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Race for 2016; Bill Cosby Charged in 2004 Sexual Assault Case; New Documentary Offers Look at Steve Jobs. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired December 31, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:31:41] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the big dog, Bill Clinton, getting ready to hit the campaign trail. That happens on Monday. Awaiting him? Donald Trump, who is longing new attacks against the form are president. Trump says he has no choice but to target both Bill and Hillary Clinton. The Republican frontrunner describes the election in stark terms. He calls the campaign war against his enemies.

Here to respond, CNN political commentator and Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord, and here with us in New York, Democratic strategist and former senior advisor to Bill Clinton, Richard Socarides.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us.

Jeffrey, in purely political terms, doesn't Donald Trump need to win a primary? Shouldn't he be talking about Ted Cruz and not Hillary Clinton?

JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think what he's doing is to some degree indicating that as a possible nominee he knows how to take on the opposition, which is what he's doing here and doing it to great success. So, you know, he's not done with his fellow Republicans here, his competitors. But moving on a bit, he is showing what he can do as a nominee and taking on Hillary Clinton directly, and it's working.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And, Richard, he's not just taking on Hillary Clinton directly, he's taking on Bill Clinton. He's bringing up Bill Clinton's sexual history. Let's play a portion of what Donald Trump said in which he said he had no choice but to go this route against Hillary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They don't want to run against Trump. The last thing she wants in her whole life is - this was only - I did this in like 15 minutes, what happened to them, because the husband wants to come and she wants to accuse me of things and the husband's one of the great abusers of the world? Give me a break. Give me a break. Give me a break.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Richard, what do you think of this line of attack that Trump is taking?

RICHARD SOCARIDES, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, I think Mr. Trump, rather shamelessly, is trying to appeal to the extreme right in his party. And I think, you know, to John's question, he is - he does have to win a Republican primary first and I think he feels the best way to win over Republicans on the far right in Iowa and New Hampshire is to go against Bill Clinton.

But I would just - let's all remember that Bill Clinton is one of the most respected and most beloved figures in America and the world today. So I think if - if you want to make this a - if he wants to make this a referendum on the Bill Clinton presidency, where we enjoyed eight years of peace and prosperity. Bill Clinton is one of the most popular Americans, most popular citizens of the world. So if we make it a referendum on that, I think Hillary's going to do great in the general election.

BERMAN: And, Richard - I mean, Jeffrey, you know, Donald Trump's not a choir boy, right? I mean Donald Trump has his own history, his own marital past. Will that become an issue in a Republican primary?

LORD: Well, I - if there's somebody out there, as there is with Bill Clinton, accusing him of rape, I'd, you know, I'd like to know her name. You know, you've been reporting all morning on Bill Cosby. And Bill Cosby, like Bill Clinton, was once one of the most popular people in America and around the world. Every time this Cosby story surfaces, this is, in effect, casting appall over the whole Clinton situation because it reminds people that there are women out there, just like the women with Bill Cosby, who have serious allegations against Bill Clinton. And -

SOCARIDES: I mean I would just say - can I just say that I really think this is disgraceful. I mean here we are on television on New Year's Eve and you -

[08:35:04] LORD: I'm (INAUDIBLE) -

SOCARIDES: You are accusing the former president of the United States of rape and these charges -

LORD: No, no, no, I am - no, no, no, no, no, no.

SOCARIDES: These - these are - these are phony charges that have - have been dragged out for a long time against the president.

LORD: Richard - Richard, I am not (INAUDIBLE) -

SOCARIDES: This president has - has a long record and reputation. Hillary also, I will point out, Hillary is running as her own person. She is not running for a third Clinton term. She has a record to be proud of on women's rights, on all kinds of protecting human rights of people all around the world. I think this is disgraceful, sir, and I think what you and Mr. Trump are doing are really disgraceful.

LORD: Richard - Richard, I did not make the accusation. Juanita Broaddrick has made the accusations. SOCARIDES: But you are a Trump supporter. You are here representing Mr. Trump.

CAMEROTA: Hold on.

LORD: Who has specifically accused Hillary Clinton of threatening her to be silent. I'm not making the accusation. These accusations are well out there on the record by a women, just like the Bill Cosby accusations.

CAMEROTA: Yes, but, Jeffrey, Jeffrey, hold on a second.

LORD: I'm not making -

CAMEROTA: Hold on a second, Jeffrey. I mean to your point there are three women that, over the course of a couple of decades, have come out against Bill Clinton and made accusations of sexual impropriety.

LORD: Exactly.

CAMEROTA: But Bill Clinton, as you will recall in the White House - there were impeachment trials and hearings about this and he persevered. Do you think this is what the voters want to hear about?

LORD: Well, this is relevant the Hillary Clinton in that one of these women is accusing her of essentially threatening her to be quiet about a rape. I'm not making the accusation. So Hillary -

SOCARIDES: I mean this is, you know, this is part of the Trump - this is part of the culture that Mr. Trump is trying to create in which you can say anything, there's no fact-checking. You can say anything. You can use his language.

LORD: Well, Richard, you talk to Juanita Broaddrick and get - get her response.

SOCARIDES: This is great. This is great. I mean listen - listen - listen, all of these allegations have been long discredited. And, you know, we - people remember what's happened. I mean it's not like we're living in a fact-free zone, right? People know Bill and Hillary Clinton, know what they're about, know what they've stood for, for decades here. So I think this is very - it is a very clear tactic by Mr. -

LORD: Well, they know - they know that about Bill Cosby too, you know.

SOCARIDES: This is a very clear tactic by Mr. Trump to appeal to the lunatic fringe in - in the Republican Party that, you know, that - that - that is attracted to any kind of bizarre allegations against the Clintons.

CAMEROTA: So, but, Richard - Richard, I just have a - I just have a question. The - because John - John brought up so - and, in fact, a reporter brought it up with Donald Trump. So are your sexual indiscretions, if you happen to have any, now fair game? And Donald Trump said yes. SOCARIDES: I actually think that the American people want this

campaign to be about the issues. This is about our country. This is not, you know, this is not a joke. This election is not a joke.

LORD: Exactly.

SOCARIDES: It's not - it's not a frat party game, like Mr. Trump would suggest. And I think he, Mr. Trump, there's more evidence that he is going to become unhinged. And this is what the Republican establishment is hoping for, that he's - he's going to become unhinged and that his campaign will implode.

BERMAN: Right.

SOCARIDES: That's what I think is going to happen.

BERMAN: You said not a joke. Jeffrey agreed with you. We're going to take that moment of agreement and end this segment there. Jeffrey Lord, Richard Socarides, thanks so much.

LORD: Happy New Year.

CAMEROTA: You, too, Jeffrey, thank you. And to you, Richard.

Let's give it to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Well, to the topic of Bill Cosby dogged by allegations of drugging and sexual assaulting dozens of women. He now faces his first criminal charges. His lawyers claim the case is politically motivated. How hard is this case going to be to prove? And could Cosby's own words actually hurt his defense?

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[08:42:20] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are here to announce today charges that have just been filed against William Henry Cosby. Reopening this case was not a question. Rather, reopening this case was our duty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Bill Cosby free on $1 million bail this morning, facing sexual assault charges in Pennsylvania. Cosby's attorneys vow to fight these charges. So how hard will this case be to prove? Joining us now is CNN legal analyst and defense attorney Mark Geragos.

Mark, nice to see you this morning. Were you surprised that the prosecutor moved forward in this case?

MARK GERAGOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: No, not really. I think last July, when the federal judge released that transcript of his deposition in this - the civil component of this case. And then when you saw the election where for the prosecutor's office who brought these charges and that was a central issue, I think anybody who was a close observer there locally expected these things to happen. CAMEROTA: Yes, the Bill Cosby case was a centerpiece of this election,

this campaign for district attorney. And the new - the guy who was running to unseat the district attorney, Kevin Steele, basically said, you know, the old guy didn't do it. He didn't bring Bill - even when there was evidence, he didn't bring any charges against Bill Cosby. Bruce Castro (ph) is who he was criticizing. He refused to prosecute him, he says here. I'm showing the campaign ad. But I will do so. This makes Bill Cosby's camp say this is all just about politics.

GERAGOS: Well, and I think they've got a point there. I mean they're going - the - the defense is clearly going to build it around that this was a political operation and not a legal or a seeking of truth or justice. But the problem is, no judge is going to dismiss the case on that basis. But that becomes the theme for the defense. Then you're going to have kind of these legal skirmishes. The first is going to be whether or not the - you will see in Pennsylvania the prosecution can bring in other - what's called other crimes' evidence. Normally you'd say, well, how can they do that? That's character assassination. Here, they bring it in under the guise of, it shows his common scheme or motive. So there's going to be a battle as to how many people first of all or how many other women the prosecutor wants to put on the stand and whether or not that evidence comes in. I'll betting that the evidence will come in. So this is going to be kind of flattened out, if you will, and it will involve a lot more women.

[08:44:53] CAMEROTA: If they do want to establish his M.O., his modus operandi, as they say in court, they have many different women to choose from. And in fact, to that point, "The New York Daily News" this morning, their cover story, calls this a he said, she said, she said, she said, she said - fifty times. There are at least fifty women who could come forward and testify that they experienced something very similar to Andrea Constand. Do you think that that is what this case will hinge upon because since, as we know, there is no physical evidence?

GERAGOS: Well I -- You might remember a couple of years ago in Los Angeles they tried Phil Spector, the music producer, for the murder of a young lady out here in L.A. and one things they did, because California has a similar law to Pennsylvania, is they put on the stand four or five other women who had been threatened by Spector with a gun. A lot of the jurors afterwards said that that was very compelling evidence for them this in voting to convict Spector.

So I would expect you will have at least four or five other women. I don't think that you are going to want, if you are the prosecutor, to put on ten because then you give the defense the ability to start building some kind of a theme or having problems with trying to get consistency out of them. But it would not surprise me at all to see five other women take the stand.

CAMEROTA: Mark, you are a defense attorney. Do you put Bill Cosby on the stand?

GERAGOS: You very well might. Generally we have an old adage that says it's a rare case that gets better after the prosecution rests. But this is the kind of case where you might want to put him on. But that is -- it is way too early to tell you. You never know or never make that decision until you are in the heat of the battle. You have to see who your jurors are, No. 1. You also have to see whether or not you are trying this case for a not guilty or whether you're trying this case for a hung jury. Those kinds of dynamics that go on in a case are really the trial lawyers, that is how he makes his living, and you don't make that decision until the very end.

CAMEROTA: It will be interesting to see this case progress through 2016. Mark Geragos, thank you. Happy New Year.

GERAGOS: Happy New Year to you, too.

CAMEROTA: Let's get over to John.

BERMAN: All right. Steve Jobs, his vision decades ago helped shape life as we know it today. Coming up we're going to find out what it was like to work with that man and how he changed our world. Stay with us.

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[08:51:04] BERMAN: It wasn't just technical engineering that made Apple co-founder Steve Jobs famous. He also had a unique ability to sell an idea to consumers. In this clip from the new CNN film "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine," an old colleague offers insight into what some called the darker side of Steve Jobs and what it was like to work with the tech legend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is easy to make chaos. And if you are comfortable with it, you can use it as a tool. And he used a vast number of really irritating tools to get other people involved in his schemes. He's seducing you. He's vilifying you. And he's ignoring you. You are in one of those three states.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: The director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, Sherry Turkle, appears in the new film. She joins us this morning. She's also the author of "Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age."

Sherry, thanks so much for being with us. You hear words like that, "vilify" and "seduced." It doesn't make it seem like Steve Jobs was particularly pleasant to work with. You knew him professionally. What do you make of that?

SHERRY TURKLE, DIRECTOR, MIT INITIATIVE ON TECHNOLOGY AND SELF: Well I think what's most fascinating about Steve is the adulation that he's received from the American people who basically know this story or know big parts of the story that this was not a nice man and yet people put candles out for him, have created shrines for him when they lost him. And it is because he recognized something so important about our relationship with technology, about how we live now, that he's one of the few people who we admire really not for who they were, but for what they understood, what he understood about us. So it is a very personal, a very emotional connection that doesn't have to do with him being a nice guy, but really about a deep insight that he had. It is an extraordinary story.

BERMAN: If I loved my iPhone, and I have two of them, why should it matter to me that he was a pain in the neck to work with, or worse, that he was a jerk or offensive to work with, which this film seems to indicate?

TURKLE: That's really what I'm saying is that people recognize that he had a kind of deep humanity in the fact that he understood something deep about our humanity and that we were moving into a different kind of relationship with technology. That we would see computers and computational objects as imagination machines, as a kind of second self as a way to project ourselves into the world of objects. He saw that. At a time when people just said this is another machine. He saw that computers would not just do things for us but to us. He saw that when nobody else did. And I think people recognize that he saw that and they -- they admire him for understanding that about themselves.

BERMAN: It is one thing being singularly focused and directed, which it is clear that Steve Jobs certainly was. Another thing being cruel. Do you think that that aspect of him, though, is important to understand to get the full picture?

TURKLE: I kind of do. He was -- I'm not sure that I would -- the cruelty was in the service of a kind of single-mindedness about a vision. And I think you sense that when you watch the film that this is someone focused on a vision that, quiet frankly in the beginning, he didn't share with a lot of people.

[08:55:03] He convinced the world of a vision that he then made people see was actually the way they experienced this new technology. So that when people walk around with their phone and they feel their phone is part of them, they are living out something that Steve Jobs saw. But that was not obvious when he started. But he saw that.

BERMAN: A long, long career. Quite a legacy, but a complicated legacy. Sherry Turkle, thanks so much for being with us. And you all should tune in Sunday at 9:00 for "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine." That is right here on CNN.

CAMEROTA: So Happy New Year's Eve guys.

PEREIRA: This is it. This is it. This is it.

CAMEROTA: Yeah.

PEREIRA: How about that? It's been quite a year.

CAMEROTA: It has. Thanks so much to all of you for watching us this year. We really have appreciated all of that. It certainly has been a big, huge year as next year looks as though it will be as well.

PEREIRA: We've been together for some really big news stories this year. Some very difficult times. Some wonderful times. And hopefully there will be better ones ahead.

BERMAN: I hear 2016, some big stuff is happening then, too.

CAMEROTA: Yeah. That's true. If it's one thing you can bank on, there will be news. We don't know what it is. But there will be news.

PEREIRA: Have a safe and happy New Year.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Here's some live pictures of Times Square that's about to be filled with a million people as we all ring in the New Year. Happy New Year, everyone.

"NEWSROOM" with Deb Feyerick begins after this short break.

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