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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
vDonald Trump Wins Big in Nevada Caucuses; Assessing the Democratic Town Hall, Sanders Denounces Republican Obstruction of Obama, Clinton: Whites Need To Be Honest About Race; Deadly Storms Tear Through South Killing 3. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired February 24, 2016 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[05:30:23] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news this morning. They are still counting votes in Nevada. The Nevada caucuses -- Donald Trump with a huge, huge win there. There is a battle for second place. Marco Rubio has moved out in front of Ted Cruz. The votes are still coming in and we are counting them live.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders battling it out on the CNN town hall stage, each laying out new strategies ahead of a crucial primary. We'll tell you what those new strategies are.
Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
BERMAN: I'm John Berman. Thirty minutes past the hour right now. So much going on. We do have breaking news this morning. Donald Trump -- he wins big. Not just big, but huge, in the Republican caucuses in Nevada. With 96 percent of precincts reporting right now he has 45.9 percent of the vote -- nearly 46 percent of the vote.
There's been a question over the last few hours about who would come in second. Marco Rubio has moved ahead of Ted Cruz -- more than two points ahead of Ted Cruz. Back in single digits, Ben Carson and John Kasich.
But I've got to say this. The big story is absolutely Donald Trump. He won nearly every county in the state. The entrance polls show that Trump was hugely popular among voters who say they're angry at the federal government, and a lot of voters say they're angry at the federal government. Also among those who say they want the next president to be an outsider, Donald Trump crushed it there. He gave a speech just a couple of hours ago -- his victory speech. He was clearly ecstatic. Listen.
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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We won the evangelicals, we won with young, we won with old, we won with highly educated, we won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated. We're the smartest people, we're the most loyal people. And you know what I really am happy about because I've been saying it for a long time? Forty-six percent for the Hispanics. Forty-six percent. Number one with Hispanics. I'm really happy about that.
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BERMAN: I'm really happy, he says. The win in Nevada gives Donald Trump a pretty comfortable delegate lead right now. You can see he has more than twice as many delegates as all the other candidates combined. Now, all these candidates -- they look ahead to Super Tuesday next week with so many more delegates at stake.
ROMANS: All right, joining us to break all this down -- all these Nevada results, CNN politics reporter Tal Kopan in our Washington bureau. Good morning, or good night, or good day to you because you have been up all night live blogging and talking about this, and this is another decisive victory for Donald Trump. All of those people who have been looking for an establishment insurgency are just not getting it. Donald Trump is clearly resonating here.
TAL KOPAN, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Absolutely, and you see his numbers only grow. We kept talking about some sort of ceiling for Donald Trump. Oh, he can't break 30 in a poll. Oh, he can't break 40 in a poll. And now, we're past polls and into actual primaries and caucuses and we see him continuing to defy expectations. There doesn't seem to be the anchor around his neck that the punditry and establishment expected would just occur.
And you've seen other candidates fighting with each other more than they've been fighting with Donald Trump. Clawing their way into second place, hoping that at some point if everyone else drops out maybe then they'd be able to take Trump on. And while that's still possible, it's not really clear if that's a likely scenario at this point.
ROMANS: He just wins category after category. When you look at this entrance polling you see that over and over, almost any way you slice the demographic, he was winning there, except -- except if you dig in and you look at recently decided voters. They tended to go for Marco Rubio. And people who want or value experience in their commander in chief, again, Marco Rubio. Everything else was Donald Trump.
KOPAN: That's right, and he keeps bringing up that stat about how Hispanics went towards him, and it's a very small sample size and a high margin of error, but that's, in fact, what entrance polls show. And, once again, that sort of defies conventional wisdom with all the comments he's made about illegal immigration and building a wall on the border and having Mexico pay for it, and the comments he made about Mexicans very early on in the campaign, saying they were rapists and things like that.
It hasn't sullied him at all with voters it seems. And yes, he actually won the Latino vote in Nevada when you had two Hispanic candidates in the race who could potentially be the first Hispanic president. It simply defies expectations left and right, no matter how you slice it.
[05:35:16] BERMAN: Everyone's talking about they need a winnowed field. They need -- even if fewer candidates. We've gone from 17 to five, but they need even fewer than five to take on Donald Trump. But if you'll look at the map from last night -- if you add up Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio you still don't get to Donald Trump.
That's the delegate board right, but if you look at the total vote and the percentages from last night, you add up all of Marco Rubio's votes, all of Ted Cruz's votes, it is still less than the number of votes picked up by Donald Trump. Let's talk about next Tuesday -- Super Tuesday. A treasure-trove of delegates at stake there. What do these others guys do? What do these other guys do to stay in the game?
KOPAN: That's right. Stay in the game is the perfect word for it because right now they're not pledging a victory. If you ask Marco Rubio when are you going to win a state, he demurs. His campaign believes that until he is the only one left standing by Donald Trump he probably won't win a state,which is a stunning admission when you think about it.
It's basically about delegate math at this point. That graphic you showed, showed Trump way ahead in the delegates. But, of course, we've only got a very small percentage of the total that will be allocated over time. And the strategy is to stay close. Stay close enough to Donald Trump, pick up delegates in every state here and there, try to keep that margin low, and hope that later in the calendar when you've got more moderate states voting when they're winner take all.
So the winner, doesn't matter by what percent, takes all the delegates. That's the hope -- that the establishment candidate can kind of pull away with it then. Again, it's not clear if that's a likely scenario anymore. It's still possible.
ROMANS: And hope is really all they have because they certainly don't have the numbers. They're not getting the numbers. They just aren't. You're not going to hear from Marco Rubio. We didn't hear from him last night because he was on a plane going to other states. He left Nevada looking ahead toward Super Tuesday. We did hear from Ted Cruz, though. Let's listen to what he said last night.
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SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: At this point, we've had four primaries. History teaches us that nobody has ever won the nomination without winning one of the first three primaries -- Donald Trump and us. And the undeniable reality that the first four states have shown is that the only campaign that has beaten Donald Trump, and the only campaign that can beat Donald Trump, is this campaign.
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ROMANS: He got some kind of low marks for that appearance. He seemed kind of low energy.
KOPAN: Yes. To borrow a phrase coined by Donald Trump, that was the words that we kind of put on that speech. You know, it's understandable that he's tired. It was very late in the night if you've been on east coast time, and I can testify to the fact that a campaign schedule is grueling, having followed some of these candidates around on the trail.
But still, when you're trying to tell your supporters that it's not over, you're still very much in the race, you don't really want to seem deflated. He is right, of course. He is the only candidate that has won a race besides Donald Trump at this point.
Of course, he won in Iowa, the first caucus state. Since then no one else has beaten Donald Trump, and so, yes, history tells us that it's really not the case that usually someone who doesn't win one of those first states goes on to win the nomination, so he has a point there. Of course, Donald Trump has won three out of four, so it's a limited point to me.
ROMANS: History is a guide until it's not. This campaign is one of those that -- I don't know -- I wouldn't put money on history at all on this one.
KOPAN: Well said.
BERMAN: I've got to say, the debate tomorrow night -- the CNN debate in Houston will be huge. Tal, thank you so much. So, in addition to that debate coming up on Thursday, we had a big event last night. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton -- they were onstage at a CNN town hall in South Carolina. They flashed some new strategies of how to deal with each other, and also how to deal with voters. We will discuss next.
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[05:43:54] BERMAN: All right. The breaking news this hour -- counting the votes in Nevada. The results coming back from the Republican caucuses right there and Donald Trump is way, way ahead -- 22 points ahead of his nearest challenger. This is a blowout. There's been a little bit of a race for second place all night. Marco Rubio now pulling ahead of Ted Cruz. But look, you add up all their votes, it still doesn't equal Donald Trump. Ben Carson, John Kasich -- they're stuck back in single digits.
ROMANS: All right. Also breaking overnight, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton making some adjustments in the case for their candidacies at a CNN Democratic town hall in Columbia, South Carolina. Right now, polls show Clinton with a strong lead in South Carolina, outpacing Sanders nearly two to one.
One tense notable moment at the town hall came when CNN's Chris Cuomo asked Secretary Clinton why she has not heeded Sander's call to release transcripts of those paid speeches she gave to Wall Street bankers. She said she would do it if all the other candidates, including the Republicans, did so.
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HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Why is there one standard for me and not for everybody else, Chris? You know, at some point, look, I'm on record. I have a record. It certainly is far different from the Republicans because they think, actually, and have said, that the cause of the great recession was too much regulation on Wall Street, which is an absolute joke. I have been upfront and strong on this issue for a long time. As strong, I would argue, as my esteemed opponent. So, you know what? If people are going to ask for things, everybody should be on a level playing field.
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BERMAN: You know, Bernie Sanders, by the way, said sure, he'd turn over all his paid transcripts of speeches to Wall Street banks because he said, there ain't none.
ROMANS: He said, here they go, Chris. Here they are.
BERMAN: Chris did not catch them, by the way. Let's talk more about this. We want to bring back CNN politics reporter Tal Kopan. You know, Tal, there was the Wall Street angle. I think that was one big story last night. The back and forth there.
[05:44:79] I think the other big story last night was Bernie Sanders with this really new embrace of President Obama. It's not that he's ever really been running against Obama out loud, but he really seemed to go out of his way last night to cozy up to the president. I want to listen to one thing.
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SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Literally it turns out on the day that Obama was inaugurated, Republicans came together and said, what are we going to do? And what they concluded is we're going to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. Make it as difficult as he could to do anything. Now, we have had to fight through that. I've been at the president's side time and time again. And this is on top of this birther issue, which we heard from Donald Trump and others. A racist effort to try to delegitimize the president of the United States.
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ROMANS: He said no one's ever asked me for my birth certificate --
BERMAN: Yes.
ROMANS: -- because I'm white.
BERMAN: This is a different tone from Bernie Sanders last night.
KOPAN: Yes, for sure, and part of it is that Hillary Clinton has been hitting him pretty hard over the past several weeks for supposedly not supporting President Obama in the past. She brings up the fact that in 2012 he sought a primary challenger for the president, from the left, to try to run against him as an incumbent.
And, of course, there was this book blurb that he wrote on a book that was heavily critical of the president, and he wrote this very favorable blurb for the cover. And so, it hasn't really looked good for him a Democratic electorate that is still very favorable towards Barack Obama. And, as he tries to make up ground with African- American voters, Hillary Clinton is really beating him with minority voters, and so those two things seem to have been effective.
And we see him now really making an emphasis to not only embrace President Barack Obama, but also talk about his bonafides with the minority community and what he can do for African-Americans. And so, that's why you saw him talk about racism in a question that was actually about who he might pick for a Supreme Court nominee and who his favorite past Justice was.
ROMANS: If that's his change in strategy, I think hers was not to attack him but to try to connect with those voters. To try to really show a personal connection with the people who were asking her questions. And she, too, got a question about race that many of her supporters this morning are saying was one of her strongest moments. Let's listen to that, Tal.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My question to you is, what do you intend to do help fix the broken racial relations in our nation?
CLINTON: We have serious challenges and I think it's important for people, and particularly for white people, to be honest about those and to recognize that our experiences may not equip us to understand what a lot of our African-American fellow citizens go through every single day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: In South Carolina, I think in the polls she's ahead of Sanders maybe two to one with African--American voters, isn't she?
KOPAN: That's right, Christine, and that question -- the young woman actually began by saying she recently started wearing her hair naturally and feels like people treat her differently for it. And Clinton, at the end of her answer, made a little comment about how she, too, has faced plenty of scrutiny for her hairstyle and encouraged the young woman to continue to wear her hair however she liked.
And also over the course of that answer, on a much more serious note, she had a group of women stand in the audience. She referred to them as mothers of the movement. These were women who have lost children to gun violence, either at the hands of police or random senseless acts, all African-American women.
And she spoke to their plight, and she spoke to understanding, or trying to, where they came from. It was a very effective answer from her. And for a candidate who, over the course of time, has been told she needs to come off as more human, more warm, this night offered her a few opportunities to do that.
ROMANS: All right, Tal Kopan, really a big night. Thank you for covering it all for us. Really appreciate it.
BERMAN: Thank you. You get to go to sleep now for the first time since Saturday.
KOPAN: Yes, thanks.
BERMAN: Let's take a look at what's coming up on "NEW DAY". Alisyn Camerota joins us now. Hey, Alisyn.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": Hi, guys. We have a very big show. Donald Trump scores another big victory. He wins the Nevada caucus, as you've been talking about, with across the board support. So, we will break down all of the different demographic groups that he won over as his rivals make a big push to Super Tuesday.
Now, before Super Tuesday, the Democrats vote in South Carolina on Saturday. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both looking for votes, as you've been talking about, in last night's CNN town hall moderated by Chris. So, we will get both campaigns to weigh in on how they think they did, as well as hear from Chris.
Another bout of deadly weather in the south. Several states rocked by a violent band of storms, so we'll have the amazing pictures to show you and the latest on the cleanup and, still, the recovery efforts there when we see you in 10 minutes guys.
[05:49:95]
ROMANS: Those pictures are just unbelievable. Alisyn, thank you.
BERMAN: All right. Donald Trump with this big, big win in the Nevada caucuses. We're showing 96 percent of precincts, and I think there's a new batch of votes being reported as we speak. We are tracking it live all morning long. But first, you just heard Alisyn talking about it -- the deadly storm that just bashed the south. The damage done, what comes next? Stay with us.
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ROMANS: Breaking news. Donald Trump sweeping to a victory -- resounding victory -- in the Nevada caucuses. Here we go. Ninety-six percent of the precincts have reported Donald Trump the clear winner in a rout. The only contest in Nevada was for number two and we now have an answer. Marco Rubio claiming second place over Ted Cruz. Ben Carson, John Kasich way back with only single digit support. New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada -- three big, big wins for Donald Trump.
[05:55:11] BERMAN: All right. We do also have more breaking news. Deadly storms tearing through the south. More than a dozen tornados reported in three states with one fatality confirmed in Mississippi, two others in Louisiana. (Video clip playing) Look at the destruction in Pensacola, Florida.
A tornado ripped apart homes there and an apartment complex leaving six people injured with reports of leaking gas overnight. This is an RV park near New Orleans. Just devastation there. More than 160 mobile homes just mangled by an apparent tornado. Two fatalities reported, with seven other people critically injured. Residents there enduring just an awful, awful night.
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