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Miss USA Pageant Participant Talks Trump; David Sweat, Richard Matt Rehearsed Escape in Upstate New York Countryside; New Information on Sweat, Matt Escape; Another Shark Attack Off North Carolina Coast; Polls Show Trump in 2nd Place Behind Bush. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired July 01, 2015 - 14:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:31:19] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Take two. Let's take you back to Alexis Railsback, a Miss USA contestant representing Kansas and also a third-generation Mexican-American.

So I was asking you before the break, you're already there and prepping for the big contest in a couple of weeks. What's the word among, you know, all of you ladies? This is something that I imagine you've prepared years for, the fact that this will not be broadcast.

ALEXIS RAILSBACK, MISS KANSAS & MISS USA CONTESTANT & THIRD-GENERATION MEXICAN-AMERICAN: Well, it was very disappointing to us and to our families, I especially our families that can't come to watch the pageant in person, and like you said a lot of us have invested months and years of our lives into preparing for this moment and to get where we are now, so to think that it's not going to be broadcast on live television which is such a big part of the Miss USA pageant, it's a little disheartening and a little bit disappointing but we're trying to stay positive through the whole thing because either way the show will go on and we'll have a new Miss USA so we're trying to enjoy our experience here in Baton Rouge.

BALDWIN: Alexis, you're a third generation Mexican-American. I'm sure you have seen Donald Trump use comments about Mexicans and immigrants specifically. Did you take offense to them?

RAILSBACK: His comments are his own personal opinion. That's his decision to run for president of the United States, and I don't think that this is really related to the pageant in any way which is why I don't understand why the Miss USA pageant and the contestants should have to suffer for his comments because that is his personal opinion.

BALDWIN: Trump says NBC and Univision have abandoned you because of this. Do you agree with him?

RAILSBACK: I agree, somewhat. I mean, like I said, we've spent so much time preparing for this and this is such a huge part of our lives, it's very important to us, so I think, you know, not being televised, a lot of us feel we're not getting the recognition that we deserve or that we've been helping for, but I would agree with that in some way. BALDWIN: In the wake of all of this, in the last couple of days, has

Donald Trump at all reached out to you, to the contestants? Has he had any kind of message?

RAILSBACK: I believe he did send out a statement, but as far as having a personal message for the contestants, he has not contacted us or anything like that.

BALDWIN: Do you think he should, and if so, what should he say to you all?

RAILSBACK: I think that if he does decide to say anything to us, I think it should be something that -- (AUDIO PROBLEM) -- personal to us that, you know, he would shed some light on the situation and kind of give us some hope for the next two weeks that we're there.

BALDWIN: Give you hope. I caught the back end of that. Listen, it's technology. We roll with it.

Miss Kansas, Alexis Railsback, thank you and good luck.

RAILSBACK: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Let's move along here. Two convicted killers didn't just pull off one audacious prison break. Richard Matt and David Sweat did it twice. The first, it turns out, was the practice run. Sweat is in a hospital and is talking to investigators, tell them he and his cohort, Matt, rehearsed their dash through the prison's tunnels and pipes, popping open a manhole outside of prison walls, but they apparently saw too many houses and turned back and returned to the prison cells until the following night.

First up here, Gary Tuchman. He takes us to the New York countryside where these two hid out and shows us exactly how close Sweat was to making it to Canada when he was caught.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[14:35:] GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: David Sweat ran into this field, and this is where he was shot. Canada is through this forest, but it's in heavy wilderness, two miles as the crow files, but it would have taken a long time to get there because the brush is so thick. But there's a much easier way to get to Canada. He could have gotten there very quickly if he took the path that I'm about to take. It's along mostly dirt roads, but at night, it's very dark, and he could have gotten away with it if there were no police present. And I want to show you how easy it would be for David Sweat to do this.

I'll jog some of the way and walk some of the way which is likely what he would have done. He was seen jogging. I'll show you how long it would take and how easy it would be for him to get into Canada.

Cutting through the farm field saves time. All you need is an electronic map and paper map, and anyone can figure out how to do it.

I mean, I walked a bit over a mile in about 17 minutes. The course we've charted is 4.2 miles, longer than the two miles through the wilderness, but this will be much easier to get into Canada, as you'll soon see.

I have less than half a mile to go to the Quebec border. Been going now for about 50 minutes.

The 4.2-mile walk/jog is over. This is the international border between the United States and Canada. And you haven't seen one like this before. The only impediment stopping you from going into Canada is this, this jungle gym. This is a single-family house right here. This family lives right on the border. And I'm going to show you if Sweat planned it like this, it would have been very simple for him to get in Canada, because you see this monument, this is the border between the countries. It's the backyard of this family's house in Franklin County, New York. This is the United States and this is Quebec, Canada. This backyard is part of Canada. The sign for people entering illegally from Canada to the United States, "Stop, United States boundary. Don't go here."

This is Canadian land and if David Sweat got to this point, it would have been Canada in charge of finding him.

(voice-over): The entire journey to get here took one hour and one minute.

Deborah Smith lives here with her dogs.

(on camera): So when you heard where David Sweat was shot so close to here, what did you think?

DEBORAH SMITH, FRANKLIN COUNTY RESIDENT: It scared of bejeezus out of me. I didn't realize they were quite that close.

TUCHMAN: This is obviously a very easy place to cross into Canada.

SMITH: Very easy, very easy.

TUCHMAN: Did you have police come to you asking questions or asking to search?

SMITH: I don't think they realized they were down in this area until the very last hurrah.

TUCHMAN: And that's true.

SMITH: Yeah.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): And Deborah Smith says a narrow road runs through this Canadian forest and that exits into the Quebec farmland.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, Franklin County, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Gary Tuchman, thanks so much for that. And I've got Deborah Feyerick here with me, who has some new information and as David Sweat continues to talk from his hospital room about this escape.

Let's begin with what he said about just finding a sledgehammer and laying around in the tunnels of the prison.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The first thing we have to keep in mind, everything out of David Sweat's mouth will have to be investigated, verified, corroborated and then confirmed, because he's got a very good motive for lying, and that is, he could be called to testify against Joyce Mitchell. And given that she was the getaway driver who failed to show, failed to get these two inmates to Mexico, as he alleges, well, there's a whole lot of hate that is probably there in his heart, so he has every reason to lie.

First of all, about the escape. He is telling investigators, according to the district attorney, that they were almost discovered twice, once when they were hiding out by a nearby cabin when they overheard authorities speaking to residents, and the residents asking whether in fact they should leave the area. Well, apparently the people who did leave the area were the two escapees the second time David Sweat was on his own in a hunting stabbed and also heard agents and Custom and Border Patrol coming close by.

BALDWIN: He heard them.

FEYERICK: He heard them. He heard them. He said -- he's telling people he saw them as well. Those hunting stands, if you don't look up, you can almost not realize that they are there, so that was also key.

But what he is saying is that the steam was turned off in late April, early May, and that's when they would have begun digging out that steam pipe. He's telling authorities that the only thing they used were hacksaw blades. I've spoken to a lot of officials and investigators. Nobody believes that the holes that were certainly made in their prison cell were actually made by a hacksaw. The blades are simply too thin. He says apparently they were able to finish on Thursday and so they went down into the catwalk and then into the tunnel, getting to a manhole cover, allegedly, and lifting it up. And because of its location, they decided to go back and do a different manhole.

All of that has to be investigated as well, because you can see that the cuts in the steam pipe are very deliberate and very careful, and you don't just pop out and have your choice of which manhole to essentially emerge from, so all of that is going to be investigated as well. You can see the cuts, the pipe there, probably about half an inch thick. So, again, they have got to see whether there were hacksaw blades and they will have to find the hacksaw blades. What did he do with them? Where did they go? And the sledgehammer they allegedly found in the catwalk and used to, you know, make that other hole, all that will have to be discovered as well.

And they could testify against Joyce Mitchell. He could testify and he hates her, we can assume.

[14:40:54] BALDWIN: And he's saying, yeah, it was me, I was the mastermind, ruling the roost. And he said I ended up dissing Matt, right, because he was out of shape.

FEYERICK: Right, exactly.

BALDWIN: Boozing in the cabin.

FEYERICK: And you know what? They may have just made this call at that point because there was evidence, DNA, forensic evidence that, in fact, Matt was very sick by something he drank or ate, and that could have been slowing him down as well. It may have been amicable or Sweat may have taken off in the middle of the night. But they had been very successful up until that point. So whether Sweat made that decision on his own or they both agreed, clearly things began to unravel soon after the two men separated, with Matt essentially exposing his location and bringing border agents to where he was hiding.

BALDWIN: Fascinating details from you, as always.

Deborah Feyerick, thank you very much.

Next here, we are getting breaking news into us at CNN about this shark attack off the coast of North Carolina. This would be the sixth reported attack in three weeks. We'll talk live to a witness after the break.

Also ahead, Donald Trump, no shortage of controversy here, with this Republican presidential candidate, but that's in no way slowing him down in the polls. Listen, he is a close second to Jeb Bush, but can he sustain that lead? We'll discuss that. Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:46:25] BALDWIN: Breaking news here. Another shark attack off the North Carolina coast. This one happened just this afternoon off Ocracoke Island. According to officials, this is a man in his late 60s and bitten by the shark in his rib cage, hip, lower legs and both hands.

Let me bring in Hyde County EMS director, Justin Gibbs, who is on phone with me.

Justin, I know you've talked to folks who were first responders. Tell me exactly what happened and how he's doing.

JUSTIN GIBBS, HYDE COUNTY EMS DIRECTOR: OK. At approximately 12:13, the Hyde County dispatch center received a radio transmission from a lifeguard at the public access beach on Ocracoke. They had a person who had sustained injuries from Marine life. In talking to the providers that responded to the scene and the information that they were able to obtain from the patient, it was a shark approximately six to seven feet long.

BALDWIN: Ew.

GIBBS: The individual was swimming out past the first breaker when he actually bumped into the shark. That's when the shark bit him and pulled him under, and as I stated, he sustained several injuries to his left side.

As soon as responders got there, they found that there was a doctor in the immediate area that had provided some care to the patient to sustain him. During their response, when they, you know, talked with the patient and observed his injuries, they knew immediately that he needed to go to definitive care so they requested medevac from the medical center, and they launched a helicopter with a 45-minute ETA. During that period, the provider got the patient stabilized.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: OK. Good. So he's stabilized.

GIBBS: And he was stable when he was transported.

BALDWIN: OK. Justin, let me just jump in.

And, Troy, let's throw the graphic back up of the attacks off the North Carolina coastline.

I mean, beautiful beaches here. But listen, when I look at this, two attacks in the Outer Banks and Ocracoke and two attacks, Oak Island. I'm wondering, Justin, how rare, how odd this is that these attacks are happening sort of in a similar -- all off the North Carolina coast.

GIBBS: Yeah. I would just speak to my personal experience. I've been the director of Hyde County since 2021, and this is only the second shark bite that we've had to respond to. So I would say the frequency would be, you know, low, but there may be some environmental factors that are contributing too much of the activity this year.

BALDWIN: Listen, just the 1st day of July. Summer still very much in full swing. I guess folks have to keep all of this in mind if they are heading that way.

Justin Gibbs, director of Hyde County EMS, thanks so much for hopping on phone with me. Really appreciate it.

GIBBS: Thank you very much. You have a nice day.

[14:50:00] BALDWIN: You got it. You, too.

Coming up next, his comments on Mexicans may be not great for business. NBC and Macy's now cutting ties with presidential candidate, Mr. Donald Trump. But what explains his rise in the political polls? Have you seen this? The question I want to have answered is, how long can he sustain this? We'll bring in Michael Smerconish for that discussion, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [14:54:36] BALDWIN: Macy's joining the growing list severing ties with Donald Trump. His merchandise will disappear from the stores. But for now, the Republican voters seem like him. Case in point, let me show you some numbers. A recent CNN poll, you see at the top there, Jeb Bush leads at 19 percent but Donald Trump is still sitting at a strong second, double digits, 12 percent. A big jump from his 3 percent support, as you can see from May, amid the controversy over his remarks about Mexicans.

Donald Trump doubled down just last night in New Hampshire.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, CEO, TRUMP GROUP & PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I do a show called "The Apprentice," and it was a tremendous success, in fact, so successful that NBC was really angry when I said I'm running for president.

Now you know it's at least my hair because it's raining out here. If this wasn't my hair, I wouldn't be out here.

Somebody said I made a fantastic speech two weeks ago. They said my only problem is I speak through the applause.

Who has done more than me? I've employed tens of thousands of people over the life.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: CNN, so they do a poll, and it was a nice poll, and they had me second, which it's hard to believe I'm second to Bush, because Bush is not going to get us to the promised land, folks, I'll tell you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: This guy -- I don't want to say he's a stiff because that's too rude.

If I'm in second place, which is actually embarrassing, which Republican candidate do you think would be the best to handle the economy? I'd blow everyone away, because we're stupid. We're stupid.

(LAUGHTER)

Our leaders are stupid people. They are incompetent. ISIS is building a hotel in Syria. They are competing against me.

So I say to myself, if I'm number one in all these categories, and these are like the most important categories, why don't we just cancel this primary and just do Trump.

If I were a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm a super genius.

I had an uncle that went to MIT, a top professor, Dr. John Trump, a genius. It's in my blood.

When I heard Paul Ryan -- and I like Paul Ryan as a person, but when I heard Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan -- I mean, what he's known for is killing entitlements -- I said that election is over. Now it's really over because Mitt choked in the last month. He choked like a dog. I don't know what happened to him, but that was not a pretty picture to watch. I'm not a choker. He choked like a dog.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All right. Michael Smerconish, I see that grin on your face, a lot to get to. Political commentator and host of CNN's "Smerconish."

Listen, this is a man who obviously doesn't shy away from the microphone but you have all of these businesses dumping Trump. But you saw the CNN polls, which clearly he is reading. He's polling in second place behind Jeb Bush. My question to you is, I mean, he's obviously appealing to Americans. Does he have the power, Michael Smerconish, to sustain this?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR & HOST: Well, he's appealing to some Americans, and when you think about the constricted nature of the heap can base and who is left in the party because there's an exodus of moderates. The fact that Macy's has said no more selling of Trump ties, it helps him with the core constituency with an older, whiter, angrier male base within the Republican Party. This is chum in the water for the sharks. It's great stuff. So the more that he earns public ridicule for these sorts of things, the more it appeals to him with a very narrow constituency. I've been hard on him. I'll at least give him 12 percent in the polls. And the real story is Jeb in a 14-candidate field is nearly 20 percent of the vote and that's pretty significant given how many individual are running.

BALDWIN: It's feels we're very far off from the 2016 but I think we're only like two months out from the first debate, so the numbers are significant. And we should also broaden it out in our conversation. Let's bring in Hillary Clinton because we have latest CNN polling shows Hillary Clinton clobbers both of them. We have the polls, not this one, but another one, it shows Bush gets 41 percent to Hillary's 54. Trump gets 34 percent to Hillary Clinton's 59. Here we go. So why do you -- is that because there are so many Republican candidates, or is this the Hillary factor, or is it something else entirely?

SMERCONISH: What surprised me about the internals when you then do the head-to-head contests for the general election was not so much that Jeb runs the strongest. I would have expected that because I would think that he would have the greatest appeal to more moderate, more Independent voters. The surprise to me was that the Republican opponents of Jeb are not that farther behind him in that head to head with Hillary. They're pretty much within the margin of error. So I attribute that to the fact that with regard to Secretary Clinton, everybody has an opinion. You can run this election. Some can't wait to get out there and vote for her. There are some who wild horses couldn't keep away from voting against her regardless of who her opponent might be.

BALDWIN: In terms of dollars and cents, Hillary Clinton has raised $45 million in her first quarter, and that is better than Obama's record in 2011.

Michael Smerconish, thank you very much. We watch you every Saturday, 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern here on CNN.

SMERCONISH: Thank you.

[15:00:07] BALDWIN: Thank you.

Top of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.