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Donald Trump Gives 100-Minute Long Interview to "New York Times" on Foreign Policy; Donald Trump and Ted Cruz Continue to Criticize Each Other's Campaign Tactics; Interview with General Wesley Clark; Taliban Splinter Group Behind Easter Bomb Attack; Assad Calls Syrian Army Victory "Important Achievement"; New Video Of Brussels Airport Suspect; Belgian Authorities Conduct Thirteen Raids Over The Weekend. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 28, 2016 - 08:00   ET

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

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: -- uphill battle in the delegate race against Hillary Clinton. We have the battle of the White House covered only the way that CNN can cover it, starting with CNN's David Mattingly. He in West Salem, Wisconsin. Good morning. Phil Mattingly, excuse me. Good morning, Phil.

(LAUGHTER)

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Dan Lemon, how are you, sir.

Look, when it comes to Wisconsin, this is a place where Republican candidates should all be focused right now. A week from tomorrow a huge contest, crucial 42 delegates, and yet they are going into this week talking about personal attacks. Donald Trump breaking from Republican foreign policy orthodoxy, and even a lawsuit threat.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't think America is a safe place for Americans you want to know the truth.

MATTINGLY: Donald Trump claiming Americans are unsafe the day after laying out his controversial foreign policy worldview in a lengthy interview with the "New York Times." He calls into question traditional U.S. alliances, including NATO, describing his approach as, quote, "not isolationist but America first." He says if elected he might stop buying Saudi oil unless they commit ground troops to fight ISIS and opening the door to the of notion Japan and South Korean developing nuclear weapons.

TRUMP: He started it. I didn't start it.

SEN. TED CRUZ, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Attacking spouses and children is off limits. It has no place in politics.

MATTINGLY: This as he and rival Ted Cruz ramp up the war of words over their wives, Cruz slamming Trump for hitting below the belt.

CRUZ: He sends tweets attacking my wife, attacking Heidi. It is inappropriate, it is wrong. It is, frankly, disgusting.

MATTINGLY: The frontrunner accusing Cruz of knowing about a super PAC ad targeting his wife Melania first.

TRUMP: Don't forget, I call him "lying Ted." I call him that because nobody I have known -- I have known a lot tougher people over the years in business but I've never known anybody that lies like Ted Cruz.

MATTINGLY: Trump threatening on Twitter to, quote, "spill the beans" on Cruz's wife Heidi and again on Sunday.

TRUMP: There are things about Heidi that I'm not going to talk about, but I'm not going to talk about them.

MATTINGLY: Cruz calling Trump's actions a deliberate distraction, coming down hard on a salacious story in the tabloid "National Enquirer" which earlier this month endorsed Trump.

CRUZ: He is pushing these attacks, and by the way he has been pushing them for many, many months online. These are complete made up lies. They are garbage.

MATTINGLY: Trump also blasting Cruz for courting additional delegates in Louisiana's March 5, primary issuing this threat on Twitter, quote, "Just to show how unfair Republican primary politics can be, I won the state of Louisiana and get less delegates than Cruz. Lawsuit coming."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: Now, guys, how Donald Trump would actually shape that lawsuit is an open question. Right now here's what's actually going on in Louisiana. Donald Trump won the state by three points. The delegates were allocated proportionally. Both he and Ted Cruz came away with 18 delegates. Marco Rubio got five, another five weren't bound to a specific candidate. Ted Cruz saw that Marco Rubio dropped out and saw that there were another five out there, so he and his campaign went down and started lobbying those 10 delegates to come to him. According to the "Wall Street Journal" it looks like he succeeded. It might not seem fair, but those are the rules. That is how the game is played. And Ted Cruz's campaign not willing to let this one go, throwing in a little jab of their own, guys. His national spokesman saying "Maybe your time is better spent reading the rules than sending hate tweets." Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right.

LEMON: It's Alisyn and Dan.

CAMEROTA: And Michael.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: To be honest with you I sat here for 10 years and said David Mattingly for so long because David Mattingly was a correspondent with us. MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: We have a new Mattingly in town.

CAMEROTA: We have a lot of names for Phil. One of them is Rick.

(LAUGHTER)

PEREIRA: We'll move on to the Democrats now. Bernie Sanders is ready to campaign hard in New York. He is fresh off his three-state sweep over Hillary Clinton. The crowd says his campaign is gaining momentum. He has a good shot, he believes, in beating Clinton in her adopted home turf in the upcoming New York primary. Our senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar is live in Washington D.C., with more for. Good morning again.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela. This was a big weekend for Bernie Sanders. We could see other big days for him in the weeks ahead here. He is calling now for a debate in New York. You do point out, this is Hillary Clinton's adopted home state. This is where she served as senator. He is hoping to ride some of the momentum into the next few weeks from his lopsided wins this weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERNIE SANDERS, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Every vote is pivotal. We are now winning in state after state. The Latino vote, we are doing better now that we were out of the south with the African- American vote. We are doing well with young people. And we think we do have a path towards victory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:05:01] KEILAR: Now, even with these big wins this weekend, considerable margins that he won by in Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington state, he still, Bernie Sanders, faces an uphill battle when you are looking at the delegate math. You can see it here, Hillary Clinton still more than 200 pledged delegates ahead of Bernie Sanders.

And so you hear Bernie Sanders talking about New York, which will have its primary on April 19. But right now all eyes are really on Wisconsin and April 5th, this big date next week. A lot of delegates at stake, and also this is a state that is going to play in the general election.

It is interesting, though, Alisyn, when you talk about the Clinton campaign, they say Wisconsin probably favors Bernie Sanders. So you can see they are playing the expectations game. They want to make sure that if Bernie Sanders wins that there is no Michigan upset where it sort of comes by surprise and looks like big defeat for her. This is a state of course that is near Michigan, so they certainly are fearful that Bernie Sanders could do well there.

CAMEROTA: It makes sense, particularly after what happened this weekend. Brianna, thanks so much for that.

Let's talk about Donald Trump's foreign policy plans and the 2016 race. Joining us now is General Wesley Clark, a former supreme allied commander of NATO in Europe and senior fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations. He also supports Hillary Clinton. General Clark, great to have you here.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK, SENIOR FELLOW, UCLA BURKLE CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: Thank you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Donald Trump sat down with the "Washington Post" and the "New York Times." He had a 100-minute long interview with the "New York Times" about foreign policy in which he said NATO is obsolete. What do you think?

CLARK: I think NATO is a vital organization. We put it together at the end of World War II. It holds the United States and Europe together. And that is the crucial anchor point for world affairs today. The world pivots around the link between the United States and Europe. With that link we work with Russia or work to manage Russia. We work with China. We work with the Middle East. It is the crucial foundation for U.S. diplomacy.

And so, yes, we can always talk about strengthening NATO and we can always talk about European nations contributing more to their own defense. We have been talking about it for a long, long time. But we don't want to let go of that linkage with Europe. It is vital for America's national security. It's for our benefit, not Europe's.

CAMEROTA: I think what Donald Trump's point is that nowadays the existential threat to the United States is terrorism and that NATO wasn't designed to deal with terrorism. Listen to what he said about this over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If you look at the Ukraine, we are the ones always fighting on the Ukraine. I never hear any other countries even mentioned. NATO is obsolete and it's extremely expensive to the United States, disproportionately so. And we should readjust NATO. And it is going to have to be either readjust to take care of terrorism or we are going to have to set up a new coalition, a new group of countries to handle terrorism, because terrorism is out of control.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: General, what about his argument that NATO is not good at tackling terrorism?

CLARK: Well, terrorism is fundamentally about two things. First it's about sharing of information and intelligence, and secondly it's about actions at home. People in the United States wouldn't want Britain and France and Germany to come over here and tell us how to run our police forces. And we don't want to have U.S. police over in Germany and France and Britain. So what we do is we share intelligence. Those countries have to do a better job of working on sharing of information, and then they have to act on it. So if you look at what happened in Belgium, that's largely responsibility of Belgium itself. It had the information. It has multiple overlapping jurisdictions, and it didn't take the action --

CAMEROTA: Should NATO help with that? It can't just be a Belgium problem. Obviously terrorism is an international problem.

CLARK: NATO is composed of individual nation states. The United States, Germany, Britain, all those nations have tried to help Belgium. The Turkish president mentioned that they earned about the suicide bombers coming into Belgium and the Belgians admitted they did nothing. So that is a state to state issue.

What NATO is very good at is working beyond borders of states. So when it came to Afghanistan, NATO was there to help us deal with that. When we are looking at Libya or Syria or Ukraine NATO was there. Now, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but as a result of Russia's aggression in Ukraine, NATO has toughened up exercises, responded vigorously to reassure the states to the east. And so everybody is working together on this. So I don't think -- I appreciate what Mr. Trump has to say about the importance of dealing with terrorism, but I think the tools we have are present. They are at hand.

[08:10:05] We don't need to reform NATO to do this. We need a better job with some of these European governments on their own soil.

CAMEROTA: One last point on this NATO issue, what about bankrolling NATO? His point is the U.S. pays the lion's share of the budget, something like $5.5 billion over just the last eight years. Should it somehow be more equitable among other countries?

CLARK: The NATO expenses are shared out on a proportion of gross domestic product. Of course we have the largest economy in NATO. There is a NATO infrastructure fund. We do common funding for NATO. And then each nation puts in its defense contributions. We spend more on defense. We have worldwide global responsibilities in our defense, and we have always recognized that as the world's strongest nuclear power when it came to dealing with Russia and other nuclear powers, NATO comes to us and relies principally on us.

So it is always going to be a little bit disproportionate. It has been a 60-year dialogue in the alliance to get this so-called burden sharing issue right. And what the Europeans will tell you is they are spending more. They are all trying to reach the two percent of GDP target that NATO has set. And remember, if there is any trouble it is on their soil, so it is their reserves, their police, their highway management, their roads and bridges. That's where NATO has traditionally occupied and operated. And so they have that part of the burden that we in the United States don't have.

CAMEROTA: Very quickly to the Democratic side of the presidential race. You of course have endorsed Hillary Clinton. Are you concerned about Bernie Sanders big wins this weekend?

CLARK: I'm a strong supporter of Hillary. I have known her for over 30 years. She is very, very qualified. She is very competent. There is a lot of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton. We have seen her in action. I think she is most qualified person in the race. And let's get it on. Let's go to New York. Let's go to Wisconsin. Let's let the American people have their voices. I'm very confident that Hillary Clinton will be our nominee for the Democratic Party and that she will be the next president.

CAMEROTA: General Wesley Clark, thanks so much for being on NEW DAY.

Tomorrow night, the three Republican candidates will take part in a CNN town hall in Wisconsin. This comes just one week before the primary there. The GOP town hall Tuesday night 8:00 p.m. eastern right here on CNN. Don?

LEMON: There's some breaking news this morning. There is new airport security video released showing a Brussels airport bombing suspect who is still on the run. It's the first moving image that we have seen of the suspect in the light colored jacket you can see and dark hat there. It comes amid more than a dozen raids over the weekend. Three people now under arrest in a growing manhunt. CNN senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward has the very latest now from Brussels this morning. Good morning, Clarissa.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Don. Belgian authorities haven't said yet why exactly they have decided to release this footage. This is the first time we are seeing video of the third airport bomber. You may remember his explosives did not detonate. And he is believed to still be at large. The fact that authorities are now releasing this video would also indicate perhaps that they have not yet been able to identify him.

Meanwhile, it has been a very busy weekend for authorities here and across Europe even -- 13 different raids here, nine people arrested, five of them subsequently released. But three people we are learning are being charged with participation in terrorist activities. And we also learned about a man who was arrested on Thursday who is being identified only as Faycal C. Faycal C. is being charged with terrorist murder, also attempted terrorist murder, and participation in terrorist activities, giving us the impression essentially that he played a major role in these attacks.

We also saw arrests happen in Italy, in the Netherlands, in France. So certainly the investigation is fanning out across the European continent. And we have also learned today that 35 people are now being announced as dead. Four of them are Americans. Michaela?

PEREIRA: Clarissa with the latest there in Brussels, thank you so much.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's military and intel agencies are cracking down on terror, carrying out raids in three cities including Lahore. A suicide bomber attack killed at least 69 people there. A Pakistani Taliban splinter group claiming responsibility, admitting it intentionally targeted Christians on Easter Sunday. Our New Delhi Bureau Chief Ravi Agrawal is tracking developments for us live from New Delhi. Ravi?

RAVI AGRAWAL, CNN NEW DELHI BUREAU CHIEF: That's right.

[08:15:00] The terror attack on Sunday, the raids that are being conducted today, they have made a number of arrests and they have also found a significant cache of ammunition and arms we're being told by Pakistani authorities.

So it has been a very swift response on the part of the Pakistani military. It is also significant that these raids took place in the state of Punjab, where the attacks took place. Punjab is usually a place that they don't go for these sorts of raids because they don't want to lose the vote there because that's their vote bank.

So this is all quite significant. It all comes off at the back of the prime minister making some very strong words today that he would make sure that they would wipe this terrorist group off the face of the country.

So very strong words and it all comes after Sunday's attack where as you say 69 people were killed. What the worst part of this not just the fact that Christians were targeted, but also that there was a playground nearby as well as an amusement park.

So we suspect that many of the victims are children and young women. Pakistan today are very shocked and unhappy country, but the government says it is fighting back.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Just so sickening, Ravi. Thank you for that update.

Syrian forces reclaiming the ancient city of Palmyra delivering what its army is calling a, quote, "mortal blow to ISIS." Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to take credit for it.

Let's get more from CNN senior international correspondent, Arwa Damon in Istanbul. Tell us what you've learned, Arwa?

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, one must say that the Russians do deserve most of the credit given that it has been their airstrikes in this instance and the past instances that have allowed the Syrian government's forces to make significant advances.

Advance that they quite simply would not have been able to make without Russian support. In the case of Palmyra, hundreds of strikes leading up to the final push to retake the city and perhaps more importantly retake control of the historic ruins there, a UNESCO heritage site.

One that ISIS did deal some destruction to, but not perhaps as severe as many had been fearing. Now the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad coming out and saying that their ability to recapture Palmyra from ISIS is a clear evidence that their and Russia's strategy is working when it comes to defeating terrorism comparing it to that of the U.S.- led coalition.

Palmyra in and of itself strategic, yes, because of where it is located, but this is not necessarily the mortal blow the regime is touting it to be. That being said, it is a very symbolic victory, one that is short to boost the morale of Assad's forces. MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Arwa, thank you so much for that. Back here at home, quite a story, an American Airlines co-pilot failed a breathalyzer test just moments before takeoff. Passengers initially were told there was a delay. But when they look out of the window of the plane they saw the unidentified co-pilot being arrested on the tarmac at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Unsettling to say the least. An airline spokesperson said the passengers were transferred to other flights heading to Philadelphia, I'm sure a little shaken.

DON LEMON, CNN GUEST ANCHOR: Some sad news to report, to tell you guys this morning, 18-year-old Troy Stone has died after a long battle with a severe form of muscular dystrophy. You may remember Troy, he was featured on our "Beyond the Call of Duty" series. (Inaudible) stepped up to pay a $1,000 electric bill after the family on hard times. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Stone family. Very, very difficult.

CAMEROTA: I do remember that "Call of Duty" segment. That was so touching.

LEMON: The 18 years old, Troy Stone.

CAMEROTA: That was not an easy life.

We have new video to show you of the release -- it was just released and this was of the Brussels airport suspect who is still at large this morning. We have details on the terror investigation for you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:22:41]

LEMON: This morning we are getting our first look at new video of the Brussels airport bombing suspect now on the run for nearly a week. Police releasing this airport security video of a man in a light jacket and dark hat.

Meanwhile, new raids and arrests across Europe over the weekend in connection with the Brussels and Paris attacks. Authorities searching for at least eight suspects they believe have links to the ISIS attacks.

Joining us now to discuss is CNN senior international correspondent, Clarissa Ward, and Greg Mathieu, president of the Foundation for Democracy and Government, a former Belgian government official.

I want to start with you, Clarissa. What can you tell us about this new video? What does it mean to the investigation now?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, interesting, Don, we don't really know. The question is why would Belgian authorities release this video now? What is it about the timing? Does this indicate that Belgian authorities have not yet been able to identify the man in this video?

Of course, we know him well from the still photograph that we have seen many times as the third airport bomber. His suitcase actually contained the largest amount of most potent explosives. It didn't detonate and he was able to flee the scene. We don't know why he fled the scene. We don't know why the explosives didn't detonate.

Did he get cold feet? Did he run away? Did the detonator not operate correctly? So there are still so many questions and at this stage, we don't yet know who he is or where he is and the release of this video would seem to indicate that Belgian authorities don't know either -- Don.

LEMON: Greg, this is obviously a suspect. You have said, though, in the past that Belgium is not a hot bed for terrorism or jihad. The Belgian police continue to detain suspects. Do you think that this is a witch hunt?

GREG MATHIEU, PRESIDENT, FOUNDATION FOR DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNMENT: This shows that not everybody is captured already. It confirmed that's what we thought last week. There are still a number of people walking in the city and different cities in the country who are dangerous and that police need to stop them.

The Belgium authorities are doing all they can to arrest them as soon as they can. This Faysal doesn't seem to be the correct guy so this man in white is still in the nature and we are doing every effort to stop him as soon as possible.

[08:25:04]LEMON: Greg, the Belgian interior minister said last week that errors were made in all of this. He also said the government invested about $670 million in the last two years on antiterrorism mechanisms, but more investments were needed.

I mean, do you think authorities there have enough manpower and technology to track down these suspects? How long do you think that this investigation can continue?

MATHIEU: What the minister said is true, but at the same time it's not enough because we need more budget for more technology. But we also have to better use the resources we have. There are hundreds of investigators busy in the field.

Look what happened last week after the bomb attacks. They were unable to communicate with each other. The system was finished, were stopped. I mean, we are in the 21st Century and the police cannot communicate with the emergency units.

That shows that we have a lot of improvement to do in Belgium, but we have to trust those now in charge and we can only wish them to have results as quick as possible.

LEMON: Clarissa, we are seeing raids all across Europe. How wide is this terror web?

WARD: I think authorities are just starting to realize just how wide it is. Over the weekend we saw raids here in Brussels, but also outside Paris, in the Netherlands, in Italy. This is one of the fundamental difficulties.

You heard just Greg talking about the issue of communication not just on the level of Belgian authorities communicating with each other, but also European countries communicating with each other.

Because you have these free and open Schengen borders it is very easy for these men to move undetected into different countries. Many of them have come back from Syria. They have Interpol red alerts next to their names.

Yet still the mechanisms aren't yet in place for information sharing so that if someone arrives in the Netherlands, for example, who is Belgian and who has been to Syria.

That leader in the Netherlands or those authorities in the Netherlands will immediately call the Belgians because they all are on the same page as a result of a shared database.

We heard in the aftermath of the Paris attacks that this shared database was supposed to be happening as soon as possible. It was supposed to put together by the end of the year, but from what we are seeing and all these different moving parts in different European countries, it is clear that there are still major problems with this -- Don.

LEMON: Greg, I want to talk about those riots yesterday when several hundred protesters arrived on the square shouting anti-immigrant slogans. It was very interesting to watch what was happening on the ground. These protesters and rioters, I'm wondering if they reflect the public's general feeling about immigrants currently living in the country.

MATHIUE: Look, last week the story was that we were almost all terrorists. This week the story is that we are almost all fascists. This group of people showed up yesterday was a group of guys among probably 20 of them were far right radicals. It doesn't mean the whole country is like that at all. Those guys are known.

They are known to the police. So I think the terrorists are somehow achieving what they want. They are dividing the people. There were enough people to shout at them go back. No racism here. I agree with that.

But this protest yesterday was decided to be forbidden and how come that 400 guys could come (inaudible) escorted by the police on the place. We should have stopped them before coming here. I know personally a group of 20 people who were in the demonstration. They are all my friends and all anti-fascists.

The group of guys, the group of terrorists we are asked to say not all Muslim are terrorists. So all the guys there yesterday are not all racist. Believe me, we need to have a more balanced approach here. The words are important. When you say fascist or terrorist the words are important. You cannot assume that the whole group was fascist group. They were dressed in black. There are plenty of people wearing black in the streets doesn't mean they are fascist.

LEMON: All right, Greg Mathiue and Clarissa Ward, thank you very much. Remember, you can join CNN's Chris Cuomo as he returns to Paris to investigate the terror that struck there. That CNN special report airs Wednesday night 9:00 Eastern -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right, back to politics, Donald Trump's personal attacks against his Republican rivals so far not really hurting him. Is he going too far by going negative on Ted Cruz's wife? Will women make him pay at the polls --