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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Sources: Trump Campaign Frustrated By Their Candidate; Clinton Campaign Rakes in Big Money & Endorsement; Zika Virus Spreads in Miami; Olympic Torch Arriving in Rio. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired August 03, 2016 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:13] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: They feel like they're wasting their time. Trump staffers revealing to CNN growing frustration inside the campaign, and for their candidate constantly at war with someone.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hillary Clinton with a prominent new Republican endorsement, and a record month in fund-raising.
ROMANS: The Zika virus now spreading in Florida. New cases reported in another Miami neighborhood.
Good morning. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
BERMAN: Great to see you today. I'm John Berman. It's Wednesday, August 3rd. It's 4:00 a.m. in the East.
Breaking news this morning: a head-spinning 24 hours for Donald Trump. I got to say, I barley sleep -- I sleep five hours, I wake up and there's that much more this morning. Word this morning that there's increasing frustration inside the Trump campaign.
Republican sources tell CNN that campaign staffers, quote, "feel like they're wasting their time." Among these people apparently campaign manager Paul Manafort. The distraction cited included Trump's fight with the Gold Star parents of an American army captain, and Trump's unprecedented snub of high profile party leaders this morning. Trump is refusing to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan in his primary campaign, and Trump is sort of heaping praise on Ryan's underdog opponent.
This is on top of new criticism by Trump of Senator John McCain. And that is on top of other high profile Republicans coming out overnight saying flat out, they will vote for Hillary Clinton.
CNN's Jason Carroll has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is really a stunning development. We'll have to see how this plays out across the GOP landscape. Donald Trump saying in an interview with "The Washington Post" that he's not ready to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan in his upcoming primary election.
Trump saying, quote, "I like Paul, but these are horrible times for our country. We need very strong leadership. We need very, very strong leadership. And I'm just not quite there yet. I'm not quite there yet."
If that language sounds familiar, it's pretty close to the same language Ryan used when he waited to endorse Trump.
Trump also saying he's not supporting Senator John McCain in his primary bid in Arizona. Trump saying "he has done a good job for the vets, and I always felt he should do a better job for the vets. So, I've always had a difficult time with John for that reason because our vets are not being treated properly."
Trump did not stop there. He also took aim at Senator Kelly Ayotte, calling her a weak and disloyal leader in New Hampshire.
For his part, Trump involved in another controversy, this after he talked about a Purple Heart recipient at his rally yesterday in Virginia.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Something very nice just happened to me. A man came up to me, and he handed me his Purple Heart.
Now, I said to him, I said to him, is that like the real one? Or is that a copy? And he said that's my real Purple Heart. I have such confidence in you.
And I said, man, that's like -- that's like big stuff. I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.
CARROLL: Trump already under fire for comments he made about the family of a slain Muslim U.S. soldier Humayun Khan. Trump telling a local reporter late yesterday, he has no regrets about anything he has said about Khan's family.
Both Ryan and McCain did release statements defending the Khan family. It should also be noted that Chris Christie also spoke out in defense of the Khan family. Clearly, this is something that so far has not set well with Trump.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: All right. Thanks for that, Jason.
Overnight the father of that fallen American soldier calling Donald Trump a draft dodger for taking four student deferments and a medical deferment during the Vietnam War. Khizr Khan also slamming Trump for accepting that Purple Heart and making that joke about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KHIZR KHAN, GOLD STAR FATHER OF SLAIN U.S. SOLDIER: A man comes to him, a veteran, so kindly, what a gracious man, hands him his Purple Heart. What he does, he deceives, thanks, puts in his pocket. Later on, pulls it out. I got this Purple Heart, so easy, I always wanted one.
Donald Trump, you had the time, you did not serve. You know what he should have done? And listen to me and I want his surrogates to listen to me. You should have pinned that back to that veteran's chest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[04:05:04] ROMANS: Illinois Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth also attacked Trump's Purple Heart joke last night. The disabled veteran tweeting out a picture of yourself and a message, "Donald Trump, this is what one usually looks like when you're awarded the Purple Heart. Nothing easy about it."
BERMAN: The president jumped into the frenzy, and Donald Trump jumped back, calling Trump called Obama a terrible president, one of the worst and a total disaster.
Why did he say that? Well, it came after the president stood inside the White House, next to a world leader and called Trump unfit for office and urged Republican leaders to withdraw their support for Trump. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, I think the Republican nominee is unfit. I said so last week and he keeps on proving it. This isn't a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily, and weekly, where they are distancing themselves from statements he's making.
There has to be a point at which you say, this is not somebody I can support. There has to come a point at which you say, somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn't have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the world.
TRUMP: He's been one of the worst presidents in the history of our country. I think he's probably going to go down maybe as the worst. We'll see how this all comes out. But he's been one of the worst presidents in history. For him to be calling me out is almost an honor, because he truly doesn't know what he's doing. He's been a very, very weak president.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
ROMANS: A federal judge is allowing a lawsuit against Donald Trump and Trump University to move ahead. Judge Gonzalo Curiel rejected Trump's attempt to get the suit thrown out, ruling that a jury should decide whether Trump had, quote, "knowingly participated in a scheme to defraud former students."
Curiel did order video depositions in this case to remain sealed. He wants to avoid what he called a media frenzy before the trial. Trump has previously attacked this judge's fairness, incorrectly identifying the Indiana-born judge as Mexican.
BERMAN: A big shake up in the Democratic National Committee in the wake of the DNC e-mail hack. The party CEO, CFO, and communications director are all out. This has come as Donna Brazile, our friend, steps in as interim party chair, replacing Debbie Wasserman Schultz who was forced out over revelations from the hacked emails. Sources tell CNN that federal officials believe Russian operatives were behind that hack. President Obama said Monday that even if that is confirmed, it would not significantly worsen the already strained relationship between Russia and the United States.
The Clinton campaign has marked best fund-raising month. They raised $63 million in July. That's a lot of money, culminated in last week's Democratic National Convention. The campaign doesn't receive a surge of $8.7 million in the 24 hours after Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech. At a rally on Monday, Donald Trump said his campaign raised $35.8 million, also a lot of money. He claims much is from small donors.
ROMANS: Hillary Clinton just scoring a Fortune 500 size endorsement, and it's coming from a Republican. Meg Whitman is the chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard. She said, quote, "Donald Trump's demagoguery has undermined the fabric of our national character. America needs the kind of stable and aspirational leadership Secretary Clinton can provide."
Whitman will also donate to the Clinton campaign and a super PAC. She's been a big donor to GOP candidates in the past. She ran for governor of California, as a Republican. Whitman is the third prominent Republican woman to endorse Hillary Clinton in the past three days. A longtime aide to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is backing Clinton and a, former top Jeb Bush adviser is also jumping to the Democrat side.
BERMAN: It's an understatement to say that she's a big Republican donor. She spent $140 million of her own money to run for governor of California. She was a huge donor to Mitt Romney and a close friend of his. She was a huge donor and a big figure in Chris Christie's presidential campaign.
ROMANS: That's right.
BERMAN: So, in addition to being a prominent Republican, in addition to being a big money donor, she's also a woman which also the optics for Donald Trump is troubling this morning --
(CROSSTALK)
ROMANS: On paper, you know, business owners don't want higher minimum wages. They don't want more costs for business. They don't want some of the things that are part in the Hillary Clinton platform. But they are so much more concerned about what they see is inconsistencies and chaos in the Trump economic plan, that they would rather go Hillary's way. At least these few people in the last few days.
BERMAN: All right. Nine minutes after the hour. Mosquitoes spreading the Zika virus to new areas around Miami. A growing concern of new cases reported, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:14:04] ROMANS: All right. Welcome back.
Health officials confirming the new case of the Zika virus in South Florida, bringing the number of infections now to 15. The latest cases outside of the Miami-Dade County where active transmission has been identified the. State health department will now begin aerial spraying of a ten-mile area, in an effort to contain this virus. But there's concern about how effective it will.
Let's get more this morning from CNN's Nick Valencia. He's in Miami for us.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Florida governor and the CDC both say to expect even more cases of the Zika virus to be locally transmitted in Miami. Part of the issue, according to the CDC, is that mosquitoes in this area may be resistant to the insecticides that are being sprayed by health officials. Here on the streets in Wynwood, which is ground zero for the local transmission, just north of downtown Miami, reaction is mixed even those who must be most concerned, pregnant women.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We recently went on vacation. We didn't travel to the Caribbean because of the Zika, just so I wouldn't get exposed to them.
[04:15:05] But I mean, I live here. I'm not going to move. So -- and I'm not going to stop living my life. So (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wasn't aware of it jumping to 14. I know this is ground zero for the initial four cases.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think that's completely nerve-racking. It's scary. I don't know what to say about it. It's just -- I don't know what to do.
VALENCIA: In an interview earlier with the director of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, I was told that that reaction area is not in the cases that have been announced here so far in South Florida. Some of them were discovered by random door-to-door community surveys. State officials and the CDC has a team here. They expect to continue those surveys in the days ahead.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: All right. Nick, thanks so much.
The Delaware Supreme Court has declared the state's death penalty law is unconstitutional. The court ruled that judges rather than juries are given too large a role in imposing death sentences and it violates the requirements laid out by the U.S. Supreme Court. The state can appeal to the decision, but legal experts say that's highly unlikely. Capital punishment has been abolished in 18 other states.
ROMANS: Authorities in Central California investigating the deadly crash of a charter bus that went off a highway and into a signpost. Five people were killed and more than a dozen others injured. The pole sliced the bus nearly in half. Police have been unable to speak to the driver because of his injuries. The bus company has been cited for more than 40 violations over the past two years, seven of them specifically for the bus that crashed.
BERMAN: Officials in California are blaming a legal campfire for setting off a deadly wildfire. Authorities say the fire was apparently built around July 22nd and then abandoned in the state park. The persons responsible for the blaze could face criminal and civil penalties. The flame scorched more than 40 acres of land in the Big Sur area. A bulldozer driver died in the fire and at least 57 homes were destroyed.
ROMANS: All right. Severe thunderstorms ahead for the Midwest today. Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri has more on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, John and Christine, you think of California, this region in particular, around the Monterey Peninsula, among the most challenging landscapes for firefighters to be working in when it comes to the mountains there. Over 44,000 acres consumed. You look at the area in decades it's steadily increased since 2012. The latest data indicating 1,000 acre or larger fires every single year.
Another story we're following, what's happening down across portions of the Caribbean. Earl is sitting down out there as a tropical storm forecast to become a hurricane. Land fall around Belize Thursday morning. Again, not a big time rainmaker, plenty of rain, though, and speaking of rain, along this frontal boundary this afternoon, some storms or thunderstorms could begin to pop up.
Along with this, high pressure is setting up shop around portions of the gulf as it does. We get a nice strong surge of here. Moisture content is up. Dallas, 132 degrees by Thursday afternoon. Atlanta, mid-90s. even Washington makes it up into the mid-90s. The place to be New York City, upper 70s, low 80s -- guys.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: That's could be meet because that's where we are.
Thank you so much for that, Pedram.
Ivanka Trump addressing the issue of sexual harassment after comments by her father and one of her brothers placed her in a middle of a debate about how a woman could or should respond to being sexually harassed in the workplace.
In a FOX News interview, Ivanka called harassment inexcusable.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
IVANKA TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP'S DAUGHTER: I think sexual harassment is inexcusable in any setting. I think harassment in general, regardless, sexual or otherwise, is totally unreasonable. If it transpires, it needs to be reported and it needs to be dealt with on a company level.
We have a very strong HR team at the Trump organization who is equipped to deal with these issues if they arise. You hope they never arise. You hope you have a culture in which they don't arise. But when they do, it needs to be dealt with swiftly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Donald Trump, her dad, has said he thought Ivanka would, quote, "find another career or another company if she were harassed workplace." And Eric Trump called Ivanka a powerful woman who would never let herself being harassed by a boss. Both of those comments raising a lot of eyebrows from people who said, wait a minute, it's a woman's responsibility to take herself out of that situation, it's not the company's responsibility to make sure there's no harassment in the first place?
BERMAN: That's right. It's victim blaming in some ways is what people are saying.
All right. Ready or not, the Olympic torch arrives in Rio today. Two days from the beginning of the Olympics. We go live there, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:24:07] ROMANS: In just few hours, the Olympic torch will arrive at its final destination in the Rio de Janeiro, site of the 2016 games. The torch is expected to circulate through the city over the next two days, leading to the opening ceremony. That's on Friday. Meantime, the first Olympic events begin today.
CNN's Christina Macfarlane is live for us in Brazil this morning where it's still predawn.
Good morning, Christina.
CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine.
Yes, amidst all the buildup, all the hype, all the problems leading up to this Olympic Games, finally, the first event gets underway. And it will be the women's soccer matches that we'll see. First up will be Sweden against South Africa. And later in the day, will be the reigning World Cup champions and the Olympic gold medalist, the USA against New Zealand.
You know, the organizers themselves are very keen for these sports to get under way. I mentioned all of the problems we've seen in the buildup, Zika, of course, the Russian doping scandal, polluted waters.
[04:25:07] And even today as the torch is making its way to Rio, where it's set to arrive in several hours time, it's been stopped by protesters for the third time on its journey here. For the third time someone has tried to extinguish the torch.
So, I think as I say, everyone here, all of the organizers very happy for these sports to get under way so they can shift focus to the more positive aspects of the games.
ROMANS: I would say. All right. Christina Macfarlane for us this morning in Rio -- thank you for that.
BERMAN: USA versus New Zealand, we're taking them down, taking the kiwis down. "Lord of the Rings", forget "Lord of the Rings". They're going down.
All right. Developing news this morning, North Korea has reportedly launched a ballistic missile that landed in the Sea of Japan, near Japanese controlled waters. Japan's prime minister calls this a grave threat to his country. This is just a latest in the series of missile launches by Pyongyang, in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
ROMANS: President Obama administration secretly sent $400 million in cash to Iran in January, the same time four detained Americans in Tehran were released. That according to "The Wall Street Journal".
The paper reports the cash was meant as a way to resolve a decades-old dispute over an aborted arms deal back in the 1970s. U.S. officials denied the money was linked to the release of those prisoners but did say Iranian negotiators involved in the prisoner exchange wanted cash to show they gained something tangible.
BERMAN: All right. Big campaign news overnight. Staffers inside the Trump campaign whispering to CNN reporters that there is turmoil, upheaval, that they're frustrated with their candidate. What does this all mean? That's next.
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