf, I don't think so. The questions about Trump University had been out there and they will continue to be out there and we're going to learn much more about that in the days and weeks to come. I think with veterans groups, Trump's supporters will be with him. So I don't think it's a matter of those people because he's got a solid base of support that as we learned during the primaries is not going anywhere.

I think the real question is, as you broaden those whom Trump needs to support him, the so-called persuadables and we have, you know, yet to get any real indication at this point about how many there are out there, but I would submit there are a lot, that they will be looking at Trump and at Hillary Clinton, I might add, through a different lens because they will be looking at them through the lens of, is this a person I want in my living room every night, is this a person that I can trust to send my child to war potentially? It's a very personal vote for the presidency and I think you start looking at a candidate very differently. And when you see someone kind of lashing out, the question that some of those persuadables might have is, "Wait a minute, is that somebody I really can trust with these important things?" And so, we're just going to, I hate to say this, but we're just going to see how it plays out.

BLITZER: You know, we're going to see how it plays out, is one thing to play it out during a Republican primary contest in the general election.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yeah.

BLITZER: You have to bring in a lot of other people into that discussion as well. And he does have pretty high unfavorable numbers right now. But raising $5.6 million for veterans including $1 million personal contribution, he made that contribution, went to the U.S. Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation. With average Americans, that sounds pretty impressive.

HENDERSON: It does sound pretty impressive. It's a lot of money. He raised a lot of money. He gave some of his own money and we tend to see very rich people give lots of money to charities and he certainly should be commended for that and everybody who gives to charities. But I do think, so his behavior in that press conference I think is going to set off another round of hand-wringing among a lot of GOP folks. And also, I think he's going to underscore one of the arguments that you see from the Hillary Clinton campaign which is this idea that he doesn't have the temperament to be president.

[13:45:03] You saw from a top aide, they tweeted out, close your eyes and imagine, if you will, Donald Trump in the White House after seeing this president. I do think it goes again to Gloria's point of that's the kind of test and those are the kind of questions that average voters are going to make. We will see I think a coalescence of most Republicans because that's just what happens in -- party identification.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Right.

HENDERSON: But I think these other voters, they're going to raise some questions.

CHALIAN: It does raise questions, but we should be careful about what the answers will be to those questions, right, because to some, you know, lashing out is in the eye of the beholder.

HENDERSON: Right.

CHALIAN: To some people in this persuadable universe, it will be seen as strength ...

HENDERSON: Yes.

CHALIAN: ... which has been a calling card for him. And so, I agree with Gloria entirely that the -- voting for the president really is a personal decision and it's a very -- it's an emotional one, right?

HENDERSON: Yeah.

CHALIAN: People really do get exactly what Gloria is saying. I just think that looking at today's press conference, there will be a universe of people who see that as strength, not as a hindrance for him, and that to me has been what's working for him.

BLITZER: And Gloria, the news media, not necessarily all that popular to begin with.

BORGER: No, we're not. And by the way, you know, this has worked for candidate after candidate no matter which party. But it worked for Donald Trump during the primaries and it worked for other candidates. Ted Cruz comes to mind during the primaries. Attacking the media is kind of an easy thing to do. We're easy targets. And ...

CHALIAN: Richard Nixon.

BORGER: Yeah. And I think that, you know, that Trump will continue to do it. But getting that to a point we made earlier in the program, Wolf, what Donald Trump said today that I thought was so important was that, he's not going to change. There all these people talking about, "Oh, he's going to be more presidential, you're going to see a different Donald Trump." This is Donald Trump, like him or don't like him, but this is Donald Trump and this is the person that you will be voting for. So either you see what you saw today is a show of strength and taking on the evil media or you see it as something you ought to be concern about. But I think what you see with Donald Trump, and that's part of his appeal actually, is what you get.

BLITZER: Let Trump be Trump. That's what a lot of his advisers have said they want him to do. It's gotten him this far, beat 16 other Republicans including a lot with the gubernatorial, senatorial experience. As he said today, he's not going to change. All right, standby, we have more to assess much more right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[13:51:28] TRUMP: These people are losers. He's trying to make you -- he's trying to drive you guys a little bit nut. If they do in indie, assuming it's decent, which I don't think anybody with a reputation would do it because they'd look like fools. But what you're going to do is you lose the election for the Republicans and therefore you lose the Supreme Court, therefore you will have a group of people put on the Supreme Court where this country will never ever recover. It will never ever be the same.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: That was Donald Trump at his news conference a little while ago dismissing the idea of a third party candidate, one being pushed by the Conservative editor, Bill Kristol of "The Weekly Standard". Let's bring back our panel, Nia-Malika Henderson is with us, David Chalian is still with us. He keeps teasing Bill Kristol that there is someone out there who is serious, who's got the ground game, got the expertise to be a viable third party candidate. We haven't heard that yet.

CHALIAN: We have yet. We keep waiting and -- but we did already get a preview of if indeed somebody doest emerge, how Donald Trump is going to frame that person. You are in a fool's errand. He just -- he said they're going to be a fool because it can't be anyone with the upstanding reputation because they wouldn't do something so foolish. You can already hear how Donald Trump is going to frame this person when the name emerges.

Listen, you were just talking a little bit ago, Nia, about there is going to be some more hand-wringing in Conservative and Republican establishment circles over Trump's candidacy, right, that that's not dissipating so quickly yet. And this is awaiting the vehicle for that and we'll see if it has any legs or not when this person emerges. It seems to me that it is really late in the game to have a substantial impact.

BLITZER: But Mitt Romney has already said even though he doesn't like Donald, he's not interested in being a third party. Ben Sasse, the Republican Senator from Nebraska, he says he's not interested. There have been other names. But David is right. In Texas for example, you can't even get in the ballot unless you have a court order and you appeal that earlier deadline.

HENDERSON: Exactly. It's expensive. I mean logistically, there's a lot of red tape. And even if you got somebody great starting at this late day would be a problem. And the problem here is they don't have any one, right? We've been talking about this for months and months and months and no one has really emerged as someone who would want to do it. So that's the problem.

But I think with he is kind of linking the independent candidate as he called it the -- an indie, an independent candidate, linking it to the Supreme Court, I think he is sort of speaking the Establishment lingo there and essentially saying, "You guys got to keep behind me because otherwise, we're going to put the Supreme Court in jeopardy." And this is from a guy who was threatening the Republican establishment not so many months ago with his own independent third party run. And now, he's speaking, and really I think underscoring a lot of things we've heard from other Republicans saying that the independent one would really be the damaging foothold.

BLITZER: Jerry Brown, the Governor of California endorses Hillary Clinton presumably. He's a popular governor, that can help her.

CHALIAN: He is a popular governor. He can certainly help her. I think endorsements especially this cycle tend to be a little over stayed. But I think it's important in terms of a narrative that Hillary Clinton wants to tell because he was -- he likes to claim to have been the Bernie Sanders kind of guy in the '92 race against Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton, as you know, was running more of a centrist kind the Democrat. So, Jerry Brown was the rubble rouser and now, you know, Hillary Clinton can take on some of that as she tries to stave off a Sander's surge and charge in California in these last days of the campaign.

[13:55:01] BLITZER: And you heard Jane Sanders, the wife of Bernie Sanders, say to me just a little while ago, if he gets 67 percent of the remaining delegates out there, he could get more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton.

HENDERSON: Yeah, I ...

BLITZER: That's a high hurdle.

HENDERSON: Yeah. I mean anything can happen. Bernie Sanders was just at the Warrior's game last night. He was surprised that they came back from that 3-1 deficit. So, anything can happen. At least that's what they are thinking and telling their supporters. We've got Tuesday. We'll see how he does in California and how Hillary Clinton does in New Jersey. They're going to -- she could wrap this up in New Jersey. I think she needs, what, like 70 more delegates or something like that, if she could wrap this up even as people in California are still going to polls.

BLITZER: You think that's realistic?

CHALIAN: I do think it's very realistic that she goes over the top before the California polls close. Yeah. BLITZER: All right. We'll see what happens. All right, guys, thanks very much.

An important note later today, Hillary Clinton will join Jake Tapper live. That's at 4:00 p.m. Eastern on "The Lead with Jake Tapper" only here on CNN. Also coming up, our coverage continues of that heated news conferences by the Republican Presumptive Nominee, Donald Trump, unleashing on the news media, insulting some journalist in process, giving a hint of what the press can expect if he wins the presidency. Much more on that, and a whole lot of news coming up right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)