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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

CNN Republican Town Hall in Wisconsin; Brussels Death Toll Now 32; Hijacked Flight Raises Security Questions. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired March 30, 2016 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:14] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: All three GOP candidates taking the stage in a CNN town hall, walking away -- walking away from their pledges to support whoever becomes the Republican nominee. And just hours before the live event, Trump's campaign manager arrested. Trump responds.

Good morning. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Alison Kosik. It's Wednesday, March 30th. It's 4:00 a.m. in the East.

And breaking overnight, the three remaining Republican candidates taking the CNN town hall stage in Wisconsin. The state that holds the next presidential primary on Tuesday. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich taking questions from voters on topics ranging from terrorism to jobs.

Front runner Trump defending his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski who was arrested and charged with simple battery after roughly grabbing the arm of a reporter. Trump says he won't fire Lewandowski and he even mocked the reporter, Michelle Fields.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It would be so easy for me to terminate this man, ruin his life, ruin his family. He's got four beautiful children in New Hampshire. Ruin his whole everything and say you're fired, OK? I fired many people, especially on "The Apprentice."

But, look what she says, Michelle Fields. Oh, by the way, she's not a baby, OK? In her own way, exactly, "I was jolted backwards." Well, she wasn't -- I mean, she's standing there. "Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm", tightly, "and yanked me down." She wasn't yanked down. She was like, she didn't even have any expression.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSIK: Interesting to see him have notes on his hand in this subject. Keep in mind, this is a guy who doesn't use a teleprompter very often. Trump also walking away from his pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee, repeating that he's been treated very unfairly by the Republican Party. In fact, all three candidates, all of them stepping back from the pledge. Cruz refusing to say he'd back Donald Trump if he becomes the nominee.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not in the habit of supporting someone who attacks my wife and attacks my family. I think that is going beyond the line. I think our wives, I think our kids should be off limits. They don't belong in the attacks. Donald is not going to be the GOP nominee and we're going to beat him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CRUZ: Trump and Cruz both challenged on their rhetoric in the so- called "war of wives".

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I didn't start it.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: That's --

TRUMP: I didn't start it.

COOPER: But, sir, with all due respect, that's the argument of a 5- year-old.

TRUMP: I didn't start it. No, it's not.

COOPER: The argument of a 5-year-old is he started it.

TRUMP: You would say that. That's the problem with our country. That's not a 5-year-old.

COOPER: Every parent know the kid who says, he started it.

TRUMP: Excuse me, no, no. That's the problem.

Exactly that thinking is the problem this country has.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSIK: Meantime, John Kasich tried to say above the fray.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JOHN KASICH (R-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I can say all kinds of things to get people stirred up. But leaders don't do that. Leaders tell people the way that they see it. Even if it means for a while, you're unpopular.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: All right. Helping us break all this down, CNN political analyst Josh Rogin. He's a columnist for "Bloomberg View". He joins us from our Washington bureau, bright and early this morning.

KOSIK: Good morning. ROMANS: A fellow early bird. Nice to see you, Josh.

Look, a lot of material from last night, from these candidates, as they head into Wisconsin.

Let's talk first about backing away from this pledge. I think that is a headline, a big, big headline from last night. I want you to listen to these candidates in their own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Do you still sand by the pledge to support the nominee, even if it's Donald Trump?

CRUZ: Well, Anderson, as you mentioned, what I said is true. I'm not in the habit of supporting someone who attacks my wife and attacks my family.

TRUMP: Obviously, he doesn't have to support me. I'm not asking for his support. I want the people's support.

COOPER: Do you pledge to support whoever the Republican nominee is?

TRUMP: No, I don't. Look --

COOPER: You don't?

TRUMP: No, we'll see who it is.

KASICH: If the nominee is defuse who is hurting the country, dividing the country, I can't stand behind them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: This is what Republican Party insiders did not want to see. A Republican Party falling apart in terms of supporting who could be the ventricle nominee even before the convention, Josh.

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right, this was the pledge that they made, except for Donald Trump, in the very first GOP debate, and Donald Trump made this pledge with a very grand showing after a meeting with the RNC. That's all over now.

And I think what we're seeing here is the public result of what's going on behind the scenes in the Republican Party. And despite Ted Cruz's denial that he's running to prevent Trump from getting 1,237 delegates, that's exactly what's going on.

If you talk to anybody working behind the scenes on any one of these campaigns, they'll say the same thing, that all bets are off. The mission is to deny Trump the nomination. If he somehow gets the nomination, things like a third party candidate, a conservative candidate to run against Trump, those are all in the table.

[04:05:01] That's just the reality. The insiders all know that. So, now, when they're asked publicly, "will you support Trump if he's

the nominee" or vice versa, they can't say yes, because that's no longer the case. The game has changed. It's not about Republican unity anymore. It's about stopping Trump, and there's no actual rules either internally or externally about what the limits of what that mission might be.

KOSIK: You know, you look at the timing of the town hall coming on the day where there was huge news breaking on the Trump side, the Trump camp side. His campaign manager arrested and charged with simple battery after grabbing that reporter by the arm. We got the response from Donald Trump. We heard the response from all the candidates.

Let's listen to Trump and Cruz here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And by the way, she was grabbing me! Am I supposed to press charges against her? Oh, my arm is hurting.

Anderson, my arm is just killing me. It's never been the same.

COOPER: You've suggested you might --

TRUMP: Excuse me, excuse me! I didn't suggest.

COOPER: Oh, yeah, you did.

TRUMP: I tweeted. No, no, I tweeted.

COOPER: A tweet is a suggestion.

TRUMP: Should I press charges?

COOPER: Are you going to?

TRUMP: Sure! I don't know. Maybe I should, right? Because you know what?

(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: She was grabbing me. And just so you understand, she was off base because she went through the Secret Service. She had a pen in her hand which Secret Service is not liking because they don't know what it is, whether it's a little bomb --

CRUZ: Look, it shouldn't be complicated that members of the campaign staff should not be physically assaulting the press. I mean, that -- that shouldn't be a complicated decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSIK: OK. Never a dull moment. You have Trump standing by his man. You have the other saying, wait a minute what is going on here? How effective do you think that Donald Trump is in his -- in his reaction to Anderson's question?

ROGIN: I think you've got two things going on here. One is the evolving Trump version of events. First, remember they said that nothing happened. It was all delusional. That the reporter, Michelle Fields, made it up.

Then, the video came out. They came up with another cover story. She assaulted him first, which doesn't seem to be supported by the evidence.

We're talking about a campaign that's intent on denying sort of the basic reality of what most of us can see plainly in the video. That's a problem in and of its own right.

But on the larger scale, it's about them denying that there's a culture of violence that comes from the top that has infiltrated the staff and the supporters and that's created an environment around the campaign that's increasingly dangerous and has the potential for risky incidents.

And for both of these things, the Trump campaign has done what it wants to do, which is to muddy the waters, make sure supporters have a narrative that they can push back with. Nevertheless, it has a counter-effect for all of those who weren't Trump supporters who look at this and say, wow, this is not the way a presidential campaign should be.

KOSIK: Is there a Trump fatigue starting?

ROGIN: Yes, you see his negative numbers are going up. His supporters are standing by him. So, what we can extrapolate from that is that in the primaries, sure, his supporters will believe whatever he says, and probably this won't affect their support.

In the case that it got to a general election, you're going to find more and more people. And all the polling supports this, that are really put off by this lack of sort of forthrightness and honesty, and that would really hurt him in the general election. I think a lot of Republicans are looking at that and saying Trump is doing damage, and if he were the nominee, that would be hugely problematic to the party, the way that he approaches all of these sensitive issues.

ROMANS: Josh, we are learning more about the Trump worldview, what a Trump foreign policy were like, how he thinks and changes his mind, actually, about sort of world events in some cases, we're talking about undoing decades of American foreign policy work.

I want to talk a bit about -- listen to what Donald Trump said about nuclear weapons.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: At some point we have to say, you know what, we're better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea, we're better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself, we have -- COOPER: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons?

TRUMP: Saudi Arabia, absolutely.

COOPER: You would be fine with them having nuclear weapons?

TRUMP: No, not nuclear weapons, but they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: What do you make of the Donald Trump foreign policy worldview here as we get more clarity on it?

ROGIN: Sure. I think, again, there's a sort of micro problem here and a macro problem. I lived in Japan for years. I worked for a Japanese newspaper, right? Japan will never get nuclear weapons. They have a firm policy being the one country that was actually the victim of a nuclear attack.

So, he's wrong on the facts, right? So, that's one thing. When he keeps talking more and more about how this would unfold, it's just totally off base.

But the bigger issue is all this messaging -- I was in Europe, as you know, right before the Brussels attacks, people were very upset. Officials all over the world -- I can tell you this firsthand because I spoke to them directly, look at these statements when Trump says he wants to back away from NATO or back away from alliances, and that has a real effect, and they're worried about that, and that's very damaging to the U.S. sort of image and influence around the world.

[04:10:06] Even if he's not president, they see that and they question the American commitment to this longstanding relationships.

So, on one hand, he's wrong on the fact. On the other hand, his statements have their own second and third degree effects. I think it's pretty terrible actually. And, you know, the more he talks, the less his foreign policy really makes sense. You could say his broad worldview, which is that America should get more help and do less, is consistent in and of itself, although the details don't make sense at all.

KOSIK: All right. So many more moments to go through. We'll come back to you later in the show.

ROMANS: Thanks, Josh.

KOSIK: Thanks so much.

ROGIN: All right.

ROMANS: Ted Cruz and Donald Trump facing tough question from dairy producers last night. You know, Wisconsin is dairy country. It's big business for the state's economy. The main issue: how their immigration policies could take workers out of the dairy industry. Leaving the small business owners struggling to find workers. Ted

Cruz citing a "Wall Street Journal" article said Arizona saved hundreds of millions of dollars after enacting tough immigration laws. His point: a state spending on prison, schools and hospitals, and wages grows as business owners had to pay legal workers more.

And that's a little misleading. The story says the savings from fewer hospital visits and incarcerations are far less, under $100 million. Disappearing manufacturing jobs also brought up last night. It's the issue resonating with angry voters. Those jobs are disappearing, and the ones still here are hard to get, highly skilled manufacturing jobs. Cruz says education is the key. But Trump blamed it on bad trade deals.

All right. Eleven minutes past the hour.

At least eight terrorists are still on the loose, two bombers still unidentified. Authorities frantically conducting raid throughout Brussels. We'll take you there, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:15:46] ROMANS: Authorities in Brussels trying desperately to find two unidentified suspects linked to last week's deadly terrorist attacks. The death toll from those bombings now stands at 32. With the FBI heavily involved in the case now analyzing phones and hard drives seized by Brussels police, American Airlines announcing all of its flights to and from Brussels are canceled through April 7th.

I want to go live to Brussels right now, and bring in Alexandra Fields for the very latest on this investigation.

Good morning, Alexandra.

ALEXANDRA FIELDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there. Good morning, Christine.

We know that there are nearly 100 people still in the hospital. The number of people killed in the attacks now standing at 32. This is a week of grief and mourning here in Brussels, at the time when a lot of the victims of these attacks will be laid to rest.

But investigators are keeping the pressure on on all fronts, across Europe, to try and find men who carried out these two vicious attacks. They are still looking for that third suspected bomber at the airport. They are still looking for a possible second suspect who could have participated in the bombing at the metro station.

And on top of that, we know that security forces are trying to find and identify at least eight different suspects who are believed to have links to ISIS and believed to have links to the attacks in Brussels and Paris.

So, you've seen these sweeping raids over the last week. Those raids will, of course, continue not just in Belgium, but really well beyond Belgium as they try to apprehend the suspects and find anyone who could have knowledge of this attack or who could be plotting future attacks. At the same time, this is a city that is still seeing a lot of police presence on the streets, a lot of security forces out in public and visual.

You have European Unions institutions reopening after the Easter holiday amid -- beefed up security as well. As for the airport, we know there have not been flights going into or out of Brussels airport since the attack happened. The airport is as well trying to identify what they can do to get back on their feet.

We're hearing they're looking at ways to partially reopen the airport. But it's a process, Christine, that could take months. That's why you're seeing major carriers like American Airlines already saying flat out they will not be able to return to service in Brussels for at least a week, Christine.

ROMANS: All right. Alexandra Field for us this morning in Brussels, thanks for that.

KOSIK: Supreme Court decisions in high profile cases could begin to be handed down beginning later this morning, including a possible ruling on contraception under Obamacare. The death of Justice Antonin Scalia is already having a big impact. Organized labor celebrating a big win on Tuesday as the justices split 4-4 in a case involving a public union's right to collect fees from workers who don't want to join. The tie leaves a lower court ruling favoring unions intact.

ROMANS: Mark Kirk is the first Republican senator to break ranks and meet with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. And the Illinois lawmaker is blasting his party's leadership for stonewalling the nomination process. Senator Kirk calling for rationale, adult, open- minded consideration for the president's pick to replace Judge Scalia. He believes 15 or 16 other GOP senators may follow his lead.

KOSIK: North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory facing intense fire over a controversial new state law that eliminates discrimination protections for gays and lesbians. The ACLU just sued the state and Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte, is now publicly condemning the measure as bad for business, joining 80 other corporations. Governor McCrory not backing down, calling the opposition a sneer campaign and insisting the measure does not remove any existing protections.

ROMANS: Duke University, a lot of big companies and a lot of big organizations that have -- their conventions and conferences in North Carolina are all pushing hard.

KOSIK: They've got the financial might.

ROMANS: They do.

All right. New questions this morning in the wake of the EgyptAir hijacking. How did a mentally unstable man with a record hijack a plane? Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [04:24:08] ROMANS: New questions raised this morning about the state of airport security in Egypt after a man authorities called mentally unstable with a criminal record hijacks an EgyptAir flight wearing what looks like an explosive vest. Now, no one thankfully was injured.

And Tuesday's incident while disturbing was not linked to terrorism. But there's still the question how did he get on the plane? How was he able to rush the cockpit in a post-9/11 and post Sharm-el-Sheikh world?

CNN's Ian Lee has been on the story for the very start. He joins us this morning from Cairo with the latest.

We say in a post-Sharm-el-Sheikh there was a bomb planted on a MetroJet plane that took off from Sharm-el-sheikh with devastating results just last October, and now this incident yesterday.

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Christine. On that flight, over 200 people died. So, when this incident happened yesterday, the first thing everyone looked at was security at the airport.

[04:25:01] How did this person get aboard this plane with what he said at the time was an explosive belt, although that bomb turned out to be fake in the end? We did see security video of this man being patted down, being scanned by airport security. The Egyptian officials are coming out, saying that there was no fault of the security at the airport. That the person didn't have a bomb, and that he was let through like any other passenger.

But they will be reviewing it, especially with this person's criminal background as well, impersonation, theft, as well as drug dealing. He had been on the radar of security forces here. But right now, he is in Cyprus. He's appearing in court today. This is a person who is also described as deeply disturbed.

During the negotiation process, he had a wide range of demands regarding his ex-wife, female prisoners in Egypt, as well as speaking to E.U. officials. Despite all that, everyone is happy that it was able to end peacefully. That no one was harmed. All the passengers have made it back to Egypt. Now, Egyptian authorities are trying to bring him back here so he can face charges.

ROMANS: One of the officials saying he's not a terrorist, he's an idiot -- but certainly something that raised alarms around the world yesterday.

Thank you so much for that, Ian Lee, for us in Cairo this morning.

KOSIK: Certainly thankful it had the ending it had.

ROMANS: Sure.

KOSIK: Could have been much worse.

GOP presidential candidates dropping their signed pledge to support the Republican nominee. The contest more contentious than ever, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)