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Clinton Wins Kentucky, Sanders Takes Oregon; Sanders Supporters Stage Uprising in Nevada Convention; Trump Willing to Meet with North Korean Leader. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired May 18, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D-FL), DNC CHAIR: There is never a place for violence and intimidation.

[05:58:42] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a pretty unfair process.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The election was stolen.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Senator Sanders should outright condemn that specific conduct.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We obviously do not condone any kind of violence or threats.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This campaign is listening to the American people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I get threats every one to two seconds.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have too much divisiveness in America.

SANDERS: We are in until the last ballot is cast.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would speak to him. I would have no problem speaking to him.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: We will not be disadvantaged by anybody in North Korea.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: The Trump campaign is announcing, along with the RNC, that it has agreed on these joint fund-raising agreements.

REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We're having the conversations that are necessary to make sure that we are unifying.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Wednesday, May 18, 6 a.m. in the east. Up first, Hillary Clinton dodging a major blow. The Democratic front-

runner narrowly wins Kentucky's primary, and we mean really narrowly. We'll take you behind the numbers, and you'll see just how true that is. Bernie Sanders wins big in Oregon, vowing to stay in the race, saying he thinks he can win California.

The results, however, overshadowed by this fight heating up between Sanders supporters and the party establishment. Some Democrats now worried about violence at their convention in July.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: On the Republican side, presumptive GOP nominee Trump picking up one more win. Trump also making news for saying that he would speak with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and for sealing a deal with the RNC to now accept campaign donations.

We have a panel of Trump supporters joining us this morning to talk all about this.

CUOMO: Smile! There you go.

CAMEROTA: We will be with them shortly.

We have this race covered the way only CNN can. So let's begin with Christine Romans with a look at the primary results and the delegate race.

Hi, Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, you guys.

Hillary Clinton got the win she needed but barely. The margin razor- thin, narrowly winning in Kentucky. Fewer than 2,000 votes. In Oregon, Senator Bernie Sanders with a more decisive win, taking 54 percent of the vote to Clinton's 45 percent. His 20th state victory.

Now, despite winning fewer delegates than Sanders last night, Clinton is now just 89 delegates shy of clinching that nomination if we include super delegates. It remains mathematically impossible for Sanders to win with pledged delegates.

Let's talk about the Republicans. The last man standing, Donald Trump, with just 67 percent of the vote in Oregon. That victory awards Trump 18 delegates. The presumptive GOP nominee is now 62 delegates shy of making it official. That margin, however, is greater than the number of delegates at stake in the next Republican contest, meaning it will take until June 7 to reach the magic number, Chris.

CUOMO: Wow. It just keeps going. Very interesting. Thank you, Christine.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

CUOMO: So with Clinton, as you just saw there, just squeaking by in Kentucky, and Sanders winning Oregon in strong fashion, the focus shifts now to California's delegate-rich primary early next month. Sanders says he's not going anywhere until then, because he thinks he can win.

CNN senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns live in Washington with more. Joe, what a race.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: That's for sure. Good morning, Chris.

A narrow victory for Hillary Clinton in Kentucky, but all she needed to be able to claim that she has broken the string of victories by Bernie Sanders in multiple primaries and caucuses. The Clinton campaign in the Bluegrass State makes a statement about her ability to attract votes

in Appalachia. She's now within 100 delegates or so of what she needs to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Bernie Sanders, for his part, picking up a win in progressive-leaning Oregon, making it clear he has no intention of dropping out of the race, even though there are increasing concerns in the party that his staying the course all the way through June 7 and the California primary creates chaos and anger in the run-up to the Democratic convention.

Listen to Sanders last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANDERS: Many of the pundits and politicians, they say, "Bernie Sanders should drop out. The people of California should not have the right to determine who the next president will be."

We are in until the last ballot is cast.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: Also, breaking overnight, Hillary Clinton releasing her personal financial disclosure statement, which shows she made about $5 million in royalties for a book and about $1.5 million in speeches in 2015. The release appeared timed to ping Donald Trump, who is also releasing his disclosure.

The Clinton campaign once again trying to draw attention to the fact that Trump has refused to release his income tax returns, because he says he's undergoing a routine audit.

Back to you.

CAMEROTA: OK, Joe, thanks so much for all of that.

Questions of party unity now plaguing the Democrats, too. Bernie Sanders and his supporters growing increasingly frustrated with the primary process they consider unfair, and that is prompting fears of revolt at their Philadelphia convention.

CNN senior political reporter Manu Raju is live in Washington with the latest.

Good morning, Manu.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Now last night, before that raucous crowd in Carson, California, Bernie Sanders actually steered clear of the controversy over some of his supporters' rather aggressive tactics. He said last night that, of course, he's in this race until the last votes are counted, but this much is clear. The longer he stays in the race, the more nervous the party establishment grows.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: The senator's response was anything but acceptable.

RAJU (voice-over): Overnight, Bernie Sanders getting slammed by Democratic leaders, calling for Sanders to rein in his supporters after this weekend's chaotic state convention in Nevada.

SANDERS: I say to the leadership of the Democratic Party, open the doors. Let the people in!

RAJU: But Sanders is claiming Democratic leaders used their power during the convention to, quote, "prevent a fair and transparent process from taking place."

JEFF WEAVER, SANDERS CAMPAIGN MANAGER: The leadership there that was running it was not following the rules. They were overruling voice votes on the floor to get the result they wanted.

RAJU: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who spoke to Sanders yesterday, is angrily disagreeing Sanders's claim of a rigged system, telling CNN, "It's a silly statement."

[06:05:06] SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D), CALIFORNIA: when you boo me, you're booing Bernie Sanders. Go ahead."

RAJU: And Senator Barbara Boxer, a Clinton supporter, seen here trying to calm the convention's raging crowd, tells CNN that Sanders has to, quote, "get things under control."

WEAVER: We do not condone any kind of violence or threats. That is unacceptable. Bad language. We don't -- that's unacceptable.

RAJU: The anger didn't stop Saturday. The chairwoman of the Nevada Democratic Party receiving over 1,000 angry calls. Even death threats.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People like you should be hung in a public execution to show this world that we won't stand for this sort of corruption.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU: Now, most of Bernie Sanders's colleagues on Capitol Hill have not pressured him to quit, giving him the time and space to make that decision. But in light of the Nevada aftermath, pressure is intensifying.

Dianne Feinstein, a veteran Democrat of California who backs Hillary Clinton, told me yesterday that Bernie Sanders should drop out in June, after voting concludes, to avoid a messy convention in July. And Jeff Merkley, Bernie's lone Senate supporter, has told me that, as well.

So Chris, expect to hear a lot more of that in the coming weeks.

CUOMO: All right, Manu, appreciate the reporting.

Let's flip over to the other side for a second. Donald Trump, the pressure on him has been to stop talking about other people, start talking about what you would do. He's done just that. He's making waves. Big foreign policy splash. He's willing to do, he says, what no president has ever done.

The presumptive GOP nominee says he would be willing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to hold nuclear talks. This as the billionaire developer, who has long boasted about self-funding his campaign, no longer is, technically.

CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us now with more.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

Donald Trump is scheduled to with former secretary of state Henry Kissinger today. And the presumptive GOP nominee and the Republican Party's preeminent foreign policy elder statesmen, they have something new to talk about. North Korea.

Trump telling Reuters in an interview on Tuesday that he would be willing to speak directly to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. A significant policy shift for the U.S. towards the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I would speak to him. I would have no problem speaking to him. At the same time, I would put a lot of pressure on China, because economically, we have tremendous power over China. China can solve that problem with one meeting or one phone call.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Now guys, as it currently stands, senior U.S. officials do engage with their North Korean counterparts, but direct talks between the country's two leaders, they are not on the table.

Now Trump also yesterday took a key step forward in unifying his own party. Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee reaching a joint fund-raising agreement, a crucial deal that aids GOP candidates up and down the ballot, as well as the party on the whole.

Now this deal, guys, it allows top GOP donors to write checks for up to $449,000. A pot of money that would be split between Trump's campaign, the party and 11 state parties. Now, this is something Trump and his advisers have been working with

behind closed doors with top RNC officials over the last couple of weeks. Really since Trump became the presumptive nominee. And it is another example of Trump's shift away from the self-funding stance, and one that also makes clear he is willing to make deals with a party, for all intents and purposes, he has trashed for much of the last year -- guys.

CAMEROTA: OK, Phil, stay with us. We want to talk about all this.

Let's bring in CNN political commentator and political anchor for Time Warner Cable News, Errol Louis; also Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast," Jackie Kucinich. Thanks for being here, everyone.

Let's start with the Democrats and what happened last night. Sanders won Oregon, and it was razor-thin in Kentucky.

So Errol, Sanders makes the case that he might be able to deprive Hillary Clinton, if he were to win California, say, the 2,383 number that she needs to truly be the nominee. Is that possible?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is, in theory, possible, but the Sanders scenario you just laid out doesn't really take into account the super delegates. Right? So you put the super delegates in, and Hillary Clinton is almost there right there, and it's almost impossible for her to not hit that number.

But again, you back out, you know, a few hundred super delegates, yes. And in fact, Bernie Sanders, depending on how the rules are actually sort of stamped out at the convention, could force a vote by those super delegates. And the party establishment, the super delegates themselves, they don't really want to have to do that. They don't want to be the margin of victory for Hillary Clinton. They'd rather have something closer to unanimity and the famous scene on the stage, where the candidates clasp hands and everybody comes together. That's the whole point of the convention, is to bring everybody together.

Bernie Sanders signaling, at least right now, that they're not nearly ready to do that.

CUOMO: Well, we have heard from the DNC directly that -- they say a couple of things. One super delegates, to pledged delegates, 85-15. Don't make much of the super delegates. They're only, you know, 15 percent, and they have never decided an outcome.

However, as Errol just laid out, this race is looking like something different.

[06:10:05] So the question to you, Jackie Kucinich is, at this point you cannot deny that they have problems in-house, because perception is reality in politics. So math aside, Bernie Sanders seems to have the momentum, and more importantly, is winning the kinds of people that will matter most in the election, in the general election. So what is the party to do?

JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "THE DAILY CALLER": You know, it was very striking last night when Debbie Wasserman Schultz was on CNN talking about how -- she looked angry about what happened in Nevada, and what's happening on the ground with Sanders's supporters.

So there's always been bad blood throughout this whole process between Sanders and the DNC, but let's be honest. It shouldn't really be that surprising that Sanders doesn't really have an affinity for the Democratic Party, because for a long time, he wasn't in it. So the fact that his supporters and he aren't necessarily tacking to the party line shouldn't really be a surprise for anyone in the party establishment.

CUOMO: Well, what happened in Nevada was also -- anybody would be upset by it?

CAMEROTA: They are frustrated.

CUOMO: To be fair.

CAMEROTA: They're quite frustrated but, of course, there's been violence.

KUCINICH: It was also -- it was also the Bernie Sanders response to it. I think they expected a little more of a stronger statement from the candidate himself, rather than, you know, than what you saw.

CAMEROTA: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as you say, did talk about this. Let's play that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: Well, after I heard that Senator Reid had had -- that Leader Reid had had a conversation with Senator Sanders, and he publicly announced that he felt that Senator Sanders was going to respond appropriately and issue a statement, I was comfortable that, you know, one conversation was enough.

Unfortunately, the senator's response was anything but acceptable. It certainly did not condemn his supporters for -- for acting violently or engaging in intimidation tactics and instead added more fuel to the fire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: And, Phil, I mean, we do have Sanders's response here. He does say that he condemns violence, but he also went on to talk about how the system is just completely broken, he thinks, and that he understands their frustration. So it was not the full-throated condemnation of violence that they were hoping for.

MATTINGLY: That's right. And when you talk to party leaders, I think they feel like he hedged a little bit, and granted, they're parsing words, and they're looking at paragraph three of a lengthy statement, all that stuff.

But they still are digging in on it and saying this was not -- it should have been one line, two sentences, maybe, condemning the entire thing and moving forward. But I think that's the issue the part has right now. Bernie Sanders isn't willing to do what they want him to do yet. It's in large part been what the last 10 months have all been about.

But I'm more intrigued right now is watching -- and Manu Raju talked about this a little bit, but he's also been reporting in detail on it -- watching the senators. They have given Bernie Sanders his space. They respect him as colleague. They respect him for what he's doing. They're slightly concerned about what his supporters would do if they didn't.

That's starting to shift right now. The party is getting frustrated. Senate leaders are getting frustrated, and you're seeing people -- obviously, Senator Reid, never one to hold his tongue, he's coming out publicly, but others are, as well. They're saying it's time to unify right now.

How do they balance the fear that they push Bernie and his supporters too far in the opposite direction, versus the fact that they need to unify right now? Their willingness to start speaking out right now, I think, is an important moment for the party. And how Bernie Sanders and his supporters respond is equally important.

CUOMO: What are they going to say? If you're the senator, and you know, you know from the reporting, we're all hearing from these people -- what do you say to Bernie Sanders about why to unify? We're not going to include what you want in the platform. That's what Bernie says: "Are you going to give me what I want in the platform?" No. You're not going to get your free college. You're not going to get your single-payer health care. You're not going to get it.

So what do they say to him when he's got the momentum, he's got these masses coming out. And what happened in Nevada, as we all know, was something that was worthy of condemnation.

MATTINGLY: I think there's a lot of conversations going -- I know there's a lot of conversations going on behind the scenes, trying to answer just that question. Can we give him something on the platform? Can we talk about maybe shifting things away from super delegates in future elections? Maybe that's Bernie Sanders's legacy here in 2016.

But I also think the issue is he's a colleague. They feel like there's mutual respect among the two -- among the two camps, if you will, and that this is a conversation that should happen behind closed doors, which should, as Errol was saying, end up with people raising each other's arms and unifying the Republican Party.

Donald Trump is the motivating factor here. And they believe, I think, when you talk to your kind of top-line Democrats here, that at some point Bernie Sanders and his supporters will recognize that this is all about beating Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton is the one who's on track to do it, and it's time to unify.

But no question about it, there is legitimate concern inside the party that it hasn't happened yet, and they don't see a pathway right now for it to happen. His statement on Nevada just making that even more clear.

CAMEROTA: Errol, very quickly.

LOUIS: I would say one thing that might be discussed somewhere along the line is to make clear to Bernie Sanders's supporters, it's fine to make 1,000 intimidating phone calls to the chair of the party. Maybe they should have made those 1,000 phone calls to voters in Nevada, and then they wouldn't have been blown out.

There's so much of this sort of condemnation of the establishment, and all of that political energy, if it were put into actually, you know, sort of turning out the vote for Bernie Sanders, he'd be doing better in many different states.

[06:15:04] CUOMO: So you don't buy what happened on the floor there?

LOUIS: No. The big fight was over two delegates. I mean, that's all they would have gotten, even if they'd succeeded. It seems kind of pointless.

CAMEROTA: OK, panel, stick around. We have a lot more to talk about.

CUOMO: All right. We're going to talk more about the Democrats, because there is a news story line about what's happening within the party. So who better to talk about that with than DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She's going to be here. She'll tell you about what's going on in her party for herself.

CAMEROTA: OK. Picture this: Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un sitting down face-to-face. Trump says he would welcome the opportunity to sit down with the reclusive North Korean leader. What do foreign policy experts think about that?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I would -- I would speak to him. I would have no problem speaking to him. At the same time, I would put lot of pressure on China, because economically we have tremendous power over China. People don't realize that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You say you'd talk to Kim?

TRUMP: I would -- I would speak to him. I have no problem with speaking to him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Easy enough for Donald Trump to say. Well, why is it getting such eyebrows raised? Because we're talking about politics. We're talking about the Republican Party, and we're talking about, you know, sitting down with a man that the administration won't right now.

So Donald Trump making headlines by saying he's willing to sit down with North Korea's leader, who is known as a dictator. Right? We call him Kim Jong-un. He is the son, and he's also seen as a holy figure there.

So he believes he's the man to curbed nuclear ambitions there, Donald Trump. Is he?

Let's bring back Phil Mattingly and Errol Louis. Why is this politically intriguing, Phil? It's because of context, right? 2008, Barack Obama, then-senator, says, "Look, you know, I'd have to sit down with some of these bad guys. I'd sit down with then-Ahmadinejad in Iran." "How could you sit down with them?"

Now, Donald Trump is saying the same thing. What's the state of play?

MATTINGLY: In a CNN debate, no less, when Barack Obama said that, and he was hammered by John McCain at the time. He was naive. He didn't understand how foreign policy worked.

Now, interestingly enough, the Obama administration has strategically kind of worked that out with Iran, with Cuba, but not with North Korea. And I think this is the issue that is going to be attacked on -- Donald Trump will be attacked on in the days and weeks ahead. He's already been attacked by Hillary Clinton. That's to be expected. They say this is an opening to attack him on naivete in foreign policy. A key issue there, his ability to actually man the job.

But I think the more interesting thing will be how does his party react? We've seen a number of splits on economic policy areas that raises some concern about his comments, positive comments he's made about Vladimir Putin going forward, but sitting down with a dictator is essentially giving credence to the fact that that dictator has a right to exist or that his country as its currently set up, the U.S. is willing to recognize that. That is not the structure of foreign policy that we usually see from the GOP.

CAMEROTA: Right. And Errol, one of the things this Donald Trump campaign has raised is that there's all sorts of new things that we don't normally see from the GOP candidate.

And so at the time, in 2007, when then-Senator Barack Obama said it, his foreign policy supporters, Tony Lake, and others said, "Bold, new way of doing business."

And so now that Donald Trump is in that same category, how does everybody thread that needle?

LOUIS: Well, I think they're doing pretty much the same thing. You know, both Obama then and Trump now, they want to position themselves as, in certain ways and in certain issues, as not reckless. You know, this is the shadow of the Iraq War. Right? That's absolutely the main campaign issue that Obama ran on in 2007.

Trump has been saying, as well, he also predicted it would be a disaster. He's not going to be reckless and rush into situations where we tie down lots of troops or tie down lots of resources, and we squander the prestige of the United States. So they were both saying the same thing. The minute, assuming you get sworn in, President Trump gets his first

briefing, it will be pretty clear that you do not take the prestige of the presidency and squander it on an isolated little dictator.

I mean, this isn't like Iran, which is a major player in its region. This isn't like Cuba, which has been sort of a symbolic and regional player for decades. This is a completely isolated, tiny little weak dictatorship that's severed from the rest of the world economy in many respects. You don't go in and talk with them one on one.

It starts to lift this strange little murderer up to the same level as the president of the United States. It can't happen. There's no reason to.

CUOMO: So what we see here is that last night Trump sits down with Megyn Kelly. Republicans like, "Whew. He got a pass. We're having a good night. This is good."

Then the Kim Jong-un interview, the statement comes out. Then, "Dodd- Frank, I'd get rid of it." Those are two things that Republicans don't want to hear. So how do they respond?

What I got the phone calls were, "Get back to Clinton. Get back to Clinton and her husband and the enabling. Stop talking about this stuff." Do you think that's going to be the checkmark?

MATTINGLY: All of a sudden fighting in the "New York Times" over a story about his...

CUOMO: Looks pretty good -- looks not that bad, after all.

MATTINGLY: Then again, I think the issue here is, to your point, exactly, Chris, when you talk to Republicans, their heads spin over the course of a 24-hour period with Donald Trump. Right? And they think he's in a good groove now, these attacks. Well, maybe we're not totally sure how they'll actually come across. At least he's focused. At least he's sticking to one line.

And then all of a sudden, he does another interview and he goes in a completely different direction. I think the concern here is kind of the uniformity of message. His ability to stay on track, to attack relentlessly the person that they're trying to take down here.

I think that's what they want to see going forward. They feel like he's capable of doing it, if only he's not distracted by shiny objects. And I think the issue with Donald Trump and the issue he's had throughout the primary is, he talks to the media, very regularly. The media is going to ask a lot of questions, and he's going to give you his unvarnished opinion of those things. That would be considered, in a political sense, lack of discipline and that makes traditional Republican lawmakers nervous.

CAMEROTA: So Errol, Donald Trump now says he's worked out a deal with the RNC, and that he will be accepting campaign donations. Very different than what he's said up until this point about self-funding his campaign, which is a real point of pride for him, up until this point. So let's just remind people what he had said before now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:25:09] TRUMP: I'm turning down millions. I don't want your money. I don't want your money.

If you think those people are giving without favors -- now, Hillary raised $46 million. It's a lot of money. The good news is, I've got -- well -- the good news, how much do I have $10 billion?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So what's changed?

LOUIS: Well, first of all to actually mount the kind of campaign to make a national campaign work, you've got to raise a lot more money than they has, frankly, available to commit in liquid funds in the way that it has to be spent. It's got to be spent quickly. It's got to be spent all across the country, and it's got to be liquid. He'd have to sell some properties or do some other kind of things to make that possible.

He's never expressed anything remotely like an interest in doing that. And the reality -- we should note just in passing that, when he says he's self-funding, a lot of that is loans from Donald Trump that are going to be repaid with some of this new campaign money.

CUOMO: He's not doing a Bloomberg here or something?

LOUIS: Yes. This is not -- this is not self-charity. This is sort of -- sort of a loan to the campaign that will be repaid. So Donald Trump is going to come out of this financially somewhat whole. But you know, a lot more than any of us would ever what -- in the end, he's not going to spend all that much of his own money.

But more importantly, this starts to create the basis for a national campaign. The coordination in ways is almost more important than the money, that you sort of get the state and the national parties, and the different candidates at different levels also pushing in the same direction, talking together, making sure they're sort of duplicating effort and making sure that you sort of get a good turnout in November.

CAMEROTA: Errol, Phil, thank you. Great to talk to you guys.

Democrats taking a page from the Republican playbook. The party fractured now by in-fighting. Could Democrats be facing a revolt at their convention? We will ask DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. That's ahead on NEW DAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)