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Wolf

Train Crash in Hoboken, N.J.; Clinton Campaign with Sanders in Iowa; Trump: I Won Presidential Debate Regardless of Polls; Rep. Maloney Talks Train Crash, Rail Safety; Update on Train Passengers at Hospital; Press Briefing with New Jersey, New York Authorities. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired September 29, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:34:09] WOLF BLITZER: CNN ANCHOR: We're following the breaking news. We're keeping a very close eye on Hoboken, New Jersey, a cross the Hudson River from New York City, as investigators also try to put the pieces together after a deadly train crash there.

Here's what we know right now. At least one person is dead. 74 others are hurt. Some of them on the train, some of them simply standing at the train station. At least two of those injuries are considered critical. Several others serious. A witness says he saw the engineer of the crashed train slumped over in the front of the train. We now know the engineer survived the crash. He, of course, will be questioned. The train never, never slowed down at all as it approached the train station in Hoboken, New Jersey, jumped the emergency bumper, went airborne into the building. There are fears the station, that building, could still collapse. We're going to bring you updates on this.

We're standing by for news conference from New Jersey Transit officials as well as Hoboken officials. That's coming up shortly.

We'll get back to the breaking news in a moment.

[13:35:18] I quickly want to turn to politics right now. We're less than 40 days until the presidential election here in the United States. But while Election Day is November 8th, early voting is already under way in a number of states. And that includes Iowa, where Hillary Clinton is expected to take the stage for a campaign event any moment. She's being introduced by some fellow Democrats.

Our senior political correspondent, Brianna Keilar, is on the scene for us. She appeared with Senator Sanders.

Brianna, Iowa, it's a critically important state and Millennial voters very much on Hillary

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It certainly is, Wolf, and Millennials are so important to Hillary Clinton, not just in Iowa but all over. You can look at the polls and see how she is underperforming compared to how President Obama did in '08 and 2012. A new Bloomberg poll out really putting this in perspective. She's beating Donald Trump but only by a -- about four points, so compare that to 2008 when President Obama did so well with Millennials, Wolf. He had a 34-point advantage over John McCain. Of course, that tightened up in 2012, but the spread then was only about 23 points. So you see how much ground she really has to make up. Millennials account for a -- sort of a bigger chunk of the votership. They're a larger generation during this cycle. So it's so key for her. This is why we're seeing Bernie Sanders getting out there for her yesterday. He's going to continue to campaign for her in the coming days. It's why he says she needs to emphasis a few things, her plan for free tuition for public universities and colleges for families that are making 125,000 or less. And also that she needs to emphasize her message about climate change which is obviously so different than Donald Trump's. And that's why she's going to be talking about that here in Iowa, Wolf, and other places as well.

BLITZER: Brianna is in Des Moines.

Stand by, Brianna.

Donald Trump, he's getting ready to take the state in New Hampshire. He wants you to know he believes he won Monday's presidential debate no matter what all the polls or pundits are saying. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We had the debate the other night and every single online poll had me winning by sometimes a landslide.

I'm winning by massive margins. One was 80 percent to 20 percent. But I'm winning all of these polls, hundreds of thousands of votes, and I have to sit back and you have to sit back and hear how those polls don't mean anything, but when they poll 300 people, that means a lot, right?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Those online polls, as he calls them, they're not scientific because people can vote as many times as they want for the same candidate. The Trump campaign is now telling its surrogates to stop saying he did not do well, start talking about Monica Lewinsky.

Let's bring in our politics editor, Juana Summers.

CNN has learned the Trump team held a conference call with surrogates to let them know how upset Donald Trump was that anyone felt he didn't nail it, that he didn't win that first debate. What more can you tell us?

JUANA SUMMERS, CNN SENIOR POLITICS EDITOR: Well, it seems like from our sources and our reporting at CNN that Donald Trump believes that he won. He doesn't like the idea that people who are supposedly on his even under the cloak of an anonymity he didn't do well. Saying there's no truth, that that reporting is untrue. That's not what our sources tell us. This is a typical pattern from Donald Trump. He keeps people around him that kind of boost him up. I don't think he likes being told that he's wrong. Wolf, I'm watching to see just how well Donald Trump does at this next debate October 9th in St. Louis. Will he change course in his tactics in debating Hillary Clinton or will we see the same trip of approach in that debate as well.

BLITZER: Juana, the talking points fro surrogate, and that includes talking about Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton's infidelities. Even some Republicans think he shouldn't go there. What's the thinking about that?

SUMMERS: I think there's concern among Republicans if he does go there he could alienate voters. A recent CNN/ORC poll found Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine have a wide lead among women. Polls show that women are more likely to see Donald Trump's attacks on the other groups as unfair as compared to how men say they prioritize that. I think there's concern he could do more damage, rather than build the brand up.

[13:30:02] BLITZER: The "L.A. Times," as you know, Juana, citing a 2012 lawsuit claiming Trump wanted to fire employees he didn't find attractive and replace them with better-looking women at one of his golf courses. What impact could that have out there on female voters?

SUMMERS: It's certainly a striking he line to hear and read about. The issue here, it's not just this one instance. There's the comments he has made female pageant contestants. About the looks of celebrity women such as Rosie O'Donnell. There's this evidence that I think many women are looking at concluding there's sexist rhetoric going on and they can't support a candidate that would do that. If you look at the polls now, this is a very tight race and all the national polls we've seen. Donald Trump needs to be able to bring more people in, rather than push them out.

BLITZER: One of Hillary Clinton's most prominent supporters, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, she tweeted out this message of Trump's feud with a former Miss Universe, who she says he weight-shamed her. Here's the tweet, "The D women Senators have talked and we're concerned about Donald's weight. Campaign stress, question mark. We think a public daily weigh-in is called for."

So they're really going after him on this issue.

SUMMERS: Democrats certainly hope to make that stick. McCaskill is an apt Twitter user. It's one of those things most of us at home, you don't talk about people's weight and things like that. I think some people might see this as a fair attack. Certainly given the gender dynamics in this race, I would expect Democrats to continue to highlight these comments as they have and continue to bring that up. I do think we will likely hear Hillary Clinton campaign surrogates continue to push this message.

BLITZER: During an interview last night, Trump defended a comment he made during the debate with Hillary Clinton that not paying makes him smart. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BILL O'REILLY, FOX HOST, O'REILLY REPORT: Hillary Clinton in the next debate, I say to you, what she said yesterday in North Carolina, hey, if he's not going to pay any taxes and he thinks that's smart, what does that make us, we pay taxes, are we stupid? How are you going to answer that?

TRUMP: First of all, I never said I didn't pay taxes. She said maybe you didn't pay taxes.

O'REILLY: Right, it's speculation.

TRUMP: And I said, well, that would make me smart, because tax is a big payment. I think a lot of people say that's the kind of thinking I want running this nation.

O'REILLY: OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Does he need to do a better job addressing this sensitive issue ahead of the next debate?

SUMMERS: I think the issue here is Donald Trump has now left it as an open question. Did he manage to not pay federal taxes because Donald Trump has not released his tax returns? We don't know the answer. I think that will mean this is an open line for Democrats Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine to push back against him aggressively. We've seen CNN polls, it's voters care deeply about. I think he needs a better answer.

BLITZER: Juana Summer, senior politics editor, thank you.

We're going to get back to the breaking news we're following. We were waiting for a news conference in Hoboken, New Jersey. Officials are getting ready to update us on the train crash at the Hoboken train station that killed one person, injured 74 others. The latest information coming in right after this.

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[13:47:48] BLITZER: An update to the breaking news we're following. That deadly passenger train crash in Hoboken, New Jersey. At least one death, 74 others hurt. Lone fatality was a person who happened to be standing on the platform. The train never slowed at all as it approached. It jumped the emergency bumper, went airborne into the building. Another train engineer on the scene estimated the speed at around 30 miles an hour. A witness says he saw the engineer of the crashed train slummed over in front of the train. He certainly will be questioned as investigators look for the cause of the crash. A transportation worker at the train station told reporters he believed the tracks were in order. We're going to bring you more updates as the story unfolds.

I'm joined right now by Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney from New York. He serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Congressman, have you been briefed, first of all, on this crash,

because rail safety is a top priority for you? What have you heard?

REP. SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, (D), NEW YORK: Well, you know, look, we got on this issue the hard way. I lost a friend of mine on a crash in 2013, a guy from my hometown. His wife actually works for me. Our kids go to school together. And what we found is there is a really embarrassing and disgraceful history of noncompliance with existing federal law on this and going back 10 years, to 2000, 2006, the crash in California. Congress passed a bill in 2008, called the Passenger Rail Safety Act, that required these technologies that can stop trains, positive train control, it's called, be installed in all class one rail systems by 2015. What we found out is there wasn't, you know, except for Amtrak, which has done a good job on this, most railroads weren't anywhere near complying but --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Why? Why is that, because thousands of people are taking these commuter trains every day?

[13:49:50] MALONEY: That's right, and we're losing lives, in Amtrak, on today's crash. And we don't need to be burying our neighbors when we can do what makes sense.

Here's the deal, I passed legislation in 2015 that opens up $35 billion of federal financing to install these. Metro-North, to Governor Cuomo's credit, is using $1 billion that they secured from that program called the RIFT Program the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Program. New Jersey Transit, I'm sorry to say, issued a plan in 2011 that said 22 percent of its system would have positive train control by the end of 2014, and yet now two years later, zero percent has positive train control. It is a failure of New Jersey Transit. And you can look at Metro-North in New York as an example of a state getting its act together. But there is federal financing available and there are ways for these state authorities to fund this technology. We can do more on the federal level, too. That's why I've passed legislation to make sure there's federal grants. There's now $220 million in federal grants available to these railroad systems.

And there's other things we can do, Wolf, that are common sense. We can identify all high-hazard curves, I passed a second piece of legislation that does that, so they have to have two engineers in the cab when you're going around a tight curve. There are common-sense things we can do, dead man switches and alerters and redundant systems, but we need positive train control because we're losing too many people on these preventable crashes.

BLITZER: It's a very frustrating situation. You cover these train crashes. You look over what could have easily been done. It wasn't done. Then you go through it once again. You're working to fix it.

Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, thanks for joining us.

MALONEY: Thank you, Wolf. BLITZER: Joining us on the phone is Jarrod Bernstein, the director of

communications for Care Point Health which operates Hoboken University Medical Center which treated 22 of the less-severe injuries.

What can you tell us about the types of injuries you saw at the hospital today?

JARROD BERNSTEIN, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, CARE POINT HEALTH (voice-over): Hi, Wolf, the injuries we saw today were fractures, laceration, bumps and bruises. A fair number of walking wounded who showed up at the hospital about seven blocks away from the crash site. So we were able to treat and release a number of those folks. A number of them still are in the hospital and we actually saw one patient at our sister hospital, part of the Care Point Christ Hospital in Jersey City.

BLITZER: When you have a mass casualty incident like the one in Hoboken today with this train crash, how do the hospitals in the area response?

BERNSTEIN: That's a good question. We plan and train for this everyday. Whether it's 2:00 in the afternoon or 2:00 in the morning, we have a plan to spread out casualties other the regional hospitals to make sure no one hospital emergency room is overwhelmed. So that plan was put into operation today and so far it seems to be working.

BLITZER: Jarrod Bernstein, good luck. Thank you so much for joining us.

I want to bring in Peter Goelz, once again, and Rene Marsh, our aviation and government regulation correspondent.

These are problems that can be fixed, have two engineers not just one in case there is a human error, the engineer fell asleep, have cameras inside to see what's going on. They can live stream that we would know if the engineer fell asleep.

PETER GOELZ, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: The bottom line is money.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: You just heard the Congressman say they got the money.

GOELZ: Well, they haven't had the money and the cost of putting positive train control, the railroads themselves have spent $6 billion to $8 billion and they're not done. They're enormously complex system and my guess is positive train control in the yard --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Positive train control would slow down a train if the engineer fell asleep, for example?

GOELZ: On a normal track, but in the yard, it may not be operable because the train is running below 30 miles an hour.

(CROSSTALK)

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION & GOVERNOR REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: It does come down to the bottom line being money and I do want to flesh that out we are talking about technology and no one will dispute that that technology, positive train control, without a doubt can save lives and prevent accidents. We don't know it would have stopped this accident, though. Positive control is really meant to stop a very fast going train, a train that's going maybe 60 miles per hour, even faster. Once it's in the terminal, it's going really slow, it's not intended for those circumstances so it may not have made a difference there.

BLITZER: Why aren't there two engineers up front?

GOELZ: That's been a debated issue for the last 20 years. Part of it is cost, the railroads don't want to pay for redundancy of human beings in the cabin and there's studies that say it doesn't help. There are other studies that say yes, it would help and common sense might tell you that but it is not an issue there's agreement on.

[13:55:13] BLITZER: Renee, we're showing live pictures. Hoboken officials, New Jersey state official, representatives from New York among others, the governors are getting ready to brief reporters, we, of course, will have live coverage of that, Governor Cuomo of New York is going to be there, we're told, Governor Christie I think will be there as well. The mayor of Hoboken, representatives from New Jersey Transit authority. We'll have live coverage of that coming in.

What about the live streaming of what's going on? That shouldn't be that expensive.

GOELZ: It should be. But certainly what they should have is inward- facing cameras that are recording everything going on in the cabin. That's simple.

MARSH: And if unions have fought that for quite some time.

BLITZER: Unions have resisted that.

All right, you see Governor Christie, you see Governor Cuomo, they're going to speak right now. Governor Chris Christie will begin.

CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R), NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR: Good afternoon. I'm pleased to be joined here by the lieutenant governor, my partner in New York, Governor Cuomo. Governor Cuomo and I have just taken a tour of the damage inside. We pay for the family of the one fatality we have confirmed, for her and for her family. We have a revised total of injured. We had 108 injured in this accident and all of those have been evacuated to local hospitals where they're receiving the care they need. We pray for their recovery.

The engineer who was operating the train was also critically injured. He is at a local hospital and cooperating with law enforcement officials in the investigation.

What we know is that the train came in at a high rate of speed and crashed through the barriers bringing it into the interior wall of the Hoboken terminal. Extraordinary reaction from local law enforcement and EMS along with civilian passengers who assisted EMS and local police and state police in evacuating the trains as quickly as possible and helping with the triage of passengers who were injured and getting them immediately to local hospitals for them to receive health care. There will be others who will speak today about some of the specifics, Commissioner Hammer, Prendergast from the MTA, about the specifics of commuting, both this afternoon and tomorrow. We won't address that specifically.

Both Governor Cuomo and I come from a law enforcement background, as does the lieutenant governor. My admonishment, when I was U.S. attorney, all the time to my prosecutors and agents, was don't jump to conclusions, let the facts lead you to the proper conclusions, so we're not going to speculate about the cause of the accident. The fact is that we're in the midst of an investigation.

I was called by the White House today as well. They have not only dispatched the NTSB and the Federal Railway Administration but also pledge any resources we need additionally to deal with the victims or to deal with what's happened at the Hoboken terminal. We were pleased to get that call.

As I said, from the time the incident happened this morning, Governor Cuomo and I have been in communication since the train began its journey I the state of New York and we have a number of New York citizens on this that train as welcoming here to New Jersey. So we're going to work together to make sure the investigation is seamless and coordinated, that we come to a conclusion as quickly as possible, and then if there are steps that need to be taken thereafter to provide for greater assurance and safety for the people of our states, we'll together through the transit authority of New York and New Jersey, MTA and New Jersey Transit to make sure that that occurs.

And so we pray for the victims and their families. We are on the scene. We're going to continue to monitor what's going on. We have engineers that are examining the structural integrity of the building now. We have no estimate as to when the terminal will be able to be reopened except to say that it appears that the PATH terminal, the structural integrity is fine and so PATH trains will use the terminal. As for the New Jersey transit portion, we don't have an estimate yet on that. We'll need time to do that.

I want to turn this over to Governor Cuomo. We'll also have Commissioner hammer, then the MTA Director Prendergast to make some comments, and Governor Cuomo and I will come back to take on-topic questions.

Governor Cuomo?

ANDREW CUOMO, (D), NEW YORK GOVERNOR: Thank you.

Thank you very much. First, I'd like to thank Governor Christie and his entire team --