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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Trump & Sanders Win Primary Elections; Deadly Stabbing Spree in Massachusetts; Prince's Local Doctor Identified in Search Warrant. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired May 11, 2016 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:20] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight: big wins for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, planning his general election strategy, as Sanders claims his wins show he can beat Hillary Clinton to the Democratic nomination.
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman. Nice to see you. It is Wednesday, May 11th, 4:00 a.m. in the East.
And this morning, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, they are waking up with big West Virginia wins.
Donald Trump is the only Republican still running for president. He easily won West Virginia. He also took Nebraska. He adds at least 39 delegates to his total. It will end up being way more than that once West Virginia's convoluted process works itself out. Trump needs 1,237 to win the Republican nomination. You can see him moving ever closer to that total.
On the Democratic side, it was only West Virginia. They voted big for Bernie Sanders. He crushed Hillary Clinton there. But even with that big win, even with a 15 percent win, he barely chipped away at Clinton's delegate lead.
If you include super delegates, if you include superdelegates, I know this appoints Sanders supporters. She's only 148 short of securing a majority for the nomination.
Even so, Sanders told supporters last night he can still win.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: With our victory tonight in West Virginia, we have now won primaries and caucuses in 19 states.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
And let me be as clear as I can be. We are in this campaign to win the Democratic nomination.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: You notice Bernie Sanders was in Oregon there. They vote later this month.
This morning, Donald Trump is looking to unite the Republican Party and put states in play for November that have gone for Democrats in recent elections. That's his plan at least.
CNN politics reporter Sara Murray has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Good morning, John and Christine. Donald Trump picked up two more victories last night, winning in West Virginia and Nebraska.
Now, we shouldn't be totally stunned by this since all the rest of the Republicans have now dropped out of the race. But it still brings Trump even closer to officially becoming the Republican nominee.
Now, of course, part of doing this means rallying the Republican Party behind him. Trump has had some hiccups along those lines. House Speaker Paul Ryan said he se Trump. The two are going to be meeting later in the week in Washington to try to hash out those differences.
Trump was talking last night in some interviews, and he was sounding a much more optimistic tone. His aides believe they can reach some common ground on issues like cutting taxes for the middle class, debt reduction, and Trump even said he wants to see Paul Ryan stay on as co-chairman of the Republican convention coming up this summer in Cleveland.
So, this could be a sign they're ready to sweep their differences more fireworks ahead.
Back to you, guys.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: All right. Sara, thank you for that.
Bernie Sanders scored a huge win in West Virginia, but it barely budges the needle in the delegate race, where Hillary Clinton has a big, big lead without many states left. Still, Sanders is vowing not to quit. He not only continued to challenge Clinton at a victory rally late last night, he also went hard at Donald Trump.
CNN's Brianna Keilar was there. She's got the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, on the evening of the West Virginia primary that Bernie Sanders won, talking to these crowd here in Oregon, he sounded like a candidate who's really pushing through this primary season to win. He took on Hillary Clinton on a number of issues, on the environment, on trade, on campaign finance, including a donation that her Democratic fund received from Alice Walton of the Walmart Walton family.
But he also garnered a lot of energy and excitement from his supporters here when he took on Donald Trump.
SANDERS: Donald Trump is not going to become president for a number of reasons. And the major reason is that the American people understand that we cannot have a president who has insulted Latinos and Mexicans, who has insulted Muslims, who every day is insulting women in one way or another, who has insulted veterans like John McCain and others, who has insulted African-Americans in a very profound way.
[04:05:01] KEILAR: Bernie Sanders explaining to his supporters that he has received 45 percent of the pledged delegates. That goes to show you the math and why it is so difficult for him because moving forward, in order to tie Hillary Clinton and just the pledged delegates, he would need to seize 66 percent of the pledged delegates in all of the primary contests ahead.
That is a huge undertaking, nearly impossible -- John and Christine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: All right. Brianna Keilar, thanks so much.
Joining us to discuss, CNN political analyst and columnist for "Bloomberg View", Josh Rogin.
Josh, great to see you this morning.
JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.
BERMAN: We are now in May. Sort of like Maalox May for Hillary Clinton, right? I mean, it's uncomfortable. She's going to lose. She lost in West Virginia. She could lose more states coming up. So, it feels lousy, but for the Sanders team, they say they see these delegate challenges.
ROGIN: Right. I mean, let's stipulate West Virginia was not going to be Hillary Clinton's strong state. It plays to all her weaknesses. As we saw on the exit polls coming out of last night's election, Clinton continued to do poorly with working class white voters, with independents, with people who don't support the Obama agenda and people who have been disadvantaged by economic globalization. So, the charitable way to look at this is that it's better for Hillary Clinton to try to solve some of these problems now than maybe in August, September, and October.
You see her putting more resources into addressing these kinds of states with these kinds of people. She's going to go back up on the air with ads in Kentucky. She's going to send her husband Bill Clinton out there to campaign for her. So, she's trying to stem this bleeding, but it's not a good look to lose a bunch of your last primaries as you head toward your nomination.
ROMANS: Some of those counties last night have 30 percent unemployment. Some of those counties have localized Great Depression, some economists call it, and the Donald Trump message really resonating there. So, Hillary Clinton had a tough road there.
When you look at some of those exit polls, even the Bernie Sanders supporters said if it were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the fall, who would you Donald Trump. The Donald Trump story line really played perfectly into what's been happening there in West Virginia. But at some point, instead of complaining about what's going wrong, they have to start saying how they're going to fix it and what's going to go right.
I thought it was interesting that Hillary Clinton just propose a cap on childcare, a plan to cap childcare costs at 10 percent of family income. Is that, Josh Rogin, Hillary Clinton listening to what Bernie Sanders has been saying, what his supporters have been saying, and trying to move a little to the left but show families, hey, look, this is not the United States of losers, this is the United States of fixers, we're going to fix this.
ROGIN: Yes, I think you're seeing two things. You're seeing her try to address some of the specific policy challenges that the Bernie Sanders campaign has presented to her, but you also see her trying to make up for some of the mistakes she's made, right? West Virginia was a state where she said that the coal miners in her view should go out of business, right?
So, she's now looking back at this and saying, OK, it's not enough just to go with the platform that she started with. She's going to have to be mobile. She's going to have to be nimble. She's going to have to react to what the voters are telling her. Her campaign hasn't always been good at that.
In the end, what's going to happen is that Bernie Sanders' campaign is going to amass as many delegates as they can and try to influence the platform at the party convention in Philadelphia in July. Now, they can do that, but in the end, those platforms, as we all know, are not really the last word in campaigns. So, the question is whether Hillary Clinton is going to veer to the left for the rest of the primary and then recalculate and figure out what she needs to do to beat Donald Trump in the fall.
BERMAN: All right. As for Donald Trump, he's locked up the nomination. He is the presumptive nominee, but he hasn't locked up the support of everyone in his party. So, there's the Paul Ryan primary. He meets with Paul Ryan on Thursday.
Right here on CNN with Jake Tapper, there's sort of the Marco Rubio primary. He dropped out of the race in March. People wanted to know what he would do in the general election, if he would support Donald Trump. He kind of told Jake yes, sort of. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Are you going to vote for him?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: Well, as I said, I'm going to support the Republican nominee.
TAPPER: No, you're going to abide by your pledge, but when you go into the privacy of the voting booth --
RUBIO: I intend to support the Republican nominee and I think that, you know --
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: Including --
RUBIO: Oh, I'm not voting for Hillary Clinton.
TAPPER: OK.
RUBIO: I'm not throwing away my vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: He couldn't bring himself to say the words Donald Trump. That was among the most tepid, you know, signs of support you could ever have.
ROGIN: That's right. I spent all day yesterday talking to Republican senators on Capitol Hill who had all come back to town after a long recess, degrees of the same message. They want to support the Republican nominee.
[04:10:02] Some of them are actively now reaching out to The Donald. Some of them are receiving calls from The Donald. They all have the same attitude. What are we going to do? We have no choice.
They don't want to contemplate the alternative, which is a broken party for the next six months. So, they're trying. And it's all based on this hope and this prayer that there is enough common ground and enough overlap between what Donald Trump thinks and what they think that they can move forward together, but nobody really knows if that's true.
When Trump and Ryan have their grip-n-grin on Capitol Hill tomorrow, you'll see this really stark sort of dynamic where the Republicans can't believe the situation that they're in, but they're trying to deal with it any way they can.
ROMANS: You know, Paul Ryan telling "The Wall Street Journal" essentially, look, this was a tough primary season, it took more than a week to divide this Republican Party, it'll take more than a week to unite it. Is he downplaying expectations for Thursday?
ROGIN: No, I think what he's doing is laying out the fact that he wants to see some concessions, right. His whole play here is he knows he's going to have to support Donald Trump in the end. He wants Donald Trump to give him some stuff so that he can go back to the rest of his rank and file and say, look, not only do we have to work with him, but he has to work with us. It's just not clear that Donald Trump is willing to do any of those things.
I mean, we really don't know, but this whole idea that Donald Trump is going to play nice with the Republican caucus in exchange for them helping him with the fundraising and the get out and vote, the data, and all this other stuff that he's going to need them for in the general election has not born out yet. So, Paul Ryan is keeping his powder dry so he can be in a better negotiating position, but negotiating with Donald Trump is never an easy task.
ROMANS: Right. All right, Josh Rogin. We'll talk to you very soon. Thanks for waking up early with us. Thanks, Josh.
All right. West Virginia has the second highest unemployment rate in the nation, 6.5 percent, the second lowest median household income. Those struggles reflected in our exit polling. Ninety-two percent of Democratic primary voters say they're worried about the economy, 92 percent. That's one of the highest totals we have seen this primary season. More than half of those voters sided with Bernie Sanders.
His populous message on trade really resonating in West Virginia. Fifty-three percent say trade with other countries kills U.S. jobs. That group broke for Sanders. Thirty-five percent said trade creates jobs. That group was split evenly between Clinton and Sanders.
West Virginia, of course, coal country, about a third of Democratic voters said they are coal industry households. Fifty-five percent of those voters broke for Bernie Sanders. That follows Hillary Clinton's comments about putting coal miners and companies out of business if she's elected.
She's since tried to sit down and backpedal that and say, look, I want to help people in West Virginia get jobs. But those comments about coal, something really hard to dodge here. On the Republican side, obviously a win for Donald Trump, but that support behind him is pretty solid.
Look, 59 percent of Republican primary voters in West Virginia say it's likely Trump would beat Hillary Clinton. Another 28 percent say it's somewhat likely, 74 percent tell us they'd be excited or optimistic if Trump is elected.
BERMAN: All right. At 12 minutes after the hour.
A deadly knife attack that started inside a home and ended up in a Boston area mall. Six people wounded, two dead. We have new information on these attacks, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:17:17] ROMANS: Two people are dead following a bloody stabbing spree in Taunton, Massachusetts. Police say 28-year-old Arthur de Rosa stabbed a mother and daughter inside their home after he had a car crash in front of the house. He then drove into the front door of a Macy's Department Store. He stabbed four more people inside a mall restaurant, killing a 56-year-old man.
Listen to witnesses who watched it all unfold.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of the sudden people were hollering, there's a killer, there's a killer. He came from the back of the restaurant, and he was walking towards the front. As he was coming, he was slashing people, and people were throwing chairs at him and stuff.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were sitting in the car right in front of the main entrance, and we saw a pregnant lady being pulled out and she was holding on to her stomach screaming and crying for her baby. Please help my baby.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We pulled up, and there's people on the stretchers getting taken out and everything. One girl was crying for her baby.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: An off-duty sheriff's deputy who happened to be on the seen fatally shot the attacker. Police say if the officer had not been there, more people could have been killed.
BERMAN: The Justice Department will not pursue the death penalty against Benghazi suspect, Ahmed Abu Khattala. Attorney General Loretta Lynch made the decision without explanation, insisting she remains committed to holding the suspect accountable for the deadly 2012 attack. Khattala is considered one of the ring leaders of the terror attack that took four American lives. His lawyers called attorney general's decision courageous.
ROMANS: This afternoon, a judge will rule on the mental competency of the suspect accused of killing three people last year at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood. Robert Lewis Dear was in court Tuesday at a hearing determined whether he's fit to stand trial. Police say when Deer was captured, he told them he anticipated being thanked by aborted fetuses at heaven's gate.
BERMAN: One of six Baltimore police officers facing charges in the death of Freddie Gray has decided to pass on a jury trial. Officer Edward Nero has opted for a bench trial, putting his fate in the hands of a judge. Nero is charged with second degree assault and misconduct in office. His trial is now set to begin on Thursday.
ROMANS: Senate Republicans ruling out any chance of a hearing for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland before the next president takes office. Garland has gone through the formality of filling out a questionnaire and returning it to Senate leaders. Republicans are making it clear they will not even authorize a confirmation hearing during a lame duck session in December, in the event Hillary Clinton wins the November election.
All right. Investigators back this morning at the home of Prince. They're looking for new clues into his death and into a doctor who was treating him in the months before he died.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:24:18] ROMANS: Potentially major knew developments into the investigation of the death of Prince. A flurry of law enforcement activity at his Paisley Park estate. Authorities executing a federal search warrant Tuesday, attempting to learn more about the late entertainer's death. This as new details emerged about a Minnesota doctor who visited Prince right before he died.
CNN's Stephanie Elam has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Late Tuesday afternoon, local sheriffs as well as officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration showed up here back at Paisley Park to further their investigation. This as "The Los Angeles Times" has gotten ahold of some documents from a county, not the same county where Prince lived, but one county over that say the day Prince died, that they interviewed the people who were here.
[04:25:07] One of those people was a local doctor who actually showed up at the scene with test results for Prince because he had seen Prince twice before in April, including the day before Prince died. We have reached out to the place where this doctor is employed. They say that he is no longer, but they are investigating this further. It's just a new wrinkle in the sad, sad story of how Prince passed away at just 57 years of age.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: All right. Some interesting questions raised by all that. Thanks to Stephanie.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders won big overnight. Donald Trump now looking toward the general election. Bernie Sanders trying to keep Hillary Clinton from doing just the same. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: Big wins for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders overnight.
