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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Trump Wins Nebraska, West Virginia; Sanders Beast Clinton in West Virginia; Deadly Stabbing Spree in Massachusetts; Prince's Local Doctor Identified in Search Warrant. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired May 11, 2016 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:07] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Big wins for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders overnight. Trump cruising toward the official Republican nomination. Bernie Sanders making things complicated for Hillary Clinton as she tries to move on.

Welcome back to EARLY START, everyone. I'm John Berman.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: So nice to see you this morning.

BERMAN: Hello.

ROMANS: Hello, everyone. I'm Christine Romans. It's 30 minutes past the hour.

Big morning, everybody. This morning, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are waking up with big West Virginia wins. Trump, the only Republican still running for president, easily won West Virginia, also Nebraska. He adds at least 39 delegates to his total, but it will end up being more than that once West Virginia's kind of convoluted process works itself out. Trump needs 1,237 to win the Republican nomination.

On the Democratic side, it was just West Virginia voting. That was just fine for Bernie Sanders. He crushed Hillary Clinton in West Virginia. Even with his win, Sanders barely chips away at Clinton's delegate lead. If you include super delegates, she is only about 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)

ROMANS: This morning, Donald Trump looking to unite the Republican Party and to put states in play for November that have gone to the Democrats in recent elections.

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)

BERMAN: All right. Sara Murray, thank you so much. Bernie Sanders, he scored a huge win in West Virginia, but it really barely budges the needle in the delegate race, where Hillary Clinton has a big, big lead. There are not many states left to vote.

Still, Sanders is vowing not to quit. He not only continued to challenge Clinton at a victory late last night, he also went after Donald Trump.

CNN's Brianna Keilar was there.

(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.

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)

ROMANS: All right. Thanks for that, Brianna.

[04:35:01] Let's discuss last night's primary results. CNN political analyst, columnist for "Bloomberg View", Josh Rogin.

And it was a good night, Josh, for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Talking about the Democrats first, Bernie Sanders in West Virginia.

But West Virginia is really about West Virginia, you know? Now he's got to move forward to some of these other states who have a very different makeup, very different look.

And, Joe Biden, the sitting vice president, says he's pretty confident that he knows who the nominee will be. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I feel confident that Hillary will be the nominee, and I feel confident she'll be the next president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: So there you go. Look, you've got the established Democrats saying it will be Hillary, it's just a matter of time. But Bernie Sanders is hanging in there for the foreseeable future, and he's relishing in his win last night.

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. I think Joe Biden is right at least on one of those two things. Hillary Clinton will probably be the nominee.

But what we see is that she's changing, she's being forced to change her tactics because Bernie Sanders refuses to go away. Reporters got two Hillary Clinton campaign press releases in their inboxes following her loss in West Virginia. The first was about her new plan to reduce childcare costs, which she announced in Kentucky as you mentioned before, Christine.

The second was Bill Clinton to campaign in the Virgin Islands. Now, the Virgin Islands don't vote in the general election. So this can only be interpreted as an increased push by the Clinton campaign to wrap it up, to go after these delegates, to get to that threshold where Bernie Sanders will no longer be able to claim he has a chance of getting this nomination.

So, she's adjusted. She's changed her tactics. She's spending money she doesn't want to be spending, that she wants to be saving for a fight against Donald Trump. Now, the silver lining could be that she's addressing the problems in her campaign now rather than later. That's her problems with working class white voters, problems with people who feel left out by globalization, and her problems with people in states that don't share the Obama agenda vision she's been running on.

But in the end, there's only a limited amount of time and money. So, Hillary Clinton campaign is putting its foot on the gas. They want to wrap this up.

ROMANS: Just quickly, I want to tell our viewers what that cap on childcare spending is. She wants to limit how much a typical family spends on childcare to 10 percent of their income. And that goes right at the heart of what so many primary voters have been telling us. You know, they've got student loans, childcare costs. Sometimes childcare costs are as expensive as college tuition. You can see this pivot toward a general for Hillary Clinton where she's trying to say, look, I understand a lot of people feel malaise about the economy, but this is how I'm going to fix it.

BERMAN: It's also what she wants to do against Donald Trump. They want to talk about policy as much as possible. So it works both in a primary and a general election.

Josh Rogin, you know, I played this sound last half hour, but I've to play it again, because I think, if you look at reticent in the dictionary, it would have a link to this clip right here. Reticent, convoluted -- that's how you might describe how Marco Rubio says he will support Donald Trump in the general election. Listen to this.

(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)

ROMANS: Oh, that was painful.

BERMAN: Marco Rubio agreed to sit down with Jake yesterday. This is days in advance. We've been promoting this interview for a long time. He knew that was going to be the main question. And that is the answer that he planned to give.

What message is he sending there, Josh?

ROGIN: I think it's twofold. One, Marco Rubio was very clear. He does not want to be the guy who all the reporters go to who look for bad, critical quotes on Donald Trump in the next six months. He's just not going to play that role.

He's not going to stand inside the Republican Party and bash the Republican Party nominee. That's for a number of reasons. It's not a good look for him. He doesn't think it's productive. It doesn't help him overall. So, that's number one.

Number two is I think every Republican, and again, there's a wide range sort of struggling with this horrible sort of existential crisis in their own party, which is do we put our money and our effort and our souls with the immediate problem, which is how to beat Hillary or do we save the principles of the Republican Party and the conservative movement for the next election. And nobody has the answer to that.

So, Marco Rubio is more to the side of sticking to what he's always been saying. I talked to a guy named Bob Corker, a senor from Nebraska, yesterday.

BERMAN: The next vice president of the United States.

ROGIN: Maybe. Who knows? Anything could happen.

This guy said he's more willing to sort of work with Donald Trump and find areas can of common interest. And he thinks Donald Trump can be persuaded to come around to supporting the ideals of the Republican Party traditionally, even on foreign policy. That may be true. I don't see it right now.

So, every Republican is making this calculation, and they're all waiting for Paul Ryan to lead. What Paul Ryan says after the meeting Thursday, which again will be somewhere in between full-throated support and I can't deal with this guy, and that will become the standard bearer. After that, I think a lot of Republicans will fall in line, behind the speaker. ROMANS: Who's got the leverage here? Donald Trump's got the

leverage. He keeps winning and winning and winning. He's bringing new people out of the woodwork to vote Republican. Donald Trump seems to have the upper hand in this if you want to talk about who's trying to persuade whom to change their policies.

ROGIN: Yes, I totally agree with you, Christine. I think he does have the upper hand.

However, this is the moment where the party establishment has any leverage if they have some. Donald Trump cannot fund his general election campaign by himself. He doesn't have the infrastructure. He doesn't have all the tools you need to go against Clinton machine.

And actually, today and tomorrow is the chance, that all of the Republicans have the best opportunity for the Republicans to say, you need us, even a little bit. That's why the Trump staff was meeting with the RNC on Monday. That's why they're meeting behind closed doors with senators and lawmakers all this week.

The bottom line here is Republican Party has to try to find some broad umbrella, some value, some basic principles. They want to convince Donald to stop doing the most crazy stuff, stop alienating piles of voters they think they need to win the down ticket races.

And in the end, all this money that the establishment has can either go to the president, or can go to these races. They can put it all in the congressional races. That's not what Donald Trump ultimately wants to see.

ROMANS: All right. Josh Rogin, thanks so much for stopping by this morning nice to see you, bright and early again on a post primary Wednesday. We love to have you around.

BERMAN: He's the king of the mornings post-primary.

ROMANS: He's always very happy. Must have an I.V. drip of caffeine.

BERMAN: We won the Josh Rogin primary.

ROMANS: Time for an early start on your money. Dow futures lower after a big, beautiful rally yesterday. Stock markets in Europe and Asia mixed. Oil trading slightly lower, but it was a big rally yesterday on the back of a jump in oil prices. Shares of Staples and Office Depot halted overnight.

The company's calling off their $6 billion plus merger. A judge ruled in favor of this Federal Trade Commission, which was challenging the deal. The FTC claimed a combined company would violate antitrust laws. Sales have been falling at both companies. They face stiff competition from Amazon, Walmart. That's also hurt their stock prices.

Both companies down more than 30 percent over the past 12 months. They thought they'd be stronger together, but the FTC focused on contracts with large companies in which Staples and Office Depot were frequently the two top bidders. A merger between the companies was denied in 1997 as well.

Also, watch Disney shares this morning. Studio doing well, but investors are focusing squarely on the TV business. Disney shares were down 5 percent after hours. So, watch Disney. That's a widely held stock.

BERMAN: All right. Three people killed, two injured in a stabbing rampage that began in a home and ended in a popular shopping mall. We have new details on these attacks. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:47:18] BERMAN: An attacker and two victims are dead this morning following a stabbing spree in Taunton, Massachusetts. Police say 28- year-old Arthur de Rosa stabbed a mother and daughter inside their home. The mother later died. He then drove into the front door of a Macy's department store and stabbed four more people inside a mall restaurant, killing a 56-year-old man.

Listen to witnesses who saw the whole thing unfold.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All of the sudden people were hollering, there's a killer, there's a killer!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 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)

BERMAN: 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.

ROMANS: A flurry of law enforcement activity at Prince's Paisley Park estate. Search warrant Tuesday, trying to learn more about the late entertainer's death. This as new details emerge 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.

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)

ROMANS: All right. Stephanie, thank you for that.

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 Lynch's decision courageous.

[04:50:01] BERMAN: 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.

ROMANS: 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.

Fifty minutes past the hour. A medical breakthrough for those wants to get rid of wrinkles.

You look perfect. You look great, John.

BERMAN: It's like a half hour of makeup every day.

ROMANS: Don't change a thing. But we're live with what could change the face of America, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:55:09] BERMAN: All right. Big news in science and skin care this morning. A new study revealing a possible fix for wrinkles. Scientists at MIT did this study, showing a thin, invisible layer of polymer film that you can wear on top of your skin. It just kind of smoothes everything back into shape.

ROMANS: A little like super glue.

Senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now.

Elizabeth, this is a breakthrough, a real solution for ageing, sagging skin. You know, there's this quest around the world for looking good without surgery. What did these researchers develop? What is this new research?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So, the new research, Christine, involves people putting on first a liquid and then a lotion. It does is sort of firms things up. It's kind of this second skin, some people are calling it. Other people are calling it Spanx for your face.

Now, it's not a solution. It lasts kind of like Spanx. You take them off at the end of the day. This also comes off at the end of the day. You can think of it as cosmetic in that way.

But as you can see from the photo that we're showing, it does appear to sort of flatten out some of the wrinkles and some of the fat pads.

BERMAN: Is there a catch beyond the fact it's not permanent? It's just basically a kind of makeup, I suppose. Not makeup, but an application on your face.

ROMANS: Skin care, I guess, yes.

COHEN: Right. One of the catches is that they've tried this in a relatively small number of people for a relatively short time. Sometimes there's lots of excitement when you're at this pilot study stage. Later on down the road, it's like, oh, you know what, it causes this or has that side effect. I'm not saying it's going to happen with this product, but you always want to keep that in mind when you're in such an early stage.

ROMANS: Besides helping with sagging skin, are there other potential uses for this?

COHEN: Yes, potentially there are. Skin, some folks have said, gee, could this be more effective sunscreen that what we have now. Others have said, hey, it covers up the skin, could it keep the moisture in and be a potential treatment for extremely dry skin for something like eczema or psoriasis.

So, it might be for more than just wrinkles. That has a lot of doctors really excited.

ROMANS: All right. Elizabeth Cohen with exciting new research for John Berman this morning that will extend his TV career by another ten years. Thank you for that, Elizabeth.

BERMAN: The things I have to do to my face as it is are humiliating.

ROMANS: Let's get an early start on your money.

Stock futures retreating after a big rally yesterday. Shares in Asia finishing mixed overnight. Oil down around 44 bucks a barrel right now.

Keep an eye on Disney today. The stock is down more than a percent in premarket trading. The company's earnings disappointed investors. ESPN lost more subscribers. Revenue fell at its parks and resorts.

You know, it had some big blockbusters. The movie studio did great. I mean, think "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", it's for you, John. But, you know, as has been the theme for Disney for a few quarters now, the focus of analysts is not on the wins but the TV business in particular. So, there you go.

Big stock market rally yesterday. The Dow's biggest jump since mid- February when stocks began their epic rebound. Investors put aside concerns about disappointing corporate earnings and slowing global growth.

The Dow gaining 222 points yesterday. That's more than a percent. NASDAQ and S&P also up more than a percent each.

BERMAN: It's about time.

ROMANS: Some exciting data here. There are 5.7 million open jobs in the U.S. that is very close to a record high. It is great news that companies are hiring, but it also shows these companies are having a tough time finding the right workers.

In 2007, before the great recession, there were an average of 4.5 million job openings per month. Last year, there were 5.3 open positions on average. The job skills gap is a major reason why there are still high levels of part-time workers and underemployment in the U.S. It's why many Americans feel disgruntled about the economy. It's also a big part of the reason why wages haven't risen very much during the economic recovery. There's a lot of argument about what is holding us back. Is it companies are expecting more? Did they used to do more training?

Did unions used to have a bigger hold on manufacturing in particular, so companies and unions together retrained workers? Has that changed? What is going on here?

BERMAN: You know, again, it's another one of these issues where the inflection point, the great recession was a pure inflection point. I still don't think we know the ramifications.

ROMANS: You're right.

BERMAN: EARLY START continues right now.

(MUSIC)

BERMAN: Breaking overnight, big wins for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Donald Trump the presumptive nominee, he's got no opponents left, but he's cruising toward the general election. Bernie Sanders, he's still got an opponent left. Hillary Clinton. That doesn't make Hillary Clinton very happy at all.

We're breaking it all down this morning.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm John Berman.