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Trump Stands Firm on Boycotting Tonight's Debate; Democrats Debating More Debates; Clinton: Sanders' Attacks are 'Increasingly Personal'. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 28, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have zero respect for Megyn Kelly. I don't think she's very good at what she does. I think she's highly overrated.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Apparently, Mr. Trump considers Megyn Kelly very, very scary.

BILL O'REILLY, FOX NEWS HOST: Answer the questions, look out for the folks. Just want you to consider it.

TRUMP: I don't like being taken advantage of. In this case, I was taken advantage of by FOX. I don't like that.

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, things don't always go your way. It seems kind of weird.

O'REILLY: Think about it. Say look, I might come back.

TRUMP: All this pundits, these geniuses. These people back there. Morons. You're morons.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can the people of Flint today, as we sit here, can they drink the water?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. We don't want them to.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Snyder must go. Snyder must go.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Governor, will you resign?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY.

It is January 28, 6 a.m. in the east. Mick is off, J.B. sitting right here.

And up first, Donald Trump standing firm on his plans to boycott's tonight's FOX News debate. The Republican frontrunner announcing plans to host a veterans benefit in Iowa at the exact same time his rivals will be debating.

Trump's war with FOX News taking center stage. Trump says this is about an eye for an eye.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Meanwhile, Trump's rivals accused him of being afraid to answer tough questions, and they're hoping to seize on his absence tonight. Just four days until the Iowa caucuses, and this race continues to heat up.

So let's begin our coverage with Phil Mattingly. He's live in Des Moines, Iowa.

Good morning, Phil.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

He's not bluffing. The venue has been reserved. The tickets are available. And it's not going to be taking place behind me. Donald Trump's feud with FOX definitely escalating over the last 24 hours, and now he's going to be missing the debate that will be taking place right behind me in just a few hours. Puts a lot of things in flux right now and is frustrating a lot of campaigns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Donald Trump only hours away from hosting his, quote, "special event" to raise money for veterans at Drake University in Des Moines. The televised affair airing the same time as FOX's Trumpless primetime debate.

TRUMP: What we have going, and it's really important, it's a movement. It's not like a normal situation.

MATTINGLY: But the GOP frontrunner's decision to stick it to FOX by dropping out is not without irony.

TRUMP: I was not treated well by FOX.

MATTINGLY: Trump, appearing on the network last night, FOX News anchor Bill O'Reilly failing to coax him back to the stage.

O'REILLY: Just want you to consider it. You owe me milkshakes. I'll take them off the ledger if you consider it.

TRUMP: I told you up front. I said don't ask me that question, because it's an embarrassment for you.

O'REILLY: I'm not going to listen to anybody. Right. But I'm not going to listen to any political person telling me not don't ask me anything.

MATTINGLY: O'Reilly repeatedly asking Trump to debate tonight.

O'REILLY: I'm asking you to reconsider it.

TRUMP: A lot of milkshakes. O'REILLY: If you don't want to, it's up to you.

MATTINGLY: In Trump's absence, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, running No. 2 in the polls, is likely to be pushed to center stage. Now Cruz is doubling down on his challenge for a one-on-one debate with his biggest rival.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm going to propose a venue, Western Iowa Tech, Saturday night in Sioux City. We already have it reserved.

MATTINGLY: Cruz's super PAC offering $1.5 million to vets groups if Trump agrees. And Carly Fiorina upping the ante, offering $2 million to debate Trump at Drake. The media spectacle rubbing the rest of the GOP pack the wrong way.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't think he'll be missed. In fact, I really don't think Donald Trump is a conservative.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Ninety percent of their coverage is on this whole thing. This is not a show. This is serious.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: Marco Rubio really expressing the frustration there that I've been hearing talking to campaigns, both behind closed doors and publicly over the last 24 hours, guys.

The key to watch over these next couple days, Ted Cruz obviously throwing down the gauntlet, trying to get a one-on-one challenge debate. His team is very cognizant of the fact Donald Trump is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room at the key moment when he needs to be reaching Iowa voters. What he does tonight during that debate without Donald Trump onstage might be the most interesting and possibly most important aspect of these next four days in Iowa, guys.

CAMEROTA: OK, Phil, thanks so much for all of that background.

Here now to discuss, CNN senior political analyst, editorial director for "The National Journal," Ron Brownstein; CNN political commentator, political anchor at Time Warner Cable News, Errol Louis; and CNN national political reporter, Maeve Reston. Great to see all of you.

Errol, I'll start with you. Let's not start by talking about Donald Trump. Let's start by talking about Ted Cruz talking about Donald Trump. And Ted Cruz is trying to really sort of turn this to his advantage. He's upping the ante in terms of his rhetoric. He's also -- his mega donors are offering $1.5 million to the charity of Donald Trump's choosing, if he will debate Ted Cruz, mano a mano.

So here is Ted Cruz asking, asking -- cajoling Donald Trump. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRUZ: And imagine someone called you and said, "You know what? I'd like that job. But I ain't showing up for the interview."

What would you say? "You're fired."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: He's taking a page from the Trump playbook. Who do you think this is working for?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's working for everybody, frankly. This is the nature of a media stunt, right? The people who pull off the stunt and the people who try to get into the stunt, it sort of works for everybody, in part because we're talking about it.

So for Donald Trump, look, it's classic frontrunner strategy to not -- to want to freeze things. He thinks he's doing well. He thinks he's got the momentum. He thinks he can win Iowa. There's absolutely nothing to be gained from his point of view by going in with a target on his back and having every other candidate on the stage and maybe one or two of the moderators taking shots at him, so he walks away.

For Ted Cruz, this is a chance to say, "This was always and only between me and Donald Trump. Let's get the rest of these people out of the way, and let this be something that helps me if" he thinks that works for his strategy. He's got a lot of organization on the ground. He thinks he can win in Iowa.

So this is pure politics. I mean, this is -- this is in some ways nothing to do with we want robust, open debate. And I think it works in some ways for both campaigns.

CUOMO: This is also a big reflection of who Donald Trump is at his core and how he deals with stimulus, let's say. So here he is with O'Reilly last night, explaining once they got into it. Because this was a whole beg session to go to the debate tonight, is what it really was. It was couched as an argument, but it wasn't. It was, "Why don't you go? Please go. Why don't you go? Please go." And here's Trump's rationale for why he won't. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'REILLY: I think you should be the bigger man. And say, "You know what? I didn't like it," and you should make that case all day long. "But I'm not going to take any action against it." You know, don't you think that's the right thing to do?

TRUMP: It probably is, but, you know, it's called an eye for an eye, I guess, also. You can look at it that way.

O'REILLY: That's Old Testament.

TRUMP: Bill...

O'REILLY: No, no, no. If you're the Christian, the eye for the eye rule goes out. Here's what it is. Turning the other cheek.

TRUMP: Let me tell you, you're taking this much more seriously than I am. I'm not taking it seriously. I'm going to have a wonderful time tomorrow night at 9 p.m. at Drake University.

O'REILLY: But you're depriving the people of seeing you...

TRUMP: No, I'm not.

O'REILLY: ... in a forum they need to see you in. Come on, it's about the country.

TRUMP: The press will be there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: I just like that just on its own face. I don't even think we -- I don't think we have to discuss it anyway. So, Ron, when you hear Bill O'Reilly say, "Turn the other cheek," something that he's known so well for, what do you think about this dynamic of what Donald Trump is doing and why he's doing it and how that will impact voters?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: A couple thoughts. F=I mean, first, as Errol said, you know, there are lots of frontrunners who don't like a debate when they think they're ahead. And at some level, behind all of the extra ingredients, that's what we're looking at.

The second thing is that, look, Donald Trump's temperament is the two- edged sword in this race. The belligerence, the brusqueness does appeal to those voters or attract them to feel, as they talked about before, that the country is slipping away from them in a fundamental way, and they want someone who will fight in a way that we haven't seen.

On the other hand, there are lots of voters -- I was at the Ted Cruz rally last night in west Des Moines, who question his temperament as president. They like hearing him say these things as a provocateur. They wonder whether it would apply as president.

The third point, though, I think the most important one is we are here talking about process. Donald Trump has essentially been able to dominate the debate in this race from the beginning through personal attacks and process stories, I think.

And, you know, he's been able to kind of tamp down the discussion of many of the issues that may be problematic for him in a Republican primary. Like, for example, a group of anti-abortion leaders coming out yesterday in Iowa, saying vote for anyone but Trump. We're not talking about that today. We're talking about process, and he is at the center of this discussion again.

BERMAN: He is all process. And to a certain extent, Maeve, I think how it plays depends on how he performs over the next 24 hours in his appearances today, in the media, and in the event tonight. It depends if he portrays himself as the big dog or the weak puppy.

And you saw some of that with O'Reilly last night where he says, I'm doing this from a position of strength. I'm doing this, because I know how to negotiate and behave in a deal. Let's play that. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I don't like being taken advantage of. In this case, I was being taken advantage of by FOX. I don't like that.

Now, when I'm representing the country, if I win, if I'm representing the country as president, I won't let our country -- because that's a personality trait. I'm not going to let our country be taken advantage of. So it is a personality trait. But I don't think it's really a bad personality trait.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That's what he's got to sell, Maeve, over the next 24 hours.

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And absolutely. What I heard yesterday all over Iowa, this was all that anybody was talking about. Paying attention to that deal-making aspect of Donald Trump, and whether or not this was a good move or a bad move and how it would turn out for him.

I think, though, that he is operating from the position of strength. A lot of people are going to tune into his event to see what he says about the other guys on the stage.

And I think that it gives the other candidates a little bit of breathing room on the stage tonight. Obviously, Ted Cruz has really taken advantage of this opportunity that Donald Trump has given him. But in the long run, I'm really not sure that it's going to matter that much to Iowa voters. Donald Trump has been, you know, in their living rooms for years. They like watching the spectacle, but the people who are for him are sticking with him at this point, and those who were not for him to begin with are the ones who were taking issue from the fact that he's withdrawn from the debate.

CAMEROTA: He says -- Donald Trump says that he's going to hold a competing event tonight for vets. And interestingly, one of the organizations, the veterans organization tweeted this out. They say, "If offered, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America will decline donations from Trump's event. We need strong policies from candidates, not to be used for political stunts."

That's fascinating. You would think any money is good money. Trump money is as green as anybody else's money. And they're saying, "We don't want to be a pawn."

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: The tweet from Paul Rieckhoff. I interviewed him a few times. A very principled guy. You know, really has his heart in that kind of work. And doesn't want to be used. Because they have been used. They're not just props to stand in the background and camouflage while some politician tries to advance themselves. And that's clearly what's going on here.

I mean, as Bill O'Reilly pointed out to Donald Trump multiple times, it's like you can raise money any night of the week for veterans if you really want to. Trying to do it as a way to counterprogram a debate that you didn't want to participate in starts to really sully a lot of the underlying issues that are involved. And there again, as Ron points out, you know, you've got somebody who's trying to distract from issues constantly, and at least some of the people, this particular veterans group is not going to play along.

CAMEROTA: All right, guys, panel, thank you very much. Stick around. We have a lot more to talk about.

Coming up in our 8 A.M. hour, we will talk to Republican candidate, senator Rand Paul who is back on the main debate stage tonight and who says the I.Q. level of the debate has just gone up.

BERMAN: As for the Democrats, they have their own debate problems. Democratic candidates in the DNC, they are sparring over plans to add an unsanctioned debate in New Hampshire just days before the primary there. This race continues to tighten between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, so how is this debate over debate going to play out?

CNN'S Jeff Zeleny in his homeland, in Des Moines with more.

Good morning, Jeff.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

If you're wondering when the last Democratic debate was here in Iowa, you might have to check your calendar. It was in November. In that lies the whole challenge here, the whole controversy now on the Democratic side.

Hillary Clinton for months was not wanting more debates. Suddenly she is interested in debating more. She said she would do another debate next week in New Hampshire.

Why is that? Because this race has gotten so tight. We saw Bernie Sanders meeting at the White House, meeting with President Obama one on one for 45 minutes. Then he returned to Iowa, was in Mason City, Iowa, last night, and he noted that one of his rivals, Hillary Clinton, was absent.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My opponent is not in Iowa tonight. She is raising money from a Philadelphia investment firm. Frankly, I would rather be here with you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So, of course, that is a central message of Bernie Sanders' campaign in the final days here, that he is raising money individually from some 2.5 million contributors. And Hillary Clinton is raising money the old-fashioned way.

But she was in Iowa campaigning yesterday. You can see this video of her at a bowling alley, trying to work over every Iowa voter, every supporter here. Bill Clinton, one of her top surrogates, was just down the road from Bernie Sanders in Mason City. So the issue on the debates here is this. He says -- Senator Sanders says he will do another debate next week in New Hampshire if the Clinton campaign agrees to a debate in March, April, and May.

So what this is boiling down to is the Sanders campaign hopes this fight lasts months and months and months. The Clinton campaign was hoping to wrap it up early. We'll see how those Iowa results go next week. That will be the entire ball game to see how long this Democratic campaign is going to go on -- Chris.

CUOMO: Jeff Zeleny, thank you very much. A reminder: we are just four days from the Iowa caucuses. We're going to take NEW DAY on the road for the big event. We're going to be live on Monday from Mars Cafe in Des Moines.

CAMEROTA: Out of this world.

CUOMO: That's the kind of cheek you can look forward to. And you can see it in person. If you're in the area...

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CUOMO: ... come on and stop by. You have seen nothing until you have watched Camerota take down a flapjack in a single bite.

CAMEROTA: A stack of them, No. 1. No. 2, what else would you be doing at 5 a.m. in Des Moines? So come on down.

BERMAN: Come early. "EARLY START" is going to be there, too. So if you want to wake up at 3...

CUOMO: Yes.

BERMAN: ... you know, come see me.

CUOMO: And I'll tell you what. Berman is no joke around the breakfast table, as well.

BERMAN: Hard-boiled eggs. You'll see why they call them hard-boiled.

Breaking overnight, three members of the militia group occupying a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon arrested. We're told the men turned themselves into the FBI. The group's leader, Ammon Bundy, is now urging the small band of remaining protesters holed up in the refuge to go home. Bundy was arrested Tuesday during a traffic stop. The group's spokesman was shot and killed in a shootout with authorities during the same stop.

CAMEROTA: Growing global concern over the Zika virus. Two American scientists say it has, quote, "explosive pandemic potential" and calling on the World Health Organization to convene an emergency meeting.

The mosquito-borne virus spreading to two dozen countries with Brazil hit hardest. The scientists estimate it could be a decade before a vaccine is available to the public. CUOMO: President Obama weighing in on the controversy surrounding the

Oscars. He made the push, or talked about the push to make the Motion Picture Academy and its nominees more diverse. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When everybody's story is told, then that makes for better art. It makes for better entertainment. It makes everybody feel part of one American family.

As a whole, the industry should do what every other industry should do, which is to look for talent and provide opportunity to everybody. And I think the Oscar debate is really just an expression of this broader issue, of are we making sure that everybody is getting a fair shot?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:15:12] CUOMO: The specific criticism here is that the Academy, for the second straight year, will have all white acting nominees in the major categories. The group's president says they are taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of their membership.

BERMAN: All right, we are just four days now from the Iowa caucuses. The race on both sides very tight. So which candidate -- which of these people up on the screen right now has the most to lose? Is it Susan Sarandon? We'll discuss on our panel next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: The fingers show four days until Iowa. New polls. You'll see more and more coming out. They are all showing the same thing. The race tightening on both sides.

Here's a new NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll. A Marist poll shows the race tightening for the Republicans. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are locked in a virtual tie in Iowa.

[06:20:07] The candidates aggressively trying to convince Iowa voters that they have the best vision, crisscrossing the state, leading up to Monday's caucuses.

Let's discuss who is making any gains and what is the state of play. Again, Ron Brownstein, Errol Louis, Maeve Reston. Thank you for being in the cold.

I'll start with you because you're freezing, Ron Brownstein. You look like me out there. We don't do well in the cold, us ethnics.

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

CUOMO: So they're crisscrossing the state. They're going back and forth. The polls are very tight. The state of play: Clinton's campaign has been talking more and more about negative attacks coming from Bernie Sanders. Do you see the "there" there?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. I mean, look, he is pushing the edge, as she said, in terms of the way he's talking about her.

But Chris, the larger point is I think you have the same dynamic under way in both parties at this point. The polls aren't so much predicting an answer as framing the right question. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both do better among voters who have been less likely to participate historically. And the larger the turnout, the bigger the universe of voters, the better the night they will have.

You look even at the Quinnipiac poll that had Bernie Sanders ahead in Iowa among the Democrats yesterday. Hillary Clinton was up 17 points, 16 points among people who have voted in the caucuses before. He was up 46 points among first-time voters.

The disparity isn't quite as extreme on the Republican side, but it's the same pattern. The bigger the turnout -- and by the way, it will tell us a lot about what's coming down the road. Because if Donald Trump in particular can turn out his voters to the caucus, which is a tough, complex process, they're going to show up in the primaries, and Republicans are going to be looking at a very different electorate, possibly.

CAMEROTA: Hey, Maeve, let's talk about the Democratic debates. OK, debates on that side of the aisle. There are no debates scheduled right now before New Hampshire primary.

However, something has happened where now Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are fighting with each other. "No, I want more debates. No, I want more debates. I want a debate, but you say you don't. No, you say you don't." What's going on here?

CUOMO: I think you summed it up pretty good right there.

RESTON: Well, I mean, clearly, this is such a tight race. Just being out there talking last night to people who had come out to see Bill Clinton in Mason City, people are nervous. The supporters are nervous. And they really want to see Hillary Clinton on that debate stage again. They think that, for example, in our town hall recently, that she really was able to hammer that experience point over and over again. And really raised questions about Bernie Sanders, the feasibility of his ideas. And they think that that is a good stage for her to be on. Bernie Sanders, of course, coming back and saying well, that he's certainly not afraid to debate Hillary Clinton and would do it many times again.

So I do think that the Democrats are enjoying this. And the Democratic Party has really hidden these debates in some ways from voters. You know, Saturday nights. It's not been as many eyeballs as on the Republican side. And I think that, you know, both of them have a shot in the debates to really show their strengths, and it's a good venue for them.

BERMAN: Yes, if the debate falls in the woods does it make a sound in the newspapers have a really interesting story. They're deciding whether or not to go negative on Hillary Clinton with ads. They bought all this ad time. They have two sets of ads. Positive and negative. And they can't decide which to use. I mean, clearly they're leaking the story. They're floating it. What are they doing here?

LOUIS: Yes. That's a way, I think, of sort of fertilizing the ground a little bit and getting us used to the idea that some negative attacks are going to come out. This is something that Bernie Sanders has said he wouldn't do. He personally doesn't seem to want to do that sort of a thing.

But when you've got somebody who, in effect, is the incumbent, and that really is very much who Hillary Clinton is in the Democratic Party, you've got to make a case that she has to get fired. And there's no way to do that that doesn't get into "She did this. She voted that way. She's not right. She's not ready." You've got to -- you've got to say it.

BERMAN: There's more of a risk for him than most candidates, because part of his brand this whole time is "I'm not going to get mean."

LOUIS: Well, this is true. But he never said he wasn't going to get mean. He said he wouldn't get personal. So, you know, there's contrasting your record. I mean, so, for example, you know, votes that she helped support during her husband's administration when she went out and argued for the Crime Control act in 1994. Well, she did that. It happened. There's videotape of it.

Do you want to show that videotape and ask a couple of questions so that people who may maybe weren't old enough to vote back then will have something to think about as they go into the voting booth?

Bernie Sanders would do well to sort of raise those issues if he wants to win. And in order to win, you've got to tell people, you know, "Look, you don't know Hillary Clinton like I know Hillary Clinton. Let's look at some videotape."

Is that negative? Well, all's fair.

CUOMO: Yes, Ron.

BROWNSTEIN: I was going to say, you know, look, in the Democratic race, it really is coming down to a single issue. Which is this question of how do you achieve change in this era of divided government?

Bernie Sanders is talking about fundamentally transforming politics with his bottom-up uprising. Hillary Clinton is saying -- and you see it in her closing ads -- look, I can work within the system and get more done. That what he's proposing is unrealistic.

CUOMO: Ron -- Ron...

BROWNSTEIN: And you see the audience for that dividing along a very clear demographic line, as well.

CUOMO: Ron, here's part of the audience for what they're talk about right now, and that's Nancy Pelosi. Here's what she just said about whose plan has a chance.

BROWNSTEIN: Exactly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), MINORITY LEADER: Well, he's talking about a single payer, and that's not going to happen. I mean, does anybody in this room think that we're going to be discussing a single payer?

We have, I think, a very realistic plan that is out there. Can it be improved upon? Everything can. But it's no use having a conversation about something that's not going to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: I may be wrong here, Maeve, but I keep hearing the words "not going to happen" in relation to what Bernie Sanders is proposing. What does that tell you in terms of the state of play on the Democrats' side?

RESTON: That it's very, very tight. And I mean, that was really quite a cutting line of argument that Pelosi was using against Sanders without, you know, making it sound like an attack.

Last night, Bill Clinton also hammering home that argument over and over again, that Hillary Clinton is the only proven change maker on hostile territory, using that word again and again. And I think that that is what her allies hope in these coming days, to really get voters to think about the feasibility of Bernie Sanders' plans and to start thinking about the long-term, and what he would look like up against Donald Trump in a general election.

CAMEROTA: Maeve, Ron, Errol, thank you. Great to talk to you guys.

BERMAN: All right. A potential blow to peace talks in Syria. A key U.S. ally could be kept on the sidelines. We have reporting from the front lines in the fight against ISIS in Syria, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)