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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Primary Coverage; Hillary Clinton Wins California. Aired 5- 5:30a ET

Aired June 08, 2016 - 05:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hillary Clinton, she embraces history, now, you know, reveling in the fact she's the first woman to win a major party's presidential nomination.

[05:00:06] She's the presumed nominee of the Democratic Party, though she kept her focus last night largely on Donald Trump, who is promising a tough race ahead.

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

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christine Romans. It is Wednesday, June 8th. It is 5:00 a.m. in the East.

But, well, they're still counting the votes in California right now. Happening right now: Hillary Clinton holding a commanding lead in the California primary with two-thirds of the precincts reporting.

Now, CNN is still not calling the race, but history was already made overnight. Clinton now officially the fist woman ever to become a major party's presumptive presidential nominee. Including super delegates, Clinton now has 2,630, about 250 more than she'll need to win the convention in July.

She also now has the majority of the pledged delegates. Of the six states voting yesterday's final Super Tuesday, Clinton won at least three with a big victory in New Jersey. Closer margins in New Mexico and South Dakota. Sanders won two states, Montana and North Dakota. Of course, as we told you, still hanging in the balance is California, where Clinton's lead is now 14 points.

In her victory speech, Clinton basked in her historic moment but did not take her eyes off her Republican opponent, and Donald Trump in his speech, oh, he promised to be a fierce competitor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The choice is clear. Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander in chief.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

And he's not just trying to build a wall between America and Mexico, he's trying to wall off Americans from each other, when he says "let's make America great again", that is code for, let's take America backwards.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form for themselves.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

They've made hundreds of millions of dollars selling access, selling favors, selling government contracts, and I mean hundreds of millions of dollars. Secretary Clinton even did all of the work on a totally illegal private server. Something that she's getting away with nobody understands.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BERMAN: All right. I want to bring in our panel of political experts. CNN's senior media correspondent, host of "RELIABLE SOURCES", Brian Stelter, CNN political reporters Tal Kopan and Eugene Scott, and CNN political analyst Josh Rogin, also a columnist for "The Washington Post".

I want to put up the California numbers just to tell people where we are In case you went to sleep last night thinking when you woke up we would have a declared winner in California, not yet. Hillary Clinton leads there by about 406,000 votes. That's about 14 percent. Bernie Sanders closing the percentage.

But what's interesting is over the last several hours, it hasn't made any headway in the total vote differential there. Hillary Clinton still up by 406,000 votes. A lot of votes left to be counted, but Hillary Clinton has a fairly comfortable lead there.

Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton is the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party, something we knew 24 hours ago, something she finally declared and embraced last night, Tal, in a very big rally to her supporters here in Brooklyn.

TAL KOPAN, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Absolutely. In some ways, this is the moment that Hillary Clinton has been waiting for, for arguably even more than eight years. It showed when in the first minutes of her speech, she harkened back to that moment eight years ago where she conceded to Barack Obama and said she didn't crack that glass ceiling and didn't breakthrough.

And very quickly, she returned to that theme and said not only is she beginning to break those glass ceilings, but there are more she has her eye on. And that's going to be a theme we hear over and over in her campaign. She's settled on this message of breaking barriers down for everyone, trying to contrast that with Donald Trump's message and use that as a way of distinguishing herself from it.

And so, this is the first time we've seen her sort of wholeheartedly embrace the fact that her candidacy is historic, but I suspect it's something we're going to see more in the coming months. ROMANS: Brian Stelter, banner headlines in all the papers this

morning from "The Wall Street Journal" to "The Washington Post," "New York Times," "USA Today," look at "The New York Post" saying "The First Lady" -- a big nod to the history making part of this. And "USA Today" saying the race is on.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Yes, indeed.

ROMANS: Moving past this to the race is on.

STELTER: Donald Trump not acknowledging the historic nature of this.

[05:05:02] Some Bernie Sanders supporters that I see on Twitter say it's historic because she's the first presumptive nominee who could be under FBI investigation and could be indicted. You know, some people still holding out hope one the left that Clinton will be denied the nomination because of this ongoing FBI investigation.

Putting all that aside for a moment, though, I agree with what Tal just said. This is the culmination of what Clinton has been working at her entire life. And to think about that and to register that, you know, she had to go all the way to the end of the primary season. But she's finally got to the numbers she wanted delegate-wise.

BERMAN: Literally 24 hours before the last Super Tuesday, she finally clinched the nomination.

STELTER: I don't think she was expecting this a year ago, right?

BERMAN: I do not think they were expecting it to go this long. I think that's safe to say.

Eugene Scott, she was trying to couch this now in terms of bigger than herself. This fight going forward is a generational fight. She invoked not just her mother but her one grandchild and future grandchildren. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: Our children and grand children will look back at this time, at the choices we are about to make, the goals we will strive for, the principles we will live by, and we need to make sure that they can be proud of us. The end of the primaries is only the beginning of the work we're called to do. But if we stand together, we will rise together because we are stronger together. Let's go out and make that case to America.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Stronger together is a theme that Hillary Clinton is pushing in this campaign.

Brian Stelter, it was interesting to see right there Hillary Clinton, you know, talking about these bigger themes but still getting digs in there at Donald Trump, saying you have to be proud of your candidate.

STELTER: Yes, she was back in the venue where the final debate happened in April. Yet, she spent a lot of time talking about Sanders and herself and a lot of time talking about Donald Trump. I think starting today, we're going to hear her go right back to what she was doing last week that, foreign policy speech that was a series of jabs against Trump. We're going to see that, I think, right again today and ongoing for the weeks to come because this five to six weeks between now and the conventions is an opportunity for both sides to try to define or trash the other side.

ROMANS: Yes, Josh, what do you see in these five or six weeks until the convention from these two or three candidates? Because we're going to have a lot of activity from Bernie Sanders in the next week or so.

But what do you see in terms of their message and their messaging?

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Sure. I think there's an underlying reality here that not a lot of people talk about, which is that the Hillary Clinton campaign is much more organized and much more prepared for this coming period bore the convention than the Trump campaign. They're often accused of being overly messaged, to be having their talking points done by committee.

The fact is they know what they want to say. She laid out a clear argument. This comes just as Donald Trump is finishing a week of just sort of correcting himself or not correcting himself, playing defense, battling with his staff, confusing his surrogates. There's also a big money disparity here. There's a big organization disparity here.

You know, unified or not, the Democratic Party knows how to do this. They're ready for this. The Republican Party seems to be more in disarray.

So, what you're going to see from the Hillary Clinton campaign is an effort to push that forward and the Republican Party just trying to get its act together.

BERMAN: And, Eugene, what we're going to see over the next few days quite literally is these candidates all doing different things. Yes, we would talk about Bernie Sanders. He's going to the White House to meet with President Obama. He's going to campaign in Washington.

Hillary Clinton has events planned in swing states, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Donald Trump has got a big speech that he even promoted last night, which he says next week will focus exclusively on the Clintons.

EUGENE SCOTT, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes, it's going to be a very busy time for all of us in political journalism, especially because we don't know for sure what will come out of some of these things. So, we know this speech is coming with Donald Trump. We don't know exactly what he's going to hit on beyond ideas that he's already focused on.

But the way he's pitched it, he implies that he's going to perhaps going to take some new attacks. Seeing how the Clinton campaign responds to that will be very interesting. As well as this meeting that Bernie Sanders has with President Barack Obama, we know this is not the first time he's been in communication with the president, even this week. He hasn't been forth coming with what those conversations have entailed.

But we will see hopefully very soon what will come from these talks and what will be the next move for Bernie Sanders regarding this election.

ROMANS: We know there have been at least two phone calls between Bernie Sanders and the president in the last week.

BERMAN: And there's three candidates. Let's keep in mind the fourth one, President Obama. This is his last campaign, and he once again started.

He's coming in New York today. He's holding fundraisers. He would love to be able to endorse Hillary Clinton sooner rather than later. So, we'll see if Sanders makes that possible.

ROMANS: Maybe the president can be the healer in chief with what's going on with the Democratic Party.

All right. Everybody, stay here. Thank you so much.

Donald Trump, though, promising to unite his party and the country. But after a week of controversy for saying an American judge can't be fair because of his Hispanic heritage, can he do it? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:14:09] BERMAN: Donald Trump promising to unite the Republican Party and bring the country closer together just days after setting off a mini revolt within the Republican Party.

In a speech to supporters in New York last night, Trump did not mention the controversy that has dogged him since he criticized an American judge overseeing the Trump University case, an American judge with Mexican heritage.

Listen to an interview with CNN last week when Trump really triggered chaos by calling that judge biased because of his Mexican roots.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: He's proud of his heritage. I respect him for that.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: You're saying he can't do his job because of that.

TRUMP: Look, he's proud of he is heritage, OK? I'm building a wall. Now, I think I'm going to do very well with Hispanics.

TAPPER: He's a legal citizen. TRUMP: You know why I'm going to do well with Hispanics? Because I'm

going to bring back jobs and they're going to get jobs right now. They're going to get jobs. I think I'm going to do very well with Hispanics.

But we're building a wall.

[05:15:01] He's a Mexican. We're building a wall between here and Mexico.

TAPPER: If you're saying he can't do his job because of his race, is that not the definition of racism?

TRUMP: I don't think so at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, after that, how much work does Donald Trump have to do with Latino voters? We should note, he said those comments are now misconstrued, though he's not apologized for them.

Joining us now, the president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Javier Polomarez.

Javier, thanks so much for being with us. Let's show you the cover of "The Daily News." Paul Ryan said his comments are the textbook definition of racist comments, although he still says he's endorsing Donald Trump.

How much work does Donald Trump need to do now, do you think?

JAVIER PALOMAREZ, PRESIDENT & CEO, U.S. HISPANIC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: You know, the reality is what America needs to do, Hispanic and non- Hispanic, is register to vote. We need to be heard. We can't stand for this kind of divisive narrative to exist in this country.

BERMAN: This time being what he says?

PALOMAREZ: Absolutely. There is no way Donald Trump can call this back. He's done immeasurable damage to the Republican Party. I commend leaders like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn and Jeff Flake and so many others that are now standing firmly again this kind of rhetoric and this kind of divisiveness.

ROMANS: Has the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce ever endorsed a Republican?

PALOMAREZ: We have never endorsed anybody in the general election in the 37-year history of our association.

ROMANS: Do you feel you need to say something, you do something this time around?

PALOMAREZ: We certainly feel that it's time for American business, we represent 4.1 million Hispanic owned businesses in this country that collectively contribute over $661 billion to the economy. Our small businesses are starting up at a rate of 3-1 when compared to the general market. And we believe it is time for American business to stand up and to be heard.

ROMANS: Because you think Donald Trump is not good for those small businesses.

PALOMAREZ: We don't believe he is. We believe that this nature of divisiveness and hatred can only help to poison what right now is a very tentative, very fragile economy. We need to be focused. We need to be working together collaboratively to move this nation forward from all aspects and certainly from an economic perspective.

BERMAN: To be clear, you haven't made an endorsement yet in the general. If you endorsed a Democrat, it would be the first time.

PALOMAREZ: It would be the first in the 37-year history of our society.

BERMAN: Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, a Republican running for re- election, a tough race there. He's come out and said he's not going to vote for Donald Trump. He put out a statement yesterday in the wake of everything that happened here.

Do you think that other Republicans in your mind, does your organization feel that other Republicans need to do the same?

PALOMAREZ: Well, actually, I'm hearing from a variety of particularly Hispanic Republicans that have sworn not to vote for Donald Trump. Again, I believe the damage he has done, ultimately the losers here will be the Republican Party. There was so much great work done by, you know, Mitch McConnell, by Reince Priebus, and so many others to broaden the tent and bring more people into the Republican Party, to modernize is, to ensure that there was a sense of diversity within that party. All of that has been laid to waste by Donald Trump.

ROMANS: If you look at sort of the last several elections and the Latino vote in the last several elections, you can see the Republicans have been getting a smaller and smaller and smaller share. You sat down with Donald Trump. You met him last year in September, I think. You know him. You have talked to him.

Is he receptive to what you are saying?

PALOMAREZ: He was receptive when I talked to him. But every time I see him in public, he really doubles down on this very divisive kind of rhetoric. I don't know how he could possibly call this back.

Again, I think the damage has been done. But ultimately, all Americans, not just Hispanic-Americans, all Americans who are compassionate, who believe in an inclusive and diverse country, we can do what we need to do. And that is to register to vote, to stop this kind of divisive behavior.

ROMANS: I want to breaking in here. We have a projection for California. So, stand by for just a second. These numbers are just coming in. BERMAN: All right. CNN now projects that Hillary Clinton is the

winner of the California Democratic primary. Again, this projection now just in at 5:19 Eastern Time. That's, what, 2:19 Pacific Time.

You can look at the vote totals now, with 63 percent of the vote in, her lead is some 407,000 votes. That's enough right now for CNN to project that Hillary Clinton has won the California Democratic primary.

ROMANS: All right. Interesting there. We're calling that now.

OK. Nineteen minutes past the hour.

Thank you so much, Javier Palomarez, for joining us this morning and being here while we made that call.

Historic Senate race shaping up in California overnight. Two minority Democratic women may be facing off in November's election. The first time a Republican won't be on that ballot in more than a century.

We've got that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:23:57] ROMANS: A historic night in the race for the Senate seat being vacated by California Democrat Barbara Boxer. For the first time in a century, it appears that a Republican will not be on the state's general election ballot for the Senate. Instead, it looks like two Democrats will compete against each other in a November runoff.

State Attorney General Kamala Harris is the top vote-getter among 34 candidates seeking the job so far. Coming in second to Harris, ten- term Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez of Orange County. Under California's unusual election rules, only the two top finishers from whatever party move on to November.

Time for an early start on your money this morning. Dow futures up slightly. Oil pushing close to $51 a barrel. Stock markets in Europe and Asia mixed.

The S&P 500 now just 18 points away from a record high. The S&P has jumped 15 percent since its big decline in February. Rising oil prices and a delay in interest rate hikes from the Fed has been fueling it.

Could be another bad day for shares of Ralph Lauren. The stock tanked at yesterday's open, ended with a 2.3 percent loss.

[05:25:00] The drop came after Ralph Lauren announced it is cutting 8 percent of its work force, closing stores. Sales are in a slump with shoppers turning to fast fashion brands like H&M. The company's founder Ralph Lauren says he backs the company's new CEO saying, quote, "I'm trusting my baby with him, and my baby has to grow up." So, watch those retail sales this morning.

All right. Hillary Clinton embracing a historic moment. Big night in politics.

NEW DAY picks it up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)