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Stock Market Opens to Highs; Alton Sterling's Son to Speak; Clinton Courting Sanders Backers. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired July 13, 2016 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:30:40] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Some breaking news out of Indiana, where Donald Trump apparently is having breakfast this morning with Indiana Governor Mike Pence who, of course, as you know, is rumored to be on the very short list now for his vice presidential pick. This is him last night at a rally in Indiana. The two working together there, or working the crowd together.

We do know Donald Trump has said that he is looking for somebody who has some government experience, somebody who is a fighter, somebody who he feels he has chemistry with. And the three people that he's said to be looking at last now are Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Newt Gingrich. So this breakfast this morning fueling even more speculation about whether Pence will be his guy. We'll continue to follow any developments on that race.

Opening bell on Wall Street this morning just rang and let's take a look at the big board here. Of course we know the Dow is starting the day at its highest point ever and it appears to be in positive territory again this morning. Alison Kosik is joining us from the New York Stock Exchange.

Alison, we are now at record territory. Why suddenly this surge?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know what, Ana, gone are the worries about the Brexit vote, the crashing oil prices we saw and China's economy slowing down. So it seems that Wall Street is kind of putting all of that on the back burner after getting a strong jobs report on Friday. So what that's translating into is two days and two all-time highs.

So, yes, the Dow is sitting at its highest level ever after a three- day winning streak. The S&P 500, it hit its all-time high Monday and it sure has been a wild ride for stocks this year. The Nasdaq even hitting a significant mark. The first time we've seen it turn positive for the year.

The Dow and the S&P 500 are both up more than 5 percent for the year. That's great news for your 401(k) because many funds reflect the major averages. So, Ana, if you just couldn't bear to look earlier in the year at your portfolio, I would say today is a good day to check your account.

Ana.

CABRERA: All right, Alison Kosik, thanks very much.

I want to take you now to Louisiana, where any minute we are expecting Alton Sterling's son Cameron to speak at a news conference in Baton Rouge. Alton Sterling, you'll recall, was shot and killed at a convenience store after being pinned down by police. His death fueling the nationwide protests and a lot of anger about the killings of African-American men. That anger and that tension between police in their community was really the focus of President Obama's speech yesterday during that memorial service for five officers killed in Dallas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Faced with this violence, we wonder if the divides of race in America can ever be bridged. We wonder if an African-American community that feels unfairly targeted by police and police departments that feel unfairly maligned for doing their jobs can ever understand each other's experience. I understand how Americans are feeling. But, Dallas, I'm here to say, we must reject such despair. I'm here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we've come against impossible odds.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: The president also acknowledging that his words have done little to usher change. The president has visited the site of a mass shooting now 11 times since he took office.

Joining me now, CNN's Polo Sandoval, CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill, and retired NYPD Lieutenant Darrin Porcher.

Polo, I want to start with you. You are standing by there at this press conference where we will hear from the son of Alton Sterling. We saw him so, so heartbroken the last time he appeared. What are we expecting today?

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Ana, this is obviously very significant here because this shooting has definitely led to a raging debate at times and it's often easy to overlook what is a real human tragedy because regardless of where you stand on this debate, what you have here is a 15-year-old young man who lost his father to a police shooting that happened just outside of this convenience store just over a week ago.

So any moment now we do expect Cameron Sterling, the 15-year-old son of Alton Sterling, to take the mikes that you see no far from where I'm standing here, as he will eventually share his story here.

[09:35:00] Now, it's going to be interesting to see what he shares. What will he touch on? When he stood in front of some cameras just over a week ago, he was obviously overcome with emotion, as you may imagine, so it was very difficult for him to speak about the loss of his father. But now as he is able to really harness that energy and to a certain extent have the courage to be able to speak in front of so many cameras and talk about his loss, it will be interesting to see what he touches on. Will he touch on, perhaps, what is this increasing hostility that we have seen in several Americans city and this tension that continues to grow, and the growing call for bridging that disconnect between some communities and the law enforcement agencies that they believe may not be protecting and serving them. So it's going to be very interesting to see exactly what he touches on as he takes the mike here in only a few moments, Ana.

CABRERA: And what a courageous young man. He's just 15 years old.

Polo, we are planning to take his comments live as soon as he starts talking. So we will be monitoring that.

But let me bring in my other guests here with me to talk more on the broader conversation.

We know yesterday at that memorial service President Obama did not shy away from talking politics and talking about really implementing something that could bring about some concrete change. You know, he talked about leader's failure to invest in mental health services, allowing their cities to crumble and become impoverished. He talked about the lack of gun control. Let me just play a quick clip on that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book. And then we tell the police, you're a social worker. You're the parent. You're the teacher. You're the drug counselor. We tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Darrin, what's your reaction to what you heard the president say there?

DARRIN PORCHER, RETIRED NYPD LIEUTENANT: Well, I applaud the president as the leader of our nation in making a statement because this is a tragedy to say the least. But I can hear -- I can see a lot of officers that have a disdain for this speech because they feel like the president is not providing them with the proper backing. However, I believe that the president's narrative is necessary to introduce on a national level because it's clear that we do have a problem with a lot of these shootings of African-Americans in these communities within our nation.

Now, policing oftentimes breaks down into two components. We have order maintenance which primarily focuses on enforcement, and then we have the public servant, which is -- that binds the -- the policing community relationships. Oftentimes you see police departments have these robust budgets that they focus towards the order maintenance component, and that's the enforcement. However, they are tremendously lacking as the public service component. Therefore, we need to intensify our resources in that public servant piece. That's where the officer has that engagement on a day-to-day with people in those particular neighborhoods. So a lot of officers really are -- just are not understanding of that relationship with the community is necessary.

CABRERA: And that investment in that portion is equally as important as, like you said, maintaining the law enforcement side of things.

PORCHER: Absolutely.

CABRERA: Marc, was it appropriate for the president to kind of dabble in these areas that are controversial, like gun control, for example, in a speech at a memorial?

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think so. I think when you invite the president to the funeral of citizens, you're expecting some political dimension to this. He's not coming to read the Bible.

CABRERA: Yes.

HILL: He's not coming to give a normal homily. He's coming to speak to the bigger picture. He mourned those five officers. He eulogized those five officers. He did the things that you do at a funeral, but he also wanted to give a sense of hope and possibility. You can't have hope and possibility unless you're honest about what's going on in the world. And I think that's what the president attempted to do.

Now, I think the president was wrong on certain key things. He says, number one, we're not as divided as we think we are. NO, we are very divided. There are two different conversations going on about law enforcement in our communities, particularly venerable communities. This isn't a question -- and also the president tends to establish equivalency between people in power and people who don't have power by saying, oh, well, white people feel like this and black people feel like that. As he did with Jeramiah Wright in a way.

CABRERA: Trying to acknowledge both sides of the argument.

HILL: Both sides. Right. But the problem is, one side has the power of the state behind it and the other side does not. So we're not opposite sides of the same coin. When we're talking about how vulnerable people feel against state power, how vulnerable people feel when they're being policed, when order of maintenance becomes a way of, honestly, over policing black and brown communities and leading them to jail, right, when those types of things happen, you can't say, well, one type feel like this, one type feels like that. We need to keep police safe. Obviously, no one deserves to die, but we have to do something else here and to change the structure.

CABRERA: OK. We have this presser now with Alton Sterling's son. Let's listen in.

CHRIS STEWART, STERLING FAMILY ATTORNEY: And we thought that it was important, not just for Baton Rouge, but for the entire country, to hear the voice of a lot of the cause of why people are upset and demonstrating. To hear the son of the man that was murdered and hear his thoughts on what's going on across the country. And may that can calm some of the flames. They don't need to be put out, because what's happening is positive. It may be a little struggle, it may be uncomfortable, but it's positive.

[09:40:29] Voting rights didn't come for free. Women's rights didn't come for free. There's always a struggle with change. And there must be change in policing. So it's uncomfortable. It looks difficult. But it's OK. It's OK. Nothing has gotten insanely out of hand with the demonstrations because they've been peaceful.

What we won't allow is one radical person who's going to do something so heinous to stop a positive movement because it is unrelated. This movement is just about change for a community that hurts. And the beauty of it is black, white, Hispanic, everyone has now seen that maybe certain changes need to happen.

And now you'll hear from the voice, the son of Alton Sterling.

CAMERON STERLING, ALTON STERLING'S SON: Good morning, everyone.

I came to talk to everyone about, one, about the death of my father, two, and how I feel about people in general.

First, I want to talk about I feel -- how I feel about people in general. I feel that people in general, no matter what the race is, should come together as one united family. There should be no more arguments, disagreements, violence, crimes. Everyone should come together as one united family.

My father was a good man. That was a sacrifice he showed everyone what has been going on in life. And it should give everyone a push that everyone should be together, not against each other. Everyone needs to be in -- on one accord, not a different note. Everyone needs to be together, not apart.

And I truly feel that my father was a good man, and he will always be a good man. But, at the same time, he has a lot of loved one out here that are really here to support me, my mother, the rest of my brothers and sisters and my father. They're here to support everyone. And I want to thank everyone that are supporting us. I want to thank y'all very much for supporting us.

And another thing, the protesters. I feel that everyone, yes, you can protest, but I want everyone to protest the right way. Protest in peace, not guns, not drugs, not alcohol, not violence. Everyone needs to protest in the right way, with peace, no violence, none whatsoever.

Thank y'all.

STEWART: Out of a babe's mouth.

CABRERA: Again, we were just listening to some comments from the son of Alton Sterling, the man who was killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His son, Cameron Sterling, gentlemen, is just 15 years old. He was so composed. Marc Lamont Hill joining me, and Darrin Porcher.

Darrin, you say you were so impressed.

PORCHER: I was impressed is an understatement. For him to introduce that level of poise in the wake of his father's death, and it kind of brings me back to one thing that President Obama mentioned yesterday. He mentioned that how people came to grieve for these police officers, and then you had the protesters, the two entities conjoined and they realize that, look, this is now a time of coming together, not separating. And that is clearly an example of what his son mentioned in his speech today. So --

CABRERA: Well, he said, he said, no more violence.

PORCHER: Right.

CABRERA: He said he's calling for unity. And he said protesters could protest, but do it the right way.

PORCHER: This is the president's message in execution.

CABRERA: Does -- does it have an extra meaning coming from this individual?

HILL: Well, absolutely. I mean this boy has become a symbol of everything that's been going on for the last week or two and certainly the bigger conversation that's been going on forever in America. And I think the idea of unity is great. But, again, unity can only happen when the precondition is justice. In other words, we can't come together on a false premise. Until we figure out what the problem is, and figure out how to redress the problem, it's going to be different to come together because we're speaking two different languages, maybe three different languages. We're having different conversations with one another and we need to shift that.

[09:45:14] But seeing that boy up there is heartwarming, it's compelling. But the thing that scares me is, he reminds me so much of Mike Brown. And I worry that that same boy that we're all saying is a genius and beautiful and we talk about his warmth and his emotionality, we love this kid. But when he's walking down the street in Baton Rouge later tonight, he's still going to seen -- be seen as a potential threat to a lot of people. And that's the world we live in. That's the paradox of American life. And that's what we've got to fix.

CABRERA: All right. Well put. Thank you both for joining me. I appreciate it.

PORCHER: Thanks for having me.

CABRERA: I also want to let you know, tonight we're going to be talking much more in-depth on this whole subject. A special town hall on police and community relations. "Black, White, and Blue: America in 2016." Why are police and civilians alike in the line of fire? This is hosted by Don Lemon tonight at 10:00 Eastern, only on CNN. All right, back to our breaking news on the political front this

morning. We know Donald Trump is getting very close to naming a vice president. These live pictures now outside the Indiana governor's mansion where Donald Trump is having breakfast with Mike Pence. The Indiana governor, first term governor, who spent many, many years in the House of Representatives. He fits the bill as somebody with government experience, somebody who will really echo what conservatives want to hear and so he is rumored to be one of potentially three people that the list has been narrowed down to now. We have our Dana Bash en route there and anxiously awaiting any news. We'll bring it to you right here on CNN.

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[09:50:56] CABRERA: Back to Indiana now. Live pictures from outside the Indiana governor's mansion where Donald Trump is currently meeting, we understand, with Indiana Governor Mike Pence, somebody who very well could be named Donald Trump's vice presidential pick. We do understand he also dined with the Pences last night prior to his joint rally with Governor Pence there in Indianapolis.

We are anxiously awaiting any word from what's happening inside this meeting, whether or not Donald Trump may be offering him this opportunity to be his vice presidential candidate. We understand that it's down to Governor Pence, Governor Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich, who may be named the vice presidential pick in the next couple of days, as we're leading into the GOP convention here next week.

We'll continue to monitor what's happening there in Indiana and whether or not there is any news to report. We'll be bringing it to you here on CNN.

All right, on the Democratic side, more news to talk about. Hillary Clinton stumps in Illinois in just a few hours. Now, back in March, she barely beat out Bernie Sanders there to win the primary. Well, now, she is vying to win over Sanders' backers following his big endorsement yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president, and I am proud to stand with her today.

Thank you all very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: So are Bernie fans buying it? CNN's Joe Johns is live in Washington this morning.

Joe, are we looking at a different race this morning?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: They've still got time to buy it, but I don't think the really -- the die-hards are quite there yet, Ana. This is a big moment for Hillary Clinton. It was a long time coming. You know, the last primary race ended a month ago and the Clinton campaign's been working hard to try to incorporate a number of the Sanders campaign's key issues in hopes of persuading Sanders voters to vote for the secretary of state.

A lot of people I've talked to who've attended Sanders rallies, especially at the end of the process, said they would likely support Clinton when it's all over, but after the endorsement. I think it was clear that Hillary Clinton still has some work to do to attract those die-hard Sanders supporters, especially the never Hillary Democrats who said they took issue with things like her trustworthiness, for example.

But the biggest uniter for the Democrats so far has been the guy you were just talking about. It's not the issues, it's the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, and the concern that he could make it to the White House. Those ideas were very much on display in New Hampshire when Sanders endorsed Clinton. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This election must be about bringing our people together, not dividing us up.

While Donald Trump is busy insulting Mexicans and Muslims and women and African-Americans and our veterans, Hillary Clinton understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: To everyone here and everyone across the country who poured your heart and soul into Senator Sander's campaign, thank you.

And our country desperately needs your voices and involvement. And so does this campaign. And so does the Democratic Party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: So, another important day for Hillary Clinton this campaign cycle and for the Democratic Party unity. But it looks like some on the far left of U.S. politics aren't buying it. As expected, green party candidate Jill Stein criticized the endorsement, tweeting, "many burning hearts are breaking right now." And she also tweeted this. "It sounds like the only good thing Bernie can say about Hillary is that she is not Donald." So, on the left, they still have a lot of work to do with those progressives if they want to persuade that group that really doesn't like Hillary to come along.

CABRERA: And then the new poll numbers out this morning from those swing states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, are another sign that it's not so encouraging to the Clinton campaign. We'll continue to watch that race too.

[09:55:08] Joe Johns, thank you very much.

Let's check top stories this morning. David Cameron resigns. A standing ovation last hour as Cameron closed

out his final cabinet meeting as Britain's prime minister. He signed off giving this advice to his successor Theresa May, "keeping the U.K. as close to the European Union as possible." Now, Cameron is going to head to Buckingham Palace where he will then tender his formal resignation.

North Carolina's A.G. is slamming a new law that makes police body cam and dash cam video off limits to the public. Under this new law, a person would have to submit a written request to even look at a recording and then petition a judge to try to get a copy or release it. Now, the governor claims the new law will promote uniformity, clarity and transparency. Critics say it deepens the mistrust so many police involved shootings have caused.

The FBI is looking and closing the book on one of its longest a most exhaustive investigations. The last time anyone saw D.B. Cooper, he parachuted out of a Seattle-bound airplane with $200,000 in ransom strapped to his body. The book is now closed.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM begins right after a quick break. Stay with me.

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