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Obama Chides Senators to 'Do Their Job' on Court Pick; Obama Calls Out Senate for Stalling on Judges; Obama: 'Trump Will Not Be President'; CNN Poll: Trump Nearly Doubles Cruz Among Evangelicals in S.C. Aired 7-7:30a ET
Aired February 17, 2016 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:00:03] TONY BLINKEN: We had a big summit meeting in Washington. And what we're doing now, in a very targeted and sustained way, is looking at what are the drivers that push people to become radicalized? What are the best policies to prevent it before it gets started? Who are the most credible spokespeople and the most credible voices to convince people not to get into that? What do we do about things like prisons, where a lot of the radicalization takes place?
[07:00:24] And increasingly, what we've done is we've established new international networks to bring together best practices. We're also changing the way we're organized. We're standing up a new bureau at the State Department that will focus not only on counterterrorism, which we've already been doing, but on countering violent extremism. In other words, preventing the problem from starting in the first place.
CUOMO: Tony Blinken, thank you very much.
BLINKEN: Thanks for having me, Chris.
CUOMO: Good luck with everything you're trying to do. Appreciate it.
BLINKEN: Thank you.
CUOMO: Big story coming out of Syria but there's a lot of news. We have new numbers that you're going to want to hear coming out of Nevada in the election. Let's get right to it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The very balance of the Supreme Court and of the Constitution is at stake.
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The job doesn't stop until you're voted out or until your term expires.
SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R-UT), SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: We're in the middle of a voting campaign for president of the United States.
OBAMA: I expect them to do their job, as well.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This man has done such a bad job. He has set us back so far. OBAMA: Mr. Trump will not be president.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Every region on Earth has gotten worse under the Obama-Clinton foreign policy.
OBAMA: What the other Republican candidates have said, that's pretty troubling, too.
TRUMP: We're going to start winning so much.
RUBIO: Building a hotel overseas is not foreign policy experience.
TRUMP: Ted holds up the Bible, and then he lies about so many things.
CRUZ: When radical Islamic terrorists wage jihad on the United States of America, the answer is not to tweet insults at them.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.
PEREIRA: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. Alisyn is off. John Berman is with us.
President Obama and Senate Republicans digging in their heels in what is shaping up as a battle royale over replacing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The president says he'll nominate someone indisputably qualified, and expects the Senate to do its job to hold confirmation hearings.
CUOMO: Meanwhile, President Obama also weighing in on the 2016 race in a way we have not heard before. Obama insisting Trump will not be the next president, because the presidency is, quote, "not hosting a talk show." And his critique of the Republican field did not stop there.
Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Chris Frates, live at the White House. Good morning, Chris.
CHRIS FRATES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Chris.
President Obama said yesterday that no matter who he qualify -- no matter who he nominates to replace Justice Scalia, they will be indisputably qualified. And despite this election-year slug fest between Senate Republicans and Democrats, President Obama made his expectations clear he'll do his job is and nominate a replacement. He expects the Senate to do theirs and vote on one.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
OBAMA: The Constitution is pretty clear about what is supposed to happen now.
FRATES (voice-over): President Obama again vowing to nominate a replacement for the late Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia, lashing out at Republicans who say the next president should fill the seat.
OBAMA: This will be the opportunity for senators to do their job. Your job doesn't stop until you're voted out or until your term expires.
FRATES: In his first comments about the fierce battle brewing over Scalia's replacement, Obama said the vacancy shouldn't get caught in the crosshairs of partisan politics.
OBAMA: I intend to nominate somebody, to present them to the American people, to present them to the Senate. I expect them to hold hearings. I expect there to be a vote. I'm amused when I hear people who claim to be strict interpreters of the Constitution suddenly reading into it a whole series of provisions that are not there.
FRATES: Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley telling Iowa Radio he hasn't decided if his committee will hold confirmation hearings for the president's nominee.
SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN (via phone): I would wait until the nominee is made before I would make any decisions. In other words, take it a step at a time.
FRATES: But most Senate Republicans are toeing the party line, promising to delay the process until after the election.
SESSIONS: There is no doubt that by following what Mitch McConnell, our leader, Republican leader, has said, that we are not going to bring the nominee out this year. He's doing exactly what Harry Reid would do if he were in the majority at this time.
HATCH: The Democrats are crying and moaning and groaning. It's highly hypocritical. Literally, we're in the middle of a voting campaign for president of the United States. And I think it just makes sense to put this off for the next president.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FRATES: So Justice Scalia will lie in repose in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court on Friday. But even as his seat on the bench is draped in black to honor him, the political battle over how to replace him wages on -- Chris.
CUOMO: Chris Frates, thank you very much.
[07:05:04] So as we're talking about the fight over Scalia's replacement, it's not the president's only issue with the legislative branch over the judicial branch. President Obama is calling out the Senate for sitting on his nominees for the federal appeals courts, as well. CNN senior political reporter Manu Raju has more on that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For President Obama the Republican objection to replacing Antonin Scalia is just the start of a much bigger problem. The president griping that the Senate is sitting on 14 nominations voting out of committee and waiting on a final vote.
OBAMA: Republicans and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee all agreed that they were well-qualified for the position. And yet we can't get a vote on those individuals.
RAJU: One Florida judge awaiting a vote was nominated almost a year ago to fill a post that's been vacant since May of 2014. One reason for the delay: no sign-off from her home-state senator, Marco Rubio.
Republicans say it's no different than Democratic foot dragging under President George W. Bush and argue they've approved 22 more judges under President Obama than at the same point in Bush's term.
As Republican Senator Chuck Grassley told New York Democrat Chuck Schumer last July...
GRASSLEY: So put that in your pipe and smoke it, senator from New York. So we're moving at a reasonable pace.
RAJU: It's not exactly a straight comparison.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There have been more judges confirmed during President Obama's tenure, but there have also a lot more vacancies. In absolute terms, the real trend has been to confirm fewer of President Obama's nominees compared to the open judgeships.
RAJU: In 2013, the Democratic-controlled Senate invoked what's known in Washington as the nuclear option, changing the number of votes needed to confirm a judge from a filibuster-proof 60 to a simple majority, 51. A year later, Democrats lost control of the Senate, but tension over that power play still lingers.
And now President Obama's Supreme Court nominee will be the next to face the fallout.
Manu Raju, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: All right. I want to bring in CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin; and Ron Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst and does so many other things. Ron, thanks for being with us, as well.
Jeffrey, you know, you hear about the appellate court right there. We see what's happening with the Supreme Court. President Obama admits, sort of, that he's been part of the problem over the last 10 years in Washington. When he was in the Senate, you know, he talked about the idea of standing in the way of Samuel Alito becoming a Supreme Court justice. But now he says it's too much too far.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: That's right. And also, I think, one backdrop to all of this is that Republicans have been more motivated on legal issues on judicial nominations than Democrats have been.
When then-Senator Obama talked about a filibuster against Samuel Alito, they could only muster 24 senators, which you know, is useless in filibuster terms. But -- but Republicans are much more united on trying to stop President Obama's nomination. And I think that tells you something about the passion on the issue on both sides.
BERMAN: Ron Brownstein, what about that? Jeffrey Toobin is saying the Democrats don't have the stomach or perhaps another part of the anatomy to fight the fight when it comes to Supreme Court justices going forward. One of the bets that you hear Democrats making right now is, "Oh, this will be a big issue on the 2016 election. This will help Democrats, because it will motivate voters." Is -- is there any evidence that that's true?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well I think, first of all, this is more concrete than it has ever been. I mean, you can literally now say, if Republicans follow through on what they are saying, that the vote for the president is also a vote to determine the direction and the control of the Supreme Court, possibly for many years to come.
And I do think this is something of a gamble for Republicans in two senses. One is the one, you know, the most obvious one. The question of whether obstruction and kind of the blockade idea is unpopular with voters, particularly in swing states.
But I think there's a larger issue here, which is that if you kind of look across the playing field now, if you think about the economy and national security, at best, Democrats are looking at a draw on those issues with the Republicans and certainly probably on national security, they're behind the eight ball.
The strongest terrain for Democrats in contemporary politics is cultural issues. And that is where the court, I think, looms largest in the imaginations of Americans. And if you are basically going to say this election is going to be a referendum on whether we're going to appoint someone to try to overturn the decision on gay marriage or to ban abortion, for instance, I think that is relatively weaker ground for Republicans to fight on than on the core issues of prosperity and security.
So this is a big gamble across the board to basically raise this as the central, if not a central, not the central issue in the 2016 campaign.
BERMAN: So one big change since yesterday. As we heard the president answer questions about the Supreme Court and the nomination process. We also heard from Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who says now he's open to the idea, perhaps, of holding hearings. Let's listen to the senator.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[07:10:04] GRASSLEY (via phone): I would wait until the nominee is made before I would make any decision, in other words, take it a step at the time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: All right. That's a change, Ron. You know, Saturday, Sunday, Chuck Grassley suggested there would be no hearings, which is what Mitch McConnell said all along. No hearings, no nothing.
If there are hearings, and I can't imagine when they'd be -- We're talking, like, April, May, June at this point, but in the middle of an election year -- describe to me what those hearings would look like and the impact they'd have.
BROWNSTEIN: Well, first of all, I mean, I think -- you know, I think there are -- there have been voices in the Republican Party who have quietly said that it would have been better for the party to essentially open a process and vote down a nominee than to seem to be opposing anyone, you know, sight unseen.
On the other hand, as you talked about earlier today, once you have an actual nominee and actual hearings, things are unpredictable. The nominee could prove very attractive to the public. You're just opening a lot of uncertainties if you go forward with the process. It probably does create more momentum and demand, support for the nominee, in all likelihood.
So I think, from the point of view of Mitch McConnell, they're trying to minimize risk by shutting down the process. But that has, as I've said, risks of its own. And there really is no easy way around this. Either course for Republicans, I think, is risky. Obviously, bringing to a vote is something that could inflame the base, but seeming to just reject a nominee, sight unseen, is also something that I think many Americans will find a bit too far of an escalation of the partisan conflict.
TOOBIN: But, remember, if McConnell succeeds in shutting down the hearings altogether, where does the story get the media oxygen? McConnell may be betting that, you know, in the absence of hearings, how many times are we going to cover the non-holding of hearings? I mean, the hearings will certainly be a focus for both sides. If you have no hearings, how do the Democrats keep the story alive for 10 months? I don't know.
BERMAN: This is a fight worth having for the Republicans or for the people who don't want, you know, a liberal or a non-conservative justice on the Supreme Court. It's a fight worth having.
Our Amanda Carpenter, CNN analyst, used to work for Ted Cruz, says, "Let's just forget about the idea of is there precedent or is there not precedent for this? Forget it. It's silly. Just say we don't want a liberal judge, and we're going to obstruct it as long as we can."
TOOBIN: And when you think of the stakes of this vacancy, they are so enormous, especially for Republicans. Because for the first time in two generations, if a Democrat fills this seat, you could have a liberal majority on the Supreme Court. That hasn't happened since Earl Warren was chief justice. That just tells you how -- how big a deal this vacancy is.
BERMAN: Ron Brownstein, let me offer this. Say a Democrat wins the White House, which is by no means a certainty. Say the Senate either flips or doesn't flip. If it's roughly 50/50, there's no way to guarantee that a Democratic president could get a nominee through the court next year if Ted Cruz is still in the Senate and wants to stop it.
BROWNSTEIN: Well, first of all, I think -- to Jeffrey's point, I think what will keep it alive essentially will be both sides, but particularly Democrats, framing the Senate races and the presidential race as a referendum on which side controls the court. And I think that is what's going to keep it alive. It's going to be a central issue of debate in the presidential campaign and these Senate races all the way through.
On that point, I think, look, you know, the general trajectory that we're in is the Geneva Convention on politics is being shredded year after year. What Amanda Carpenter is talking about is use any means necessary. And I think if Democrats regain a majority in the Senate and hold the presidency in 2017, I do not think the filibuster will survive on a Supreme Court nominee.
BERMAN: We'll see. There are plenty of Republicans just are saying bring it -- Michaela.
PEREIRA: All right, John. Thank you so much.
Breaking news in the 2016 race. A CNN/ORC poll just released in the last hour shows the Democrats neck and neck in Nevada three days out from the caucus. Forty-eight percent of voters say they'll -- they're backing Hillary Clinton, while Bernie Sanders is right on her heels with 47 percent.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Donald Trump with a shocking lead over his rivals, more than the next three candidates combined. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz in a close race for second.
Trump also holding a commanding 16-point lead in South Carolina three days before the GOP primary. He's way ahead of Cruz, Bush, and Rubio. The front-runner even rating high among evangelicals, which is typically a Cruz stronghold. Trump has 42 percent of their vote.
Worth noting: half of Republican voters remain uncommitted to a candidate.
As for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by a comfortable margin in South Carolina. She has the most support among women and African-American voters, two groups that she'll need in her corner in order to clinch the nomination. But again, more than half of voters still making up their minds on just who they'll pick.
[07:15:00] CUOMO: President Obama ripping into the Republican field at his news conference. The president declaring front-runner Donald Trump will not be his successor and accuses Marco Rubio of flip- flopping on immigration. CNN's Athena Jones live from Beaufort, South Carolina.
Good morning, Athena.
ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.
We're talking about a bare-knuckle bronze to win, place, or show here in South Carolina. Now you have President Obama throwing some punches of his own.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
OBAMA: I continue to believe Mr. Trump will not be president.
JONES (voice-over): Weighing in just days before the South Carolina primary, President Obama confident Donald Trump won't win the White House.
OBAMA: I have a lot of faith in the American people. And I think they recognize that being president is a serious job. It's not hosting a talk show or a reality show.
JONES: Obama blasting the billionaire Tuesday evening, saying Trump panders and lacks even basic foreign policy knowledge.
OBAMA: It requires being able to work with leaders around the world in a way that reflects the importance of the office and gives people confidence that you know the facts and you know their names and you know where they are on a map and you know something about their history. And you're not just going to play to the crowd back home.
JONES: Not one to keep quiet...
TRUMP: He has done such a lousy job as president.
JONES: ... the GOP front-runner shot back an hour later.
TRUMP: You look at our budgets, you look at our spending. We can't beat ISIS. Obamacare is terrible.
You're lucky I didn't run last time when Romney ran, because you would have been a one-term president.
JONES: But Obama didn't contain his criticism to Trump's polarizing rhetoric. His rivals were hit, too.
OBAMA: If you look at what the other Republican candidates have said, that's pretty troubling, too.
JONES: The president specifically calling out Marco Rubio for his previous support of an immigration bill back in 2013.
OBAMA: You've got a candidate who sponsored a bill that I supported to finally solve the immigration problem, and he's running away from it as fast as he can.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
JONES: No response yet from Marco Rubio.
Meanwhile, Jeb Bush is getting attention for a tweeted photo of a handgun engraved with his name. The caption, "America." "The Daily News" having some fun with that photo, with the headline "Dolt .45: Desperate Jeb Bush gets ripped for tweet suggesting guns are America" -- John.
BERMAN: All right, Athena. Athena Jones for us. Thanks so much.
We do have some breaking news, not about politics. Apple is refusing to comply with a federal judge's order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists. Apple CEO Tim Cook says the unprecedented step undermines customer security. FBI agents are trying to gain access to Syed Rizwan Farook's phone to get data that they believe could help the investigation into the attack that killed 14 people last year.
PEREIRA: All right. A new CNN poll shows that Donald Trump way -- is way on top with evangelical votes in South Carolina. Can Ted Cruz stop his momentum and woo these conservative voters? That's ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:22:23] CUOMO: Polls are a suggestion not a prediction. But that said, we have new numbers from Quinnipiac that give a very different picture of what's going on in the national race on the GOP side.
Trump up. No surprise. Look at the spread. February 5, now up 8. Look at the race for second: Rubio and Cruz flipping positions. Where else do we see? What is the Bush momentum? Not so much. Kasich, Cruz, Carson. You see all those headlines right there. We also have CNN polls this morning that are giving a very good window into what's happening and what's not happening in South Carolina. What is happening? Trump is just crushing the field. OK? I mean, that's the headline there.
What is not happening is with evangelicals, if we can show that number. The presumption was Ted Cruz, even Ben Carson would take a big bite out of that population. Not so much. Not even close to what Trump is bringing in right now.
So let's get some perspective on what these numbers do and do not mean. We have the two best guests for this comparison. We have Kellyanne Conway, president and CEO of The Polling Company. She does polls and analysis for a Cruz super PAC. We also have Geoffrey Lord, CNN political commentator and Donald Trump supporter and author of, quote, "What America Needs: The Case for Trump," unquote.
Lady and gentlemen, thank you for being here this morning. The big headline -- the big troubling headline for you, Kellyanne, is what seems to be a perceptible swap in numbers two and three nationally, according to Quinnipiac. And what's going on with evangelicals in South Carolina. What do you see?
KELLYANNE CONWAY, PRESIDENT/CEO, THE POLLING COMPANY: Thanks, Chris.
Well, there's one point separating Cruz and Rubio, so it's indistinguishable in a national poll. It's no surprise that people are now looking at this as a three-person race between Cruz, Rubio and, of course, Trump on top.
The question for Rubio is when will these other establishment candidates like Kasich and Bush drop out of the race and give him a clearer path? They don't seem to want to do that. There was enormous pressure on Bush and then Kasich to drop out after New Hampshire.
On the other hand, when you look at some of the South Carolina polls, Senator Rubio saw yesterday, they are all over the place. I would
note that the CNN poll that has Mr. Trump way ahead, the last CNN poll before Iowa had Mr. Trump at 41. He got 24 percent. It had Cruz at 19. He got 28. So I think some polls overestimate; some polls underestimate.
I will tell you, here on the ground in South Carolina at our super PAC, we knocked on the 100,000th door this Saturday. We have an enormous ground game. The campaign has a ground game. You saw what that did in Iowa. And I think that the fight here is for No. 2 and No. 3 and then going to Nevada, which is a caucus, which is ready- made.
[07:25:09] As for the evangelicals, they are not monolithic voters. And I hope people really take that message from this election, Chris and Geoffrey. Some of them, of course, care about abortion and religious liberty, no doubt. Others look at Mr. Trump and his attributes the same way nonvoters do. Mr. Trump is not a politician, so he'll be held to account for his performance after he's in office, if he gets there. All the others are elected officials with the exception of Dr. Carson. They're held to account for their records now.
CUOMO: Geoffrey Lord, the big theory that works against a Trump nomination is consolidation of the rest of the field. What do you make of that suggestion? When it comes down to a two-man race, if it's Rubio or Cruz, that's when the vulnerability will be shown, because the rest of the pie will all be in one slice against Trump.
GEOFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think that basically -- basically, the last straw here, people are grasping and grasping and grasping. If this, if that, then we can defeat Donald Trump. It isn't happening.
And I think Kellyanne touched on something. And I absolutely agree with this. In terms of evangelicals and the rest of the field, when you look at that -- the internals of that CNN poll, Donald Trump is way ahead on issues like dealing with immigration, dealing with the economy, dealing with ISIS. Evangelicals are not one-issue voters. I mean, there may be some. But they're regular folks. You know? They've got mortgages to pay. They've got kids to educate. They may be out of a job. So they're looking at Donald Trump through that lens, I believe. And I think that this applies across the board. CUOMO: Kellyanne, I've been leaning on you to tell me why things make
sense for about, oh, a little while now in our longtime friendship. So explain this to me. Ted Cruz, by all accounts, is incredibly intelligent. Why did he cotton to Trump early on when he was going to eventually wind up where he is now?
If that's Trump, you tell him I've been trying to get him for two days, Geoffrey, and he hasn't returned my call.
And what about this tactic of all the talk about lying, Kellyanne? That seems beneath the dignity of where Ted Cruz would usually want to be arguing. What's your take on those two points?
CONWAY: Well, here in South Carolina, Chris, Ted Cruz is being called a liar by both Trump and Rubio. Rubio is playing a little Mini Me to Donald Trump now. He is trying to break into some of his support. Just last night, there were about 500,000 robo-calls deployed by Trey Gowdy, who of course, is in charge of the Benghazi committee, the Benghazi hearings in the House, calling Ted Cruz a liar, accusing him of dirty tricks. And it's very unfortunate, because I've yet to hear, Chris, about the philosophical differences.
And what Cruz was saying on the debate stage again yesterday is any time you challenge Mr. Trump on one of his policy prescriptions or philosophical difference, he calls his opponents -- he screams, "Liar, liar, liar."
I mean, Geoffrey is an honest broker here. I'm sure he would agree it would be much better for the voters to hear about the policy differences than it would be just to hear about personal insults.
Let me just address something else you asked. Very important. You said why did Ted Cruz cotton to Donald Trump early on? I love that word. And -- and the fact is, it's this one-two Trump-Cruz punch that has left the establishment on its back. It's the conservatives who know say they're the base of the party not a wing of the party. That will be one of the by-products of the 2016 election cycle.
CUOMO: All right. What's your response to that, that it's your guy, Geoffrey, who's making this all about lying and lowest common denominator-type demagoguery, instead of dealing with what voters need to hear?
LORD: No, I don't think that's true. Look, voters are making themselves heard here. Donald Trump came in at a very close razor- thin second in the caucus state of Iowa. And he came in first in New Hampshire. I mean, the voters are paying attention. They're the ones who are deciding something.
And Chris, I will say this. I do think that Donald Trump has something going in his favor here, in that he is, like Ronald Reagan before and like Arnold Schwarzenegger -- and I'm not talking ideology so much here, I'm just saying that he's a cultural figure. And I think that when a cultural figure of Donald Trump's magnitude is pitted against politicians -- Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, whomever -- that he has an asset here. Because the American people feel that they know him. They've known him for decades. So it's not -- it's not something that's brand-new to them. They know Donald Trump. They have confidence in him, and I think they are responding to that.
CUOMO: And the Cruz camp is trying to define what he is now, versus what he's been in the past. That's the battle we'll be watching.
Geoffrey Lord, Kellyanne Conway, thank you both, my friends. Enjoy your day.
A quick programming note for you: the Republican presidential candidates make their pitch directly to South Carolina voters. Remember how different that dynamic is. When you hear these men address the concerns and the worries of real voters, you get a different window into them. Two nights. Wednesday: Carson, Rubio, Cruz. Thursday: Kasich, Bush, Trump. All of it begins at 8 p.m. Eastern.
