Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Trump Targets Carson in 95-Minute Rant; U.S. Drone Strike Targets "Jihadi John"; 43 Dead in Beirut Suicide Bombings. Aired 6:30- 7a ET

Aired November 13, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: -- and CNN political director, David Chalian.

[06:30:04] Even by Trump's standards, Mr. Louis, this was unusual. What is the strategy here?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think the strategy is to stop losing new cycles, or being left out of new cycles. That doesn't work for Donald Trump. He's running as a celebrity candidate. There's nothing wrong with that.

But what can go wrong with that strategy is if all of a sudden we're talking about Marco Rubio, we're talking about Ted Cruz, we're talking about actual foreign policy in sort of a realistic approach to the presidency, then all of a sudden, Donald Trump gets shuffled off to the side and that won't work for him.

He's been leading in the polls pretty consistently but others are creeping up. And I think he knows as well as anybody else, certainly the people on his team know, that's not a strategy that you can just sit and watch for 80 days. We have 80 days to go. That's an eternity in politics.

He can get passed between now and the Iowa caucuses. He clearly doesn't want that to happen.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: David, it was such a remarkable event that Trump had last night, it even included at one moment a re- enactment of what happened to Ben Carson. So, let's watch that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He took a knife and he went after a friend and he lunged -- he lunged that knife into the stomach of his friend. But lo and behold, it hit the belt. It hit the belt. And the knife broke.

Give me a break. Give me a break. Give me a break. The knife broke.

Let me tell you, I'm pretty good at this stuff. So, I have a belt. Somebody hits you in the belt, the knife is going in because the belt moves this way, it moves this way, it moves that way. He hit the belt buckle.

Anybody have a knife, want to try it on me?

Believe me, it ain't going to work. You're going to be successful. But he took the knife and he went like this and he plunged it into the belt. And amazingly, the belt stayed totally flat and the knife broke.

How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: David, I don't even know where to begin. I mean, let's just start with how stupid are the people of Iowa and the people of the country. Is that his new strategy?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Right. I don't think he's actually calling the people of Iowa stupid. How stupid would you be if you believed this story of Ben Carson.

CUOMO: You better hope that's how it's taken by the way.

CHALIAN: Exactly. So, that would be dangerous if he started insulting voters' intelligence. That's not a way to win votes, there's no doubt about that.

CAMEROTA: Right.

CHALIAN: Let's be honest about what we saw, some of the most compelling political theater we've ever seen in our lives, right? Let's not forget Donald Trump is a captivating force and he was in rare form last night. You were talking about the strategy about this, guys.

Make no mistake about why this happened in Iowa. This is where Ben Carson is providing the stiffest challenge to Donald Trump in this lead kickoff state. And Ben Carson with these stories about his biography has provided what is probably the biggest opening possible of the entire campaign for Trump to go after him.

So, we've seen Trump do this with other candidates when Jeb Bush was his main competition, he was vociferous in taking down Jeb Bush. Now, Ben Carson has provided an opening and Donald Trump in Iowa said, I am going to take that opening full force.

CUOMO: There's a risk though.

CHALIAN: There is.

CUOMO: There is a risk, because what's happening now is the candidates are starting to share ideas about things.

Yes, Dr. Carson has been dealing with his past a little bit. But the calculation, Errol, is, is this the right way to re-establish himself at the right time in the right place?

Carly Fiorina's response? Let's play what we said. Do we have the sound?

CAMEROTA: It's actually a full screen, because she posted it on Facebook. So, I will read it to you.

It says, "Donald, sorry, I've got to interrupt again. You would know something about pathological. How was that meeting with Putin or Wharton or yourself funded campaign? Anyone can turn a multimillion dollar inheritance into more money, but all the money in the world won't make you as smart as Ben Carson."

That's a clever response.

LOUIS: Yes, and it includes a lot of what the knocks on Donald Trump have been, including the fact that he inherited a lot of money in order to start his financial empire and so forth.

But, no, I don't think, look, there's an undeniable amount of absurdity to Ben Carson's claims. You know, I mean, that it reached this point is somewhat of a failure of the process, that he was to vociferously argue that, yes, I was a maniac as a kid, you know? And for people to vote for him or vote against him because he wasn't really a maniac, it's a very strange situation.

Donald Trump, though, I think is purely trying to get headlines. And in this case, using what "The New York Times" politely calls a barnyard epithet of the speech. You know, sort of cussing and saying outrageous things and the stunt with the belt buckle, it's going to get him, you know, sort of a lot of play going into the weekend and into the Sunday shows.

[06:35:05] And this is what Donald Trump needs. He needs to be talked about. He needs to be a player. He needs to be sort of captivating, because without that --

CUOMO: Doesn't it matter how? You know, when these guys are starting to debate issues and positions and things, don't you have to be in the mix on that level?

LOUIS: I'm not so sure about that to be honest with you. Think back to four years ago when Santorum came from behind and crept up on Romney and beat him in the Iowa caucuses, it wasn't because of policy differences. It was because Santorum went from county to country in the rural areas that everybody was ignoring and made contact with people and talked with them.

And so, you know, there's not a whole lot of difference between these candidates on immigration, on foreign policy, on the hatred of Obamacare. They're all kind of the same in the range. So, I don't think it's going to be a policy fight.

CAMEROTA: Well, "The Washington Post" has an article this morning, saying that the party faithful, well, the party establishment are getting nervous. This Ben Carson stuff, the Donald Trump front- runner is making them nervous so much so that there's this groundswell to draft Mitt Romney.

CHALIAN: Although Mitt Romney seems to be not taking that phone call right now in any ways, as far as we can tell. But, yes, some of his allies are throwing his name back in the mix.

Listen, there's been nervousness among the establishment since the beginning of this. As soon as they saw Trump rising and Carson started rising in the late summer as well, the establishment started getting nervous. Now that you're 79 days out from the Iowa caucuses, and there's been no sort of damage done to them, nobody sort of taken them down a notch, now that nervousness is moving a little bit more towards the panic button.

Yet nobody seems to have a solution, Alisyn. This is key. This gets at what Chris was talking to Errol about as well.

The big question hanging over this election right now is that when voters, caucus-goers in Iowa, the New Hampshire primary voters in the beginning of February start heading to the polls, do they go to that ballot box, do they go to that caucus meeting and cast their vote out of the anger that they have been feeling all year long and expressing that Donald Trump has been tapping into or do they start having a different calculation and say, hey, I want to vote for somebody who can win. I want to vote for somebody I can envision in the Oval Office.

That is the calculus. I don't think we know the answer to that. The establishment in "The Washington Post" piece believes things will revert to how they have been, which is that voters tend to revert to, I want a winner and I want to vote for a president. But I'm not so sure that this cycle is going to repeat that kind of behavior.

CAMEROTA: So curious, just gets curiouser and curiouser.

Errol, David, thanks so much for that.

LOUIS: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's get over to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Dozens have been killed, hundreds injured in two suicide bombings in Beirut. Was ISIS behind those deadly attacks? We'll take a look ahead on NEW DAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:41:41] CAMEROTA: We do have a developing story for you at this hour because we are awaiting confirmation as to whether Jihadi John, the notorious masked executioner in those ISIS beheading videos, has been killed in a U.S. drone strike in Syria. The Pentagon is still assessing the result of the attack. But a U.S. official tells CNN, confidence is high that Mohammed Emwazi, aka Jihadi John was killed. We're told Emwazi was sitting in a vehicle in Raqqa and was specifically targeted.

PEREIRA: A pair of suicide bombings striking southern Beirut Thursday, killing 43 people, wounding more than 200 others. ISIS is claiming responsibility for orchestrating the deadly explosions.

CNN's senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward joins us live from Beirut with the latest for us -- Clarissa.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela.

Well, right behind me is the scene where the second suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest. We actually were just walking around in that area, the ground still covered with broken glass and with the blood of all those people who were injured.

The death toll could have been much higher because there was a third suicide bomber who was killed, though, by the blast before he was able to detonate his own vest. Now, ISIS has claimed responsibility for this attack, they say because this is a Shiite Muslim neighborhood.

If you take a look behind me, you can probably see there are yellow flags everywhere. Those are the flags of Hezbollah and the people who live here are loyal to Hezbollah and Hezbollah, of course, is fighting alongside the Syrian regime inside Syria. So, ISIS now vowing more attacks on Shiite neighborhoods like this one.

But it's important to emphasize if you walk around this neighborhood, this is a civilian area. It is full of shops, Michaela, cafes, restaurants, that would have been very busy at that time of the evening yesterday. And most of the people who were killed in this attack, very sadly, are civilians.

PEREIRA: Clarissa, help us understand. How much influence does ISIS have in Lebanon?

WARD: Well, this is the first instance where we've seen is come out so brazenly and claim responsibility for an attack of this magnitude. This is the largest attack that Beirut has seen in at least two years.

Now, it's difficult to really have an understanding of how much of a foothold ISIS has inside Lebanon. But the point is it doesn't need to have a great foothold to do a lot of damage. What ISIS is really trying to do, not just in Lebanon but countries in Turkey and Jordan and across the region is so instability and create a wave of fear and fan the flames of these sectarian tensions so that it can exploit that vacuum and try to take more power.

PEREIRA: All right. Clarissa, thank you for that. We'll watch this for you in the coming days. Thank you.

CUOMO: All right. We are following a case with major implications. Utah is fighting a judge's decision to take a 9-month- old from her foster parents, apparently because they are lesbians. State officials are filing a motion with that same judge, Judge Scott Johansson, asking for him to stay his own order. Now, if the judge says no, they promise to take it to an appeals court.

The judge said the girl would be better off with heterosexual parents, the judge said, citing research but not saying exactly what research that was.

CAMEROTA: Vice President Joe Biden getting fired up while addressing the subject of sexual assault on college campuses.

[06:45:03] In a visit to his law school alma mater, Syracuse University, he urged students to take a pledge to intervene if they see something inappropriate. He also took a stand against blaming the victim.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Built into the whole system throughout this notion that if I knew you, there must be something I did, the victim did. I should have somehow known better.

What a sick standard. Guys, it's not complicated. You're an upper classman. You're at a fraternity party. A lovely young freshman girl gets drunk, like too many do, especially in their freshman year. And she's nearly passing out.

And you see your roommate or your fraternity brother walking her upstairs, have the gumption to step in, tell him, expose him!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Those are strong words we need on this.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. So fired up. It's been a long time since we've heard Joe Biden be that energize. Wow.

PEREIRA: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: We have a special programming note to tell you about. CNN Films is debuting a powerful new documentary next week about sexual assault on college campuses, and the failure of universities and the system to really address the problem. "The Hunting Ground" premieres Thursday, November 19th at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. We hope you will watch that as well as our special conversation afterwards.

CUOMO: All right. Another big case we're following. Police in Virginia fire tasers at a man named Linwood Lambert. He's now dead. Was this less lethal weapon the cause or is it more complicated than that? And was the use of force appropriate in this case?

We discuss with law enforcement, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

[06:51:19] CUOMO: This is the video that has people talking all across this country. The man on the ground, Linwood Lambert now dead. Family suing a local Virginia police department for $25 million. They say he certainly died in police custody and police shackles after being tased repeatedly and they're blaming the police officers for it.

This tape has just come out because of the lawsuit. The event was more than two years ago. No charges were ever filed. It was a finding of no criminality by the prosecutor.

So, why does this look not meet the reality in terms of what happened in this case?

Let's discuss with Jeff Roorda. He's the business manager for the St. Louis Police Officers Association and a former Missouri state representative.

Jeff, good to see you. Thank you for joining us and making the case here this morning.

It looks bad on videotape. Make the case for the officers here.

JEFF ROORDA, BUSINESS MANAGER, ST. LOUIS POLICE OFFICERS ASSN.: Well, resisting cases always do look bad on video, Chris. But -- I mean, listen, this guy didn't die because of police. He didn't die because of tasers. He died because he overdosed on cocaine.

CUOMO: And the medical examiner does say he had cocaine in his system, it wasn't that much. But cocaine metabolizes very quickly. Experts understand this.

But the medical examiners -- do you know if they had full access and review of what happened in this case with the video?

ROORDA: No, I don't know if the medical examiner saw the video. They did conclude that he died from acute cocaine intoxication. You know, they did examine the body. And that examination led to that determination.

CUOMO: But does that end the analysis or why did it end the analysis? They tased him 20 times or at least squeezed the trigger that many times in some 30 minutes. They started off by wanting to get him medical treatment.

ROORDA: Right, right.

CUOMO: Why didn't they continue through with that once they had him subdued, shackled and cuffed, why didn't they put him on the gurney like so often happens?

ROORDA: This man was never subdued, Chris. You see in the video, he kicks out the window of the police car with explosive force. He escapes from the police car and runs towards the E.R.

CUOMO: Right.

ROORDA: This is not a guy you want running loose into an emergency room full of sick and injured folks.

CUOMO: Right. We're showing the video, Jeff. You're right.

But this is also the reality that we're showing on the screen right now. He then winds up being not just cuffed, but also shackled, tased a lot and unconscious in the back of the car.

The report goes on to say that he resisted again once he got to the station. But the video shows that that is not true. So, there is certainly a falsehood made in that report, no question about that. It wasn't acted on but it's real.

But that takes me back to the original question. You had him subdued, you had him shackled, you had him cuffed, you had him tased, why not bring him into the emergency room? And in not doing that, was that a breach of their duty?

ROORDA: No. Chris, they went from taking him into protective custody, trying to get him medical treatment to arresting him because he was a danger to himself and others and had committed a crime. He broke out the police window, he tried to escape from custody. You can't just turn him loose on that hospital.

The E.R. staff wouldn't have wanted him in there. You have to at that point arrest him. You keep talking about the 20 taser zaps. You know, the medical examiner said there were only three taser wounds. It's very common, especially when people are wearing thick layered clothing for the taser to grab the clothing but not deliver a shock.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: The guy is in the back of the car, Jeff. Look, you know the job very well.

[06:55:00] If you have to put your fingers on my neck to see if I have a pulse, you don't need to have somebody ask for medical assistance in that kind of situation. You're right outside the E.R. You took the guy there in the first place because you thought he needed medical attention. Aren't you at least a little surprised they didn't then bring him into the E.R.?

ROORDA: Well, that's not -- that's not the chronology as I understand it, Chris. When they put him back in the police car he was actively resisting. It's when they get to the police station that they realize that he's lifeless and they check his pulse and they call for an ambulance.

But the gentleman never complained of any medical problems in the segments of video that have aired. I haven't seen the whole video. Maybe you have.

And he doesn't exhibit any signs of needing medical assistance other than the fact that he's obviously suffering from drug-induced delirium and that's a tough judgment call for police.

CUOMO: I'm just saying they already made it. That's why he has at the E.R., right? They made the judgment that he needed medical attention.

ROORDA: No, they made the judgment that they couldn't arrest him, I assume the hotel didn't want to prosecute for the extensive property damage that he did there at the hotel. They said we can't just leave this guy here. They lock him up, take him into protective custody, try to get him to the hospital to get help, and he's the one that interferes with them delivering that assistance to him by breaking the law, by showing them, by demonstrating to them they can't safely deliver him to the E.R.

CUOMO: This case was a decision by the prosecutor not to prosecute. We're trying to get them to comment because let's be honest, the reporting on this early on, nobody had the benefit of this video. They didn't let it come out early on. It only came out because of the discovery demands of the litigation. That's an open question also, why was that a case? We're going to have to get the answers before we analyze that, though.

Jeff Roorda, thank you for giving me the officers' side on this.

ROORDA: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: All right. This is a big story. We'll continue to stay on it. There's a lot of news this morning, breaking news. So, let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: Somebody hits you in the belt, the knife is going in because the belt moves this way, it moves this way, it moves that way.

Anybody have a knife, want to try it on me?

It ain't going to work.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Unleashing his most aggressive attacks yet.

TRUMP: How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What about Dr. Carson? Do you believe he's being truthful?

TRUMP: I don't want somebody that hit somebody in the face really hard with a padlock. I don't want somebody that went after his mother with a hammer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: U.S. forces launched an air strike targeting Jihadi John.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: If this strike was successful, it will be a strike at the heart of ISIL.

PEREIRA: A major assault to retake the strategic Iraqi town from ISIS.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a specific effort to target this one supply line.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One strike after another after another.

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to your NEW DAY.

It is not an exaggeration to call Donald Trump's rant epic. In a space of 95 minutes at a campaign stop in Iowa, Trump went after just about everybody in the 2016 race, including the voters.

CUOMO: But his most blistering attacks were directed at Ben Carson. We'll hear from a top Carson aide in a moment.

But first, the reporting, CNN's Athena Jones, more on the tirade from Iowa -- Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

It was a draw-dropping political moment. It felt like you were watching history being made in a weird way. One of the longest and most eyebrow raising tirades from Trump yet, full of insults against his GOP rivals, Democratic leaders and the media. And more tough talk for ISIS.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: I would bomb the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out of them.

JONES (voice-over): Cursing and mocking chief rival Dr. Ben Carson.

TRUMP: How stupid are the people of Iowa?

JONES: Unleashing his most aggressive attacks yet in what amounted to an hour and a half long rant in the Iowa.

TRUMP: How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?

JONES: The billionaire gunning for Carson -- the two are virtually neck and neck in recent polls here -- after the retired neurosurgeon wrote in his autobiography that as a teen he tried to stab a friend only to have it stopped by a belt buckle.

TRUMP: I have a belt. Somebody hits you in the belt, the knife is going in because the belt moves this way. It moves this way. It moves that way. He hit the belt buckle.

Anybody have a knife want to try it on me? Believe me, it ain't going to work.

JONES: Trump comparing Carson's self-described pathological temper to an incurable disease.

TRUMP: I don't want a person that's got pathological disease. If you're a child molester, a sick puppy, you're a child molester, there's no cure for that.

JONES: A theme of attack he used earlier in the night on CNN, prompting Carly Fiorina to jump to Carson's defense, writing in a Facebook post, "All the money in the world won't make you as smart as Ben Carson."

During his tirade, Trump also attacking Hillary Clinton.

TRUMP: She's playing the woman card up, that's all she has. Honestly, outside of the woman card, she's got nothing going, believe me.