Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Trump Delivers First Foreign Policy Speech In Washington; Ted Cruz Names Carly Fiorina As Running Mate; Sanders Campaign To Lay Off Over 200 Staffers After Losing Four Primaries On Tuesday; Tensions Ramp Up Between North And South Korea. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired April 28, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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

[00:00:10] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: This is "CNN Newsroom," live from Los Angeles. Ahead this hour:

ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: The world according to Donald Trump. The Republican Frontrunner delivers a major foreign policy speech which critics say was policy free.

VAUSE: Meet the Cruzarina's. Ted Cruz names Carly Fiorina as his running mate, an unprecedented move this early in a U.S. presidential campaign.

SESAY: And new details in the death of music legend Prince. Authorities say he had prescription painkillers in his possession when he was found dead.

VAUSE: Hello, everybody; great to have you with us. We'd like to welcome our viewers all around the world; I'm John Vause.

SESAY: And I'm Isha Sesay; "Newsroom" L.A. starts right now.

Three major developments in the race for the U.S. presidency. First Republican Frontrunner Donald Trump is outlining his foreign policy plans with the central theme, "America First."

VAUSE: Ted Cruz has named former rival, Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential running mate even though it's mathematically impossible for him to win the majority of delegates to win the party's nomination on the first ballot.

SESAY: And Democrat Bernie Sanders campaign will lay off more than 200 staffers after losing four out of five primaries on Tuesday.

VAUSE: Donald Trump promised a swift end to ISIS, a major military build-up and pressure on Beijing to reign in North Korea, but he did not reveal any specific details.

SESAY: CNN's Chief U.S. Security Correspondent, Jim Sciutto, has a closer look at Trump's foreign policy speech.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R) REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our foreign policy is a complete and total disaster.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Delivering what his campaign called a "major foreign policy speech" in Washington, Donald Trump immediately took aim at President Obama.

TRUMP: If President Obama's goal had been to weaken America, he could not have done a better job.

SCIUTTO: In fact, perhaps telegraphing his general election message, Trump equated the President and his likely democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton -

HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY) DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you so much.

SCIUTTO: -- uttering Obama/Clinton no fewer than three times --

TRUMP: The Obama/Clinton interventions; with President Obama and Secretary Clinton; of Obama/Clinton.

SCIUTTO: -- and declaring their foreign policy a shared failure.

TRUMP: "The legacy of the Obama/Clinton interventions will be weakness, confusion and disarray.

SCIUTTO: Trump was more scripted and less bombastic than at campaign rallies, but his speech included several campaign-tested positions, though few with specifics. He said that he, and only he, would defeat ISIS.

TRUMP: Their days are numbered. I won't tell them where and I won't tell them how.

SCIUTTO: For Russia, a country seen increasingly as a threat by the current Administration and U.S. military, Trump offered an olive branch.

TRUMP: Some say the Russians won't be reasonable. I intend to find out. If we can't make it deal under my administration, a deal that's great, then we will quickly walk from the table.

SCIUTTO: For U.S. allies, he accused President Obama of abandoning them, but at the same time repeated his campaign promise to make allies pay their way.

TRUMP: The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.

SCUITTO: Critics were quick to accuse Trump of broad contradictions.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": It was sort of rambling to the point of being incoherent. I mean, he contradicted himself several times it struck me. he said we're going to get out of nation building but we're going to create stability. Well, how do you do that? You got out of nation building in Iraq, you got more instability.

SCIUTTO: Republican Senator Lindsey Graham tweeting, "Not sure who is advising Trump on foreign policy, but I can understand why he's not revealing their names."

And, in a flub that gave his critics ammunition, Trump mispronounces the name of the East African nation Tanzania; the White House quickly pouncing on the mistake.

JOSH EARNEST, PRESS SECRETARY, WHITE HOUSE: Apparently phonetics are not included on the teleprompter.

[Laughter]

SCIUTTO: As brashly as they were delivered, some of his positions are very much in line with the mainstream Republican Party, criticism of the Iran Nuclear Deal, for instance. The question now is can he bring them together in a cohesive foreign policy message that appeals beyond his base of support?

Jim Sciutto, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Well, joining us here in L.A., James lacy, the author of "Taxifornia" and a Donald Trump supporter and Michael Hiltzik, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the "Los Angeles Times". Gentlemen, welcome; good to have you with us.

[00:05:01] Jim, let me start with you. Give me your thoughts on this speech today, delivered by Donald Trump; and specifically, answer the charge from those who say there wasn't enough detail here for this to be called a strategy.

JAMES LACY, DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTER AND AUTHOR, "TAXIFORNIA": You know, I just have to roll my eyes when I hear Lindsey Graham saying that Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave. You know, this foreign policy speech lays out an essentially Reaganesque type of foreign policy.

I worked in the Reagan Administration in the International Trade Administration, and, you know, Reagan wanted peace through strength. That was not an interventionist presidency. Outside of the Grenada incursion, dropping some bombs on Gaddafi and the unfortunate early activity in Beirut, there was no intervention in Ronald Reagan's presidency. What he did was he really built up the military. He really built up the Navy and the Air Force; and what is what the result? The result was, a few years into the next presidency the fall of the Berlin Wall.

So I think this was a good move by Donald Trump, and I think it's classic Ronald Reagan-type foreign policy.

SESAY: Would you not acknowledge some of the contradictions, and Michael to bring you in here, to join the conversation, there are those who say this was a speech that was rich in contradictions here and it was incoherent. That's what the critics say.

MICHAEL HILTZIK, COLUMNIST, "LOS ANGELES TIMES: The contradictions are only part of the problem. It was so contradictory. It was policy free, as Jim Sciutto pointed out. It was full of misrepresentations; and I think it was the Donald Trump that voters around country have come to know, and that's a deeply ignorant man, who really does not know anything about the world outside his brain. He -- he did not, -- it's bluster. It's schoolyard bullying. it's not a realistic approach to the world or to foreign policy.

VAUSE: Clearly this speech did not impress foreign policy experts; but did it have to? Because what Trump has tapped into is the message, and some of the messages which he outlined in this speech will be very appealing to a certain part of the Republican electorate and the Democratic electric as well.

HILTZIK: There's nothing new about that message. What Trump was, -- what his task really was in this speech was to go beyond the sloganeering that he engages in at his rallies and to show that he has a thoughtful approach and a consistent approach to the outside world. This he utterly failed to do because essentially what the speech was, was a repetition of those slogans with, in fact, this totally ahistorical reference to "America First."

He clearly didn't understand that. The America First, people who know their history, is not only an isolationist slogan but an anti-Semitic slogan.

LACY: I find it hard to believe that Trump is anti-Semitic in using that terminology. You know, times change -

HILTZIK: Well he used the terminology in his speech.

LACY: Just to speak - just to speak. I think you take an old- fashioned view to be quite honest with you. You know, the reality today is not to make America safe for democracy. Times have changed since the Woodrow Wilson foreign policy that I think you're advocating. Today it's a question of making America safe in a dangerous world --

HILTZIK: No. No.

LACY: -- which is completely different.

HILTZIK: America First was the slogan against the Rooseveltian.

LACY: Yes; I completely reject the notion that you're trying to build. What you're trying to do is put a square peg into a round hole. You're trying to say that Donald Trump, whose daughter is Jewish, is anti-Semitic. What you're is taking a foreign policy issue and going off on a tangent and this is what's wrong with America's politics.

HILTZIK: No, what I'm saying is, not that he's anti-Semitic but that he's --

LACY: That's what I hear you saying.

HILTZIK: -- that he's so ignorant that he didn't realize he was using an anti-Semitic slogan.

LACY: I don't think "America First" is an anti-Semitic slogan.

HILTZIK: Well you don't know your history either.

LACY: You're the one who's stuck up on it. The reality is this; this is a dangerous world. The Clinton, the Clinton/Obama foreign policy has utterly failed us. Nation building has utterly failed us. Look what it did for us in Iraq. Look what it did for us in Egypt. Look what it did for us in Libya. Look at the dead bodies that we have at the Benghazi Embassy. Are you trying to say that that's somehow a good thing?

VAUSE: I think the problem with the speech that a lot of people have is there was a lot of what is wrong; there wasn't a lot of how. How are you going to fix it?

LACY: It seems to me the principal thing that Donald Trump is saying is that we have to rebuild our military; and he did give specifics on the problems of our Navy and the problems of our Air Force declining under this President. You know, you work for the "L.A. Times", and you can't be said to be a non-partisan person when you work for a newspaper that said, during the election campaign in 2008m five column headlined, "Obama Captivates the World", okay.

This is supposed to be from a non-partisan newspaper? That was when he went [00:10:01] on his speech in Germany. What does the world think of him now?

HILTZIK: You know, that's all, -- that's totally irrelevant, and it has nothing to do with what I see on the screen, and what I see from Trump. The fact of the matter is he did not have any suggestions. He was basically, this was just another episode of schoolyard bullying. He said, you know -

LACY: It wasn't bullying. It was a speech. It was a staid foreign policy.

HILTZIK: He said that ISIS is going to be on the run but he didn't say how. He didn't show any understanding that if you were dealing with foreign policy, there's a give-and-take that's involved or you don't accomplish anything; and when you talk about the disaster in Iraq, I think you really need to acknowledge that that was a disaster that was created by George W. Bush, not by Obama.

SESAY: Gentlemen, we're going to pause on the Trump policy speech because there will be many more days ahead for us to dissect it.

VAUSE: You can come back next hour.

SESAY: Come back next hour, exactly; but let's talk about the other big news in the world of politics, and that happened with Donald Trump's nearest challenger, although quite far behind, Ted Cruz announcing Carly Fiorina as his running mate. What did you make of that? Many think it smacked of desperation, many just asking how much of a boost she could possibly give to his flagging campaign hopes.

HILTZIK: I think it's obvious she cannot give much of a boost to Cruz's hopes because Fiorina, as a candidate herself, was measured down in the low single digits, in terms of her popularity. Certainly, in California, she's a deeply unpopular person. She lost in 2010. She lost a campaign against Barbara Boxer for the U.S. Senate, in a year when Boxer was thought to be very, very vulnerable and Fiorina put a lot of her own money into the campaign, and she got --

SESAY: She got beaten by ten points.

HILTZIK: She got killed, essentially, in electoral terms. She's got -- she claims to be a great businesswoman. We know her record at Hewlett-Packard was absolutely dismal. It was one of the worst- performing technology companies of that era, in an era when few technology companies did well but hers did much worse than others. She showed no imagination as a leader. She made a lot of blunders. Then, on the campaign trail this last cycle, she presented herself as sort of a, you know, the female candidate and took on policies that were deeply anti-woman.

VAUSE: Last word to James very quickly.

LACY: Yes, I think we agree on a lot of what you just said. You know, Carly Fiorina did, I think, a little better than you would have her in the 2010 election, but the reality is this: Carly Fiorina left the state. She moved to Virginia. She's paying lower taxes. She doesn't vote here anymore. She never voted for Ronald Reagan. She wasn't even registered to vote on that whole period of time, and I think the killer for her in trying to help Cruz in California will be the fact that she publicly stated in 2010 that she would vote to confirm Sotomayor, Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court. This whole election is about the Supreme Court. Carly Fiorina is not going to help Ted Cruz with conservatives in California when that comes out.

VAUSE: Okay; James and Michael, thank you very much for being with us, and we'll talk to you again next hour.

SESAY: We'll pick this up; it's not over.

VAUSE: It's not over yet; thank you.

We shall move on. North Korea, now, appears to be making a specific and dangerous threat against the South. A South Korean Defense official says Pyongyang has built a mock-up of the South Korean's president's house, the Blue House, to use for an assault drill.

SESAY: The official says the replica of the Blue House was built in an artillery testing area where Kim Jong-un frequently watches military exercises.

VAUSE: CNN's Will Ripley joins us now from Tokyo and David Kang is here in Los Angeles. He is Director of the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California. Thank you both for being with us.

Just getting this back to Donald Trump, who today also talked about the threat coming from North Korea in his major foreign policy speech, he said he would pressure China to do more. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We have the leverage. We have the power over China, economic power, and people don't understand it. With that economic power, we can reign in and get them to do what they have to do with North Korea, which is

totally out of control.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: And, Will, you just recently returned from Pyongyang. Do you get the feeling that the relationship between Pyongyang and Beijing is not what it once was; it's no longer as close as lips and teeth, as they used to stay?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT, via satellite: Well certainly it isn't. Back in October of last year you had China sending one of their top Politburo members to Pyongyang to hold hands with Kim Jong- un, but then, just a few months after that, the Supreme Leader ordered an H-Bomb test that caught China completely off guard; then there was the satellite launch; repeated projectile launches; just this submarine missile launch most recently.

So, yes, Beijing has made it quite clear they're not pleased with the military activities by the Pyongyang leadership. That's why China has said [00:15:01] that they will enforce these sanctions, even though there is trade going back and forth. It is being inspected. Coal exports are being limited. The bottom line will hurt, according to Chinese State Media, for North Korea within the next six to 12 months.

And, China is even allowing North Korean defectors, apparently, to cross into South Korea. Those restaurant workers that North Korea claims they were abducted. South Korea says they came willingly. China allowed them to cross and actually made a public statement, very rare for Beijing to do so, saying that they had their passports and they let them cross.

VAUSE: Okay, so it's not quite the relationship it was under Kim Jong-Il. So, David, does the U.S. have the huge financial leverage over China that Donald Trump says?

DAVID KANG, DIRECTOR OF KOREAN STUDIES INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, via satellite: I think we overestimate the amount of influence we have on China. Certainly, I think we overestimate the amount of influence China has over North Korea.

As we're seeing, when China squeezes North Korea, they squeeze right back and so China has more influence than anybody else, but far less than we think. So I don't actually expect that much to change.

VAUSE: Donald Trump, David, talked a lot about this trade deficit with China, wants to use it as a political weapon as well but the reality is Americans like -- they benefit from all these cheap goods coming in from China. This is not a one-way street, is it?

KANG: Well it's not a one-way street at all. The question is whether the U.S. and China are going to throw their whole relationship away over North Korea, which I simply don't see happening. Both China and the United States want to contain the North Korean problem. Both China and the United States don't want it to get worse, but nobody really has any ideas how to make it better. So we see a lot of posturing on all sides. I will believe it when I see it, if China actually implements the sanctions. So we remain in the same place we usually are, which is talking a lot but not doing that much.

VAUSE: And, will, one of the many criticisms Donald Trump has of allies, both in Europe and in Asia is that they're simply not pulling their weight when it comes to defense spending. How will that be seen in Tokyo, in Japan?

RIPLEY: Well, Japan will point out that their spending last fiscal year, more than $47 billion is what they budgeted to support U.S. troops being based in this country, that's three times more than the country that pays the second highest amount, which is Germany. South Korea pays half of the cost associated with placing more than 28,000 troops there.

So, in fact, one top U.S. official said that it would be more expensive for the U.S. to pull troops out of South Korea and have them in the United States than what the U.S. is paying to have them in South Korea. So the numbers don't really add up for the leaders here in this part of the world, who feel that the U.S. alliance has been strong and that they feel they're contributing.

VAUSE: One of the big flash points in Asia right now is the South China Sea, territorial claims being made by a number of countries, and we also have those man-made islands that are being built by the Chinese; and Donald Trump addressed that today as well.

TRUMP: China respects strength, and by letting them take advantage of us, economically, which they are doing like never before, we have lost all of their respect. A strong and smart America is an America that will

find a better friend in China, better than we have right now. Look at what China's doing in the South China Sea. They're not supposed to be doing it. No respect for this country or this president. We can both benefit or we can both go our separate ways. If need be, that's what's going to have to happen.

VAUSE: And David, I just want to pick up on that last point in Donald Trump's statement, what does he actually mean, China and America going their separate ways? What would be the ramifications of something like that?

KANG: Well, it's hard to imagine that we would actually stop doing any kind of economic trade with China. It's hard to imagine that China would stop selling goods to us. If that's what he means, it would harm both countries tremendously. But the problem is that the solution in the South China Seas is probably not going to be a military one. If that's the case, we're all in trouble. almost for sure, the solution is going to have to be a diplomatic solution in which everybody decides how we're going to treat artificial islands and comes to an agreement about what's going to happen.

VAUSE: Okay; David, we'll let you have the last word on that; it a good point to end on. David Kang here in Los Angeles; Will Ripley live in Tokyo. Thanks to you both.

Okay, a short break; but when we come back the reputation of the San Francisco Police is taking a massive punch right now. Coming up, the condemnation and backlash after CNN obtained racist and homophobic text messages sent by one police officer.

SESAY: Plus, authorities investigating Prince's death found prescription pain killer drugs on him and in his home; more details later this hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (WEATHER HEADLINES)

[00:23:54] VAUSE: Welcome back, everybody. We go to San Francisco now, where more than 200 criminal cases might be reviewed and protesters are calling for the police chief there to step down after a second texting scandal.

SESAY: This comes after CNN exclusively obtained a list of dozens of racist and homophobic text messages were sent by and to San Francisco Police Officer Jason Lai. CNN's Dan Simon helped breakdown the story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: San Francisco's police department is once again embroiled in controversy over come highly disturbing racist text messages.

At the center of the scandal is Officer Jason Lai. Now Lai resigned a few weeks ago, but he wore the uniform for six years. He allegedly uses disparaging language, not only towards black people but towards Mexicans and Indians as well.

San Francisco Public Defender Jeb Adachi provided the texts to CNN at the request of reports, that came to light during a separate investigation of the officer.

Lai's attorney told us that the texts are not reflective of who he is, and there's no evidence that he carried out any of those sentiments as an officer.

[00:25:02] But the scandal is far wider than one officer and his racist texts. You see, the SFPD went through the same thing a year ago, where more than a dozen officers were found to have sent highly offensive racist texts. In both cases the discoveries were accidental. The officers were being investigated for various crimes, when officers stumbled upon the messages while looking through phone records.

Then you have the controversial shooting last December of 26-year-old Mario Woods, a knife-wielding suspect infamously captured on cell phone video. He was shot more than 20 times. Critics say it was an unnecessary use of force. The department is still investigating. But in light of the community backlash, the Department says it wants to change how officers confront suspects with knives.

As can you imagine, the Chief Greg Suhr is under enormous pressure to show that these are isolated issues and that there's not some deep cultural problem within the Department. he says he has no tolerance for this behavior. At stake is not just the chief and his department, but perhaps the image of the city itself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: Joining us now to discuss this in more detail is CNN Correspondent Dan Simon and CNN Justice Reporter Scott Glover. Gentlemen, welcome; good to have you with us. Dan, you talked about the video but explain why you feel this is a bigger issue than just one officer's terrible texts.

SIMON, via satellite: Well, I think it's because it's in San Francisco, you know. Everybody thinks of San Francisco as being a welcoming place. This is the city that welcomes gays and lesbian and illegal immigrants. So the fact that it happened here is very surprising. Also, you have three very high-profile incidents. Plus, when you look at it through the prism of a Ferguson, Missouri or a Baltimore, of course it's going to be a bigger story.

SESAY: Yes; and Scott, to you, you covered LAPD for many years, and all of its problems, including the infamous ramp up scandal. How do you look at this story in the context of overall policing?

SCOTT GLOVER, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER, via satellite: Well, you know, I think that remains to be seen. I mean, the real question here is, do we have a handful of officers who were sending these reprehensible text messages? Or is it something that's indicative of a broader culture, you know. Some of the messages involved a numeric reference to fire, which a source said, you know, was used to describe gay officers as flaming. You know, that's something that could indicate that a lot of people have talked about it and kind of come up with this thing. You know, the real question is, what are we looking at, a handful of officers or something more systemic; and I think that, you know, that remains to be seen.

SESAY: Dan, what is the Chief Greg Suhr doing to address concerns of racism in the SFPD? What's going on?

SIMON: Well the Chief really needs to set the tone and say this will not be tolerated. Of course he has done that. He held a very high- profile news conference yesterday where he apologized to the public. He says this will not be tolerated. He also says that all of the officers, all the officers within the San Francisco Police Department will receive bias training, and he says that he has already received it, as well as his command staff; but ultimately, it's the actions more than the words that will count. Of course, Chief Suhr, you know, his job is on the line here and he can't afford to have another high- profile incident on his watch. Isha?

SESAY: Scott, final question to you. As you look at all of this, where does the story go from here?

GLOVER: Well, you know, after our story was published on Tuesday, the public defender in San Francisco, Jeff Adachi held a press conference where he discussed some of these same text messages, which had been turned over by prosecutors; and they will be pouring over cases where this officer, and presumably other officers who were involved in the texting, were involved and they'll be looking for any signs of bias, you know, that showed up in their cases, whether they might be pending cases or old ones, and they will attempt to make arguments that this influenced their police work. Whether those will be successful, that remains to be seen, but that's one avenue of pursuit.

SESAY: We shall be watching very closely. Dan Simon, Scott Glover, our thanks to you both.

GLOVER: Thank you.

SIMON: Thank you.

VAUSE: And we'll take a short break here, but when we come back, more on the investigation into Prince's death. Authorities are now focusing on the role prescription painkillers may have played in his final days; back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:32:55] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody; you're watching "CNN Newsroom" live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.

ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Isha Sesay; the headlines this hour: Donald Trump says his foreign policy would put America first. The Republican Presidential Frontrunner outlined his vision during a speech in Washington Wednesday. Trump says the Obama Administration's policy is fraught with "weakness, confusion and disarray."

VAUSE: The families of the 130 victims killed in the Paris attacks last November hope the only surviving suspect will tell the truth when he testifies in court. He has said he will talk. Salah Abdeslam appeared before a French magistrate on Wednesday, after Belgium extradited him to France. Abdeslam is charged with murder and being part of a terrorist organization.

SESAY: North Korea is ready for an assault drill using a mockup of the South Korean president's home. A South Korea defense official says the replica was built in an artillery testing area where Kim Jong-Un frequently watches military exercises.

VAUSE: The U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh is calling on the country to condemn religiously motivated violence; this, after a branch of al- Qaeda claimed responsibility for the killings of this gay-rights activist as well as his friend. SESAY: The deaths come days after a professor was also killed at a bus stop. U.S. Ambassador Marcia Bernicat says in the last 14 months her office has tracked nearly three dozen similar attacks. She says 23 of those attacks have been claimed by terror groups.

Well this alarming trend of targeted violence has fueled fear among activists and secular writers and bloggers in Bangladesh.

VAUSE: Even Muslim leaders are growing concerned. Ivan Watson has the details of the attacks that have left many on edge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATINAL CORRESPONDENT: Grief and shock after a brutal double murder. On Monday evening, a gang armed with machetes carried out a deadly home invasion in the Bangladeshi capital, killing two gay rights activists. A local branch of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for this savage act of homophobia.

[00:35:01] Something violent and frightening is happening in Bangladesh, a majority Muslim country and secular democracy.

Militants linked to al-Qaeda and ISIS are hunting down activists and intellectuals, killing them one by one. They've murdered at least six atheist bloggers and secular publishers in just 14 months and activists say they've documented thousands of cases of violence and intimidation against religious minorities.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rape, abduction, gang rape, forceful conversion, destruction of temple and also destruction of houses belonging to the minority community.

WATSON: These days even some Muslim clerics don't feel safe.

AHMED RAZA-FARUQI, IMAM, BANGLADESH: Extremism, now it is rising. Now it is rising day by day.

WATSON: Ahmed Raza-Faruqi is an imam at a mosque in the Bangladeshi capital, who follows a mystical interpretation of Islam known as Sufism. His father, Sheik Nurul Islam Faruqi, regularly preached peace and tolerance on TV. For that, his son says, Faruqi received threats from the hardliners from the Wahabi branch of Islam, which often rejects Sufism.

FARUQI: My father has been (inaudible) from the side people, from Wahabi people, from terrorist people.

WATSON: In august 2014, attackers broke in to the elder Faruqi's home, tied him up and slit his throat.

Ahmed Raza has taken over leadership of his father's mosque. This Muslim cleric is calling on the government to crackdown on Islamist extremists, before it's too late.

FARUQI: If this sectors will not be stopped, there will be massacre; massacre with the people who loves the Sufism, who loves the modern Islam.

ANISUL HUQ, MINISTER OF LAW JUSTICE AND PARLIMENTARY AFFAIRS, BANGLADESH: We try hard to protect our citizens.

WATSON: Law and Justice Minister Anisul Huq rejects claims that the machete murders are being carried out by local members of al-Qaeda and ISIS.

HUQ: There is no existence of ISIS in this country. Now isolated incidents can take place and one amateur can demand that I belong to the ISIS; that does not make him a member of ISIS.

WATSON: In this growing climate of fear in Bangladesh, some community leaders vow to stand strong against what they describe as the forces of darkness that threaten their country.

FARUQI: No, I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of the terrorists and I will not fear of the darkness.

Ivan Watson, CNN.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: A short break; when we come back, there are new revelations in the Prince death investigation. Authorities are now looking into prescription painkillers the legendary singer was found with the day he died; stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[Prince sings "Purple Rain"]

[00:40:13] SESAY: That was music legend Prince famously singing "Purple Rain", and we are now learning that authorities investigating his death found prescriptions opioids medication on him and in his Minnesota home, that's according to law enforcement officials.

VAUSE: Investigators believe a health scare a week before his death was likely caused by a reaction to pain medication. They're still waiting for results from the autopsy. The music star was 57-year-old when he died last week.

SESAY: All right; well, let's bring in Dr. Drew Pinsky. He's the host of HLN's "Dr. Drew" and is an addiction medicine's specialist. He joins us by phone from right here in L.A.

Dr. Drew, thanks for joining us. When you hear that authorities found these prescription drugs on Prince's person and in his home, what goes through your mind?

DR. DREW PINSKY, HOST, "DR. DREW ON CALL", via telephone: Well, a couple thoughts. We've been hearing rumors that he was taking the medicine Percocet, which is precisely one of these opioid prescription pain medications. It makes me wonder whether or not this is a medical misadventure. Perhaps the doctor gave him something called a benzodiazepine, an

anxiety, valium-like medication or sleeping medication. We heard these rumors that he hadn't slept for 154 hours. If somebody added a sleeping medication to a modest dose of opiate, like Percocet, whatever the name is, they're all pretty much the same, that is a potentially lethal combination.

That does not mean Prince was an addict. We don't see the typical behaviors of someone struggling with long-term addiction, progression, all the things we're used to seeing with celebrities that struggle with that. Never have we had a hint of Prince manifesting those sort of phenomena or behavior. Yet all of a sudden, here at the end, things so bad quickly.

I'm suspicious. My clinical hunch is that he has some sort of underlying medical problem. Of course we've been hearing about the hip pain, but something more, something more substantial and that the pain medication got involved; and they were on top of some problem but may, my fear is, they are the things that really took a genius from all of us.

SESAY: Dr. Drew, is it possible, though, that one could have an addiction to these kind of drugs and it not be known by those around you, those closest to you?

PINSKY: It's possible, but think of the celebrities who have died of addiction in recent years. You knew something was up and you that things were progressing and you knew things were getting worse, and there are stories of people struggling and trying to help them and get them -- sometimes you would shake your head and wonder what was going on. It wouldn't be clear that it was addiction, but you would hear stories of a struggle and a progression. That's addiction.

In this case, you can become dependent. Again, the real story behind all this is the fact that 90-percent of the pain medication prescribed on earth are prescribed in America. That's ridiculous. we are way too aggressive with these medications and when they, -- they themselves -- it's very difficult to overdose on oral opiates. You can, but it's difficult; but when you add in the benzodiazepine and the sleeping medication, then it's very easy to accidently overdose.

SESAY: And, Dr. Drew, let me ask you this, the autopsy results, the toxicology, all that, all that detail won't be known for a while yet, but can that process, can those tests definitively determine whether or not he had a long-term dependency on these medications?

PINSKY: They can give a hint. If there's nothing else going on that can explain the cause of death and somebody simply stops breathing, and there are moderate to high doses of an opiate and a benzodiazepine, it's pretty

much a smoking gun. You can pretty much conclude what happened. There's other bits of evidence you can collect that tells somebody simply stopped breathing; but, again, I don't think it's going to be that simple. I really don't.

I think - it may be; it's possible but I just don't think so. It just doesn't sound like that, but it is a reminder of how, -- listen, if you were going to die of a substance ingestion today, it's going to be an opioid pain medication and a benzodiazepine prescribed by a doctor, often taken "as directed." So, please, people that have chronic pain, these are not good and are potentially dangerous treatments. Be very cautious and very circumspect, especially if somebody provides you with a benzodiazepine medication on top of that. It is exquisitely dangerous.

Dr. Drew, a really good word of warning. So appreciate the fact you could join us --

PINSKY: You bet.

SESAY: -- this evening. Thank you, Dr. Drew.

PINSKY: You bet you; thanks Isha.

VAUSE: We should stress, of course, that we're still waiting on the autopsy reports --

SESAY: Absolutely.

VAUSE: -- to find out exactly what happened. There's no definitive -

SESAY: Yes, we don't know.

VAUSE: -- answer on any of this just yet.

SESAY: We don't know at all, but great insight there. Thank you for watching "CNN Newsroom" live from Los Angeles; I'm Isha Sesay.

VAUSE: I'm John Vause; you're watching CNN.

["Purple Rain" by Prince plays]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ("WORLD SPORT" AIRED)