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Trump Hits Back at Paul Ryan in Tweet; Capitol Hill Reaction; Before the Bell. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired October 11, 2016 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: That we have two strong political parties in this country and, again, there's this civil war going on, something that Donald Trump said he was going to fix, that he could unify his party, but it's quite clear this morning that he can't do that.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's -- it's -- and let just be specific about what's going on, Carol. In the past ten minutes, Donald Trump has sent his second, at least second tweet of the day specifically going after Paul Ryan, the Republican speaker of the House. This is the first one. It said, "despite winning the second debate in a landslide, every poll," which these are online polls, I feel -- I feel the need to say this every time it's up there, they were online surveys and they were certainly not scientific. Put that aside. And he said, "it is hard to do well when Paul Ryan and others give zero support."

Now let's go to the most recent tweet, which is even more -- a lot more pointed. "Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty." Carol, we are four weeks from Election Day. What is the Republican nominee doing right now? He is sending out tweets that you can see he's getting angrier and angrier, probably as he's watching us, even though he says he doesn't, report on the fact that Paul Ryan is effectively concluded that he doesn't think Donald Trump can win. And that's why he's told his rank and file that they should do what they have to do for their own political viability. And maybe -- and also for their own moral consciousness. So that's sort of one aspect of this remarkable development this morning.

The other is, again, I just want to underscore, the Republican nominee is going after his fellow Republican four weeks before the election. That is his reaction on Twitter to this whole weekend, all the uproar and so forth, that it's kind of harkens back to what happened after the first debate where he took to Twitter and went after Miss Universe. Very different circumstances, but it shows that sort of his impulse when he gets angry and upset, and clearly he is, understandably, because Paul Ryan and his fellow House leaders have concluded effectively that he can't win, they need to protect themselves, it's all about self-preservation, so he's lashing out.

But it's not just that, Carol. This is an important point also. He's also, in that first tweet, if we can put it back up, "despite winning the second debate in a landslide," he says it's hard to do when Paul Ryan and others give you zero support. Remember, the reason Paul Ryan kind of let his people go and said he's not going to defend Trump anymore is because they're worried about Trump's spiral because of Trump's actions. What you see there is Trump trying to lay the groundwork for him blaming Paul Ryan for abandoning him if he loses and loses big. So this is stunning on all of those levels, and it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out.

As I was waiting for you to come to me, I was texting with an aide to Paul Ryan saying, do you have any reaction? The answer was, no, they're just not going to engage with him because that will just keep this going.

COSTELLO: All right, Dana Bash, thanks so much. And my thanks to Angela Rye and to Katrina Pierson.

Still to come on the NEWSROOM, they're some of the wealthiest people in the United States. And if you ask them, they are vilified for it. Coming up, my exclusive free-willing (ph) interview with three fascinating men.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Does money make you happy?

KEN LANGONE, CO-FOUNDER OF HOME DEPOT: No. I know a lot of wealthy people that are miserable. They're the most unhappy people on earth and they have everything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:37:51] COSTELLO: Donald Trump often paints a dark picture of America. A place where the American dream is all but impossible. But is it? I sat down with three of the wealthiest men in America who embody the quintessential American dream. They all grew up poor with working class parents, yet today they are titans. Ken Langone is the co-founder of Home Depot and CEO Invemed Associates. Leon Cooperman is a former CEO of Goldman Sachs and a founder of Omega Advisors. And T. Boone Pickens is founder of CEO of Mesa Petroleum and founder of BP Capital. My conversation with these men, well, I'll leave that to you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: I am sitting here with three of the most powerful men in the United States.

KEN LANGONE, CO-FOUNDER OF HOME DEPOT: Tell my wife that, please.

COSTELLO: No, I mean you guys are worth collectively billions of dollars, right? Very influential. You donate hundreds of millions of dollars to charity. You are the epitome of the American dream. If you were 18 years old today, could you achieve everything you have in life now?

LANGONE: Absolutely. I wish --

COSTELLO: Even though college is expensive and --

LANGONE: Wait a minute. I wish -- wait a minute, college was expensive then. My father made $4,300 in 1953 and Bucknell (ph) was $2,500 a year.

COSTELLO: Oh, I bet it's a lot more than that now.

LANGONE: Bu, so what? My father's income would be a lot more than that.

T. BOONE PICKENS, FOUNDER, MESA PETROLEUM: Yes, all he was making was $5,400.

LANGONE: Apples to apples.

COSTELLO: As a plumber (ph)?

So why don't young people feel that they can achieve your American dream?

LANGONE: Well, ask them. Ask them. (INAUDIBLE).

COSTELLO: I have asked them. They think college is too expensive. They carry this great debt. They think that people of your income level take advantage of them and you use the tax code to your advantage but they can't.

LANGONE: Well, (INAUDIBLE). Well, you really -- well, guess what, they need a lesson in reality, OK? I started working for $82.50 a week in 1957 with a college education. OK? I could sit here and ring my hands about what somebody else had that I didn't have, or I could say, I'm going to get off my butt and I'm going to go out there and give this world one hell of a kick in the ass.

PICKENS: I was making $300 a month, so $75 a week.

LANGONE: Well, $75.

COSTELLO: So do you think that if you started out today with the same parents and the same background, in Oklahoma, you could be as successful as you are today?

[09:40:03] PICKENS: Sure. Yes, I do.

LANGONE: Absolutely.

LEON COOPERMAN, FORMER CEO, GOLDMAN SACHS: Well, the economy is growing more slowly now. The economy when he was growing up was growing 4 or 5 percent. It's growing 2 percent. It's definitely more difficult, but it can be achieved. There's, you know, there's no question it can be achieved. But it's -- you need luck and you need hard work.

PICKENS: I tell these college kids I talk to, I say, if you have a good work ethic, you're a long way down the road. And you get a good education, if you miss, I don't know how you did it. LANGONE: Well --

COSTELLO: OK. Well -- OK, let's talk about education just a second.

LANGONE: You know, there's something else. There's something --

COSTELLO: So you went to Columbia, right?

COOPERMAN: I went to public grade school. I went to public high school. I went to public college. I didn't work for about a year or so. I went back to school and got an MBA from Columbia and that opened the door to Goldman Sachs.

COSTELLO: That's right. Could a middle class kid really afford to go to Columbia --

COOPERMAN: There's --

PICKENS: If he had a good work ethic and he had good grades, he can --

COOPERMAN: Forget the had.

PICKENS: (INAUDIBLE).

COOPERMAN: I'm 73 and my alarm clock goes off in Short Hills (ph) at 5:10 in the morning, and I'm in my office at 6:30. There's no substitute for hard work, but you need a certain amount of luck.

LANGONE: The last two debates, how much discussion was there about public education?

COSTELLO: None.

LANGONE: Wait a minute.

COSTELLO: Virtually none.

LANGONE: You want to help poor kids? Yet I know I am where I am because I went to a public school and got a great education and it was a start. Income inequality, you want to fix it? Help these kids become more competitive, more wanted in a competitive society.

COSTELLO: The other thing that I find from young people is their idea of success doesn't often involve money. They want be to be happy.

COOPERMAN: Is what?

LANGONE: And yet I tell kids, if you're taking the job because of how much money you're going to make, instead of taking the job for whether you're going to love the work or not, you're making the wrong decision.

COSTELLO: Does money make you happy?

LANGONE: No.

COOPERMAN: What he does makes him happy.

PICKENS: Money makes happy people happier.

COOPERMAN: Right.

PICKENS: It does not make happiness for people.

LANGONE: I know -- I know a lot of wealthy people that are miserable. They're the most unhappy people on earth and they have everything.

PICKENS: Well, I usually put the day I bought this suit, that I bought this suit --

LANGONE: This -- yes, mine is in here. It's (INAUDIBLE) for you.

PICKENS: Yes, it -- mine is -- this suit was purchased in 2006 and I'm coming to a big show here. I brought -- I wore my -- a good suit.

COOPERMAN: Sims (ph). Sims (ph). $119.

PICKENS: Yes, but, no, but, really, I'm not a -- I'm not a spender. I don't --

LANGONE: I'm not either. This suit's five years old.

My expression, I want my -- my real net worth is what good I do with what I have. That's my real net worth. The thing that I don't think Bernie and Arthur and I get credit for, which matters more to me than anything else, we have 3,000 kids at 18 years old that came to work for us in a parking lot at Home Depot and more family (ph) in years (ph) today.

COSTELLO: So why don't more young people measure you by that?

LANGONE: Because the media poisons their minds, that's why.

COSTELLO: What specifically do we say about you that you feel is --

LANGONE: Oh, that we exploit -- we exploit less fortunate people. We don't share. We don't give back.

COOPERMAN: No, there's four things you can do with money. The first thing you can do is you can consume it. The second thing you can do is you can give your money to your kids. The third thing you can do is give it to the government in the form of taxation, but only a fool gives the government money that doesn't have to. And the fourth thing you can do is you recycle it back into society to make the place a better place than when you came in. And my philosophy at this stage of the game is to basically give my money back to society.

LANGONE: The money that my wife and I have spent on ourselves is a small fraction of the money we've given away, OK? So if I've taken advantage, trust me when I say, it's modest compared to all of the people that have been helped by our success.

PICKENS: I can say this honestly, I've given away more than I'm worth now.

COOPERMAN: I'm working on that.

COSTELLO: Is the American dream dead as some people think?

PICKENS: No, it's not dead. I mean Ken spoke to that. But, listen, you've got -- you see some of these guys, what they've got. Well, look at Bill Gates. Look at "Shark Tank." Look at people starting up businesses working hard. It's harder. It's not easier. The world's more competitive. We live in a global society.

COOPERMAN: I do a lot of presentations to kids, as these guys probably do. I tell them the way to be successful is do what you love, and love what you do.

I would speak to these two gentlemen, modestly throw myself in, the majority of what we make after taxes goes to help other people. Personally, I think all of us are in the same boat. You know, I've lived the American dream.

LANGONE: Right.

COOPERMAN: Started with nothing, worked very hard, got rewarded, taking that money and giving it back to society. That what it's all about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: As you probably have discovered, all of those men are passionate about giving back. Collectively, they have donated billions of dollars to charity and all have signed the Gates/Buffet pledge to give more than half their wealth to charitable causes.

Next hour they talk Trump and whether they really believe that Trump is worth $10 billion.

[09:44:55] Coming up, we're going to talk more about the civil war that's erupting within the Republican Party. Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill and he's uncovered a few things. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Donald Trump lashing out at House Speaker Paul Ryan after Ryan announced he will not defend the Republican nominee in the wake of that vulgar video that unsurfaced. Trump tweeting twice this morning about Ryan, just saying last hour, quote, "our very weak and ineffective leader Paul Ryan had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty." On Monday, Ryan told Republicans he plans to use the next month to make sure Congress stays under GOP control.

OK, so our congressional correspondent, Manu Raju, is on the phone right now.

[09:50:01] What are Republicans saying about this, Manu? MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, it is part of this ongoing battle within the Republican Party about how to deal with their controversial nominee. You know, Trump mentioned that conference call in his tweet. There were a number of members who were very angry at Paul Ryan. There were conservative members from very conservative districts who want Paul Ryan to fall in line behind their nominee. Their argument is that, look, the better that Trump does, the more likely it is we keep control of the House Republican majority, people like Trent Franks from Arizona, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher from California, Louie Gohmert, as well as several of the more conservative members of the conference.

But there are also a lot of members, some from more moderate leaning districts, swing districts, who want Paul -- who appreciate Paul Ryan doing this and saying that we just cannot defend the things that Donald Trump is saying right now. So there is a -- there's a split within the Republican Party, within the Republican conference, in the House, about how exactly to deal with Donald Trump. And right now the Ryan camp is not responding in kind to Donald Trump. They're saying that they're not going to engage with the nominee. They're sort of going to try to ignore him and focus on those -- focus, instead, exclusively on trying to keep the House majority. But, Carol, the question is, can they ignore Donald Trump, given the megaphone that he has, and if he want to take a -- continue to battle with their party, that's something that worries a lot of them because that will just make it harder for them to have a compelling message to voters ahead of November.

COSTELLO: You see Paul Ryan. He's speaking there in Wisconsin. He did that on Saturday. And he was in Wisconsin for some kind of rally, and wasn't he -- wasn't he booed by some people?

RAJU: He -- there were some boos. There were some very hard core Trump supporters or even just regular Trump supporters who were not happy with Paul Ryan's position. But there were also people in the crowd who were cheering and happy that Paul Ryan has taken that position.

This is the problem that Republicans across the country are having right now, including in Senate races too, where they are trying to get a runaway from Donald Trump, but they are just angering their core -- some of the core Republican voters. People like Joe Heck of Nevada, a senator -- a congressman running for the Senate seat out there. He did the same thing after -- in the wake of that controversial video, he pulled away from Donald Trump, said he will no longer support Donald Trump, and then what happened afterwards, he got booed publicly at a rally. Now, Democrats are using that against him.

But it really just shows that if the party runs away from Donald Trump, it risks angering and alienating themselves from a keep bloc of voters who they will need in November, which is why this -- this battle with their nominee is so problematic down ticket as Republicans try to keep control of Congress.

COSTELLO: All right, Manu Raju, I'll let you get back to work. Thanks so much.

Coming up next, Samsung stops production of a popular phone over fire worries.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:57:44] COSTELLO: All right, let's take a look at the stock market this morning as the world's biggest smartphone maker tries to limit fallout from a product meltdown. You can see the Dow down just about 94 points.

Let's head to Alison Kosik. She's live at the New York Stock Exchange.

Good morning.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

So we did see investors immediately react to the news that Samsung permanently stopped sales and production of its prize Galaxy Note 7 smart phone. Now, Samsung doesn't trade here in the U.S., but shares got crushed in Seoul, South Korea, where they do trade, plummeting 8 percent, wiping out about $17 billion off the company's market value. Now, pulling this phone is expected to cost Samsung $10 billion in sales.

And I just want to get you up to speed on this saga. After the first reports in September that the newly launched phones overheated and caught fire, Samsung actually offered up replacement phones, but even those phones were having the same trouble. And you knew it was so bad because if you were flying on an airplane like I was, flight attendants told passengers, turn off your Note 7 phones. In fact, one phone caught fire on a Southwest plane last week. Despite that, some people just didn't turn their phones off anyway, but I digressed.

Anyway, overnight, Samsung issued a strong warning for customers telling them to turn off their Galaxy Note 7, even if it's a brand-new replacement. And then came the announcement that Samsung is killing off the phone altogether. So I'll tell you what, this is quite a gift to Apple, Samsung's biggest competitor. Samsung's phone was supposed to do battle with the iPhone 7 and instead it's not only done serious damage to Samsung's stock, but to its reputation as well.

You look at shares of Apple, they're up 10 percent over the past month. Now, if you have a Galaxy Note 7, you will be able to trade yours in for a different model. But you know what's scary about this whole thing, Carol, Samsung still doesn't know what went wrong with this phone.

Carol.

COSTELLO: That is a scary thing. Alison Kosik reporting live from the New York Stock Exchange.

For more on what's moving the market, go to CNN Money to sing up for the new "Before The Bell" newsletter. It's cool.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

[10:00:00] Infighting at the very top of the GOP. Just minutes ago, Donald Trump fires a new shot at the most powerful Republican in Congress. He tweets, quote, "our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty.