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Carson, Rubio, Cruz Take Part in S.C. Town Hall; Turkey: Attacker Linked to Kurdish Militants; Clinton: 'I'm Not So Good at Promoting Myself'. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired February 18, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you say something that isn't true, there's no other word for it.

[05:58:43] SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Whenever anyone points to their actual record, they start screaming, "Liar, liar, liar."

DR. BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The American people are smart enough to understand bluster and rhetoric, versus truth.

CRUZ: It was the act of being born that made me a U.S. citizen.

CARSON: I wish the government would read its Constitution.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will work harder than anyone.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The American people are not going to give up.

CLINTON: I am a progressive who believes in making progress.

SANDERS: Enough is enough.

CLINTON: I won't make promises I can't keep.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A deadly explosion in Turkey.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At least 28 people have been killed. At least 61 more wounded. The Turkish government is effectively blaming a key U.S. ally.

(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. Alisyn is off. J.B. is over here, and we have a lot of news this morning.

Two days to go until the South Carolina Republican primary. Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, explaining their positions, two voters at CNN's town hall. Another moment in the race. Frontrunner, Donald Trump, he wasn't on the stage. He's going to be there tonight. But that did not stop the mudslinging.

PEREIRA: Oh, yes. The race in South Carolina getting nastier and more negative in this final stretch. Cruz daring Trump to sue him over his abortion ad and vowing to run it more frequently.

Meanwhile, Rubio picks up the biggest endorsement in the state, that of its popular governor, Nikki Haley. We begin our coverage with CNN's Athena Jones, who's live in Columbia, South Carolina, with more for us. Good morning.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela.

You're right: the rhetoric in this case has been getting more with each passing day. Last night, the candidates kept hitting each other as they tried to win over undecided voters.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JONES (voice-over): Three out of six Republican candidates sitting down for an in-depth CNN town hall. The night's hot topic: the truth and who's telling it. Marco Rubio says it's not Ted Cruz.

RUBIO: I said he's been lying, because if you say something that isn't true, and you say it over and over again, you know that it's not true. There's no other word for it. And when it's about your record, you have to clear it up.

JONES: Cruz says it's not Donald Trump or Rubio.

CRUZ: Both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are following this pattern, that whenever everybody points to their actual record, to what they've said, to what they've voted on, to what they've done, they start screaming, liar, liar, liar. I mean, it is the oddest thing.

JONES: And Trump, in a dueling town hall, says it's not Cruz.

TRUMP: We certainly want to keep somebody honest.

JONES: The billionaire even sending the freshman senator a cease-and-assist order for one of the Cruz campaign's ads about him.

CRUZ: I don't think anyone is surprised that Donald is threatening to sue people. He's done that most of his adult life. But this letter really was -- look, I practiced law 20 years, and this letter really pressed the bounds of the most frivolous and ridiculous letters I've ever seen.

JONES: Dr. Ben Carson says the American people will decide who's being deceitful.

CARSON: I think the American people are smart enough to be able to understand bluster and rhetoric versus truth. JONES: But all three candidates agree that Apple should abide by

a court order to aid federal investigators in hacking the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, something the tech company sees as government overreach.

CRUZ: We should have done more to prevent that attack, but after the fact we ought to be using every tool we can.

CARSON: There's probably very good reason for not trusting the government. But we're going to have to get over that.

RUBIO: I do know this. It will take a partnership between the technology industry and the government to solve this.

JONES: Rubio taking the stage just a day after President Obama criticized him for distancing himself from an immigration Bill he once supported, predictably shot back.

RUBIO: President Obama has no standing to talk about immigration, because his party controlled the White House, the House and the Senate for two years, and they did nothing.

JONES: Later addressing a topic that's been a mainstay of the Democrats' campaign: U.S. race relations.

RUBIO: I also know that in this country there is a significant number, particularly of young African-American males, who feel as if they're treated differently than the rest of society. And here's the bottom line. Whether you agree with him or not, I happen to have seen this happen. I'm not sure there's a political solution to that problem, but there are things we can do.

JONES: Something else unexpected: the candidates' taste in music.

CARSON: I primarily like classical music.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: You like EDM, electronic dance music.

RUBIO: Yes.

COOPER: Have you ever been to a rave?

RUBIO: No, no. I've never been to a rave. No.

COOPER: Well, I don't know.

RUBIO: It's the Republican primary, Anderson.

COOPER: Well, I just...

CRUZ (singing): I just called to say I love you. I just called to say I care.

(speaking): I cannot sing to save my life. (END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: So some fun there. At tonight's CNN town hall, we'll hear from Donald Trump, John Kasich and Jeb Bush, but not before another long day of campaigning here in South Carolina. And in Bush's case, we're expecting the arrival later today of a special guest, Barbara Bush. She's coming to help her son finish strong in a contest that could be make or break for him -- Chris, John.

CUOMO: All right, Athena. Ted Cruz's open admission of unvarnished truth about his singing not the only revelation last night.

BERMAN: I've got to say, it was unfair. They should have made Marco Rubio sing to electronic dance music.

CUOMO: A little sing off.

BERMAN: Or hum.

CUOMO: That's hard, because there's not a lot of lyrics.

BERMAN: No. But I think that was unfair.

CUOMO: Some moves?

BERMAN: Yes.

CUOMO: All right. Fair point. Let's get others. Let's bring in CNN senior political analyst and senior editor of "The Atlantic," Mr. Ron Brownstein; and David Gregory of "Meet the Press" fame, both here this morning.

I don't care about your music preferences, but I do want to know this, starting with you, brother Gregory, on the stage last night, we got to see the candidates not just tit-for-tat with each other but addressing the voters. Who do you think popped in this format?

DAVID GREGORY, FORMER HOST, NBC'S "MEET THE PRESS": Well, I thought Marco Rubio was very good, and I think that he probably had a longer way to go, because his debate performance have been stilted; he looks like he's pressing, robotic, of course, and then had a moment that will be hung around his neck for a long time with Chris Christie back in New Hampshire.

So I think he had a lot to overcome, and I think he really did. I think he showed people why he is really seen as the future of the party. Conversational, has a real sense of the room, is someone who talks about his own background or he can talk about race in a way that's very effective and show some courage. You know, when he says that he's for West Coast rap over East Coast rap, you know, we're similarly aged, so I know the era which he's talking about, and I think that shows some political guts.

BERMAN: It all comes down to East Coast/West Coast rap for David Gregory. Ron Brownstein, I should also say, Marco Rubio does well in town

meeting formats. The Cruz campaign and other campaigns know it's odd that he doesn't take questions from voters in town meetings, at least since South Carolina. He held a number of town meetings yesterday, didn't take questions from the voters in those town meetings.

Ron Brownstein, I think both candidates had different goals. And you saw that. Marco Rubio, as David said, tried to stay above the fray. Ted Cruz went in there, and he mixed it up again, again on the issue of who is a liar and not a liar, everyone calling him a liar. Listen to what he told Anderson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRUZ: This is a strange election season in many ways. Both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are following this pattern that, whenever anyone points to their actual record -- to what they've said, to what they've voted on, to what they've done -- they start screaming, "Liar, liar, liar." I mean, it is the oddest thing. I can't think of any precedent in any previous Republican presidential election.

Now, from my end, I have not and will not respond in kind. If they want to engage in personal insults , if they want to go to the mud, I'm not going to say the same thing about them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Interesting to hear him talk about that, Ron, because it's all about "they." He's front -- fighting this two-front war with Marco Rubio and Donald Trump.

BROWNSTEIN: He is. You know, there's a difference in scale and states in South Carolina. First of all, how great is the South Carolina Republican primary? It's got to be my favorite thing to cover in the whole primary season every year, and the reason is because South Carolina is the amalgam of both ends of the Republican coalition. It is both the evangelical presence you get in Iowa, the more white-collar economic conservative presence you get in New Hampshire. It blends both. And that's why, except in 2012, it's always picked the winner.

If you're Ted Cruz and you're running as the candidate who can consolidate conservatives, evangelicals and Tea Party activists, if you can't make it here -- you know, to turn around Frank Sinatra, you really can't make it anywhere. I mean, this really is high, high stakes for Ted Cruz. If he can't beat Donald Trump here, if he can't consolidate evangelicals here, there's not a lot of reason to hope that he can do significantly better in the cascade of southern and border states that follow on March 1 and March 15.

So he is laying it out all on the line. I was at an event last night in a mega church in Spartanburg. I mean, this, you know, you've been dreaming of being president a long time, and this is where those dreams kind of hit the reality of it may be very difficult to see a path to victory if you can't score very well here on Saturday.

CUOMO: All right. So we have two looks at the political state of play, in terms of what Ron's talking about, with the numbers.

Now, in South Carolina, no matter what poll you look at, Trump is way up. The troubling concern, to Ron's point, he's way up with evangelicals. So to Ron's point, doesn't look good for Cruz.

Then comes this NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

CUOMO: Let's put that up there. Look, polls, they're a suggestion. They're not a prediction. There's going to be variability. But this one was an eye-opener. You know, we're looking at their sample. We're looking at the cross tabs. It's not a CNN/ORC poll. But they have Cruz popping over Trump.

So David, it's just one poll, but it is a reflection of this thin line between what Trump is capturing and what the others are offering. Do you put a lot of stock in this number? Is it suggestive of a move we have to look at, or is it just and outlier right now?

GREGORY: Well, I think we'll find out. I think we'll look over the days to come. Obviously, the outcome of South Carolina, to see if there's been any real shift.

To me, what's important about that is, as we look forward to Super Tuesday and see whether Cruz has an ability to consolidate some of those key parts of the constituency in the primary that Ron was just talking about by Super Tuesday.

I mean, one of the things you have to look at with Donald Trump is that he's winning big in South Carolina, winning big in Nevada. And there's only going to be more momentum if he wins in these states.

And even among evangelicals, as I've talked to evangelical leaders, yes, Cruz has a lead in South Carolina. Ron talks about the importance of consolidating them. But there are evangelicals who are looking at this kind of practically and saying, "Yes, I'm not sure that Trump is one of us. And yet we want to stop ISIS or we want to stop immigration. Or he simply can win."

If you think about even, I believe, Pat Robertson endorsing Ronald Reagan, despite some differences, you know, in him being divorced and being from Hollywood and so forth.

So there may be kind of a different look here, and it shows how Trump is gathering this together.

One thing about Cruz: I think this fight about the whole "who's telling the truth and who's a liar," ultimately, I think, as silly as it looks, it's helping Cruz. He wants to draw Trump into a debate about abortion and whether he's for or against abortion. He would like to keep the conversation on that terrain, I think.

[06:10:07] BERMAN: Ron, you know, if you fell asleep the last 24 hours, you missed about 1,000 things that happened in this campaign, all of them very big. You know, Marco Rubio picks up the most coveted endorsement in South Carolina, maybe in this race maybe to date. You have Ted Cruz leading in a national poll for a first time. You have Donald Trump leading in every single South Carolina poll for the first time. What's the most significant thing that's happened, because it all seems so big it almost burns your synapses?

BROWNSTEIN: It really does. You know, we have an open-seat presidential election and a really open race and both parties are so much going on. And really, this is crunch time, especially in the Republican side. As you said, South Carolina has been the absolute decider. Didn't do that, play that role in 2012, but usually has.

I think the most important thing was the governor endorsing Marco Rubio, not only for the immediate help that it provided with Nikki Haley's endorsement, but also because it changed the frame.

John, what it reminded me of was when Bill Clinton picked Al Gore in 1992, and Bill Clinton at that point was this dinged-up former governor who had been battling scandal for months. And suddenly, standing next to Al Gore, he looked very different. He looked like generational transition. It's like holy cow, he's a young guy.

And I thought the picture yesterday of Rubio and Haley together was very powerful, in terms of sending a message, "This is not your father's Republican Party." Bow, whether there are enough voters in the Republican Party who want that kind of change 60 percent of the voters are over 50 -- it's an open question. But it was a powerful image, I think, that kind of reframed the way, perhaps, people may be looking at Marco Rubio.

GREGORY: And I think, Ron -- I think what's also important is that it allows Rubio to, even if he can't do it in South Carolina by winning, which the polls show he probably won't...

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

GREGORY: ... it does allow him to try to nudge out the others in this lane. He wants to be the guy in between...

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

GREGORY: ... Cruz and Trump and maybe even take that all the way to the convention. And I think Nikki Haley is someone who's certainly a part of the future of the Republican Party and might be a running mate, a vice-presidential presidential nod in this campaign season really helped him to do that.

BERMAN: You know, Cuban American standing next to an Indian American, both 44 years old, you know, I think it is the picture, as you said that the people who wrote the Republican autopsy wanted, not the people part of the outsiders right now, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. But we will see what happens.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being with us.

There is more to come. Tune in tonight for the other three Republican candidates. John Kasich, Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, they will appeal directly to South Carolina voters. They will answer questions directly from South Carolina voters in the CNN town hall moderated by Anderson cooper, and it all begins at 8 p.m. right here on CNN.

PEREIRA: Breaking overnight, Turkey's prime minister says a Syrian national with ties to Kurdish militants was behind yesterday's deadly attack on a military convoy in Ankara. Today another bomb attack in southern Turkey left at least six soldiers dead.

CNN senior international correspondent Arwa Damon is live in Ankara with breaking details for us. What do we know, Arwa?

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, at this stage, those Kurdish militants that are being blamed for this attack by Turkey are the YPG, and they are America's main ally in the Syrian battlefield, an ally that Turkey has long been itself at least considering a terrorist organization, one whom they say is basically one and the same with the PKK, the Kurdish separatists that Turkey has been fighting for well over 30 years within its own borders.

Now, Turkish authorities say that the person responsible for this is a Syrian national with ties to the YPG. They're also saying that they have detained an additional 14 people, part of a network.

And the Turkish president and other leaders of this country have come out and said that they hope that this attack will show that the United States and other allies need to also begin considering these Turkish forces, the YPG, as terrorist entities.

They, the YPG, their political branch, they are all denying any sort of involvement in this attack, saying that Turkey is only trying to use this as an excuse to move into Syria and invade territories that have been recently brought under the YPG's control. A phenomenally complicated situation in what is already a very murky, deadly and devastating battlefield.

BERMAN: Complicated, deadly and dangerous with so many innocents caught in the middle.

Arwa Damon for us, thank you so much.

Concerns this morning about dangerous radioactive material missing in southern Iraq and questions about just who might have it right now. Reuters reporting it had been stored in a facility in Basra and has been missing since late last year. Some fear that terrorists could use it to make a dirty bomb. State Department officials say there is no sign that ISIS or other groups have this material.

PEREIRA: A bit of a mystifying story here. A Florida teenager arrested in an undercover sting for allegedly posing as a doctor. Malachi Love-Robinson was nabbed by an agent posing as a patient visiting the 18-year-old's office. Love-Robinson was arrested after authorities say he gave that agent a physical, offered to treat him. The teenager, who is out on bail this morning, insists he is not a fake. And this is the second time that he has been in trouble for practicing medicine without a license. [06:15:17] CUOMO: So he is a fake. The question is what is

motivating him? He does remind me, from the outsider, what I was able to read into about it this morning, of the guy we had here in New York City who keeps stealing buses and trains. It's an extension of his Asperger's Syndrome.

PEREIRA: Right. Yes.

CUOMO: Also wound up hooking him three felonies...

PEREIRA: Yes.

CUOMO: ... and putting him in a super max in upstate New York.

PEREIRA: This is something. This is quite a story.

CUOMO: That line between criminality and illness. Something we don't often negotiate well. But we'll see what it is in this case.

All right. Let's take a quick break. Now, when we're looking at the Republicans, we've got our focus on South Carolina. When you're looking at the Democrats, really, you want to look at Nevada right now. There was a big gap here, and there were assumption about the state that were projected onto the rest of the race. Now it's neck and neck, and so is the understanding of who will win the nomination and why. We'll tell you all the details right after this.

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[06:20:14] BERMAN: All right. An interesting admission from Hillary Clinton at a time where she's doing all she can to sell herself to voters. The former secretary of state reveals in a "Vogue" interview that she doesn't think she's very good at selling herself.

Listen to this. She says, "I'm great at advocating for other people. I'm great at saying we need to solve these problems. But I'm not so good at really promoting myself. I just find it hard to do."

So what does this mean when she's trying to sell herself to voters in Nevada, South Carolina, and beyond?

Joining us again, David Gregory, former moderator of "Meet the Press"; and Errol Louis, a CNN political commentator and political anchor for Time Warner Cable News.

Errol, I have to say, when candidates or politicians say, "I just don't do a good job with the messaging," I'm always suspect. Barack Obama said that for years: "You know, my real problem has been the messaging. It hasn't been the policy or the product; it's the messaging." It's like saying, "If you only understood me as well as I do, you would know that I'm the right candidate for you."

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's right. I didn't realize that the problem was Hillary Clinton needs to come out of her shell, you know? I think she's -- I hope she'll get better at this. Now, I mean, look, she's got a problem, and the problems are sort

of fundamental. I mean, you know, here and there around the margins, there might be some optics. There's this likability issue. There's this trustworthiness issue.

But I think at the core of it she's got issues that are not resonating with the voters. And any way her team tries to spin it, anyway she tries to spin it, I think, you know, you look at the hard economics in state after state and nationwide, and Bernie Sanders is connecting with people who need the kind of help that her platform just does not offer. That's the problem she's having to get around.

CUOMO: Her platform or her case for the platform?

LOUIS: Well, I don't -- I don't know if there's a difference. I mean, either -- if people are making $7.25 an hour, federal minimum wage, and they want more than double that, which is what Bernie Sanders is offering, a $15 an hour minimum wage, I don't know how you can tell them. You can tell them nicely, you can tell them not nicely that you're not going to go out and fight for that. As long as she's in that position, she's going to have a certain amount of problems.

CUOMO: And David, let's take another step down this road. My suggestion to you would be, yes, Errol's right. There's a little difference on the policies there with respect to minimum wage specifically.

But fundamentally, what Hillary Clinton is offering and what Bernie Sanders is offering are on the same footpath of policy, but it's about who has passion, who makes the sell, who connects with voters, where's the authenticity, where's the likability. Those are the boxes where she's now saying, as Jeb Bush did, "I'm not so good at this part of it," as if it's a discount affect.

GREGORY: Right. No, I think that's exactly right. And that's the important point here.

Look, what is the effect of Trump on the Republican side or of Trumpism in this presidential race? It is such anger and frustration among voters that they're willing to do something really rash. They're willing to really send a message to Washington and the establishment, not just throw the bums out but turn it completely upside-town. And that's true on the -- the Democratic side, as well.

Look, Hillary Clinton is a firm part of the establishment. She and her husband have been around a long time and have the nicks and cuts and bruises to show for it. She is not a movement politician. She is not an idealist. She is not talking about the prospect of her candidacy and being president as the first woman in history to be president. She has not found a way to capture that as a kind of moment in history, particularly for younger voters.

The idealism that we see in Nevada, for example, if you look at the polling around concern for the economy, it breaks almost evenly. And people who think that Sanders would be better for the middle class than would Hillary Clinton. It all goes to his single-issue candidacy. It all goes to his sense of momentum, and a sense of passion that people are cottoning to, not out of realism but out of pure idealism and anger at Washington.

BERMAN: You know, getting lost, I think, in a lot of political discussion right now about South Carolina, because South Carolina is so interesting with the Republican race, is that the Democrats vote in Nevada two days from now. We have a big, important contest in Nevada two days from now.

You know who hates running campaigns in Nevada? Everybody. Every single political strategist and consultant there is hates it, because you can't poll really accurately. It's a complicated contest and caucus. And it's tied right now. It's 48-47, according to the latest CNN/ORC poll.

Errol Louis, you know, what kind of a difference can you make right now? Hillary Clinton was campaigning until about 35 minutes ago in Nevada overnight. She had 10:30 p.m. Nevada time event. So it ended, really, like you know, they're trying to drag every vote out. It's hard.

LOUIS: It's hard for a couple of different reasons. One is this is one of the states where you can, on the morning of the caucus, go in and decide you're going to caucus with the Democrats. So it's hard to figure out who is the universe is.

Secondly, there is a huge -- I mean, this was the No. 1 foreclosure capital, really, right up until, like, 2011 or so. And even now, it's ranked -- it ranks pretty high.

What that means is that something like 20 percent of the voters have changed addresses, or their files came -- their mail came back, so that nobody even knows, in some respects, who the voters are or where they are. A lot of them were displaced. Some of them may have been displaced entirely out of the state. It takes a lot more work to go out and try and find them. The candidates will and should be working up until the last minute. They're going to have to pull out every last person they possibly can.

[06:25:27] CUOMO: But the headline, David, is just to set up the context for you on this, is that this was supposed to be the firewall, the beginning for where Hillary Clinton would assert her dominance because of the demographics of the state.

This isn't just some lily-white state like Iowa and basically New Hampshire. This was -- there was diversity. And now Bernie Sanders long and strong with those same groups. What's the message in that?

GREGORY: Well, that if he can compete in Nevada, then he can compete anywhere.

You know, the Clinton campaign has been talking about how Nevada is much like Iowa and New Hampshire. Demographically it's mostly a white state.

CUOMO: No, it isn't. GREGORY: That is not true.

CUOMO: Yes.

GREGORY: It could be as much as 40 percent minority in these caucuses in the electorate this year.

To Errol's point, tough to poll. You only caucus for about four hours, and according to the polling, according to our polling, 25 percent are still undecided. That's a huge number. And you can walk in and say, "I'm a Democrat," and you can register same day. That number is really important, that 25 percent.

So we have a toss-up here. But make no mistake: They vote in Nevada before Hillary Clinton gets to test the southern firewall in South Carolina. That becomes really important, because again, if Sanders wins here, it again changes the race, to say this wasn't just a -- this wasn't just an Iowa and New Hampshire phenomenon; this was something different.

BERMAN: Errol, David Gregory, thanks so much for being with us. To Nevada, South Carolina, and beyond -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right. Former Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, is weighing in on the controversy over who should get -- who should get to nominate a successor to Justice Scalia. We'll hear what she's having to say up next.

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