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Trump Prepares for GOP Convention Fight; Anonymous Targets Trump in New Hack; Undercover in Syria: The Air Crisis; Paris Attack Fugitive DNA Found in Belgium Raid; Obama to Hit Campaign Trail. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired March 18, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[10:00:29] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, the clock is ticking.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: Hopefully there's time to still prevent a Trump nomination.

COSTELLO: Anti-Trump conservatives racing to take down the frontrunner. But is it too late?

Also, it is official. Hillary Clinton sweeps Super Tuesday Three, but think Bernie Sanders is bowing out? Think again.

And the Korean Peninsula already roiling with tension, and now a new display of military might from North Korea.

Let's talk. Live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

The Republican race for the White House, the clock ticks, the pressure builds, the candidates return to the trail today, hitting Utah and Arizona with a new sense of urgency. For John Kasich and Ted Cruz, time is running out to derail Trump's momentum after his big week of racking up delegates. Conservative leaders scrambling to dump Trump. And the frontrunner's campaign now showing signs of concern as most states gear up to name those delegates, the Trump camp is urging its loyalists to lobby for those positions in case of a contested convention.

Here is an e-mail to a supporter in Georgia where Republicans hold county conventions tomorrow. It asks, quote, "Do you want to serve as a delegate to the Republican National Convention and help us defeat these senseless efforts to destroy our movement?" It then explains how to become a Trump delegate.

CNN's Phil Mattingly is here with more on that. Good morning.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. For the Trump campaign this is a crucial moment and not just because they need to be pushing back on a regular basis publicly but also because of what they need to do behind the scenes. Grassroots is how you win a contested convention. And if you listen to anybody who's trying to stop Donald Trump, contested convention is pretty much the only place they can do it. But if that actually happens, top Trump officials raising some serious concerns and making some personal threats of their own. Take a listen to what Sam Clovis had to say, Donald Trump's national co-chairman.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM CLOVIS, TRUMP NATIONAL CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIRMAN: I will tell you this. If the Republican Party comes into that convention and jimmies with the rules and takes away the will of the people, the will of the Republicans and the Democrats and the independents who have voted for Mr. Trump, I will take off my credentials. I will leave the floor of that convention and I will leave the Republican Party forever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: So making a little bit of a threat there. Now you've seen some strange bedfellows on Donald Trump's side but one of the more interesting things has been these strange bedfellows you've seen inside the Republican Party trying to stop Trump. Most notably, recently, Lindsey Graham, senator from South Carolina, coming out yesterday saying he was going to help fund-raise for Ted Cruz because he thought that was the best option to block Donald Trump.

Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz have essentially been arch enemies for the last couple of years on Capitol Hill. For that to happen it really underscores the urgency they're feeling inside the Republican Party. The recognition that Donald Trump is rolling right now. They need to figure out some way to stop him but, still, Carol, every single time I talk to a Republican operative who is involved in the stop Trump efforts, they all have one real serious question -- is it too late?

COSTELLO: Phil Mattingly reporting, thanks so much.

As Donald Trump gets hammered by members of his own party he is also getting hit by hackers. Anonymous says it published Donald Trump's personal cell phone number and his Social Security number. CNN has not been able to independently verify this information. But experts warned this could be the first phase of a bigger hack.

Laurie Segall is covering that for us this morning. Hi, Laurie.

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN MONEY TECH CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol. Well, I've spoken to some members of Anonymous and they say this is their next big operation. This is what they want to do. They want to take down Trump.

Let me read you exactly what one member told me. He said, "We do not believe we can stop him, but we will be doing a fair bit of hacking for lulz."

Now lulz, Carol, is a hacking term for hacking for fun. So the idea is they want to see if they can just mess with Donald Trump. Now this originated, there was actually a video that came out online a couple of weeks ago where there was almost a call to arm for hackers to take down Donald Trump's Web site, to mess with him, and now we're beginning to see that come into fruition. They have essentially started releasing personal information. They say they've released his cell phone number, his Social Security number.

I've actually seen some of these leaks online. They are the phone numbers of family and business members, his home address, personal information. So, you know, this is almost the beginning phases of what Anonymous does when they're trying to pull off some kind of operation. They're saying on April 1st they're going to try to take down the Web site.

A Trump spokesperson says they are looking into this. She said officials are seeking the arrest of people responsible for attempting to illegally hack Mr. Trump's accounts and telephone information.

[10:05:08] You know, this is what see, Carol, with Anonymous. This is a very loose collective of hackers. They all are doing different things at different times but oftentimes they will come together for one cause and it certainly seems like this go-around their cause is Donald Trump -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. Laurie Segall, reporting, thank you.

So everyone from Internet vigilantes to the GOP establishment are in an all-out panic over a Trump presidency. Even Senator Lindsey Graham. You heard Phil say Lindsey Graham, a vowed Ted Cruz hater, is swallowing his pride to stop Trump. Listen to Lindsey Graham's evolution on this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: If you kill Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you. If you nominate Trump and Cruz, I think you get the same outcome. You know? Whether it's death by being shot or poisoning, does it really matter?

I'm going to be doing a fundraiser with and for Senator Cruz. I think he is the best alternative to Donald Trump. He is certainly not my preference, Senator Cruz is not, but he is a reliable Republican conservative of which I've had many differences with. I doubt Donald Trump's conservatism and I think it'd be a disaster for the party so I'm going to try to help raise money for Senator Cruz and the pro- Israel community.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: There you have it. I'm joined by CNN political commentator and senior writer for the "Federalist" Mary Katherine Ham, along with host of the "Bill Press Show," Bill Press.

Welcome to both of you.

BILL PRESS, HOST, "THE BILL PRESS SHOW": Hey, Carol.

COSTELLO: Nice to have you here.

Mary Katherine, South Carolina's governor Nikki Haley is praying that Ted Cruz will win.

MARY KATHERINE HAM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right.

COSTELLO: Despite it all, will Mr. Trump prevail?

HAM: Look. I think that this is a tough, like, uphill battle for anybody who is in the never Trump camp but there are lots of people in that camp, when you look at the exit polling from last week, 38 percent to 40 percent in many of those states saying that they would consider a third party candidate over Trump. So this is not a normal candidate who has a plurality of delegates. And if he comes into the convention with a plurality of delegates it speaks to -- instead of a majority, it speaks to the fact that there is a strong holdout vote here against this guy and that's what these people are -- that's everybody is considering.

Now Cruz, I think, has the best national moving forward. Certainly more delegates than Kasich does and Arizona and Utah are more friendly to him than they would be to Kasich so we'll see what happens coming up. Time is getting short.

COSTELLO: Yes, it is. So, Bill, it appears Mr. Trump is a little bit worried because he is urging his supporters in Georgia to become delegates to the Republican convention. I mean, there is like very detailed instructions there on how to do that. Do you think his followers will do that? And will it matter?

PRESS: Well, first of all, I got to say I believe that -- and I'm no Donald Trump fan, but if he wins enough delegates or very, very close to enough delegates and gets to the convention, he deserves the nomination and these people trying to stop him, they missed their -- they missed the chance. You know, they should have realized his threat early, early on. They didn't. They underestimated him. They assumed he would flame out and he didn't. I think it would be a huge mistake and basically insure the election of a Democrat if they try to wrestle the nomination from Donald Trump at the convention.

But Donald Trump is -- he's taking this seriously. You know, he doesn't have a huge, big campaign operation. So they realize that if there is going to be more than one ballot, if there is going to be what we call an open or brokered convention, that is going to require a tremendous amount of organization to identify every single delegate and to make sure that those delegates commit ahead of time that they will remain in the Trump camp, no matter what happens. That's what they are starting to do.

To tell the truth, Carol, they probably should have started doing this -- the Trump campaign -- a lot earlier as well.

COSTELLO: Interesting. So, Mary -- Mary Katherine, do you think all of this Republican angst has the Democrats salivating? HAM: Well, I think the Democrats much like the GOP didn't know --

doesn't know what to expect with Donald Trump, right? If he ends up being the nominee it's not smart to write him off as we've learned when he was a candidate for the GOP nomination, right? So I think there's a little bit of concern about exactly what they will be facing.

Look. I think to Bill's point, what many who are in the never Trump camp are seeing here is like, look. The crackup is already here. It's not going to be caused by a contested convention. We have these rules for a reason. Republicans who are part of the apparatus and who have been doing this work and organizing behind the scenes to be delegates for many, many years, and know how this is done, have been doing that homework and preparing for this and could be in position for a contested convention.

Trump folks are playing a little bit of catch-up on this. They've been pretty good at playing catch-up this entire time, though, so we'll see how that goes when it comes to the convention but the rules are in place for a reason. I think when you run into trouble is that you start changing the rules after the fact, but to this point they have not been.

COSTELLO: All right. I want to go back to the Democrats for just a minute, Bill.

PRESS: Yes.

COSTELLO: Bernie Sanders, he can't win, yet he's still in the race, he's still on the attack. "The New York Times" is reporting even President Obama thinks it's time to coalesce behind Hillary Clinton.

[10:10:02] Should Bernie Sanders back off?

PRESS: Absolutely not. For several --

COSTELLO: As a Bernie Sanders supporter might say.

PRESS: No, no. Right -- no, exactly. But I say that as a Democrat, not just as a Bernie Sanders or -- let me tell you very quickly why. Number one, you're right. Look. I'm not going to spin this, right? It is a nearly -- the Clinton campaign says nearly insurmountable lead. They don't say totally insurmountable lead. So, you know, let the dreamers dream that they can still win this with enough delegates. But more importantly, what if Hillary -- if Bernie goes away? Are we going to pay any attention to the Democratic primary? Hell, no. I mean, it will be radio silence on the other side.

And the third point is, Carol, half of the voters in Democratic primaries haven't voted yet. So like Hillary did in 2008 Bernie should continue to give those voters in all those states, Washington state, my state of California, a chance to vote. Don't disenfranchise half of the Democrats in this country and then when all that is decided, let President Obama jump in. In the meantime, he ought to stay out of it.

COSTELLO: I don't know. He may jump in before. We'll see.

PRESS: We'll see.

COSTELLO: I got to leave it there. Yes, that's right. I got to leave it there.

Mary Katherine Ham, Bill Press, thanks to both of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, CNN's exclusive coverage, undercover in Syria. The moment one volunteer aid worker had to run for his life after four airstrikes.

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[10:15:34] COSTELLO: All right. We continue to follow breaking news this morning. Authorities may be one step closer to finding Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam. Officials now revealing new details about a raid this week in Brussels.

CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank joins us. He's on the phone. What are you hearing?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST (via phone): Carol, well, yes, there was this raid earlier this week in Brussels, a deadly shoot-out. Belgian police raiding this residence in Brussels because they believe it had a connection to the Paris attacks but they weren't expecting to find anybody in the apartment, but when they went up there, there were three armed radicals in the apartment that opened fire on police, wounding some of the police.

They managed to shoot one of the terrorists but two others got away, and they now believe it is possible that one of those people was Salah Abdeslam, the on-the-run Paris attacker. And they believe this because they found his fingerprints and his DNA in this apartment and other evidence that he had been there recently, using it as a hiding place after the Paris attacks.

And just to give our viewers some context, there were 10 individuals involved in those Paris attacks on November 13th, all of them are dead, apart from Salah Abdeslam, who appears to have aborted his suicide bombing for some reason and was picked up by two friends, driven back to Brussels and then he melded away in Brussels in the weeks that followed.

The trail really went cold. When they were going to this apartment earlier this week, they were not expecting to find him there. They were not expecting to find anybody there. Instead they got into a firefight with three terrorists. The one that they killed, it's now being confirmed, was an Algerian ISIS recruit, somebody who was with the group in Syria, and so the worry now is that these two people on the run, one of whom may be Salah Abdeslam, are armed and dangerous. They may be desperate men, and the worry is that they'll want to go out in some kind of blaze of glory on the streets of Brussels.

COSTELLO: Oh, my. All right, Paul Cruickshank, just keep us up-to- date. Thanks so much. European Union leaders grappling with the biggest refugee crisis since

World War II are presenting a new plan to Turkey. The 28-member union is expected to offer financial and political concessions to Turkey in return for taking back all refugees who reached Greek islands off its coast.

It's uncertain how Turkey will react to that. Most of the migrants are from Syria where the civil war has created more than four million refugees. Turkey has already taken in about 2.7 million refugees.

Also this morning, CNN's exclusive coverage continues. Undercover in Syria introduces us to an ambulance driver from England. His sole mission was to help the millions of people displaced by war but he quickly found himself in life or death chaos.

CNN's senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward went undercover into rebel territory. She's here to tell us more.

Good morning.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Well, this is the fourth and final installment of our "Undercover in Syria" series. And we wanted to look at the aid crisis because it is one of the worst aid crises in the world right now. We followed this British aid worker who moved to Syria three years ago and watched him as he tried to deliver an ambulance to Aleppo. Take a look at what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WARD (voice-over): It's a Tuesday in Syria. A British aid worker, Talkir Sharif, is making the dangerous drive to Aleppo.

TALKIR SHARIF, BRITISH AID WORKER: It's really important that we drive with the windows open because any kind of explosions that land close to us, the last thing we want is shrapnel of glass and so on and so forth, you know, landing in our face.

WARD: He is traveling to the devastated city to deliver an ambulance but it isn't long before he is diverted.

Four airstrikes have hit. Sharif runs into the wreckage to see what's needed.

SHARIF: This is a house. Look, it's all houses.

WARD: Remarkably no one has been injured or killed but the sound of another jet means it's time to leave.

SHARIF: Everybody out. Let's go. Let's go.

They are saying that the plane is in the sky. We can hear it. They are saying a tactic that they uses when ambulances turn up they'll hit the same place again, so we're just going to try and get to a safer place.

[10:20:12] WARD: Sharif is one of just a handful of Western aid workers living in Syria.

SHARIF: Most of the big aid organizations they don't want to go into the line of fire in a sense. This is something that we have to do. This is something that is a human response. If we don't do it, then who will?

WARD: In the relative safety of an olive grove near the Turkish border he told us that religious conviction played a big part in his decision to come here three years ago.

SHARIF: We need to look at what do the people really want? And if the people are Muslims, this is not saying it. If the people are Muslims and they want some form of Islamic governance then it's important that we help them to establish that.

WARD (on camera): Is that what they want?

SHARIF: In my opinion, that's what I believe. And you can ask -- you can ask, you can go and ask the people, what do you want? And I don't think the people will settle for anything else, especially after all of this bloodshed. Their right to self-determination.

WARD (voice-over): For many of the 6.5 million displaced people in Syria, there are perhaps more immediate concerns. Most live in sprawling tent cities along the border. Conditions in the camps are brutal. There is a lack of food and clean water. And they become more crowded every day.

SHARIF: We just recently done a survey of this camp. Just this camp here alone, which is a conglomeration of about 40 camps, is around 80,000 people.

WARD (on camera): 80,000 people.

SHARIF: And this is just one on this border. There is another one over -- not too far from here, another maybe 65,000, 70,000 people.

WARD (voice-over): Sharif's favorite project is this smaller camp that houses roughly 100 widows and their children.

Syria is now a country full of widows and orphans, some still too young to understand what has happened to their country, others who have seen too much, all of them dependent on the mercy of others.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WARD: And, you know, Carol, it's become such a cliche of war that it's always the children who suffer. But really in this instance, the impact that the war is having on these children is unbelievable. 2.6 million children are no longer attending school. And 1 in 3 children in Syria have been born in the last five years. That means all they have ever known, Carol, is bloodshed and battles.

COSTELLO: And that has to do something to them psychologically. I think a lot of people forget that. When you grow up with so much violence, it does something to you. WARD: It does a lot. You know, there's the question of trauma, but

beyond that there's of course then the susceptibility to radicalization. These people feel desperate. These children, these young men, they look around, they want to protect their mothers, they want to protect their family members, and they don't how to do it, they don't have the tools. And so these extremist Islamist factions naturally are able to attract those people because they are so desperate, Carol.

COSTELLO: Clarissa Ward, thanks so much.

And for more of Clarissa's exclusive coverage, you can visit CNN.com/Syria, and join the conversation on Twitter #undercoverinSyria.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the war of words between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump escalates. See how one pro-Clinton super PAC is taking aim at Trump.

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[10:27:58] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

President Obama, campaigner-in-chief? He is getting ready to wade into the 2016 presidential race in a big way. In fact, "The Washington Post" says he will hit the trail more than any sitting president in decades.

CNN national correspondent Suzanne Malveaux is in Washington with more on that. Good morning.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Carol. Well, I've been talking to White House insiders this morning. According to one person, the president is just dying, Carol, to get out there, back on the campaign trail. He loves this kind of stuff. And he understands that if Democrats are going to win he's got to get the broad coalition of voters that put him over the top, motivated to come out and vote.

He can also play the heavy against Trump or some other Republican nominee and he is also got to work to save his legacy. We are talking about Obamacare, trade, the nuclear deal with Iran and Cuba relations, immigration, all of those things are on the line. So he is going to be on the road soon after returning from his historic visit to Cuba to fight for all of these things.

In the meantime, here's what we're seeing. Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail defending and embracing Obama's policies, while fundraising in Tennessee and Georgia. The Democratic frontrunner she called into a radio show in Phoenix and she was raising some eyebrows making some news with this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think we've done a really good job securing the border. And I think that those who say we haven't are not paying attention to everything that was done for the last 15 years under both President Bush and President Obama. And, in fact, the immigration from Mexico has dropped considerably. It's just not happening anymore. There has not been net migration over our border from Mexico.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So she is clearly setting the stage for a fight with Republicans over this hot issue. Clinton is coming off a five-state sweep from Tuesday night. We are talking about 1,628 delegates in her pocket. After yesterday, Bernie Sanders conceding Missouri. Well, the next battleground, that is going to be the west. We're talking about Tuesday, 131 delegates up for grabs in Idaho, Utah and Arizona. That is where Sanders was last night. This was a rally in Flagstaff.