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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Cruz Campaign Hit Hard in Wisconsin; Trump Targets John Kasich; Democrats Debate Over Debates; Amtrak Derailment Kills Two Workers; Greece Begins Deporting Refugees To Turkey; Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired April 04, 2016 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:15] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: In just one day, voters cast their ballot in a key state primary election. Frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton behind in the polls. Could a key loss here blunt their momentum and shake up the rest?
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators revealing new information in the deadly new Amtrak derailment. So what went wrong this time?
ROMANS: And a mass deportation of migrants and refugees in Europe happening right now. Controversy surrounding the plan to ship thousands from Greece to Turkey. We are live.
Good morning. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
BERMAN: Nice to see you all. I'm John Berman. It is Monday, April 4th. 4:00 a.m. in the East.
And now just one day before voters head to the polls in Wisconsin, there is an intense battle going down to the wire between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Both of them are campaigning across the state today. The latest polls show Cruz out in front, leading Trump by as many as 10 points, but Cruz picked up new key tactical victories over the weekend in Colorado. He won the first six delegates to the Republican convention. They were chosen in a week-long selection process. There are more to come later this week .
In North Dakota, the Cruz team claims it did well in packing that state's delegation to the Republican convention in Cleveland, though all North Dakota delegates are actually unbound.
Today, though, all about Wisconsin where Cruz win could alter momentum of the Republican race.
CNN's Sunlen Serfaty has the very latest from Green Bay.
SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine and John. Well, the Cruz campaign had hit the ground hard here in Wisconsin. Dispatching Heidi Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Governor Scott Walker, all barnstorming the state this weekend.
The Cruz campaign manager declaring an all-hands-on-deck situation in the final 24 hours before voting starts in Wisconsin tomorrow. And Cruz for his part, the senator has really been projecting confidence on the stump. He's been predicting that he will get most if not all of the state's delegates tomorrow night.
And on the stump here in Green Bay, he told the crowd really playing up the importance of this moment going forward saying that it's going to be a decision point that will resonate across the country beyond just here in Wisconsin.
The senator also seemed to get a little reflective on the state of the race and all that has transpired.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This has been quite the election cycle. It hadn't been boring. There were all sorts of things a year ago someone had said you are going to see and you would say no, that will never happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SERFATY: And there's a notable strategy shift coming from the Cruz campaign here in Wisconsin. They are out with their very first negative TV ad targeting John Kasich. This is a candidate that they have in large part attempted to marginalize throughout this campaign calling him point blank, a spoiler.
So this focus on him in these last few hours here in Wisconsin certainly suggests some concern on their level about what role he might play tomorrow night -- Christine and John.
ROMANS: All right, Sunlen, thank you for that.
The stakes are high for Donald Trump in Wisconsin. Losing there would make it much harder for him to clinch the nomination before the Republican convention. Now he is predicting he will win the state. In a rally there last night, Trump blasted the man who was beating him in Wisconsin polls.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Lying Ted Cruz. He comes in bible high. I'm lying Ted Cruz. I put the bible down and then I start to lie. He's a dirty rotten cheat. Remember that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Like Cruz, Trump also took aim at the man running a distant third, John Kasich.
CNN's Jeremy Diamond was there. He has the latest.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Good morning, John and Christine. With less than 48 hours until Wisconsin Republicans head to the polls, Donald Trump stumping last night here in West Alice, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. He was of course hitting his key issues on the campaign trail. But he also devoted a little bit of time to hitting Ohio governor John Kasich. Now that's a little bit unusual for Donald Trump as far as his
stumping in Wisconsin has gone. He's really focused the brunt of his fire on Texas Senator Ted Cruz. But last night, Donald Trump talking about Ohio Governor John Kasich, calling him a nasty guy, saying that with Kasich, it's going to be harder for him to reach the 1237 delegate threshold to cinch the Republican nomination before the convention.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Kasich is now 1 for 30. He's 1 for 30 or 1 for 29? He is 1 for 30. It's good if he gets out. I don't want him in. I don't want him in.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: All of this of course coming as the Wisconsin delegate fight in the delegate fight across the country. It's coming into focus with Donald Trump now acknowledging putting a team in place to really bring those delegates into the fold, get delegates that he needs in case this goes to an open convention.
But certainly Donald Trump now lagging in the polls in Wisconsin hoping to make up some ground. He'll be stumping all day today as well and hoping to make up that ground.
[04:05:10] John and Christine, back to you.
BERMAN: All right. Thanks, Jeremy Diamond, for that. The head of the Republican Party says that Trump backing out of his pledge to support the party's eventual nominee could hurt him with delegates to the Republican convention. RNC chairman Reince Priebus says that Trump's decision could make it harder to, quote, "get people to fall in line for him." Chairman Priebus also said that if there is a contested convention, he doesn't believe the convention will pick a candidate who did not run in the primary. Someone, say, like his friend, House Speaker Paul Ryan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REINCE PRIEBUS, CHAIRMAN, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: If anything like that were to happen, which I think is highly, highly unlikely, I think our candidate is someone who is running. OK. That's pretty obvious. But number two, if something like that were even remotely possible, that candidate would actually have to have a floor operation and an actual campaign going on with the delegates to make something like that possible. And Paul is not going to do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: All right. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders locked in a debate over their next debate. Both of them campaigning over the weekend in Wisconsin where Sanders holds an edge in the latest polls. But they're already looking ahead to the next big prize. New York. Clinton campaigns in the state today. New York's April 19th primary marks the nearing deadline for that next debate.
CNN's Chris Frates has details.
CHRIS FRATES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, John and Christine. The dispute over when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are going to debate in New York exploded on the campaign trail this weekend with the Sanders and Clinton camps trading barbs over who was to blame. It all started on Saturday when the Clinton campaign said that they had offered the Sanders campaign three different dates. April 4th, April 14th and April 15th. All to be rejected.
The Sanders campaign responding that April 4th was a terrible idea with the NCAA finals happening. That's today of course. Nobody would be paying attention to politics. They'd be watching basketball. Not to mention that the big Wisconsin primary is the next day.
On the 15th, they didn't like the idea of doing a morning debate on one of the networks and so that left the 14th. Bernie Sanders telling CNN on Sunday that he's got a big rally planned and the Sanders campaign countering with four or five other dates of their own. No word yet from the Clinton campaign about where that stands.
But take a listen to how Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton talked about these debates.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm confident that there will be. But I'm not -- I'm not the one negotiating it. That's going on between our campaigns. And I do know my campaign has been really trying to get a time that Senator Sanders' campaign would agree with.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think what we want is to look at the maximum viewing audience. And any time and any venue that works that has that viewing audience will be good. So we're looking at a lot of options right now. But I think at the end of the day, George, we will have a time and a place that will be, I suspect, a very spirited debate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FRATES: So obviously both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton want to debate. In fact, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told me that he believes that this dispute will be settled fairly soon. And it's a very big and important thing for Bernie Sanders. He is expected to do well tomorrow in Wisconsin. He needs those delegates and then he needs to move to New York and upset Hillary Clinton in her adopted home state. There's about 250 delegates at stake in New York, and second only to California. Bernie Sanders looking for the upset there. So when this debate is, where it airs is a big deal. So we'll continue to watch that as Bernie Sanders continues to try to close the gap on Hillary Clinton.
John, Christine, back to you guys.
ROMANS: All right. Chris Frates, thanks for that. All right, Donald Trump making two sensational economic claims in an
interview with the "Washington Post" published this weekend. First, Trump says he would erase the country's $19 trillion debt by the end of his second term as president. $19 trillion in just eight years.
Now the math doesn't add up at all. It would require the U.S. to pay off more than $2 trillion a year. The entire annual budget is just under $4 trillion for the current fiscal year. Trump says he will renegotiate trade deals which would increase economic growth. Economists, many of them, say those negotiations could start a trade war, cause a recession in the U.S. and actually hurt economic growth and hurt receipts into the federal government.
Speaking of recessions, Trump says the country is head for a, quote, massive recession and that the U.S. economy is sitting on a bubble that will soon burst. Experts put the chances of a recession in the U.S., a garden variety recession, by the way, in the next 12 months at just 20 percent. Despite recent worries about the global economy, U.S. economic growth, the steady job creation is strong. Americans are spending money again. His other claim, it's a terrible time to invest in the stock market. Global markets seem absolutely unaffected by those comments. They're all trading mix around the world.
BERMAN: No Trump effect on the markets this morning.
ROMANS: There is zero Trump effect. But, you know, I mean, he wants to -- he wants to lower taxes for everyone but also cut a $19 trillion -- and the $19 trillion debt in eight years. It's just, you know, the budget crunchers say it's impossible.
[04:10:11] BERMAN: If you can get rid of $19 trillion in eight years, someone would have done it already.
ROMANS: Yes.
BERMAN: All right. Two killed. Dozens injured in a new Amtrak derailment. New information about the investigation. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: The NTSB is investigating a deadly Sunday morning train derailment south of Philadelphia. One of three serious accidents involving Amtrak this weekend. Rail officials said the train was carrying more than 300 people when it left the tracks moments after hitting a backhoe. And two Amtrak workers, now both of those workers were killed, nearly three dozen passengers were hospitalized.
We get this morning from CNN's Sara Ganim in Chester, Pennsylvania.
SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, a source close to the investigation telling CNN that those two construction workers, one in a backhoe and one near a backhoe, were struck by this train, number 89.
[04:15:03] They were both Amtrak workers, which raises the question of how they did not know that they were in an active track when this accident happened and how the train didn't know this was an active construction scene when this happened.
The NTSB now on scene working with Amtrak to investigate this accident. You can see behind me, that is train number 89. It was on the Palmetto route from New York to Savannah, Georgia. Three hundred and forty-one passengers on board, 35 of those passengers injured when this collision happened. None of them with life-threatening injuries. All of them were either taken to the hospital or gotten to their destinations by Amtrak today. But you can see the force of that impact just by looking at that front engine car. You can also see that it actually derailed from the track.
Now, on Sunday Amtrak was able to bring back limited service on this northeast corridor which is good news for people in their Monday morning commute because 750,000 people ride the northeast corridor every day between Boston and Washington, D.C. But on Sunday morning around 8:00 a.m. this was a very frightening experience for many of those passengers. One of them telling CNN he could tell something was wrong before the crash happened. Outside the window they could see a cloud of dust and it felt like they were riding on gravel. Another passenger, 15-year-old Linton Holmes, talked about his frightening experience. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LINTON HOLMES, AMTRAK PASSENGER: The train was like rumbling and then we got off track, I guess. And then it was just bunch of dust. It was just dust everywhere. And then the train conductors, they were running to the front. There was some people -- they were pretty bloody from the -- because it was an explosion. We got off track and then it was like a big explosion. Then it was a fire. Then the windows bursted out and some people were cut up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GANIM: Now the investigation is clearly ongoing. The good news is the NTSB has already recovered the data recorder, as well as the forward and inward looking cameras. Hopefully those will yield some answers -- John and Christine.
ROMANS: All right. Sara for us in Pennsylvania. Two other incidents involving Amtrak trains this weekend, the man lost his leg after being hit by a train as he walk, you know, near the tracks in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. And an Amtrak train struck a vehicle at a rail crossing in Somonauk, Illinois. That's about 60 miles west of Chicago.
BERMAN: This morning, Mississippi governor Phil Bryan is deciding whether to sign a new religious freedom bill that passed the state's House and Senate. The measure would allow government employees and private businesses to deny services to same-sex couples who want to get married. The governor is expected to decide whether to sign the bill by tomorrow. On Friday, a federal judge blocked officials in Mississippi from enforcing a law that bans same-sex couples from adopting.
ROMANS: New calls this morning for embattled Alabama governor Robert Bentley to step down. With state lawmakers back in session, legislation putting Bentley's recall to voters is expected to be drafted as soon as today. The Republican has been under fire ever since recordings surfaced last week revealing sexually explicit phone conversations between him and a political adviser Rebecca Mason. And Mason has since resigned. Questions, though, remain over whether state funds were used to conceal that relationship.
BERMAN: Dangerous, deadly wind storms slam parts of the Midwest and northeast. A tree smashed into a car in Evington, Massachusetts. Look at that. Killing two people. Officials say the victims were trapped in the car. They were rushed to the hospital, but doctors could not save them.
This was the scene in Ohio. A huge tree toppled into this house. No word if anyone was hurt there.
Here in New York, much of the same downed trees pretty much everywhere. Debris scattered the streets. With the wind came hail. At least 370,000 people from Wisconsin to Maine were left in the dark. The most significant power outages came in Pennsylvania where at least 82,000 customers had no electricity.
ROMANS: That was 71 mile per hour gusts in New Jersey over the weekend. I mean, unbelievable.
BERMAN: It was crazy. There are trees down everywhere.
ROMANS: Yes. Yes. And garbage cans everybody and -- all right. A mass deportation of migrants and refugees from Greece to Turkey has begun a controversial agreement those fleeing war-torn areas arriving into Europe. We are live next.
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ROMANS: Greek officials have begun deporting hundreds of Syrian migrants back to Turkey. It's part of a controversial new agreement with the European Union. More than to 52,000 men, women and children are stranded in Greece since the Balkan nations decided to shut their borders.
I want to get the very latest from CNN's Phil Black. He joins us live from Turkey this morning.
Phil, bring us up to speed.
PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, Christine, what you could see behind me is the second of tow -- three boats to pull in here, to this Turkish town of Dikili, to begin unloading the migrants that are being returned from Greece today. We are told 202 in total. Most of them from Pakistan, some Afghanis as well. And two Syrians who officials say have agreed to return voluntarily with this first batch of returns.
Now the reason this agreement -- this policy, if you like, has been enacted, is the European Union says out of necessity. As individual European countries beyond Greece have closed their borders, it created a backlog in Greece with tens of thousands of migrants left stranded in camps and that number growing by the day. So they negotiated this deal with Turkey to begin returning those.
[04:25:01] The European Union says those will only be returned if they agree to come back on their own if they don't apply for asylum, refugee protection in Greece, or if their application is rejected. The rest, according to the EU, will be allowed to stay. So what we're going to be seeing now every day for the foreseeable future will be boats like this arriving in Turkey, unloading these people.
There aren't many Syrians aboard here, but the expectation is that will change potentially in the coming days and weeks. And the European Union says that for every Syrian that is returned to Turkey here, they will take one Syrian directly from the refugee camps that line the border this country with Syria, mostly in the south of the country. Up to around 72,000 or so.
As we've been saying it is a controversy deal because those critics say this is the European Union, this is Europe abdicating its moral responsibility to help these people and more than that, critics of Turkey say that they're being sent to a country which is not prepared to give these people the hope, the support, the protection that they require.
That said, the context is important. Turkey is a country that already has around 2.7 million Syrians living here. People who have fled the conflict from just across the border in Syria -- Christine.
ROMANS: Wow. All right. So much -- thank you so much for that. Phil Black for us this morning.
BERMAN: All right. Back to the campaign now. Donald Trump with new attacks overnight. This time for John Kasich. Why he says the man running a distant third right now in the Republican primary is stealing his votes.
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