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Trump Targets Carson In 95-Minute Rant In Iowa; Judge Orders Gay Couple To Give Up Foster Child. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired November 13, 2015 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And he plunged it into the belt, amazingly, with 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?
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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: It's like an Aesop's fable gone awry.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Is it?
CUOMO: Watching Donald Trump literally doing performance art as politics as part of a 95-minute, just tirade where he was going after his opponents in Iowa, even by Trump standards this was a real --
CAMEROTA: A doozy.
CUOMO: Thank you very much.
CAMEROTA: You're welcome.
CUOMO: Let's break it down with Michael Smerconish, CNN political commentator and host of CNN's "SMERCONISH." What I am calling attack- tics is what seems to be the bent of Donald Trump here. What is the plus/minus on his obvious doubling down?
MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think you say Aesop's fable. I say it's mutually assured destruction. It's a strategy that will take him down and ultimately it will probably have its intended purpose of raising these questions about Ben Carson's bio that have been out there.
But to Trump's point of view have not gotten the level of circulation and circumspection that he thinks they require. It's how you solidify. It's how you solidify the hard core base and how you throw away a general election.
CAMEROTA: Therein lies the rub because it is not affecting Donald Trump's poll numbers to use these attack-tics, as Chris calls them, his poll numbers have gone up and stayed steady. Ben Carson supporters have suggested that they believe that he's trustworthy. They don't care about the discrepancies in his childhood. At the moment neither of your theories is proving to be true, but you're saying just wait.
SMERCONISH: Yes, I'm saying it's a long game and that ultimately neither of these individuals, I'll say it flat out, neither of these individuals who are currently the frontrunners in the Republican Party could win a general election. They're stagnant, right? They're at 20 percent, 25 percent.
They're at 25 percent of what, of 26 percent of the electorate. That's what Republicans compromise. So truly what they're commanding is a constituency that is somewhere between 5 percent and 7 percent of the populous. That's not going to get you a general election victory if you can win the nomination.
CUOMO: Well, but then you dismiss polls that have Carson beating Hillary.
SMERCONISH: I do. I do because I believe that the attention has not yet drilled down to Trump's point. Look, they are fantastical. They are eyebrow raising accounts. The belt buckle story is one that I think is deserving of attention.
The Yale story about how it now turns out, it appears he got pranked in a psychology exam, the Popeye story that he told to me on the radio when he explained to me, I just directed the gunman to the appropriate individual.
He gets a pass on this, Chris, from his constituency because the story ends with a spiritual epiphany. As long as he finds the Lord in the end, Evangelicals are willing to overlook --
CUOMO: Or he gets a pass because they believe him or they don't care and ultimately they want to know whether or not this guy is going to make their life any better. How much are you going to care about this kind of stuff at the end of the day?
SMERCONISH: Maybe all of those is true, but that ultimately is not a significant enough base to win a general election.
[07:35:04]It may win you Iowa. As things stand now for Dr. Carson, I wouldn't be surprise if he did win Iowa. It's not a strategy that will play in New Hampshire nor it is one that will play in South Carolina or Florida.
CAMEROTA: Donald Trump not only had that event that we just showed a snippet of last night. He also sat down with Erin Burnett on CNN and he laid out his immigration plan in a little bit more detail.
He plans to make a deportation force to get to the 11 million undocumented workers that are currently here. Employers use e-verify, it might solve some of the problem on its own. President Obama responded to Donald Trump's immigration plan for the first time. Listen to President Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: First of all, I have no idea where Mr. Trump thinks the money is going to come from. It would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars to execute that.
Imagine the images on the screen flashed around world as we were dragging parents away from their children and putting them in detention centers and then systematically setting them up. That's not who we are as Americans.
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CAMEROTA: President Obama says nobody thinks that's realistic. Donald Trump supporters do.
SMERCONISH: Well, I think Donald Trump supporters would like to see it carried out because my own view is that much of the support that he's deriving is predicated on the changing demographics of the country, individuals looking at what the nation will look like in 2050, if not sooner.
They're unsettled. They feel threatened by it. So when Donald Trump puts forth the idea that he's going to replicate operation wetback, it salves what they are looking for.
CUOMO: The other side of the equation is, for them not to be able to win a general that means there is someone who can. Hillary Clinton is the presumptive favorite. We have the debate tomorrow night for the Democrats.
She goes in with a healthy set of numbers, except, Michael, she has a huge built-in negative and narratives hanging over her head that will be easy to make political hay of for the whole general. What do you think of that?
SMERCONISH: There's no doubt about that. In addition to my radio program and what I do on CNN, I speak to professional groups. I spoke to one yesterday and they said who wins in the end? I say advantage Democrats but you can't say game over, because of her vulnerabilities.
Because Chris of what you just pointed out, untrustworthy is at the top of the word cloud when you ask Americans about Hillary Clinton. It appears to me that 45 percent of the country is ready to go out and wild horses couldn't keep them away from voting for her and 45 percent of the nation is ready to go against her, regardless of the opponent.
There's a very small sliver of independents who frankly hold all the cards in this election.
CAMEROTA: Michael Smerconish, thanks so much. Have a great weekend.
SMERCONISH: You too.
CAMEROTA: Great to talk to you. Let's get over to Michaela. MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, a story that we've been following here, did a judge in Utah go too far, ordering a lesbian couple to get up their foster child to a heterosexual couple. The decision has been challenged. Where is this fight going to go next?
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[07:42:16]
PEREIRA: The Utah division of Child and Family Services now asking a juvenile court judge to reconsider his decision. He removed a foster child from the care of a lesbian couple. The judge said the child would be better off with a heterosexual couple. Did Judge Scott Johansen overstep his boundaries?
I want to ask CNN senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. Jeffrey, you know, that I work with foster kids, adoptive kids. I'm an advocate for them. This has gotten under my collar. I want to find out what the legality of all of this is.
This lesbian couple was looking to adopt this baby girl, had the support of the birth mother, the biological mother, the first mother. Did this judge overstep his bounds or was this up to his discretion?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: This case is a little murky because we don't have a written opinion from the judge. We only have what the judge apparently said to people. But the judge's duty was to decide what was in the best interest of the child.
He said, apparently, that he felt, according to studies he's read, that it's better for kids to be raised in a heterosexual household. Now, according to every study I've seen and all the studies that came out in the course of the litigation over same-sex marriage that is not true.
PEREIRA: Right. We know that leading adoption advocacy groups have new research saying that there is no sexual -- there's no bearing on the child, the sexual orientation of the parents.
TOOBIN: Correct. That's why I think if in fact that's what he said, his ruling is very vulnerable to being overturned on appeal, because it would have been based on an incorrect factual basis. But, again, we don't know exactly what he said.
PEREIRA: OK.
TOOBIN: But that appears to be his reasoning. It appears to be just dead wrong.
PEREIRA: We know that just this past March Utah passed an anti- discrimination bill protecting LGBT residents from discrimination and prejudice. Would that not fall under this?
TOOBIN: Possibly. Although the best interest of the child might actually Trump that law, if there was some legitimate basis for finding that the best interest of the child would be served by taking the child away.
Utah is somewhat unusual. I think people might be surprised by that, that it is one of the half or so states in the country that has passed an anti-discrimination law involving sexual orientation.
It's generally thought of as a conservative state. That could play into it. But it would also have to interact in the judge's calculations with the issue of the best interest of the child.
PEREIRA: But we know before it even gets to a judge, there's all sorts of work that was done, if this couple was approved to adopt this baby girl, the biological mother supported this adoption.
[07:45:08]They would have had to go through home studies, security checks, visits to their house, and all sorts of background done on them. They passed that and were approved, yet this judge can overrule that?
TOOBIN: That's what makes this appear such an outrageous case, because the only thing that this judge seemed to have a problem with was not their qualifications to be parents but simply because they were a gay couple, not a straight couple.
PEREIRA: We know that even the governor of Utah, who is a conservative, we know his name is Gary Herbert, he's the governor there. He said he's concerned that Judge Johansson is being a, quote, "activist from the bench." Does it give that appearance?
TOOBIN: Not activist, ignoramus, which I think is a considerable difference. If he's relying on the idea that kids are better off with straight parents rather than gay parents, that's wrong according to studies. That's worse than activism, that's bigotry, discrimination. It is not simply the judge imposing his own views.
PEREIRA: We know that the DCFS of the state will review and investigate this order. But this -- here's -- the judge himself has made other questionable decisions, ordering a teenager's mother to cut off her daughter's pony tail as she faced assault charges for cutting most of a toddler's hair off.
Sending a boy on probation to jail for stealing a pack of gum because he had violated his probation by getting a poor report card, should this guy be on the bench, Jeffrey?
TOOBIN: There are a lot of judges in America. They're not all great and this guy seems like he's got a lot of problems. This is why we sometimes we form a service in our industry by pointing stuff like this out.
PEREIRA: Real quick question. What recourse does the family have? This couple, they're obviously going to fight this, try and get the baby back. Do you think they have hope? This is terrifying.
TOOBIN: It's terrifying but the system does appear to be working here. He is a trial court judge. There are at least two levels of appeals to come if they want to push it that far. This story, I'm pleased to say, is by no means over.
PEREIRA: Let me leave you with this, there's over 100,000 children that are eligible for adoption, awaiting a permanent home in the U.S. foster care system. They need safe, loving homes. Let's make sure we don't do another disservice to these kids. My goodness, this really is quite a story. Jeffrey, thanks for walking us through the legalities of all of this.
TOOBIN: All right.
PEREIRA: You can get in on the conversation using Twitter, #newdayCNN. Jump on to Facebook as well -- Alisyn.
PEREIRA: Great conversation, Michaela. Thanks so much for all of that. So Carly Fiorina on Tinder? No, not exactly. You'll get the joke when we look at late-night political punch lines, next.
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CAMEROTA: Once again the presidential candidates making for great punch lines. Let's take a look at last night's political fodder.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Another GOP candidate, Carly Fiorina, is being criticized for repeatedly changing the story of how she met Vladimir Putin, where they met and what they talk and what they talked about. So in other words they definitely met on Tinder.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's only three Democrats left in the field, compared to the Republican debates. There is also going to be so much extra room on stage. They should really put the podium on Airbnb.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An early copy of the "New York Times" bestseller list obtained by Buzzfeed shows Ben Carson's a more perfect union is edging out Donald Trump's "Crippled America." And a little further down the list is Jeb Bush's I don't want to do this anymore. I highly recommend chapter 3, why is this happening to me?
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CAMEROTA: That's hilarious. Airbnb and Buzzfeed and Tinder all making "late night." logically, new world order we are in.
CUOMO: I just love Seth's non face at the end. I love it. Still haven't figured how to use it yet.
Big news for you this morning that we are following, this notorious ISIS murderer known as Jihadi John, you remember him from the videos. We definitely know that the U.S. military says they targeted him in a drone strike. The question is did they get him?
We are waiting full confirmation on that. We have details ahead. PEREIRA: A programming note for you in the season finale of "PARTS UNKNOWN," Anthony Bourdain heads to Charleston, South Carolina retracing influences of southern cooking. Here's a sneak peek for you.
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ANTHONY BOURDAIN, CNN HOST, "PARTS UNKNOWN": Pretty right? Charleston is ridiculously beautiful. It is also an anomaly. It is an island of delightful weirdness. It is also where a really inordinate unusual disproportionate number of great chefs are making the argument that the south is not just the wellspring of American cooking.
It is relevant, it is important. It is not just a past but in a lot of ways the future. Charleston is place, almost too many beautiful buildings, almost too many incredibly talented chefs and almost too much really, really good food. It is nice here. I like it.
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[07:58:50]
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CAMEROTA: The critical city of Sinjar is back under the control of Iraq.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This declaration is a huge plus not only for the Peshmerga but also for the coalition.
CUOMO: Jihadi John targeted in a U.S. air strike.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If this strike was successful, it will be a strike at the heart of ISIS.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Donald Trump unleashing his most aggressive attacks yet.
TRUMP: I would bomb the (inaudible) out of them. She's playing the woman card. That's all she has. The belt moves this way it, moves that way.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I have no idea where Mr. Trump thinks the money is going to come from.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They say $600 billion -- bigger than the Department of Defense budget.
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: I think it's a foregone conclusion that Mexico is not going to build that wall.
(END VIDEOTAPE) CUOMO: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Friday, November 13th, 8:00 in the east. And we do begin with breaking news, the critical city of Sinjar once again under Iraqi control. Peshmerga forces wrestling the town out of the grip of ISIS.
CAMEROTA: This coming just hours after the U.S. launched an air strike to take out the masked ISIS executioner known as Jihadi John. Let's get right to CNN senior international correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh. He is live on the outskirts of Sinjar -- Nick.
