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New Day

Mike Huckabee Tops New 2016 Poll; Hillary Reaches Out to Elizabeth Warren; New Measles Cases on the Rise; Key Evidence Raising Questions in Hernandez Trial; Costly California Labor Dispute

Aired February 18, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Update from Iraq now. Kurdish forces regaining control in northern Iraq after ISIS launched a massive attack there, the Peshmerga pummeling the terrorists with air strikes. Officials say ISIS launched the offensive from several different directions on Tuesday night. Casualties have been reported on both sides of the battle. But it's not clear how many people have died.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The White House says the number of people signing up for Obamacare in 2015 has exceeded their own expectations. 11.4 million Americans have enrolled through healthcare exchange and the numbers are said to keep on growing. The open enrollment period has been extended a week until Sunday, that is, for people who had trouble signing up due to technical glitches or long wait times.

CAMEROTA: Pretty pooch time. We have your winner. Miss P, a 4-year- old beagle from British Columbia, took the top honors at the 2015 Westminster Dog Show Tuesday. Miss P beat six other dogs in her category to take top honors. How cute. It was her 20th career Best In Show, Chris.

CUOMO: That's huge.

CAMEROTA: Yes, her family says Miss P plans to retire from competition after Tuesday's big win. Because, really, where can she go from here? But she will embark on a worldwide media tour.

CUOMO: Should we have Miss P here? I mean, we're pretty serious.

CAMEROTA: Well, I don't know. What does the P stand for?

CUOMO: Well, that's a legitimate question.

CAMEROTA: I mean, before we commit to having her in the studio.

CUOMO: Pricey, if you try to buy a puppy that comes from that dog, I'll tell you right now.

CAMEROTA: As long as it's pricey, that's fine.

CUOMO: Some morning shows have their own puppy.

CAMEROTA: I have heard that.

CUOMO: They say that can be very endearing to the audience. You think that we should get a Miss P? Sign her up?

CAMEROTA: I think that we've been told we won't ever have a puppy on here.

CUOMO: As long as it's not a kitten.

All right, let's discuss the merits of this and so much more with Inside Politics. The man himself, who wins every show, and just because he's pretty, Mr. John King.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": The art of the segue, my friend.

CUOMO: The segyoo, the segyoo.

(LAUGHTER)

KING: Thank you. This morning, my 3-year-old wants a puppy; we're delaying that one a little bit. We'll see how that one goes.

CUOMO: Oh, come on, puppy love.

KING: I'll get there eventually. Right now, though, I'm going to go Inside Politics. And with me this morning to share their reporting and their insights, Nia-Malika Henderson of "The Washington Post", Ron Fournier of "National Journal".

Let's start with our brand new poll out this morning, and the Mike Huckabee surge. Mike Hucakbee, the former Arkansas governor, ran for president back in 2008. Says he's probably going to run again for the Republican nomination. Look at this, 16 percent, he leads the Republican field. He was at 6 percent in September. Jeb Bush at 14 percent right behind him in second place, down though from 23 percent in December. Scott Walker, another big jump, from 4 percent to 11 percent. Rand Paul staying about the same, a little bit up, 10 percent there. And then you Dr. Ben Carson. Everyone else down below. Why, why, is Mike Huckabee surging and Jeb Bush coming down?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, "THE WASHINGTON POST: I think for Huckabee, it's in some ways the book bump, which is we talked about. But it's also the Beyonce bump. He has gone after Beyonce; he's really planted a flag for himself as a culture warrior. So he's been so easy to define and so very much present, I think, in a lot of these discussions over these last weeks. So that's what we're seeing.

KING: And in the conservative media, to echo that point, so at a time when they're seeing headlines saying they're losing the same-sex marriage war, for example, in the courts. And you mentioned the Beyonce bump; he's planting a flag and saying I will fight for you.

And in that same conservative media, Ron, a lot of conservatives going after Jeb Bush, saying he's not one of us. RON FOURNIER, "NATIONAL JOURNAL": Yes, I wouldn't make too much of this, though. A year out from the election, the margin of error, you actually have a three-way tie; Huckabee is not ahead. And I do think a lot of this is ephemeral; this is -- he's had a good couple of weeks and next week it'll be somebody else, and two weeks after that it will be somebody else.

KING: Right. I think that that is headline. In a crowded field with no overwhelming front-runner, we're going to go through this. We're going to go through this over the next several months -- good weeks, bad weeks, this and that.

Walker and Huckabee coming up at the moment, underline at the moment. A big moment for Jeb Bush today. He gives a foreign policy speech in Chicago. One of the questions has been what about your father's foreign policy? What about your brother's foreign policy? Where do you stand about Afghanistan and Iraq? Jeb Bush today, in his speech in Chicago, will say this: "I love my father and my brother. I admire their service to the nation and the difficult decisions they had to make. But I am my own man and my views are shaped by my own thinking and my own experiences. Each president learns from those who came before, their principles, their adjustments."

Why is it so important -- and I'm going to say this in the question -- I guess I think this is why it's so important. Not only does he have to convince the country let's have a third Bush president. The last two Republican presidents were named Bush, by the way. So it would be boom boom boom. But Bush, forgive me in the morning, is a four-letter word to many conservatives, because his dad broke his no taxes pledge, George W. Bush and Medicare Part D we were talking about that also, a lot of people think mismanaged the Iraq war. How important is this among Republicans to say I'm not them?

HENDERSON: This is huge. And this is a conversation -- this is a good start. This is the conversation, should he run, it looks like he will, that he's going to have to have over and over and over again. Not only with that Republican base -- and you mentioned these issues, foreign policy, also just in terms of conservative social issues, right? They feel like Bush was sort of a phony and phoned it in in terms of how he felt about those issues that are so important to evangelicals. So he's got a lot of work to do on these issues. Is he going to be credible? Are people going to really believe him? Or is that Bush hangover still going to hang over him?

FOURNIER: I saw him deal with the same issue in Detroit a few weeks ago; he did it with humor. It was very effective. He's obviously going to have to deal with it, just like Hillary Clinton, by the way, is going to have to do it. How do you separate yourself from Barack Obama and your husband and be your own person? The same thing with Bush.

KING: She's got it almost on two fronts.

Last night on Fox News, a question that has come up here, we've talked about before. Scott Walker dropped out of college in his fourth year. He never finished his college education. He's the Wisconsin governor; as we just noted, he's rising now in the Republican field. A long way to go to the voting. But we do know between now and then, as he explains in his biography, he's going to have to deal with this question. Can you be president without a college degree? Here's what he told Megyn Kelly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R), WISCONSIN: That's kind of the elitist government-knows-best top-down approach from Washington we've heard for years. And I don't know about you, Megyn, but we've had an Ivy League-trained lawyer in the White House for the last six years who is pretty good at reading off the teleprompter but done a lousy job leading this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: What do you think?

HENDERSON: Yes, this is -- and it's gold for Scott Walker. I mean, he's the guy -- I think he's become a conservative hero in many ways because it's seen that the liberal sort of media and elitists are going after him. So this is a good position for him to be and a terrible thing for Democrats to do, if they go after him in this way.

FOURNIER: Yes, I agree with everything you're saying. But it's spun gold. He wants this issue.

HENDERSON: Yes, I think that's right. Oh yeah.

FOURNIER: They're latching on to every Democrat who is dumb enough to say that this is an issue and pretending this is what the Democratic party feels like. They know that only 40 percent, actually a little bit less than 40 percent, of the American public have college degrees. They know that a college degree really isn't dispositive of whether or not you're a good leader, let alone the President of the United States. So they're trying to make this an "us versus them". And Democrats, if they're smart, they'll shut up about the degrees.

KING: It'll be fascinating to watch.

We mentioned all those Republican numbers; let's look at the Democratic numbers from the same poll. Tell me if you can pick the front-runner here. Hillary Clinton, 61 percent. Joe Biden, 14 percent. Elizabeth Warren, 10 percent, and so on and so forth.

This, to me, when you look at these numbers, tells me just why Hillary Clinton has been pretty smart -- we're learning more about this in recent reports -- reaching out to Elizabeth Warren, including a meeting in December. If you're Elizabeth Warren and you're looking at 10 percent to 61 percent -- you're right, we're a year out from the voting, and anything can change -- but not running, right?

HENDERSON: She's not running. And some pollsters aren't even including her, right, in these rankings of Democrats. Smart for Hillary Clinton to reach out to her and get advice. It -- a lot of the groups that are backing Warren sent out press releases saying this is a good thing. They want to see her, if not run, then certainly have an impact.

KING: And they want to raise money off her name too.

HENDERSON: Yes.

FOURNIER: Elizabeth Warren has done a good job making sure that she's an important player even if she doesn't run. She could be in a -- this is a very good place for her to be in. Sometimes not being the president, they can be more powerful.

KING: Yes, go to CNN politics. The poll's interesting too; it also poses the question which candidate do you view as the candidate of the future versus candidate of the past? Hillary Clinton has an advantage on that one over most of the Republicans. Again, a year until people start voting, but it's a good benchmark as we start into the campaign.

Let's come back to and let's show the video -- a lot of people, when the president did this Buzzfeed video with his selfie stick, making the funny faces in the mirror, using the shades there and everything -- a lot of conservatives especially said this is not presidential. This is beneath the presidency. Why is he doing this? He's demeaning the office.

The White House says here's why we did it -- 11.4 million people now have signed up for Obamacare. They say there was a surge after this video, just like there was when he sat down "Between Two Ferns" with Zach Galifianakis. Now, that number, 11.4, will probably drop a little bit. People sign up, if you don't pay your premium, that number goes down. But can the White House say, you know, "we're right, you're wrong" to the critics?

HENDERSON: Yes, in some ways, I think so. Millions and millions of people watched this video. It's the "Between Two Ferns" effect. It worked that time. It seems to have worked this time in getting the right folks to sign up.

KING: You're not so quiet, usually.

FOURNIER: They've exceeded their own expectations, but we all like to set our expectations low and they have. They haven't met the original goal that they wanted to yet. And if you look at the back end of healthcare.gov, it's still not working very well.

KING: We'll keep an eye on this one as well. Numbers are up, but the most important thing is about how does the program work? That's part of the political argument, that the White House thinks more people have signed up, the harder it will be for the Republicans to scale it back.

FOURNIER: But let's get to the policy argument, because really, we don't know yet whether this will --

KING: Right, this will be a policy argument. I think we're going to get to that in the next presidential campaign.

Alisyn, as we get back to New York, Joe Biden made a splash on several fronts in social media yesterday. But including this video here, Ashton Carter, Joe Biden, the vice president, was swearing him in to be Defense Secretary. He waved his wife over and a little hands-on treatment from the vice president.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Oh my god.

KING: I guess it all depends on your generation and your view of Joe Biden. But, at one point, if you watch her eyes, she looks like she wishes she could say, "Scotty, beam me up."

CAMEROTA: I think she's blinking a distress call there in Morse code. That's what I'm seeing.

Oh my gosh, not only did he have his hands on her, he was also whispering sweet nothings in her ear. What was that?

KING: Can you blinks Morse code?

CAMEROTA: I can, if you watch the show.

KING: Learning every day.

CAMEROTA: All right, John, great to see you.

All right, the number of new measles cases is jumping higher. Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us with the latest developments. Stick around.

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CUOMO: All right, welcome back to NEW DAY. The measles count keeps climbing.

CAMEROTA: The latest numbers from the CDC show a total of 141 cases in 17 states. But that's not the whole picture.

So joining us from Atlanta live is CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, great to see you. So what is the situation? Is it getting worse in the country?

DR. SANJYA GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it looks like the numbers are still going in the wrong direction; there are still more cases. But it doesn't seem to be growing as quickly as it had been before.

Take a look at the map, quickly, and this gives you an idea of just how quickly an outbreak can spread with something as contagious as measles. Most of the cases in California, as we know, but literally coast to coast. And I can tell you, this is the map from the Center for Disease Control. We've been calling state health departments ourselves and we know the numbers are probably even a little bit bigger. For example, Georgia did not light up on that map, but we know that there is measles, there is at least one patient with measles in Georgia as well. So the numbers have grown a bit. We've also started to break down who are these people that are getting

measles, in terms of what their vaccination status is? Take a look. Overall, if you break it down, five in ten runbacks, they had four in ten didn't know if they were vaccinated, were likely not vaccinated as well. One in ten were vaccinated.

So, just again, I think makes the case for the vaccines in terms of how much of an impact they can have on controlling something like this.

CUOMO: What do you hear about if any of these people or any of the sourcing of the contagion has to do with undocumented immigrants?

GUPTA: Well, some of that is, when you look at the four in ten number, not knowing if they were vaccinated, they are saying either they were -- they had some -- did not have documentation overall, either their vaccination status or citizenship, whatever. They couldn't get the records for those people. Likely assumed that they were unvaccinated. They're not breaking it down further than that, but they are sort of being in that middle category there, Chris.

CAMEROTA: So, Sanjay, if you have an infant today and you're watching our program, what are you supposed to do with a baby who is too young to be vaccinated? Can they go to daycare? Can they go outside? What should you do?

GUPTA: This is probably the question I'm getting more than just about any other. Let me tell you a couple of things.

First of all, when a baby is born, from the time of birth to about six months, they do have some protection even if they haven't received a vaccine. Why? Because the mom at the time of birth actually gives some of the antibodies to the baby. So from about 0-6 months, they have some protection. Around 12 months is when they got the vaccine. So it's that 6-12-month period where they can be particularly vulnerable. They're not vaccinated, they don't have protection from Mom. And this is a big question.

What we have been told by the Centers for Disease Control is there's no reason, unless measles is circulating in your area, to keep your kid home from daycare. You can still take your kid to daycare. In some situations, if measles started to circulate, they may recommend the child get a vaccine as young as six months. Now, they would still need one at 12 months, because their immune systems aren't quite developed enough yet to accept it, but they may recommend it if measles starts to circulate more and more briskly.

CUOMO: So what would you say if people looked at the numbers, Sanjay, and say, see? I don't have to get this vaccine; it's only 140 cases here. It's a remote thing, it's not a big deal; nobody's dying.

GUPTA: Easy answer: before the vaccine use, that number would be in the tens of thousands of cases. So a lot of people are getting protection -- you know, vaccines are a funny thing. It's like proving a negative. I got this thing, I got this shot and therefore nothing happened to me. But the point is they do work, because when vaccines did not exist, you have tens of thousands of people getting infected, hundreds of people dying. Luckily, thankfully, because of vaccines, we're not seeing those numbers.

CAMEROTA: OK, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much for all the latest information. Good to see you.

CUOMO: Big video being played in the American -- in the Aaron Hernandez murder trial rather. Here he is, shown dismantling his cell phone outside a police station, moments after Odin Lloyd turns up dead. Again, dismantling the cell phone. The timing relevant as well. What does the defense, though, have to say about this?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Welcome back. Jurors in the murder trial of Aaron Hernandez seeing a key piece of evidence that's raising more questions. Prosecutors showed surveillance video of Hernandez destroying his cell phone, or trying to, the day after Odin Lloyd was shot killed.

CNN's Susan Candiotti has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's 2:00 a.m. and New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez is in a police station parking lot after voluntarily meeting with detectives. He gets into his lawyer's car. Several hours after Odin Lloyd's body is found, shot dead in an industrial park, keys to a car rented by Hernandez, found on Lloyd's body, lead police to question him. An outdoor police department security camera shows Hernandez and his lawyer who walks away. With the car's interior light on, Hernandez dismantles his Blackberry, removing battery and cover.

MICHAEL ELLIOTT, DETECTIVE, NORTH ATTLEBORO POLICE: Inside the vehicle, it appeared that he took his phone and took it apart.

CANDIOTTI: Jurors watch him pick up another phone, but first he quickly puts his own phone back together and makes a call on the borrowed phone.

ELLIOTT: So he's using one phone, either texting or calling, and the other one is on his lap apart.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. And how long did you watch him on the camera?

ELLIOTT: Around 20 minutes.

CANDIOTTI: Without the jury present, the judge says Hernandez calls Ernest Wallace (ph), later also charged with murdering Lloyd. Wallace, seen on video, coming home with Hernandez minutes after Lloyd is shot. Jurors are not told that second phone belongs to his lawyer, nor that Hernandez was calling Wallace. The defense plays down the phone swap.

JAMIE SULTAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: You saw him slide off the back cover and pop out the battery. ELLIOTT: OK.

SULTAN: I'm -- I don't -- is that what you saw?

ELLIOTT: Yes.

SULTAN: All right. You didn't see him smashing his phone, did you?

ELLIOTT: No.

SULTAN: You didn't see him destroying his phone, did you?

ELLIOTT: No.

SULTAN: And you're aware, are you not, that that phone was later turned over to the state police, right?

ELLIOTT: I believe so, yes.

CANDIOTTI: Jurors also learned about another surveillance camera in Hernandez's basement, his man cave, equipped with bar, big screen TV and pool table. When the camera's put in, he asks the installer how to disable it.

MARK ARCHAMBAULT, HOME ELECTRONICS TECHNICIAN: He asked if it was possible to shut off the camera in the basement because he didn't want his fiance to see him hanging out with his friends. I said, well, we could label the cameras and you could just unplug them. And he said, well, that sounds like a good idea, why don't we do that.

CANDIOTTI: That camera cable is labeled "man cave," significant because that's the only camera in the house prosecutors say is turned off when Hernandez comes home and goes to his basement minutes after Lloyd is shot. A gun allegedly in his hand.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Fall River, Massachusetts.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: I mean, look, it's a bad piece of videotape for the defense, any way you look at it. But, you know, at trial it's this saying we have -- you only know what you show. And this is going to be argued on both sides, but this was a tough development.

CAMEROTA: Yes, it's interesting trial to follow.

CUOMO: All right. You know what it is? It's time for CNN Money now. That means chief business correspondent Christine Romans is here -- yay, yay -- in the money center.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hey, guys. I've got a very costly labor dispute on the West Coast to tell you about. It's turning some of the ports of America into parking lots, with exports like California oranges rotting in the sun, and imports like car parts and electronics stuck on ships. Now, the president has dispatched his Labor Secretary, Tom Perez, to negotiate a deal. There will be more talks today.

Cheap oil is saving Americans billions of dollars at the gas pump, but instead of spending that money on other things, as businesses had hoped, new data shows Americans largely pocketing their extra cash and beefing up their savings, something I cannot argue with, ladies and gentlemen. Back to you guys.

CUOMO: No argument there. No argument there. Good to have you as always, Christine.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, Christine.

Word this morning the Paris attacks were coordinated. We have the damming evidence that you have to hear straight ahead.

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