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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Fierce Fight for New Hampshire Voters; Zika Virus Sexually Transmitted in the U.S.; Super Bowl 50: Newton Tired of Race Talk. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired February 03, 2016 - 05:00   ET

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

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The race for president intensifies in New Hampshire, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders leading big in the polls. But will the Iowa caucuses and a CNN town hall tonight, will that change everything?

[05:00:05] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: An alarming discovery in the battle against the Zika virus transmitted in the United States now. Not by mosquitoes, though, but by sex.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm John Berman.

ROMANS: I'm Christine Romans. It is Wednesday, February 3rd, it is 5:00 a.m. in the East. Nice to see you all this morning.

This morning is the first morning of the rest of Donald Trump's life. But he says New Hampshire will be different. He'd better hope after falling to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses. Trump is trying to protect a big lead in the polls in New Hampshire, 18-point lead he has.

But that was all before that Iowa roadblock. Now Trump admits his decision to skip the final debate in Iowa may have hurt him there, but he says he is proud of his second place finish, not humiliated by it. But Trump says New Hampshire is a better fit for the kind of campaign he's running, and that's where CNN's Sara Murray joins us from a Trump rally.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLTICS REPORTER: Good morning, John and Christine.

Donald Trump may have delivered a gracious concession speech in Iowa, but back on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, all bets were off. Last night, he tore into Ted Cruz, suggesting the Texas senator is running a dirty campaign. That's after Cruz campaign aides told Iowa caucusgoers that Ben Carson was dropping out of the race when, in fact, that was not true.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: These are truly dishonest people. Then he said, Ben Carson has quit the race! The day of the election. Ben Carson -- during a caucus -- Ben Carson has quit the race. And Ben didn't quit the race. In other words, Ben Carson quit, and

let me have your vote. What kind of crap is this?

MURRAY: The Cruz campaign has since apologized, but that didn't stop Donald Trump.

The other thing on Trump's mind: Marco Rubio. Trump kept joking that his third place finish was unbelievable that Trump's second place finish discussed as humiliation.

For his part, Trump said he's not humiliated by that second place finish in Iowa, but he does want to win here in New Hampshire.

Back to you guys.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Sara, thanks so much.

This morning, a new chapter in the Democratic race. Hillary Clinton now the declared winner of the Iowa caucuses, albeit by this much. She's trying to capitalize now in New Hampshire. She trails Bernie Sanders, the senator from the neighboring state of Vermont, by a wide margin.

Again, though, these polls all come from before Iowa. Clinton is hoping that this newly scheduled debate on Thursday, and most importantly the CNN town hall tonight, can help close the gap.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I care a lot about this state. I view it as being the first in the nation primary for a reason. I know that they tend to favor their neighbors. That's the pattern, the history of the primary. And Senator Sanders is a neighbor.

But I think we will have a good contest, talking about, you know, what results we can produce, what our records have been both in domestic policy, foreign policy, national security. And I think the people of New Hampshire will get a chance to really evaluate both of us. And I feel good about my prospects.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Senator Sanders so far refusing to commit to the Thursday debate and actually refusing to concede defeat in the Iowa caucuses.

CNN's Joe Johns has the latest from that from Keene, New Hampshire.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, after coming within a fraction of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, Bernie Sanders was upbeat, even energized as he spoke to a crowd here in Keene, New Hampshire. He's been leading in the polls in this state for months. He does have a geographic advantage.

His home state of Vermont shares a border with the state of New Hampshire. He's been pushing his issues of economic inequality as well as campaign finance reform and showing no signs of giving up. In fact, when asked if he was considering conceding in Iowa to Hillary Clinton, he was very noncommittal. Listen.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I, you know, do think it's kind of unfortunate that -- and again, I don't want to misspeak here, but it may be the case that some delegates were selected based on a flip of a coin. Not the best way to do democracy.

JOHNS: Sanders also weighed in with a snarky comment when asked about the assertion by Hillary Clinton that she's a progressive. He says she is except when she says she's a moderate.

He's pushing for more debates with Mrs. Clinton, and he said he wants them in New York, Michigan and California -- John and Christine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: All right. Joe Johns -- thank you for that, Joe.

Joining us now this morning, CNN politics reporter Tom LoBianco, live in our Washington bureau.

Good morning. Nice to see you, bright and early. So much to talk about.

I want to start with Donald Trump. Donald Trump, you know, he's not humiliated, he says, by a second place finish. For a guy who has always said it's a gold medal or no medal, here's a guy who is now talking about putting in context the fact that he did not win. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We finished number two, and frankly, had I known we could have finished number two, maybe I would have spent more time there.

[05:05:01] I would have taken a day or two off from here. But that wouldn't have been good. There were 17 people when we started. Now, you have 11. I come in second. I'm not humiliated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: What do you make of that, Tom? I mean, he's got of sort of write off what was a detour for him and focus on the fact that he is leading in the polls in New Hampshire. New Hampshire is going to be a different story for him.

TOM LOBIANCO, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: It's kind of weird with him in that number two. He didn't finish second, right? This is like Corinthians.

You know, for him, he's made so much out of winning that that's his story. You know what, each of these campaigns is doing, what each candidate is doing is they're crafting their own narrative. They have a lot of say in that.

So, when your narrative is that you're a winner, it looks bad when you don't win. So, New Hampshire is absolutely essential for him. You know, he was asked yesterday at this press conference if he was worried about Rubio possibly cutting into his support. And he said -- first he said he didn't know what was going to happen. Then he couched it and said nobody really knows what's going to happen. But that's a distinct possibility.

ROMANS: You know, Tom, it's true that nobody knows what's going to happen. There was a little bit of head scratching yesterday. Donald Trump had a commanding lead in the polls in Iowa. And he was beaten by Ted Cruz.

Does that give us any kind of, I don't know, pause as we look at some of these big leads he has in other states?

LOBIANCO: Well, sure. You know, I think one thing it does show is how much that things can change on a dime. You know, some of the entrance polling that we saw out of Iowa, it seemed to give some credence to this thought that he should have shown up to that last debate.

You know, a number of folks who showed up were telling pollsters, as they walked in, that they made their decisions fairly recently. And a lot of them went with Ted Cruz. So, you know, there's that vaunted organization behind Cruz, but then the ability to capitalize on it.

So, you know, things can change. The same thing is true in New Hampshire. You know, New Hampshire voters are famous for being, I guess, somewhat fickle, right? They'll make their decisions a little later in the game. So, you know, in some cases, this is -- this game, the New Hampshire part is not over right now.

BERMAN: Two things that can change polling are late-breaking decisions and also organizations. Sometimes it's hard to measure how an organization can affect getting people to those actual polls.

Let's talk about the Democrats because one thing we know for sure is there was a CNN town hall tonight moderated by Anderson Cooper with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders fresh off of Iowa. Hillary Clinton, she won Iowa. We finally announced it at about 1:00 p.m. yesterday. She won by about this much, but she can go into this town hall saying I won.

What do you think she needs to do?

Actually, let me play you some sound from Hillary Clinton because one of the things that was really astounding in Iowa was how badly she was beaten among young voters. This is how she said she would address that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CLINTON: I'm going to have some work to do to reach out to young voters, maybe first-time voters who have to make a tough decision as they evaluate who should be our president, our commander in chief, and I intend to do that. Laying out my case where I contrast on the issues.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, how do you think she approaches this town hall tonight? And how do you think she'll set expectations in New Hampshire?

LOBIANCO: You know, the Clinton campaign is interesting about this. They've known about this for a while. And we wrote a little bit about this with Dan Merica on our team a couple months ago, about this split where Sanders plays well to the younger voters. The oldest guy in the Democratic race, the younger candidate, slightly younger, Hillary Clinton plays better with the older voters.

They've known about it for a while. They've known they need to make some inroads. The Clinton people felt for a long time that they have to reintroduce her. They have to reintroduce the Clinton story to another generation of voters.

You know, the entrance polling on Monday night showed that Sanders, among voters who caucusgoers who said they are 24 or younger said they were going with Sanders almost 85 percent. It was just a stunning break. The difference, though, is that it was a smaller portion, though. I think it was only about 10 percent of the total caucus makeup. So, it was a big sweep for Sanders but not a lot to work with. Not a huge slice of the pie.

ROMANS: You know, when I talked to young people in Iowa, the thing that really resonates to them about Bernie Sanders is every time he's out there, every time he's speaking, he's talking about student debt. He's talking about free college.

He's talking about no one should be -- no one should be in debt or held back in the middle class because they try to get a higher education. And he hits these points that so many of these kids are feeling right now because their parents are still paying for college, and they're trying to save for college, too. I think that really resonates with them.

And they also are saying that he has been so consistent. We had a kid on our air who basically said, you know, thank God for YouTube and Google because we can see that he has actually voted the same way for years and years and years.

[05:10:05] He doesn't change his mind. He doesn't change his positions, and they like that about him had.

BERMAN: The thing for a Democrat, though, you can't win the youth vote in the general election, but it's not sufficient to get you the nomination.

Tom Lobianco, great to have you with us. Thanks so much. LOBIANCO: Thanks, guys.

BERMAN: Again, the town hall is tonight only on CNN, 9:00 p.m. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton facing questions from New Hampshire voters, and they can be tough. Anderson Cooper moderates.

All right. This morning new concerns about the Zika virus. Signs that it can be passed on not just by getting mosquito bites, by sex.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: New concerns about the spread of the Zika virus. Texas health officials are reporting the first case in the United States, and they say it was caused through sex, not a mosquito bite. In response, the CDC is advising people who travel to areas with Zika outbreaks to use condoms. And the Red Cross wants donors to hold off giving blood for at least 28 days after returning from those areas.

[05:15:05] A French company developing a vaccine to fight Zika.

CNN's Nic Robertson spoke to a scientist who is working on that vaccine. Nic joins us live from Lyon, France.

Good morning, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, good morning, John.

This is Sanofi Pasteur. I spoke to the head of global research. They have a lot of experience with viruses like the Zika virus. Dengue fever, they've got a vaccine for that. Yellow fever, they've got a vaccine for that.

They've got a big global outreach. They have a big footprint around the world. They have a lot of knowledge about the mosquito that carries the Zika virus.

What concerns the scientists here is that at the moment, the Zika virus is in about 30 countries. But they say there are about 100 countries potentially it could spread to. India would be one of those.

We heard yesterday from the Indian government saying that they don't have Zika virus at the moment. They do have dengue fever, however. Where there's dengue, Zika can follow. That's what worries the scientists here.

But they know from their own research that they have a head start, if you will, on other organizations. Normally it takes, they say, about ten years to create a vaccine because of the research that they've done, the similarities that they have, the footprint they have around the world, the experts that they have in house, and they have many thousands of them, they think it could still take them several years to make a vaccine.

Now, the World Health Organization declaring a global emergency here does help them accelerate what they're doing, it does give them assistance, it does allow them to share research. But some of the statistics they have are quite staggering and quite worrying. If you look at India, a population of about 1 billion people, they have dengue fever. They don't have Zika.

Potentially, Zika could go to somewhere like India as well, exposing another billion people. They think potentially 2.3 billion people a year-around the world potentially could be exposed to Zika virus in the future. And the other concern is that it's not just a current mosquito carrying Zika. They think there are other mosquitoes that could potentially carry it in the future, and those could spread not just to Texas and Florida but all the way up the east coast of the United States, Washington, New York.

This is a real worry for the scientists here. That's why they say they're working so hard, John.

BERMAN: You can see they're trying to accelerate their action on this.

All right. Nic Robertson for us in Lyon, thanks so much.

ROMANS: Another real worry close to home, the water crisis in Flint. It will be front and center on Capitol Hill this morning. The House Oversight Committee is holding a hearing. Local lawmakers and environmental officials are scheduled to testify.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver is calling for the immediate replacement of all lead service lines running into the city's homes. Now, she's not offering a cost estimate or a way to fund that project. Big question is who pays for it? Where does the money come from?

BERMAN: Bill Cosby will be back in a Pennsylvania courtroom today as his lawyers try to get criminal sexual assault charges against him dismissed. A judge must decide whether there was an unwritten agreement that precludes the current charges in a case brought by former temple university employee Andrea Constand. A former model, Chloe Goins, who alleged Cosby drugged and sexual assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion in 2008, she has dropped her civil suit.

ROMANS: All right. Time for an early start on your money. Big losses for stocks yesterday. Investors taking a breather this morning. Futures slightly higher but look at Asia and Europe, stock markets down there.

Chipotle executives said in January that earnings would be messy. They were right. The burrito chain pulled in a profit of just $68 million during the last three months of the year. That's down 44 percent compared to the same time last year.

The company's E. coli scare hospitalized 22 people. It crashed its healthy food image. It's scaring away many customers across the country.

The Centers for Disease Control said that outbreak appears to be over. But there is an ongoing criminal investigation and has investors worried. The stock down 36 percent since its all-time high in August.

This stock was a huge darling last year, and it's just been slammed. This morning it's down another 5 percent in premarket trading.

BERMAN: All right. Nineteen minutes of after the hour. Two quarterbacks, both the subject of controversy. The difference? One is about to play in the Super Bowl. You know, one might never play again.

Andy Scholes with this morning's bleacher report, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:23:51] BERMAN: Panthers' quarterback Cam Newton taking on all questions from reporters ahead of Super Bowl 50, but he's visibly tired of one topic, race.

ROMANS: Andy Scholes has more on this morning's bleacher report.

Hey, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, guys.

Newton was asked last week why he gets so much criticism for the way he celebrates on the field. Well, he said back then that some people just may not be comfortable with an African-American quarterback that plays the way he does. Newton was peppered with questions yesterday about black quarterbacks, but he says he is done with the subject.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAM NEWTON, PANTHERS QUARTERBACK: I don't even want to touch on the topic of black quarterbacks because I think this game is bigger than black, white or even green. So, I think we limit ourselves when we just label ourselves just black, this, that and the third. I wanted to bring awareness because of that. But yes, I don't think I should be labeled just a black quarterback.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: After a run-in with the law, Broncos' rookie Ryan Murphy has been sent home by the team. Murphy is on the practice squad. He and his brother were detained and questioned Tuesday as part of a prostitution sting in San Jose, California. Murphy was released and not charged in the incident.

[05:25:02] His brother was cited for solicitation.

All right. Johnny Manziel's time in Cleveland appears to be over. The Browns releasing a statement yesterday saying that Manziel's off- the-field incidents run counter to what the organization expects from its players, adding that his status with the team will be addressed when permitted by league rules.

Due to salary cap restrictions, the Browns can't cut Manziel until the new league year starts on March 9th. Ft. Worth police and the NFL are currently investigating a disturbance involving Manziel and his ex- girlfriend that happened last Saturday.

Broncos' punter Britton Colquitt is splurging for tickets for his family and friends to go to the Super Bowl which is normal but he's having to dish out 1,800 bucks for a ticket for his one-week-old daughter. That's right, guys. There's 2 and under admitted for free at the Super Bowl. Everyone's got to have a ticket to get into the doors, even if you can't actually sit in the seat.

ROMANS: No way.

SCHOLES: The Colquitt family will have an extra seat that they paid for right next to them.

ROMANS: I was going to say, you could just put your beer on that seat. Hold the baby, put the beer on the seat.

BERMAN: The NFL, man, I got to say, deflategate, now this. Scandal after scandal.

All right. Andy, thanks so much.

SCHOLES: Have a good one.

BERMAN: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, they have a town hall tonight. The CNN town hall, now just a few hours away.

ROMANS: It's 15 hours, 33 minutes and 42 seconds away.

BERMAN: Because you needed to know that. The drama, 15 1/2 hours away. We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)