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Poll: Sanders Fares Better Than Clinton Versus GOP; American Woman Found Dead In Italian Apartment; Republican Party Facing Internal Class War. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired January 11, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, so all hype aside, Hillary Clinton is getting all she can handle from Senator Bernie Sanders. She is neck-and-neck in Iowa and New Hampshire, and there is a bigger problem.

Discuss. CNN political commentator and Democratic strategist, Mr. Bob Beckel, and CNN political commentator and "Daily Beast" columnist, Sally Kohn.

What is that problem, Kohn, it is this. Put up the numbers of Hillary Clinton versus the GOP big shots and then Bernie. No, I do not want this.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: I do.

COUMO: All sex. If you look at how Hillary is doing against the big shots on the GOP side, here you go, she loses to Cruz. She loses to Rubio. She is neck-and-neck with Trump. He will tell you he is beating her.

Bernie Sanders, however, look at these numbers. Yes, it's in one state, but so what. That is a very predictive state. It has a big independent base.

So here's the question. Why isn't Hillary Clinton doing as well as she's supposed do against Senator Sanders especially when you match her up against the GOP?

[07:35:07]SALLY KOHN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's two reasons. First of all, in all fairness, and I'm not a Hillary supporter, but in fairness the race has not really covered what is happening among the Democratic candidates.

She has given speeches about ISIS. She has given speeches about economic policy. They haven't been covered because we've been busy talking about Donald Trump's latest lies.

So in fairness whatever negative she has to overcome, she has not a chance to. That being said, the other thing happening here is that clearly Bernie Sanders is speaking to not only a majority of Democratic supporters. But a majority of Americans who frankly, yes, they're worried about terrorism, but they don't want to demagogue against immigrants. They want everyone's wages to improve. They want everyone to have affordable college, affordable health care and he's the candidate who is speaking to them.

CAMEROTA: Bob, what happens if Bernie Sanders wins Iowa and wins at the moment he's predicted to win New Hampshire. They're neck-and-neck in Iowa then what happens to Hillary Clinton in this race?

BOB BECKEL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I don't know. I mean, I'm going through my sixth presidential race. No, let me give you a couple answers. First of all, Hillary Clinton has been on the defensive now for a quarter of a century.

If you think about that, she has been -- ever since she got into public life, she's been under attack, an easy target. After a while people start saying why is she always under attack and then the trust factor builds in.

Her trust numbers are high and they won't change. This is not somebody that you can change the views of people who have watched her for a long time. That's one.

Secondly, yes, Sanders message is good in New Hampshire, but I could get 40 percent against Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. I mean, there are just some people who don't like her.

Now having said that, Sanders can't beat her, I don't think, in the long run. He can lose it. And she certainly can't win the presidency, but the Republicans I think will lose it. So look at those numbers, they're all mid-40s for her. She doesn't get much higher, much lower than that.

COUMO: How does she win, Bob? If there is an intractable negative, it's not going away. It's built in as you suggest, then how does she win? You see these numbers even in New Hampshire where she should get the benefit of the doubt in the split of independent voters in that state and she loses to the GOP guys. Why do you presume that she definitely wins in the general?

BECKEL: Well, two reasons, one, it turned out among the constituency for the Democratic Party particularly Hispanics and blacks will be way high against any of these Republicans. That's one.

So Trump is a big deal for her. Secondly, when the public starts turning and listening to what the Republicans are actually saying, if it's Cruz or Trump or even Rubio, for that matter, they will start losing some points because they're not in the mainstream.

You know, generally the idea you run to the right in the Republican caucuses and primaries and then you try to move to the center. There ain't no moving to the center with these guys.

They made their positions very clear and they've made their positions on whether it's guns, abortion. I mean, listen, Marco Rubio, the ad in Iowa, and I was just out there for a couple of days.

You think the guy read the New Testament for the first time. He had every perfect quote from it. And again, it's just one of those things that for Hillary Clinton among even Evangelicals, there ain't a whole lot of love.

KOHN: Yes, but let's not the forget Donald Trump's negatives are way higher than Hillary's, and that's a pretty -- but he's won all that just in the last few months.

COUMO: The question is who has their finger on the polls of the country more right now. I mean, I think that's one of the things. People were shaking their head at Donald Trump early on, but he does seem to be where the country is right now.

KOHN: I'm sorry I beg to differ. I don't think the majority of the American people want to blame all of the world's Muslims, all of America's Muslims for --

COUMO: But people are afraid. They want somebody who is talking will do something about it.

KOHN: Listen, he's tapping into the emotions of the American people, that's correct. But he's helping them draw the wrong conclusion, destructive conclusions that not only don't make us more safe, but undermine our values.

And look, he's built up those negatives because we in the press are talking about him and covering him. We don't -- Hillary hasn't honestly had a chance. I support Senator Sanders more than I support Hillary.

But neither of their policies, neither of what they've been trying to say to the American public has had much of an airing because we're too busy talking about every time Donald Trump lies and we talk about that for three or four days.

CAMEROTA: All right, Sally, Bob, thank you for that. Some of your complaints might change tomorrow because I'm going to sit down with Hillary Clinton. Set your DVRs now for Wednesday morning or joins us live.

I sit down with Hillary Clinton in Iowa to talk all about Sanders and Trump and so much more on the campaign trail. You can see a portion of my interview tomorrow night on Erin Burnett "OUTFRONT."

COUMO: And we'll get a very interesting look at this man on your screen. Vice President Joe Biden sitting down with CNN's Gloria Borger to talk about the 2016 race, the state of union and more. That will air tonight on "AC 360" -- Mich.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thanks so much for that guys.

[07:40:05]Meanwhile, there is mystery surrounding the death of an American woman in Florence. Italian authorities launching a vigorous probe. Will lingering concerns about the Amanda Knox case impact this new investigation?

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COUMO: The death of an American woman in Italy is a homicide investigation. It has massive interest and echoes of the Amanda Knox case and it's really not just in people's minds here, but also in prosecutors' minds over there.

Italian police are vowing maximum attention to Ashley Olson's case, but no suspects has been named. Let's discuss what's going on here as we know. Barbie Nadeau lives in Rome, and CNN legal analyst and former prosecutor, Paul Callan.

Barbie, let me start with you. What is the word over there in terms of the early motivations in this case and the concerns?

BARBIE NADEAU, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, right now it's a homicide investigation. They found her body Saturday afternoon with bruises and scratches around her neck. She wasn't wearing any clothes. She was in the apartment that she rented by herself in Florence.

That apartment didn't show any signs of forced entry and her body didn't show any signs to the investigators at first glance that she was sexually assaulted.

What we learned in the last hour or so, that her computer was active until noon on Friday, which means that she could have been dead for one day before her body was found.

Her body was found after her boyfriend who with whom she has had an argument alerted police that she wasn't answering her phone and he was concerned.

And so he and the landlord went into the apartment with a key and found her there. That's how this investigation began.

[07:45:09]COUMO: Quick follow, Barbie, is it true that they are not looking seriously at the boyfriend at this time and those investigating the case have crossover with those who were involved in the Amanda Knox case?

NADEAU: Yes, very much the same players in this case as in the Amanda Knox investigation. The police investigator who announced case closed in the Amanda Knox -- in the Meredith Kercher case when Amanda Knox is arrested just five days after her death.

It's the same lead inspector for the police in this Florence case. We'll see if he's learned anything at all from the botched investigation that happened during the Kercher case in this particular case.

One thing we do know there aren't nearly as many leaks to the press as they were in the Amanda Knox case by any means. Things are much more tight-lipped and we're just not getting that kind of spillage that we did last time. COUMO: Still early, let's see what happens with this situation. So when you look at legally, look, I mean, there is no reason to avoid the obvious. It does smack familiar, the same prosecutor, you got the same investigators on the case. Another American woman involved. And it does seem to be a crime of passion at the least. How do you see it?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, it certainly looks that way. With bruises on her neck and no sign of forced entry, it looks like it's somebody that she knew. So you would think that her immediate circle of friends, the boyfriend, would all become immediate suspects.

But of course this is going to depend on the forensic investigation, DNA, blood analysis and that is the thing that really blew the Amanda Knox case. So let's see if Florence police officials have learned a lesson from Amanda Knox about being more careful with the scientific evidence.

COUMO: Remember, there was an odd narrative in that case. This was about police efforts supposedly to frame Knox, to be unfair to her. What do you make of the fact that they came out with an early word that the boyfriend we talked to him, we're moving on?

CALLAN: I don't know what to make of that because I don't see how you could rule out anybody at such an early stage in an investigation.

COUMO: You don't even have an autopsy. You don't even have your forensics in.

CALLAN: Exactly. So I think it's kind of premature to be ruling people in or out it. That may be just a public fake out so that a real suspect doesn't know that he's under investigation, but, you know, we'll have to see.

But it's such an odd place. Remember the public prosecutor in Florence had prosecuted a previous case called the monster of Florence case saying there was a satanic cult at work in Florence killing people. So it's a pretty bizarre prosecutor's office and we'll see.

COUMO: Barbie, what do we know about Ms. Olsen, 35 years old, beautiful, an artist? She had been there for some time. What else do we know?

NADEAU: Well, she moved to Florence three years ago after her marriage fell apart. Her father incidentally lives in Florence, he works there as an architect and an art instructor so she didn't have a base there.

But you know, her social networking sites are all full of pictures of her with her beloved dog, with lots of friends. She was very social, very pretty, very well liked.

You know, being a blond in a city of brunettes, obviously she stood out and people knew who she was immediately. People recognized her and nobody really had anything bad to say about her. She's 35 years old, was dating this artist as well who was in his 40s who, as we said, is not a suspect, not named as a suspect yet. And we'll see where the investigation goes.

She did have a few posts on her Instragram page in which she alluded to the fact that she may have had a stalker. Pictures of her that she wasn't comfortable with and she tweeted that they were creepy. Things like that are being taken into consideration.

COUMO: All right, Barbie, thank you. Obviously we're going to keep checking in with you. You let us know what we need to follow up here on this side.

And also just to be clear, it is the same investigator group that is working on this, but they have broad jurisdiction. People are saying, wow, the same place -- no, that was 100 miles southeast of where this happened.

It's just that these are the same investigators. What are your three big questions moving forward that they have to cover in terms of advancing the investigation?

CALLAN: Well, they have to interview her circle of friends in a very, very thorough way. They have to look very carefully at the forensic evidence, the blood, DNA, and then the third thing is we now have computer evidence in the case, as well. Those three things have to be looked at carefully to solve the case.

COUMO: Paul Callan, thank you very much. Barbie Nadeau again, thank you -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Hey, Chris, the presidential race has exposed deep division this the Republican Party. How did the Republican Party lose its way and is Donald Trump the solution? Former Bush speech writer, David Frum, will be here with his provocative thoughts on the GOP revolt that's next.

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[07:53:43]

CAMEROTA: The assent of Donald Trump exposing a rift within the Republican Party. Leadership and rank-and-file voters are putting their support behind different candidates. Can the party unify and save off a larger scale revolt?

David Frum is a senior editor for "The Atlantic" and recently published an article about the complex state of the Republican Party. David, great to see you this morning.

DAVID FRUM, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE ATLANTIC": Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, so this new article in "The Atlantic," you talk about this rift between the rank-and-file and the elite in the GOP. Many people have taken a stab at this topic during this election cycle. You have a different take. You basically say the Republican Party is trapped. What does that mean?

FRUM: Well, this article has a lot of facts and figures, a lot of polling data, and a lot of tracking of where the money came from. It is astonishing when you look at the more than $100 million that Jeb Bush raised in the first few months of 2015.

How overwhelmingly it came from a few extremely wealthy individuals, and how little money he raised in amounts under $200. What happened after the 2012 election was the Republicans who can write big checks decided the only thing we did wrong in 2012.

The only thing that was wrong with the Mitt Romney message, was that he was too tough on immigration. Otherwise, it was perfect.

[07:55:00]Otherwise, cutting Medicare for people who are now under 55, eliminating the health care coverage for tens of millions of people under the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, our message that it was directed at entrepreneurs but not employees, all of that, perfect.

CAMEROTA: But David, is that what they concluded? Did they --

FRUM: I have the quotes.

CAMEROTA: So in the autopsy, the post-mortem after Mitt Romney lost, they concluded that it was his immigration message that scuttled the deal?

FRUM: Right, that's it. And the people can write big checks never liked that immigration message in the first place. So the story of the next two years was that the Republican Party doubling down on the entire Romney-Ryan message of 2012, while moving toward advocating basically doubling immigration.

That was the famous gang of eight bill. It would not only have legalized people who are in the country illegally, but it would have doubled future flows of migration.

That is happening at the same time as the typical American family is earning $4,000 a year less than it did before the recession.

As we're seeing among white Americans who didn't go to college, who are now middle age, a decrease in life expectancy. Something that didn't happen in the great depression.

So you have this extraordinary social demographic economic prices happening in the middle of American society, and this extremely wealthy group saying, Romney was perfect if only he doubled immigration.

CAMEROTA: Somehow, Donald Trump, this brash billionaire, is seen as the answer for millions of Republican voters. You write something, or say something, at least, that nobody else is saying, and it's a real eyebrow raiser.

You say, Donald Trump is not a great real estate developer. Donald Trump is not a great deal maker. Huh? Those are his two selling points.

FRUM: He's a great marketer. That's what he does. He branded the Trump brand. A condominium is a box in the sky. They're all pretty much the same. How did he persuade people to buy yours? He applied a brand to it. He was genius in doing that.

Here's what he saw in Republican politics, at the start of the cycle, there were I think -- at one point 17 Republican candidates, 16 of them agreed on something like the Gang of Eight Comprehensive Immigration Reform, which was rejected by the majority of the party.

A majority of the party had a view that nobody was addressing, a minority of the party had a view that was being competed over by 16 candidates. What does any smart marketer do?

He goes for the big market slice that is completely underserved, unserved, by the existing inhabitants of the space.

CAMEROTA: You are yourself a self-described conservative Republican so what is your prescription for your party?

FRUM: Well, in the article, I offer four paths that Republicans could choose. I recommend one, the one I like best is the one least likely to be adopted. I think the party needs a much more middle class economic message.

A smaller tax cut at the top. More initiatives in the middle to raise incomes and address life expectancy issues and also a less permissive approach to immigration.

But I don't think that what's going to happen. I offer three other examples of what is more likely to happen than the thing I recommend.

CAMEROTA: Do you think that Donald Trump is going to be the party's nominee?

FRUM: I don't think so. I think in the end, it's very hard to get past the fact that two-thirds of Republicans don't accept, but he is going to rip the party apart. The things the party is going to have to do to stop him are going to seem awfully illegitimate to the one- third 40 percent of republicans, who do support him.

COUMO: It's a great article. Everybody should check out "The Atlantic." David Frum, thanks for sharing it with us.

FRUM: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: We're following a lot of news this morning. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: A secret interview with El Chapo for "Rolling Stone" magazine back in October.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The meeting, Penn says, was brokered by Mexican actress, Kate Del Castillo.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to do the monologue and then go into hiding. Not even Sean Penn will find me.

CAMEROTA: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are now neck-and-neck in the crucial states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The child of a U.S. citizen board abroad is a natural born citizen.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Is he a natural born citizen? Honestly, we don't know. Who the hell knows?

COUMO: David Bowie, a true legend, has died of cancer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: David Bowie was a genius.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: His newest album "Blackstar" was released on Friday.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He had a very quiet and private life, which is exactly how he wanted it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COUMO: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Monday, January 11th, 8:00 in the east.

We do have breaking news of the somber variety. David Bowie has died. The 69-year-old music genius, fashion icon and, above all, artist, has left generations of fans mourning his loss.

Superstars like Rolling Stones, Madonna, Kanye West, all paying tribute to the man who made their careers possible, to a certain extent.

CAMEROTA: Bowie succumbing to his private battle with cancer. The music legend behind hits like "Rebel Rebel," "Young Americans," and "Let's Dance" being remembered around --