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Democratic Presidential Race; Republican Presidential Race; Would Apple Set Precedent by Unlocking Phone? Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired February 18, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] DONNA BRAZILE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Voters would like to see someone who cares about them. And I think this will also help her with that - that problem that she's been having.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, Bob, both of you guys have run campaigns. And whenever I talk to strategist -

BRAZILE: He hired me when I was 24. I told you that. So, thank you, Bob Beckel.

BOB BECKEL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You're very welcome, Donna.

BERMAN: It was just three years ago - it was just three years ago when she was 24.

Bob, but let me ask you, every time I talk to a political strategist about Nevada, they groan. They say, oh, it is so hard to run a campaign there, particularly a national campaign there.

BRAZILE: Yes.

BERMAN: What makes it so complicated, just two days -

BECKEL: Well, I mean, you know, a caucus by any definition is complicated. The 2008 caucus attendee, the last competitive Democratic race, 65 percent of the caucus goers were minorities. Nobody expected to see that large a turnout. I mean the minorities, Hispanics and African-Americans. So it is difficult to identify voters who go to caucuses. You have new people coming who you don't expect to have and then they show up. So it is not an easy state to do that. No caucus state is really easy. But Nevada's more complicated because you've got a very large minority participation. It is difficult to reach. And, by the way, if Hillary Clinton is reaching out to the youth vote, I mean if she can get people to vote that young, then I think that would be great. But I've tried that before. It doesn't work.

But, you know, the fact of the matter is that Bernie Sanders is attracting young voters. There's no question about that. As is Donald Trump. It's kind of weird if you think about it. But Hillary Clinton, I think, is going to do all right. I mean I'm not going to predict the landscape of political consultants who predict presidential races is littered with the dead, but I think she can hold on and win Nevada.

BERMAN: Bob Beckel, Donna Brazile, great to have you here with us this morning. Thanks for being so warm and fuzzy with us the whole time. BRAZILE: Thank you so - you're such a smart man.

BERMAN: Chris.

BECKEL: Yes, and so sweet too.

BRAZILE: So sweet.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: That was tough. JB caught in a Beckel/Brazile sandwich. He did well, though. JB's no joke.

All right, on the other side, the Republican candidates got personal last night. It wasn't too early for them to be negative, that's for sure. So, what were the big moments? We've got them for you. What do they mean? You decide.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I just called to say I love you. I just called to say I care.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:36:09] CUOMO: One of many reasons that these CNN town halls have been applauded by voters is that you get to see these candidates in a way that you don't usually see them, certainly on a debate stage, where they talk about themselves. They get personal. Sometimes they don't want to, but the questions wind up taking them in that direction, so you get to judge them in a different way. So let's take a look at what happened last night in a town hall and how it resonated or did not.

For insight we have CNN's senior media reporter, Mr. Dylan Byers, and the august presence of CNN Politics' executive editor Mark Preston joining us as well.

Don't look so shocked when I use the word august in connection to you Preston.

So, Coop got these people to talk about personal things last night. We know how well those iPod questions used to go. So he talked to them about music last night, and here's what they had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I primarily like classical music.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: OK.

CARSON: Particularly Baroque music.

COOPER: You like EDM?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I do.

COOPER: Electronic dance music.

RUBIO: Yes.

COOPER: Have you ever been to a rave? I mean -

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

COOPER: Well, I don't know.

RUBIO: It's the Republican primary, Anderson.

COOPER: Well, I just -

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I actually don't sing musicals.

COOPER: OK.

CRUZ: I mean I will sing things like, ah, ah, oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Heidi Tine (ph) or, you know, I kind of do, you know, you know, I just called to say I love you. I just called to say I care.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right, so who did that help, who did that hurt and why, brother Preston?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Well, listen, I - I can't - you know, I can't hold a tune, so who am I to criticize Ted Cruz, right, for his singing ability. But I think it did show us a little bit of insight into who these folks are. Marco Rubio is supposed to be this young, energetic, new generation kind of Republican, so he listens to electronic dance music, which I myself have never listened to. I have to tell you that. I'm not surprised to see Ben Carson listening to classical music. You know, as the surgeon, you know, you would think that that's what he listens to when he was performing surgery. And then, of course, Ted Cruz, you know, he kind of has a hokey side, and he acknowledged that on stage.

Listen, what I think it did show us, Chris, is that these guys can be human. And often times as a politician, when they're out there doing interviews with you or when they're out there talking to voters, they tend to be a little bit plastic. But I think last night we saw a little bit of that washed away.

CUOMO: Well, it's all about selling the person at the end of the day, isn't it, Dylan? I mean when we start looking at why people vote at the end of the day, they rarely talk about policies unless we're forcing them too. They talk about who they like, who they trust and why. So what did you see last night?

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR MEDIA REPORTER: Well, first of all, Chris, can I just say I'm shocked that Preston isn't an EDM guy. I really had him figured for an electronic dance music guy.

Look, I think the town halls have actually gone a very long way in terms of showcasing, like you said, these candidates as human beings. You know, so much of the 2016 primary season has been about these debates, which, you know, have sort of devolved into these mud- slinging fests. I think recently, ever since New Hampshire and the Democratic town hall that CNN had there, we're really seeing the tow halls emerge as this sort of better venue, maybe, by which to view the candidates.

And, you know, for those of us, for Mark and I, who are covering the campaign day to day to day, you know, we're seeing some of these things. We're seeing Ted Cruz singing. We're seeing Senator Rubio talk about his love of football. But for a lot of the voters in states like Nevada and certainly national who don't have a chance to make it out to some of these campaign events or aren't watching, you know, interviews in the middle of the day, these are a big opportunity to sort of see the candidates in a forum where they don't have to, you know, battle or go face to face with, you know, the likes of Donald Trump.

CUOMO: People connect with people, not policies.

Let me get two quick takes from you guys on other big moments last night. The first, Marco Rubio talking about the endorsement that he got and what it means. This was huge. Everybody wanted to see who got Nikki Haley, the governor's, OK. And it was Rubio.

[08:40:10] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And my campaign for president today, I got the endorsement of - of a governor of Indian descent who endorsed a presidential candidate of Cuban descent and tomorrow will be campaigning alongside an African-American Republican senator. All three are doing that here in South Carolina. That says a lot about the Republican Party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Is this the key to him coalescing the establishment types and everybody around him, despite his policy positions, Preston?

PRESTON: You know, listen, I think that was a moment last night, and certainly for the Republican Party, they had to be happy because there's been so much criticism that the Republican Party is just made up of old white men, right, and I think that that was a powerful moment, not only for Rubio, but for the part. But I also think it's worth noting that, you know, we had two senators of Cuban descent on stage and an African-American on stage as well last night vying for the Republican presidential nomination. That's why I think last night was very special in many, many ways, certainly for the Republican Party, but for Marco Rubio trying to broaden his appeal to voters here in South Carolina and beyond.

CUOMO: The urgency of last night, Dylan Byers, show not just what we saw on the stage, but what we didn't see on that stage last night, which was Donald Trump. He got together with his buddies and had his own town hall last night to compete with it. What does that mean in terms of the urgency and the race and the optics of what's going on here?

BYERS: Well, look, as Donald Trump has been doing for a very long time, there's a desire to sort of draw eyeballs away. Any time any candidate other than Donald Trump has had a moment in the spotlight, he's done everything he can, whether it's counterprogramming or, you know, tweets to sort of draw attention away from them. You know we're in this - we're in this crucial period where we're in the last hours heading into South Carolina for the Republicans. You have to take up as much real estate as you possibly can. And I think Trump was hoping he could achieve that last night. How he did on that front, you know, we'll have to wait and see what the ratings in South Carolina were.

CUOMO: Dylan Byers, Mark Preston, thank you very much, as always, gentlemen.

JB.

BERMAN: All right, Chris.

Apple against the FBI, privacy versus national security, this is a battle that has been a long time coming. So could this fight over unlocking a terrorist's iPhone, could this set new precedent? Much more coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:51:14] MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: It is a battle of privacy versus national safety. The Justice Department is gearing up for a fight after Apple refuses to cooperate with the judge's order to help unlock a terrorist iPhone. Could this battle -- Could it ultimately set a precedent for technology companies?

Joining us now to discuss us Arik Hesseldahl. He's the senior editor of "Re/code." He's joined us before and you have been a really good mind on this kind of battle between technology and our privacy and security. So let's put you to it again, Arik.

We know that what the FBI is asking. The iPhone, for those of you that don't know, you can try some nine or ten times to unlock the password and then after that it basically wipes the phone of all of its data. So the FBI is asking for a workaround for that. Right, Arik? Is that even reasonable to ask them of that?

ARIK HESSELDAHL, SENIOR EDITOR, RE/CODE: Well the FBI has tried to find a minimally -- what they consider to be a minimally invasive solution. So basically what they are asking Apple for, this is a phone that belongs to one of the San Bernardino shooters, the male shooter, whose name I'm not going to try to pronounce. And what they are basically saying, asking Apple for is a single installation of an operating system or a workaround or some way to defeat that, try the unlock code ten times and it wipes the data. We're all -- If you have an iPhone or -- This is common --

PEREIRA: Yeah. We've all been there, right?

HESSELDAHL: Right. And so what the FBI convinced the judge that it could do is efficiently brute force once -- with that feature disabled that could brute force -- it could try just over and over and over thousands and thousands of times until it could break the code. So it's convinced the judge that it could conceivably do this.

Now Apple's position is basically very clear. This is a genie in a bottle that could have all kinds of unintended consequences.

PEREIRA: Pandora's box, right.

HESSELDAHL: Partially because once you do it in the United States, you do it --

PEREIRA: It can be done elsewhere.

HESSELDAHL: -- in multiple -- multiple countries. And in the United States we are accustomed to having a lot of judicial oversight and, you know, legal standards about investigation and search and seizure and search warrants and so forth. So -- China in particular, Iran is another country, Russia is another company [SIC] to consider. Once this precedent is set in the United States in this one case, Apple is concerned that it could be terribly misused in other countries with a completely different legal system. Because once the precedent is set --

PEREIRA: It's out there. Exactly.

HESSELDAHL: -- you know, the law in those countries really --

PEREIRA: And they are concerned that nefarious players, hackers, could use it against American citizens or other Apple consumers.

Here is the other question, though. Is the FBI -- couldn't they have gone another way about this? Could they have not asked the app developer to get access? Could they have not asked the phone carrier -- I believe it was in Verizon in this case. Are those not other courses of action the FBI could have taken?

HESSELDAHL: I'm certain that those courses of action were probably pursued. The FBI has promised to overturn and look under every rock in this case because, you know -- and I think we can all sympathize with that viewpoint. They want to find out everything that was done leading up to these terrible, terrible shootings.

But I think what's happening here is that the data is physically stored on the phone and the phone has been encrypted. And that is where -- literally a lot of this has been stored physically on the device rather than on services. So I'm sure that they've got call records --

PEREIRA: They've gone down that road. So what about the idea that this phone -- we know this man was a government employee, so ergo would that phone not have been property of the government? It was a work- issued. HESSELDAHL: Yeah, one would think about that. And that comes down to

simple IT management procedures of the county. I can't speak to what those are. But there may have been, you know, when an employer issues a phone, very often they have ownership of the data that goes on it.

[08:55:04] So you know, that comes down to a simple question of policy. If the county maintained a copy of the data that was stored on the phone or whether the phone was synced to a workplace computer or something like that, that is a whole other area of inquiry. My suspicion is that was probably not the case here.

PEREIRA: We've got less than a minute left. I'm curious. We know you're there in the Bay Area. What are you hearing from Silicon Valley, other technology companies? What are you hearing about -- the concern is the precedent, right? What are you hearing on the street?

HESSELDAHL: The concern is the precedent. We heard from Google, we heard from another consortium of wider technology companies. They are very unified on this and they feel that this really does set a dangerous precedent if Apple is forced to do it.

I would not be surprised if this case goes to the Supreme Court at some point. You know, this is a debate that we sort of fought in the '90s with President Clinton when he tried to impose weak encryption on everybody. But now that we have strong encryption in our phones in our daily lives, this effects everybody in some way.

PEREIRA: Yeah. It really does.

HESSELDAHL: So -- and -- Yeah.

PEREIRA: Arik, I think your prediction of it going to the Supreme Court is very likely as well. Thanks for joining us today on NEW DAY.

HESSELDAHL: You got it.

PEREIRA: That wraps it up for us. But you can get in on the conversation, obviously, by posting on social media.

We're going to take a short break. Carol Costello and "NEWSROOM" is up after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the "NEWSROOM," the hottest four-letter word on the GOP trail? Liar.