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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
New York's Crucial Primary Is Today; Sanders Accuses Clinton of Campaign Finance Violations; American Give the Economy a "C"; At Least 28 Killed in Kabul Suicide Blast; At Least 5 Killed in Houston Flooding; Obama Visiting Saudi Arabia; Netflix Stock Set to Drop. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired April 19, 2016 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:30:00] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The battle for New York is here. Voters head to the polls in just hours to choose their next president. A critical primary election for Democrats and Republicans. We're breaking it down right now.
Good morning. Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman. Great to see you this morning. Thirty minutes past the hour and at long last no more waiting. The New York primary, it is now, or at least very, very soon. Polls open in just a bit. The front-runners on both sides are hoping for big wins to return them to those days long, long ago -- about four weeks ago -- when they had all the momentum.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump is hoping for a big win here and to rack up some big delegates and pull ahead of Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Ted Cruz, especially, has been gaining of late. Late last night there were also some changes to the Trump campaign. His national field director resigned just days after another shakeup -- a bigger shakeup in the campaign leadership.
CNN's Jim Acosta was at Donald Trump's final rally last night in Buffalo. Jim --
JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, Donald Trump is sounding very confident about his chances in the New York primary. He says he doesn't want to talk about the polls that show him way out in front of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Trump, once again at this rally here in Buffalo, fired off on Cruz for that comment about New York values and he also went after the RNC and its system for awarding delegates to presidential candidates. Trump, again, said that's a rigged system. Here's what he told the crowd here in Buffalo.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Let me just tell you a couple of things and why tomorrow is so important. Because the system is rigged. It's not meant for a guy like me who's not taking any money from these special interests. I'm self-funding my campaign. I came up here. I paid for it to come up here. It's a rigged system just like so much else in government is rigged, but I've never seen anything like it.
When you have a Colorado or a Wyoming -- in the case of Colorado, they were supposed to vote. They said there were no changes made but there was. I announced in June. People saw that I was going to do great in Colorado and all of a sudden, in August, they change the system. They took the vote away from the people of Colorado.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: Despite his recent setbacks in states from Wisconsin to Wyoming, Donald Trump is poised in the polls to pull of perhaps what could be a clean sweep of New York State's 95 delegates at stake. And the calendar is pretty favorable in the weeks to come. Coming up next, more northeastern states like Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware -- John and Christine.
ROMANS: All right, Jim Acosta. Jim, thank you. Let's bring in CNN political reporter Tom LoBianco to help us break down the New York primary which gets underway in just a few hours. Good morning, Tom.
A big day here in New York and Donald Trump -- you hear him talking about rigged. It's rigged, it's rigged, it's rigged. He says it over and over again, yet he is tweaking the focus of his campaign team so that he can play in what he calls this rigged system and try to get more delegates.
TOM LOBIANCO, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: That's right. It's kind of ironic, right? On the one hand, he acknowledges that it's rigged publicly -- he says it's rigged publicly, but then behind the scenes acknowledges hey, this is a game that you've got to play in order to get the Republican nomination.
The shakeup at the top there of Stuart Jolly leaving is obviously a big -- Corey Lewandowski, a loyalist from the -- if you want to call it the first part of the campaign here. This moves to an inside ballgame now. They brought on Paul Manafort, a master of the delegate process and a veteran from the 1976 contested convention, the last time we had an all-out convention battle. And they brought on Rick Wylie from the Scott Walker campaign.
What all this points to is that it's a two-tiered attack, OK? On the one hand, you keep up the pressure on the Republican Party itself. They're going to be meeting down in Florida this week and are going to be making some key decisions on how the convention will operate. Whether or not they want to have a say in what happens in Cleveland in July, and this is keeping the pressure on them from the outside.
Meanwhile, Paul Manafort, himself, will actually be heading in there to lobby them inside their meetings in Hollywood, Florida. So, this two-tiered attack has been consistent. That Jolly departure just puts on exclamation point on it.
[05:35:00] BERMAN: Let's talk about the Democrats right now. The stakes here are very, very high and you can hear it in the voices of the candidates and those close to them. We have some sound last night from Bernie Sanders at one of his final events, and sounds of Bill Clinton at one of his final events. I just want you to listen to them back-to-back and you get a sense of, again, how much they're pushing for this one.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It is an enormously important primary because there are a lot of delegates at stake.
BILL CLINTON, WIFE OF HILLARY CLINTON, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We need you. We need every single vote. How this comes out tomorrow will shape the rest of this primary campaign and how we will go into the future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: We need you. This determines what goes on in the future. Again, the stakes very, very high for both campaigns and in some ways, Tom, the tenor of the Democratic race changed here over the last two weeks in New York.
LOBIANCO: If you watched that debate last week, there were some of the sharpest exchanges we've seen on the Democratic side at all.
ROMANS: Right.
LOBIANCO: I mean, the escalation that happened there is just remarkable. Last week we saw Bill Clinton make that off-handed joke about how Sanders supporters would probably like to shoot people on Wall Street. That kind of backfired. It's been real tough the last few weeks between the two of them. That's because the stakes are so high. Both sides know how important New York is for them.
If Sanders can walk away strong, or even with the win, which doesn't look likely, they can claim the momentum. If Clinton can walk out with a strong victory, double digits, they can claim they're putting this thing away. They can start to make a really good argument that they're finally putting the nomination to bed here.
ROMANS: Let's about how maybe the Sanders campaign has been chipping away at Clinton, at least in the favorability department. Let's look at the most recent polling we have on the voter's view of Hillary Clinton. Favorable in April, 32 percent. Unfavorable, 56 percent. Look at how that has changed since March. A win in New York -- a decisive win in New York is something that could help here.
LOBIANCO: I want to do a hat tip here to Maggie Haberman, at the New York Times and now with us. She wrote a great piece in 2014 for Politico, which pointed to the high unfavorables of politicians that were being elected. It's fascinating. Throughout this entire race Clinton's been upside down with the favorables and so has Trump.
Your two front-runners have been just absolutely upside down with support in the public at large. Eventually, it does have an impact. It used to be said that if you're running for re-elect you never wanted to be above 40 negative, below 50 positive. That dynamic has definitely changed but it's looking worse. We can see the movement there. It doesn't help them and that's why they want Sanders out now because the longer he hangs around, the more dynamics like that pop up.
BERMAN: And you see, the more you get attacked from the Sanders' team as well. The Sanders campaign put out a letter -- a lawyer letter to the DNC yesterday complaining about the combined fundraising operation between Hillary Clinton and the DNC. The sort of victory fundraising PAC that she's doing to raise money for down-ballot candidates, as well.
Questions like that, I imagine, are what concern the Clinton campaign going forward. If they're going to attack like this in the primary that could stick for the general.
LOBIANCO: It's so fascinating to see that because that was something that the Clinton folks were touting a few months. That they were doing this great fundraising for the party helping folks. Sanders -- they did have that same opportunity to do this joint fundraising with the Democrats. There's some question of whether -- who didn't follow through on that. Whether it was the party or Sanders. But, now they're using it as an attack on Clinton. It just goes to show how high the stakes are right now. They've both really kind of thrown the kitchen sink and everything else at them, so today's big.
ROMANS: It is a big day and it's starting getting underway in just hours. Tom Lobianco, we'll be talking about it all day, all night, and again tomorrow morning because it is such an important race. Thank you so much for that.
BERMAN: Also it's our job and our schedule.
ROMANS: It is our job and yes, it's true, it is our job. All right, thanks. A new CNN money E*Trade survey what voters are feeling. One America with two economies. Their finances are OK, but they're worried about the future. Fifty-two percent of Americans give the economy a "C". Another 15 percent say it's a "D" or an "F" letter grade.
[05:40:00] The survey respondents were Americans who have at least $10,000 in an online brokerage account, so these people are at least likely in a stable financial position because they do have investable assets. When we asked the same question to economists on Wall Street last month most gave the economy a "B" or a "B+", so why?
Stocks are up 200 percent since the recession. Unemployment is low. Jobs are being added. Gas is still cheap. But Americans aren't feeling those headlines. They're feeling stagnant wages and their college-educated children with low-paying jobs and a lot of student loan debt, plus a change in the economy that is taking good paying jobs like those in the past with manufacturing -- taking those away and so much of the job creations and low-wage jobs. These are the kinds of things -- the anxiety that is really resonating on the campaign trail. BERMAN: That's what causing a lot of the voter anxiety, to be sure.
All right, 20 minutes until the hour right now. Deadly flooding in parts of Texas. It is not over yet. We'll give you the details and the forecast next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:45:00] ROMANS: Breaking news out of Afghanistan. The Taliban claiming responsibility for a suicide blast that rocked central Kabul during the morning rush hour. Afghan officials say at least 28 people killed, more than 300 injured.
Those officials say a suicide car bomber targeted the country's government security office. Authorities say police killed an additional gunman. Two more are thought to be on the run. The blast was heard near the U.S. Embassy but the U.S. Embassy compound was not affected.
BERMAN: At least five people have been killed in the record-breaking floods that hit Houston. All of the reported deaths occurred among people who drove their cars into high waters. Officials say at least 1,000 homes were flooded in Harris County alone.
(Video playing) Look at this. Crews performed more than 1,200 high water rescues. This is a man frantically trying to swim to a rescue boat. It just got that bad in some parts of the city. Crews also had to save horses. There were animals trapped, as well. There's some pictures of a horse that's struggling to safety. Officials say this the worst flooding since tropical storm Allison hit in 2001 and killed 41 people.
ROMANS: So, is the worst over for Houston? Is there more to come? Let's bring in meteorologist Pedram Javaheri for the latest.
PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: John and Christine, still plenty of wet weather left in the forecast across parts of Houston. I want to show you what transpired there on Monday morning into the afternoon hours. Just west of the city 15, to as much as 17, inches of rainfall came down in just a few short hours.
You take the surface area of the city of Houston, you bring down the 17 or so inches or rainfall, that equates to over 240 billion gallons of water. Roughly as high as filling some 350,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. Dumping that over a city that really tells you what transpired over this region.
Of course, we know hundreds of flights canceled across Houston airports. Delays exceeding over 100 in this region, and with Houston being such a flat city it's almost sure to come down over soil, it would be absorbed on a large scale.
Across the area where a lot of concrete, a lot of areas that the water is certainly not going to absorb, they become instant runoff. That leads to the flash flooding that we saw with hundreds of water rescues taking place across the city. Unfortunately, more thunderstorms forecast by this afternoon in and around Houston for this region, guys.
BERMAN: All right, Pedram, thanks so much.
Pearl Jam -- the latest high-profile act to boycott the state of North Carolina because of its new bathroom laws that some people consider to be anti-LGBT. The band was scheduled to perform tomorrow night in Raleigh but just backed out, calling the measure despicable. Boston, the band, also canceling three North Carolina shows scheduled for May, joining Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, and Cirque du Soleil.
ROMANS: The sponsor of a similar bathroom law in Tennessee has decided to kill the bill for at least a year in order to further study the issue. The measure would have required students in public schools to use restrooms corresponding to their gender at birth. The Republican lawmaker behind the legislation insists threats by companies to leave the state had nothing to with her decision.
BERMAN: Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is urging residents in Flint to stop using bottled water and start using filtered tap water, and he's obviously doing a little bit of -- some people might call it a stunt to prove the point. The governor visited a Flint home on Monday and says he drank the tap water. He even told reporters he filled up three 1-gallon jugs to go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. RICK SNYDER (R) MICHIGAN: I'm going to be drinking Flint filtered water at home and work for the next 30 days or so.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: The senator (sic) claims his wife is on board with the plan and will be drinking the filtered tap water right alongside him.
ROMANS: The real danger for that water that was contaminated with lead in Flint is for the developing brains of children.
BERMAN: Yes.
ROMANS: The children who drink that water who could have behavioral I.Q. problems. The problems that could stem from the consumption of lead. It's just devastating for the town.
BERMAN: And that damage is done.
ROMANS: And that damage is done. Just hours from now the wife of comedian Bill Cosby will be deposed under oath for the second time. Camille Cosby will be questioned in an undisclosed location in Boston. She was first deposed in February. The case involves seven women who accused her husband of sexual abuse and claim he has also defamed them.
BERMAN: Hollywood television fans everywhere mourning the death of Doris Roberts, the actress who played Ray Romano's mother in the comedy "Everybody Loves Raymond". She died Sunday night in Los Angeles of natural causes. Roberts won four Emmy awards for her portrayal on that show. Ray Romano remembered the actress for her amazing energy and spirit. Doris Roberts, 90 years old.
ROMANS: Funny, comic timing.
BERMAN: Really funny.
ROMANS: Beautiful coming timing.
BERMAN: Really funny.
ROMANS: What a loss. All right, the Dow -- fewer than 400 points away from a record high. Will stocks get closer to that today? We're going to have an early start on your money next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:54:00] BERMAN: President Obama heads to Saudi Arabia today with relations between the two countries strained, to say the least. The Saudi regime coping with plunging oil prices and civil wars along its borders. Now there is a bill before Congress that would allow victims of the September 11th attacks to sue the Saudis. That is becoming a sticking point between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
I want to go live now to Riyadh and bring in CNN's Nic Robertson and, Nic, there could be some serious tension in this meeting this week.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, absolutely. The relationship between President Obama and the Saudi king and the leadership here -- the government here -- is perhaps at an all-time low. It's based on a breakdown of trust. The Saudis see the United States as leaning too fartowards Iran. A nuclear deal, they feel, is an indication of that. The Saudis perceive Iran being behind all the regions ills -- the situation in Yemen, the situation in Syria.
[05:55:00] So there's a real tension over that issue but it goes back before that. The Saudis feel that President Obama let them down during the Arab spring by not backing the Egyptian president, by not backing the Tunisian president at the time when they were overthrown.
So this mistrust right now comes at a time when President Obama wants to come here and really bring more regional stability, regional security. Find a way that Saudi, its allies, and the United States can tackle ISIS.
President Obama's view on this bill before Congress is that it can also damage U.S. interests because it could leave U.S. citizens and the government open to reciprocal action by other countries, other individuals. So, he's facing this issue -- this is a tough issue for him domestically.
But internationally, coming here to Saudi Arabia when you have already these existing tensions and the Saudis' reaction to the possibility of this bill is to say look, we'll withdraw $750 billion worth of assets in the United States. So, it's fueling tensions for President Obama when he arrives here with what was already a tough diplomatic task coming here at this time, John. BERMAN: Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have come out in
favor of that bill, which right now the White House says the president would likely veto. Nic Robertson in Riyadh for us. Thanks so much.
ROMANS: All right, let's get an EARLY START on your money this morning. The Dow rallied about 18,000 for the first time since July. Futures are higher again this morning. The Dow is now fewer than 350 points from a record high. Oil prices also rising. Stock markets in Europe, as you can see, posting solid gains. And look at that, a big rebound in Tokyo overnight.
More trouble this morning for blood-testing startup Theranos. The company faces new investigation from the Securities and Exchange Commission and a U.S. attorney's office in California. That's in addition to an ongoing probe by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Now, Theranos has been valued at more than $9 billion and billed as a disruptor in medical services.
It claims it can process up to 70 lab tests on just a few drops of blood. But in October, a scathing report in the Wall Street Journal called much of its technology and testing methods into question prompting wider scrutiny. The company says it is cooperating fully and will work closely with regulators. The SEC's declined to comment. No response yet from the U.S. attorney's office.
Shares of Netflix probably going to fall this morning. Ahead of strong quarter results, the streaming company says it now has 81.5 million subscribers around the world. In the U.S., the customer base rose by 2.2 million thanks to hit shows like "Fuller House" and "House of Cards". Forty-two percent of subscribers are now outside the U.S., but Wall Street worried about the future.
Netflix lowered its growth forecast for the rest of year. It announced last month prices also would rise by $2 a month. Now it plans to do that more gradually. And, rival Amazon is launching a monthly subscription to its prime video content that will compete directly with Netflix. It's really that lowered guidance that concerns so many of those Wall Street pros to look at that stock to fall today.
BERMAN: All right, primary day in New York. It is here. "NEW DAY" picks up right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: No New Yorker can vote for Ted Cruz.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nominating Donald Trump hands the election to Hillary Clinton.
GOV. JOHN KASICH (R-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You can't really put me in a box. You don't really know what I'm going to say or what I'm going to do.
SANDERS: We've got bad news for them.
CRUZ: The candidates running this cycle are not typical.
SANDERS: Stand up for some real fundamental changes in this country.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They know I'm coming after them.
