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Presidential Race for 2016; Interview with Music Icon Gloria Gaynor. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired August 13, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:33:13] MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, here are the five things you need to know for your NEW DAY.

At number one, a series of violent explosions at a Chinese warehouse. The death toll now rising to 50, more than 700 others injured. The warehouse handled hazardous material. This has forced firefighters to back away.

A new CNN/ORC poll shows Donald Trump dominating Republican rivals in the critical state of Iowa. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton beating rival stander (ph) Bernie Sanders despite that e-mail server scandal.

President Jimmy Carter is battling cancer. Doctors detecting the disease during an operation to remove a mass from his liver. The 90- year-old former president confirming this cancer has now spread to other parts of his body.

ISIS is claiming responsibility for a deadly blast in Baghdad where a truck bomb exploded in a crowded market. CNN is confirming 36 dead, 75 others injured. The death toll is expected to rise.

Mariners pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma throwing a no-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles. The first no-hitter in the American League in three years.

You can get more on the five things to know by visiting newdaycnn.com for the freshest.

Now, in today's "New Day, New You," music may calm your nerves if you are having surgery. Check it out. Researchers at Queen Mary University of London found that patients who listened to music before and after an operation were less anxious and needed less pain relief. It did not reduce the length of the hospital stay, though. Why did the music work? Well, researchers say it's a good distraction from stress. The research examined about 7,000 patients. One caveat, though. They say probably not listen to heavy metal and rap music. The sounds have to be soothing. I'd argue that A Tribe Called Quest is just fine by me.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: TCQ.

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: I was going to say, that heavy metal music.

PEREIRA: That's all I'm saying.

CUOMO: Q-tip did have a very soothing voice. Still does. A good man. A good man.

CABRERA: You're showing your age.

CUOMO: I'm not (ph).

[08:35:02] CABRERA: All right, well, the new CNN polls showing what you already know, and that is Donald Trump is still on top. He has not lost any steam in Iowa, but Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, they're also getting a bump. There are some others, though, seeing their stars fade. Who could be in trouble in the 2016 race? We'll discuss.

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CABRERA: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, they are the front runners right now in the 2016 presidential race despite some poll numbers that are shifting. So a mere 15 months until the election, whose stock is climbing, who's in trouble and is it just too early to say for sure? With us this morning, Carl Bernstein, CNN political commentator, long time journalist and also the guy who has all the expertise for us this morning.

Carl, thank you for being with us.

Let's take a look that this new poll from Iowa first on the Republican side. And you can see where some of those numbers are changing. We have Donald Trump on top. Walker, who was on top, is now back down in third. Carson's moved up. Fiorina's come out of nowhere. Bush is way down. When you look at this poll, who's in trouble?

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: First of all, I think the key word you said is 15 months. So let's not put too much stock in today's polls.

[08:40:03] CABRERA: Right.

BERNSTEIN: I think the person who is in trouble is Jeb Bush. In some ways he hasn't caught fire. Scott Walker's campaign is tanking. He's not connecting with people. We know that anecdotally, as well as what we see in those Iowa polls. He's not where he expected to be.

CABRERA: And why is that?

BERNSTEIN: I - I - you'll have to talk to the people of Iowa and the registered Republicans for that - that answer.

But let me try something different. The big beneficiary of this environment, this changing environment is Joe Biden if he chooses to enter the race. He's looking at it right now. His people believe he may do it. Some say yes, some say no. But the distrust factor with Hillary Clinton, the whole Trump excitement and bubble that will probably burst gives a great opportunity to Biden to capture the imagination of the press, of this race, of democrats who don't want to see Hillary Clinton, who are worried about the distrust factor with her.

And one thing that I keep hearing about Biden is that if he were to declare and say because age is such a problem for him if he does, I want to be a one-term president. I want to serve for four years, unite Washington. I've dealt with the Republicans in Congress all my public life. I think there's a conversation going on to that effect among his aides and friends. It could light fire to the current political environment.

PEREIRA: Carl Bernstein may be being a vice president advisor here. This - I like what you've done -

BERNSTEIN: No, no, I - I'm telling - I'm telling - I do that from talking to people. I'm not in the business of advising -

PEREIRA: I do like what you're suggesting, though. I know.

BERNSTEIN: I - you - I'm not in the business of advising candidates. I'd be terrible at it. That's why I wrote a book about Hillary Clinton, the standard biography, and I don't give her advice either.

PEREIRA: But I do appreciate what you're saying, is talking about - instead of looking at who's failing is, who's getting an opportunity for this. Because as - as you say, we're in the first yards of a marathon. We're not even in the first mile. It's such a long way to go. But this is a time when we see sort of a sloughing off. We've already seen that Rick Perry, for example, didn't even make the graphic on our - on our CNN poll here because he's at 1 percent. We understand that he stopped paying campaign staffers. This is the time when we start seeing some of this occur, correct?

BERNSTEIN: That's correct. But the thing that was unforeseen was the Trump phenomenon and how it is shaking up the whole environment in both parties. What we need to keep our eye on is, who could be elected in a general election. And that means someone who might not just appeal to the Republican base in Iowa, but to the country at large. And for that you have to look at what's happening with Fiorina, you have to look at what's happening with Kasich, in particular, who is a very different kind of Republican, who said he'll take Medicaid funds, who has a different position on immigration than those who are pandering to appealing to the base.

The other surprise I think is Rubio, who has painted himself so far to the right, who has put abortion so front and center in this campaign, as to render his candidacy unelectable probably in terms of the general electorate, no matter how articulate he might have appeared in that debate.

But let's go back to the surprises. The surprise is that both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are in trouble with their bases to some extent. Hillary's support -

CABRERA: Why do you think Hillary's in trouble when you look at that - the poll in Iowa and she has 50 percent of the majority supporting her there? BERNSTEIN: I - I think - let's say something about Iowa. The idea that

about a couple thousand people have the power of tens of millions of people in this country to vote says something about how screwed up this political system is and about our electorate - electoral process. And once we get past Iowa and past New Hampshire, which we will, there will be some relative sanity and balance restored to the electoral process. But they're disproportionate role (ph). Those two states can't be ignored.

But Hillary is in trouble because she has done damage to herself that her enemies are taking advantage of the situation with the server. She might get some good news because Bush has his owns, to a server, quote, problem. He too used a private server. There's a story in "The Washington Post" today about it. He discussed National Guard deployments, I believe, in the Middle East on that server.

At the same time, Hillary's server shenanigans, for lack of a better word at the time, and it goes deeper than that, are going to continue to plague her because - because what happened is real.

[08:45:05] CUOMO: Right.

BERNSTEIN: And what happened is that classified information, which should have remained classified, went across this server and we don't know how and whether it was compromised. But if you look at Hillary Clinton's own comments about people being prosecuted for breaching national security through leaks and through their servers being inadequate -

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: The concern is obvious.

BERNSTEIN: -- even though you're talking about -

CUOMO: The concern is obvious.

BERNSTEIN: -- private (INAUDIBLE) and others. It's a problem and it's not going to go away. But again, I come back to Biden.

CUOMO: Thank you very much, Carl Bernstein. Let's see what happens in the week ahead. Seems to go one week at a time. Appreciate it.

PEREIRA: Very special guest coming up. One of the best known songs of all time, topping the charts of 1979. Wait for it - Gloria Gaynor is here.

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[08:50:07] (VIDEO PLAYING: GLORIA GAYNOR SINGING "I WILL SURVIVE")

CUOMO: The tune, the 'tude. I should have changed that stupid lock. I should have made you leave your key and now I've got the one and only Gloria Gaynor sitting across from me. That's why I don't write songs. What a pleasure to have you here.

GLORIA GAYNOR, LEGENDARY MUSIC ICON: Thank you. Great to be here.

CUOMO: Such a big part of a moment in culture, a moment in time. Do you know that?

GAYNOR: I think so.

CUOMO: When you hear the song -- Now I know you still play it whenever you're going to perform, I know it's part of how you see your musical history -- But what does the song mean to you now?

GAYNOR: It means a lot to me because I've found that it is the foundation for my purpose.

CUOMO: Foundation for your purpose. You called the song to me a "divine appointment."

GAYNOR: A divine appointment. Right.

CUOMO: How so?

GAYNOR: Well, I was asked by the record company to record another song and when I went to the producers, they made a deal with the record company to write the B side. I said, well, so what's the B side? They said, well, what do you want it to be? What do you like to sing? What kind of emotions? All that. After that conversation they said you're the one we've been waiting for to record this song we wrote two years ago.

CUOMO: And they use the word "anthem" for this song, you know, something that is about purpose, that is about perseverance.

GAYNOR: Right.

CUOMO: What did you take from it early on?

GAYNOR: Exactly that. When I read the lyrics, I was standing there in a back brace after having had surgery on my spine. I had a performance at the Beacon Theater in New York, fell down, and went out to breakfast, woke up the next morning paralyzed from the waist down. So I'd had surgery on my spine, I'm standing there in a back brace reading these lyrics, relating that situation to this, that I will survive this ordeal, and the fact that my mother had recently passed away, something I never thought I'd survive. So if I'm relating these things to this song that's really about unrequited love, other people would do the same thing, I thought.

CUOMO: Is it disco, this song?

GAYNOR: It's set to disco music.

CUOMO: It's set to disco music. Disco is kind of a dirty word, isn't it? But it was the disco era and people always want to put stink on disco and yet, one of our most famous songs of empowerment - not just some catchy, you know, not just some catchy tune - is disco. Does that fit?

GAYNOR: Not at all. First of all, I've always believed that the backlash on disco was orchestrated.

CUOMO: Oh.

GAYNOR: By someone whose bottom line was being negatively affected by the advancements and popularity of disco music.

CUOMO: So you buy into the whole Chicago White Sox, that night that disco supposedly died, that the rock labels had paid DJs and people to bad-mouth disco - you buy it.

GAYNOR: Absolutely. For one simple reason. I'm analytical enough to have looked at that situation and thought, if they hated disco music, why did that have all those records to burn?

CUOMO: What pops out to you about what you want to remember about the '70s in a good way and in a not-so-good way?

GAYNOR: What stands out to me, what I want to remember in a good way is that there was camaraderie and we had a coming together of people on the dance floor and then off the dance floor and then in the cities and communities around the world. What stands out to me that I don't want to remember is that we got caught up in a sort of pseudoinnocence and started doing things that were not good for us, overindulging in alcohol and drugs.

CUOMO: Well, that's part of the stink, that disco music, you could only enjoy it if you were high, you know, that it was about excess, it was about Studio 54 and the drugs and --

GAYNOR: Those things were attached to the music. So those people were doing -- listening to disco music and they did that, that wasn't a fault of the music.

CUOMO: So when you're thinking back, who did you love back then?

GAYNOR: I loved Thelma Houston with "Don't Leave Me This Way." I loved Donna Summer's "Mac Arthur Park." My all-time favorite song to dance to was "Brick House."

CUOMO: Oh. What a song. Right?

GAYNOR: Yeah.

CUOMO: Mighty, mighty. And do you feel satisfied - By the way, you should know, fans out there, Gloria is getting ready to record a new album. You're doing Christian music, though, now?

GAYNOR: Yes. Yes.

CUOMO: And that's closer to your heart and your passion -

GAYNOR: You know, it's definitely Christian music, it's definitely Christian based, but the sound, the lyrics are inspirational, can apply to anyone. Of course, Christ applies to anyone if they want him. But --

CUOMO: You don't have to be a Christian to like the music.

GAYNOR: You don't have to be a Christian to like the music.

CUOMO: Because it's coming out of you and you've got a beautiful voice and you accept that you have a place in history, the '70s and beyond.

GAYNOR: Absolutely.

CUOMO: Thank you for the gift of something that makes us feel in our heart and our head that we can overcome.

[08:55:00] GAYNOR: Thank you, Chris.

CUOMO: We need this song probably today more than we've ever needed it.

GAYNOR: Thank you.

CUOMO: Gloria Gaynor.

GAYNOR: Bless you.

CUOMO: What a pleasure.

GAYNOR: My pleasure.

CUOMO: All right. I don't have to remind you of this, but please tune in tonight for the season finale of "THE SEVENTIES." It will be 9:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

More "Good Stuff" coming up.

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CUOMO: Today's "Good Stuff" is a tale of unbelievable honesty. Listen to this. A Georgia woman recently took her grandkids to the NASCAR Hall of Fame. That's nice. Bought them a souvenir. That's nicer. It was a pencil and eraser. Grand total: $2.66. When she got home, she discovered there was an extra eraser in the bag. How do we know? Because she mailed a handwritten letter to the store along with a check for $2. The clerks were so shocked, they called the phone number on the check.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, you could have just kept the extra eraser and it would all have been OK.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (on the phone): Listen, I've got somebody I have to answer to. We call him the Lord. And I wanted to be honest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Yes, she does.

CUOMO: She didn't want to be honest, she was honest. Needless to say, the store is not going to cash the check.

PEREIRA: It has been wonderful having you here with us this week.

CABRERA: Well, hey, it's been fun, guys.

PEREIRA: Come visit us again soon.

CABRERA: Thank you. I know Alisyn's been here in spirit the whole time.