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New Day

Are Carson's Rivals Denouncing Muslim Comments?; Bono's Mission to End Extreme Poverty; Woman Who Attempted to Assassinate Pres. Ford Speaks Out. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired September 22, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:31:02] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Dr. Ben Carson just drew a big old line in the sand. He says a Muslim should not be president. Last night, you know, the word in the prompter is backtrack. I wouldn't say that. I'd say he kind of qualified saying, well maybe he could support a Muslim for president if he or she swears to put the Constitution ahead of their religion, like every elected official has to, by the way, and rejects Sharia, as if all Muslims live under Sharia. So what are Carson's rivals doing about this rhetoric?

We have Amanda Carpenter, CNN political commentator and former communications director for Senate Ted Cruz, and CNN political commentator Kevin Madden, who is a Republican strategist.

Kevin, I start with you. Alisyn and I were just discussing how to do this segment -

KEVIN MADDEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

CUOMO: And the notion is - the CNN debate was a formative event in this race. It changed the field. It changed who's at the top and who's coming up on them. Could this be the next formative event because you have one big group of appeal chasing the frontrunners with totally different positions on tolerance?

MADDEN: Yes, I don't know. I - look, I don't - I don't look at campaigns as really events as much as I look at a processes. So I think it was part of the process. I think this is going to bring the kind of scrutiny to the Ben Carson campaign that, as we've seen with some of the way they've handled it, he's clearly not ready for. And I think other campaigns are - who are looking at Ben Carson like he's holding on to this like 25 percent of the - of the Republican electorate right now, they're more than willing to watch him, you know, have to explain this because, ultimately, they want those voters to fall to him.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Huh. Amanda, there have been a bunch of GOP contenders who have come out and either condemned or backed away from what Ben Carson has said, including Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Jeb Bush. Lindsey Graham was quite forceful. He said, I think Dr. Carson needs to apologize. But Donald Trump has taken a different tact. He sounds as though he's given support to Ben Carson. Let's listen to what Donald Trump said about this last night. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (voice-over): Ben was saying there are difficulties. And I think everybody knows what those difficulties are. And people want to be politically correct. But there have been difficulties. And a lot of people agree with Ben.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Look, Amanda, this is what Ben Carson's people and Donald Trump keep saying is, we're not going to be politically correct. This is just about political correctness. How do you see it?

AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I don't think Donald Trump has a choice. He was arguably the highest profile birther in America over the last five years. I mean I think everyone forgets the fact that he was on cable TV all the time demanding President Obama produce the birth certificate. So when someone stands up at a New Hampshire rally and asks him a question like that, gosh, Donald Trump is playing footsie with this issue at every venue possible. So I don't see there's any way he could bush back on that question.

And I'm happy to see him get the scrutiny. I'm happy to see Ben Carson get the scrutiny because, quite frankly, this isn't the first objectionable thing he's said.

MADDEN: Right.

CARPENTER: He's all over the map on so many issues. In the debate he's talking about competing minimum wage. He's talked about installing federal monitors in classrooms to make sure there's no liberal bias. He said people should voluntarily opt out of Social Security to make the system more solvent. He needs some scrutiny because the second, you know, number two status that he's enjoyed this far has not been earned.

CUOMO: Well, Kevin, you end - you did the end run on me there on the event versus process thing. Let me come at it a different way though.

MADDEN: Yes.

CUOMO: Do you think this issue may tighten up the difference between Carson and Trump and the rest of the field? At least with Fiorina, who gave an incredibly intelligent and inclusive answer about what the role of faith should be for its leaders. Do you think we may see a contraction based on this?

MADDEN: Yes, I - look, I think it's - I think it will take place over time. And Ron Brownstein made a point earlier that I agree with. I think there's a bit of a fissure right now within this - within this field. There is two candidates and Trump and Carson who seem to be defining their candidacies based on what they're against. I ultimately believe that is destined to fail.

The other part of the campaign, which is the other part of the field, which is, they're very focused on promoting their candidacies based on what their for and what their vision for America is. One that's a unifying vision. People may disagree with it, but they are - they are absolutely defining their candidacies that way.

[08:35:05] I think ultimately one thing after the other, as Amanda pointed out, there are a number of issues that are going to add up for Ben Carson where people are going to have very serious doubts about his readiness, about his judgment as a potential president and ultimately it will - I think the rest of the - the support will come back to the rest - to the - to that other half of the field.

CAMEROTA: Well, but, I mean, Amanda, very quickly, doesn't this also hurt the rest of the field because there's people like John Kasich who are trying to have a substantive policy discussion but keep having to address these conflagrations?

CARPENTER: Well, certainly. And the way that Donald Trump and Ben Carson have controlled the media narrative is unfortunate for so many other candidates. But I want to jump on a comment that Chris mentioned about whether we're going to see a contraction in the field. Well we immediately saw the field contract yesterday with the departure of Scott Walker who said in no subtle terms that he's doing this to unify the anti-Trump, you know, and anti-Carson, too, I'm sure he meant, vote. He dropped out so that there could be some coalescing around some kind of unifying candidate that probably has a more positive vision for America. So that's already happened quite dramatically.

CAMEROTA: All right. There you go.

MADDEN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Amanda Carpenter, Kevin Madden, thanks so much. Great to get your perspectives on all of this.

MADDEN: Great to be with you.

CAMEROTA: Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: The front man of U2 showing he has a heart of gold. Bono fights for a good cause. You're going to find out what it is and why it is so important to him when NEW DAY returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Here we go with the five things you need to know for your NEW DAY.

At number one, we're showing you live pictures of Pope Francis celebrating his final mass right now in Cuba's most precious shrine. This afternoon, he will arrive in Washington, D.C., to begin his visit. His first visit to the United States.

[08:40:06] Ben Carson saying now he's absolutely standing by his belief a Muslim should not be president. He now acknowledges he could support a Muslim leader if they swear to put the Constitution before their religion and renounce Sharia law. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has officially dropped his bid for the White House. He is, in fact, encouraging others to do the same and follow in his footsteps.

Two inmates who used bed sheets to escape from a Louisville, Kentucky, prison are back behind bars. Twenty-nine-year-old Matthew Johnson, 37- year-old Christopher Cornelius. They were captured just hours after their daring escape according to a local station.

China's president, Xi Jinping, headed to the U.S. today as tensions between Washington and Beijing continue to run high. He is expected to meet with President Obama this week to talk economy, climate change and cybercrime.

For more on the five things, be sure to visit newdaycnn.com.

With the pope arriving in the U.S. today, all eyes will be on his United Nations address on Friday. The issue of extreme poverty is expected to be front and center. For U2's Bono, the issue has been a life's work. CNN caught up with the rock star in between U2's U.S. and European tours. And while he says progress on eradicating extreme poverty is happening, there's still a whole lot more work to be done.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA (voice-over): This is how most people know Bono, as the electrifying rock star for the band U2. But away from the lights, this is Bono's other main stage - the continent of Africa.

BONO, LEAD SINGER U2/ACTIVIST: I started to work for Nelson Mandela. And he said, you know, poverty is not natural. It is manmade. And it can be overcome.

Poverty's a - it's an easy word to throw around. But it's not - it's not simple to understand. It can be, you know, a famine or it can be conflict. But the thing that really offends us is I suppose when there are structures in place that keep people poor. That's the thing that's - that really gets me going.

PEREIRA: CNN met up exclusively with Bono in Lagos, Nigeria, after a stop in Rwanda, where a small bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation saw firsthand the progress and the plight facing first responders on the ground. It had been ten years since Bono visited Rwanda, but he promised that he'd be back.

BONO: When I first went into Rwanda, we had finally got across the line, universal access to ARVs, AIDS drugs. And I was in a hospital, a teaching hospital, in Kagali (ph). And I witnessed six people on a bed, three of them patients, under the bed, on top of the bed. The despair of people receiving their diagnosis and realizing it was a death sentence. So an accident of geography, literally where you live, was deciding whether you live.

PEREIRA: Bono also made a promise to this woman, a nurse.

BONO: What's your name? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

BONO: This is actually Florence Nightingale.

PEREIRA: A decade later, the two were reunited.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You promised me you would come back again. Nobody comes more than once. Here you are again.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D), MEMBER OF CONGRESSIONAL TRIP TO AFRICA: Here he is.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) I'm glad you (ph).

COONS: It was very moving, challenging for me to realize just how significant the gap is in the quality of care available here and the quality of care available in this which really is Rwanda's best children's hospital.

PEREIRA: Senator Chris Coons of Delaware was on the trip. A trip that comes ahead of the pope addressing the United Nations General Assembly, where eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 is expected to be one of the top global development goals.

PEREIRA (on camera): That is a big goal.

COONS: It's a big goal.

PEREIRA: Is it realistic?

COONS: That ambitious goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 is entirely possible. If we wisely deploy the development dollars, the assistance that's provided by the United States and many other western countries, and if we embrace and leverage the power of the private sector -

BONO: You can be whatever you want to be.

I'm not really motivated by charity as much as I am motivated by justice. That's where I came in. Christ only speaks of judgment once. It's about the way we will treat the poor. So I think it's the second most important theme of the - of the scriptures after redemption is how we treat the poor. So I'm just doing what I'm told.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[08:45:01] PEREIRA: According to the one campaign there are nearly 11 million people living in Africa today who now have access to live- saving HIV/AIDS medication. That is an incredible accomplishment if you consider that in 2002 only 100,000 had access, Alisyn. Incredible progress.

CAMEROTA: That is incredible. He just continues to do amazing work.

PEREIRA: Sure does.

CAMEROTA: That's a great story, Michaela. Thanks so much.

Well, 40 years ago today Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford. Now she's talking about what drove her to try to kill him. Her answers are still just as shocking today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: An apple a day is the American way when it comes to our kids. In today's "New Day New You," apple's account for 29 percent of the fruit eaten by children and teenagers in the U.S. Bananas come in second. According to a study in "The Journal of Pediatrics," the average child eats about 1.2 cups of fruit a day. That is within the guidelines recommended by the doctors. That is the good news.

The bad news, a third of our kids are getting their fruit from juice. The number rises to 41 percent in children five years old and younger. Nutritionists say fruit juice lacks the fiber and nutrition of whole fruit and it's typically loaded with sugar contributing to rising child obesity rate.

We'll be back in a moment.

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[08:50:24] 40 years ago today, Sara Jane Moore aimed a gun at President Gerald Ford in San Francisco and fired a single bullet. The bullet missed Ford by inches. That attempt came just 17 days after another woman, a Charles Manson follower, tried to assassinate Ford.

Sara Jane Moore received a life sentence for the attempted assassination but she was released on parole in 2007 and Sara Jane Moore is now speaking out and joins us this morning.

Sara, thanks so much for being on NEW DAY. You say that it's been 40 years, as we all know, today but yet you remember that day of the attempted assassination vividly. Tell us what you remember. What drove you to want to try to assassinate President Ford?

SARA JANE MOORE, ATTEMPTED PRESIDENT FORD ASSASSINATION: Well, everybody asks that and the thing is that everybody was talking about it. They say where did you get the idea? I don't know about the rest of the country, but in San Francisco people were saying this all the time.

No. 1, we elect our presidents. We don't appoint them. And Gerald Ford was appointed and he was appointed by a crook, if you will pardon the expression. So it wasn't a unique feeling. It was partly that there were other people who had talked about it, who I thought were much more important to what we were thinking of as a revolution and we really truly thought there was going to be one. And I thought somebody like me, I was a nobody, it would be better coming from somebody like me and not destroying these people who I felt were leaders and if they did this, it would destroy their leadership.

CAMEROTA: So you missed. Obviously. And how long after you fired that bullet did the sort of realization, the enormity of what you tried to do, dawn on you?

MOORE: Oh, I think the enormity of it had dawned on me before. As I said in a letter that I wrote to President Ford later that, I think life - well, life was more important then than it is now. It wasn't, you know, sort of an awesome decision to make a decision to take somebody's life. I don't think people feel like that now. But at the time it was. So the decision ahead of time -- The thing that surprised me, and this probably sounds very silly, is I was concerned about the publicity but only in the Bay Area. It never occurred to me that this was a story that was going to go all over the world.

CAMEROTA: Oh my gosh.

MOORE: Yeah.

CAMEROTA: You served more than 30 years in prison. You got out in 2000 --

MOORE: More than 32 years.

CAMEROTA: More than 32 years. You got out of prison in 2007. You then were given five years of parole. Are you still on parole?

MOORE: Yes, I am. The rules say that after five years of clear conduct, you're like a mandatory release. You are supposed to be released from parole. And I am now seven years of clear conduct and have yet to be released from parole.

CAMEROTA: And why is that? I mean, I believe that you have gone on and proven as best you can to the court that you are now an upstanding citizen. You have turned over a new leaf. So what do they tell you?

MOORE: Well, I was always a pretty good citizen. Let's not talk about turning over a new leaf. Nothing. The first time that they turned me down I was shocked because one would have thought the incident had happened the day before the way they talked about me and I just was in total shock. And they repeated much the same this time. They are supposed to release you unless they feel that you are going to commit another offense. And I don't know what offense I would commit. Jaywalking perhaps.

CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, there you have it. I say you have turned over a new leaf and you bristle at that. But you tried to kill the president of the United States back then.

MOORE: Yes. But it makes it sound like I was a totally different person. And I was pretty much the person I am now. Had gotten into something over my head. I will admit that. Had quit listening to reason. So for a little while I was a different person. But in terms of being your ordinary normal citizen who gets up and goes to work and, you know -- I think the most -- Yeah, I think the only (INAUDIBLE) I had before, I had gotten a ticket for jaywalking.

CAMEROTA: Oh my goodness. You feel that you've served your time, you spent 32 years in prison and now five years on parole. Please keep us posted and let us know what happens. 40 years after the attempted assassination of President Ford. Sara Jane Moore, thanks so much.

Let's get over to Chris.

[08:55:01] CUOMO: All righty then. How about we end the show on a little bit of "The Good Stuff?" Coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: "Good stuff." Air Canada pilot turned around a transoceanic flight loaded with passengers. Why? To save a dog. Simba, French bulldog, was in the cargo hole of the plane. Heating system malfunctioned. Temperatures could have dropped dozens of degrees below zero spelling the end of anything that was in the cargo hole. The pilot knew that and diverted to Germany. Simba's daddy? Overjoyed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's my dog, like child, it's everything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: The delay cost the passengers 75 minutes and the airline ten of thousands of dollars. Aviation experts say the captain did the right thing.

PEREIRA: Absolutely.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The captain is responsible for all lives on board, whether it be human life or even canine life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That's wonderful.

CUOMO: Any of you want to take the other side of this proposition?

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: There is no other side. Way to go Air Canada. Way to go pilot. That was funny -

(LAUGHTER)

PEREIRA: I'm against dogs. I'm against airplanes.

CUOMO: My time matters.

PEREIRA: We're all together on this.

All right. Time for "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello.