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Two 'Religious Freedom' Bills Move Through Tennessee Legislation; How the 1976 GOP Convention Was Won; Protecting Yourself Against Zika Virus. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired April 08, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:32:17] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: And now comes Tennessee, the latest state to consider so-called religious freedom bills.

One of the measures would allow mental health professionals to deny services to the LGBT community on religious grounds. So what is this really about? Is this about protecting freedom or restricting it?

Let's discuss now. We have Tennessee State Senator, Jack Johnson, he's one of the sponsors of that therapists bill we mentioned. And LGBT activist and furniture entrepreneur Mitchell Gold, co-founder and chairman of Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams. Gentlemen, thank you for being here to have a reasonable debate about this.

Let's start with you Mitchell Gold, you're making the accusation at these laws are designed to suppress, not to free up people of religious freedom. How so?

MITCHELL GOLD, LGBT ACTIVIST: Well, I think what this really does, is protect in competent professionals in the counseling field. I mean their Hippocratic oath is do no harm.

In here we have young teenage kids or adults who are LGBT, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender who go through an enormous emotional toil at the hands of their bullying parents or bullying church that they go through, bullying society and politicians who are more concerned about protecting outdated, ill-informed, misguided religious teachings than in fact, protecting these kids.

Gay kids are four to six times more likely to commit suicide, they're more likely to suffer severe depression, they're more likely to do drugs and alcohol. And they in fact, more often than their straight counterparts, kill themselves. And we have to protect these kids, not legislate in favor of in competent professionals.

CUOMO: So senator how do you address the need and still justify the bill?

JACK JOHNSON, (R) TENNESSEE STATE SENATOR: Well, first of all, let me explain what the bill does because apparently you and your guests on the show haven't read the bill. From time in memorial counselors have been allowed to refer to another counselor when someone is seeking counseling for a subject matter that the counselor finds personally objectionable. No one gets a door slammed in their face. The counselor has a duty to refer to another counselor.

We're not changing that. From time in memorial that's been the case. It wasn't until 2014 that the American Counseling Association, which by the way the state of Tennessee happens to adapt their code of ethics for our state.

In 2014, the American Counseling Association decided to change their universal code of ethics and say that a counselor must refrain from referring a client or perspective client to another counselor based solely on a personal belief or violation of a personal belief or behavior. It's the American Counseling Association who's discriminating here. It's not Tennessee or the Tennessee general assembly.

[07:35:01] CUOMO: Senator just for purposes of clarification, because you brought my competence in to it. Let's put up the bill. I understand it very well. I've read it, not just the agenda but also the main line. I also familiarized myself for the American Counseling Association and their ethics because you referred to it in your pre- interview. So just so you know that.

It's now on the screen. "No counselor or therapist providing counseling or therapy services shall be required to counsel or serve a client as to goals, outcomes, or behaviors that conflict with a sincerely held religious belief of the counselor or therapist."

Are you saying senator that this bill does not do one simple thing, allow a therapist to say, "I won't treat you if I feel something about you is offensive to my faith." Is that not what this bill says?

JOHNSON: This bill maintains the status quo that is existed within the profession of counseling up until 2014. And no one has been able to provide me with a single incidence of a circumstance where someone was denied counseling.

People who go into the counseling profession do it because they care about people. But no law, no American Counseling Association and no code of ethics should require a counselor to provide counseling when someone seeks counseling for a subject matter that the counselor disagrees with.

And you all are the ones who brought in LGBT. This could be drug and alcohol abuse, it could be an addiction to pornography.

And by the way, why should someone seek counseling from a counselor who is unqualified, untrained and has no experience in a particular subject matter?

CUOMO: Mr. Gold?

GOLD: Well, first of all, that counselor if they're untrained, if they're not keeping up with their profession and going on with continuing education so they can keep up with it they really shouldn't be a counselor.

But to the senator's point, this was changed in 2014. And things do change because people evolve, they learn more, they understand more. I mean before 1972, I think it was. Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. And I unfortunately when I was a young kid, that's what I grew up thinking. And I cried myself to bed every night. I mean, I was tortured about it.

But luckily in the early '70s, my father sent me to a psychiatrist because he saw how -- was turmoil I was in. And I had a psychiatrist who had a new way of thinking. And instead of suggesting shock therapy to mere part or Perative therapy, he taught me how to love myself and to enjoy my life as it was. And I was really born again at that point because I started to live my life.

In 2014, the American Counseling Association with more knowledge, with more information, with more understanding they said, "No, no, counselors can't just say because of their deeply hug religious beliefs or if they don't like alcoholics or whatever the senator just said, "No, no, no, you can't do that."

If you're a professional in this field, you have to have continuing education. And you have to live to the Hippocratic Oath, do no harm.

What does it say to a kid when a counselor says, "Oh, no, no, I don't want to take care of you because you're gay. I'll refer you to someone else."

Instead of the senator working hard to protect in competent counselors, how about protecting these kids that are out there, there's over a 1.5 million gay teens that need the help and support of adults. They need common decency of adults. They don't need to be persecuted.

CUOMO: Senator put a button on it, you get the last word.

JOHNSON: Thank you very much.

Well let me just say, that the ultimate objective should be for people who need help to get the help that they need. And if there's a counselor out there who wants to specialize in one specific form of counseling, then that counselor should have the ability to refer the client who needs the help to a counselor who is most capable of providing that service.

CUOMO: All right gentlemen, thank you for discussing this. Obviously we're doing this for your benefit. What do you think about the state of play in this debate?

The bill that we're talking about right now is Bill 1840. You can find it online very easily. And then you can tweet us @NewDay or facebook.com/NewDay. Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, back to the race. If no GOP candidate reaches the magic delegate number, then what?

We look ahead by taking you back in time to the 1976 GOP convention. Ignore what just fell.

[07:38:57] What lessons does that year teach us?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: OK, so picture this. Republicans gather at their convention with no clear nominee and less than a 100 delegates separating the candidates.

The only way to pick a winner is a floor fight. I'm not talking about this summer. I'm talking about what's already happened back in 1976, when a California governor named Ronald Reagan took on the Republican establishment.

CNN Chief Political Analyst, Gloria Borger has more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: After millions of votes, dozens of contest and heaps of mud flung along the way. The Republican presidential race has a bit of everything, except a nominee.

TED CRUZ, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We will win a majority of the delegates.

BORGER: The last time a contested convention happened was in 1976, when Former California Governor Ronald Reagan was the outsider challenging the president, Gerald Ford.

Both men claimed to have the votes heading into the convention, but nobody was sure. Not even Jim Baker, who was then Ford's top delegate hunter.

JAMES BAKER, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: We had no assurance whatsoever that he would get the majority of votes necessary to be nominated.

BORGER: But he did. Winning the nomination and earning Baker headlines. But it was far from easy.

RONALD REAGAN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Mr. President ...

BAKER: Governor Reagan, Ronald Reagan almost knocked off a new combat, a Republican president. We had to get in there and scrabble for and fight for it.

BORGER: So as Donald Trump gets ready to rumble at the convention, Baker has little sympathy for the argument that if Trump is closest to the finish line going in, he should be declared the winner.

BAKER: It's mathematically unfair.

BORGER: Is that the way the process works?

BAKER: Well, that' a very good political argument for him to make. But that's not actually the way the process is supposed to work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twenty votes for our fellow Texan.

BAKER: It is supposed to works in a vote or series of votes by the delegates on the floor of the convention. They select the nominee. It is after all a parties nominating convention.

BORGER: The good news for Trump is that his supporters, like Ronald Reagan's 40 years ago, are die hard.

BAKER: Reagan had the benefit of the movement. I mean his delegates were already committed to what he stood for.

[07:45:01] BORGER: Just the same way Trump's delegates by the way are very committed to Donald Trump as the outsider.

BAKER: Provided Trump can get them selected as delegates and not have his delegates' slots filled by a Kasich or Cruz person.

BORGER: In other words, just winning the most delegates on primary nights is not enough.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Another win for Donald Trump.

BORGER: Winning states is one thing. But keeping your state delegates is another matter entirely. Not only on the first ballot but hanging on to them if there are multiple votes leaving delegates free to roam, even defect. And that's where Trump's anti-establishment campaign is playing catchup.

If you were running the Trump delegate selection process now, what would you be doing?

BAKER: Well, I think they need to be ramping up a sophisticated delegate selection process. I'm not sure that they've been paying very much attention to their ground game.

BORGER: So how did you track of it?

BAKER: What you have to do, you have to, first of all, you're going to need to know everything there is to know about a potential delegate or a delegate.

The most important thing to know is what turns them on and what turns them off, what they believe in, what they favor, what they disfavor, who they are sleeping with an old Kashmir (ph), OK. You make a point to learn everything you can about each delegate.

And then you just massage that delegate. You stay in touch with them. You work them. Protect them to keep them from being stolen by the other side. It's a zero sum game. And if -- and as people say old time, it ain't bing-bang.

BORGER: With very few rules.

BAKER: Now, you got to be very careful. You can't buy votes. BORGER: So what can you do?

BAKER: Well there are some things we can do. And of course, we can't -- we took great advantage of it in 1976, ahead of the party was the president of the United States.

BORGER: That helped.

BAKER: Yeah, it helped a lot. There was a dinner for the queen of England. OK, so you have a -- you can get an uncommitted delegate, invite him to the White House for a state dinner for the queen of England. And you don't think you have a good chance of getting his vote. You got a pretty good chance getting his vote.

BORGER: Did you?

BAKER: Yeah, we did. And I bet I went to more state dinners than anybody in the Ford administration with the basically exception of Betty and Gerald Ford.

BORGER: And some delegates brazenly asked for favors, some crossing the line.

BAKER: We got a lot of inappropriate requests. And there was some really outrageous ones, like jobs, federal jobs.

BORGER: Federal jobs?

BAKER: Yeah, federal jobs.

If I'm not mistaken, there was a request to lay off a relative of one of the delegates who is being prosecuted for a federal crime. I mean things like that.

BORGER: And proper requests aside, what's the south (ph) a few friendly plane rides to Miralago for a hunting trip.

CRUZ: He shot the wrong kind of bird.

BORGER: To Texas.

BAKER: We came more than, it wasn't only played on our side. It was played on their side too. We just had some better inducements we can offer.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: America is at peace.

BORGER: Still, it was close. When it came to a head on the convention floor, Ford beat Reagan out right by just 117 votes.

REAGAN: We must go forth from here united.

BORGER: But this fight could be more bitter and last longer.

And Baker warned that if it does and the rules start changing in the middle of a game there could be hell to pay for the entire Republican Party.

BAKER: If you have a candidate who's within a 100 or 150 delegates votes of getting the majority and you start changing the rules to screw the candidate out of the nomination, I'll think you're going to get -- you're going to buy yourself some grief, you can buy yourself some grief in the general election because his supporters, all of whom thought that they were voting for significant change, my stay home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Glorious, so fascinating to hear Jim Baker on this. And almost comforting to know we have done this before. There is a way to get through this.

BORGER: Yeah.

CAMEROTA: But -- and I know that you asked him this, and Jim Baker said that the rules are such that they allow for other voting. But does he agree with Donald Trump if Donald Trump is within a 100 delegates or he is the closest that he is the one who should get the nomination?

BORGER: No. Look, nothing is automatic. The rules are the rules. And what Baker says, that you can't change rules in the middle of the game, number one. And you have to get to that magic number of 1237.

And so his feeling is that where the Trump campaign has lagged behind, and I think, you know, you had Paul Manafort on earlier because he's trying to fix that.

[07:50:01] And by the way, Paul Manafort worked for Jim Baker at the '76 convention.

CAMEROTA: Wow.

BORGER: You've got to start wrangling these delegates. You got to know who they are and you have to make sure they're with you, not only on the first ballot so you can win.

But on second ballot, if you don't win, when they're free to roam and they're free to move to another candidate if you want to.

And one thing to remember here, Alisyn, is that delegates are pulse. They are not primary voters who want to send a message to Washington and protest. These are people who work in politics by in large, and they have one goal, and that is to win.

So what a candidate has to do is convince these delegates that he's the fellow who can beat the Democrat in the fall.

CAMEROTA: Wow, Gloria, thanks so much, such an education.

You know, what's old is new again, these old names being relevant again, these old scenarios, really interesting, Gloria. Thanks so much.

BORGER: Amazing. Sure.

CAMEROTA: Let's get over to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, President Obama directing billions of dollars to combat the Zika virus in the U.S. after a stand off with Congress.

We're going to talk about this virus Zika. How worried should we be?

Sanjay Gupta, joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:55:17] CAMEROTA: It's time for CNN Money Now and Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans is in Our Money Center. Hi, Christina.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

For the first time ever, four Federal Reserve chairs on one stage, Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan via satellite, nerd out.

They told that Fareed Zakaria the U.S. economy is solid. This is not a bubble economy headed towards a recession despite the gloom and doom you're hearing on the campaign trail. But they are worried about weakness in the rest of the world.

The fed did not raise interest rates in March. Almost certainly won't in April.

Enjoy these low rates while they last. Mortgage rates hit the lowest levels of the year this week of below 4 percent. Michaela?

PEREIRA: All right, thanks so much, Christine.

The White House warning Congress to fight the Zika virus or live to regret it. President Obama redirecting nearly $6 million in Ebola funds to Zika research.

The White House is frustrated with Republicans for not allocating more money for this growing public threat. How worried should we be here in the U.S. about Zika?

Our Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here now. It's so great to have you.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Thank you.

PEREIRA: Spend a little bit of time on the money. We want to get to the concern and worry.

So this redirect of the fund, sort of frustrated with Congress, so he's redirecting the funds from Ebola to Zika. It's interesting how will that all work and what does it mean for the fight against Zika and what does it mean for Ebola?

GUPTA: Yeah, fight against Ebola.

Well, first of all they're saying, look, we need money now. The weather is starting to get warmer. We know how to basically try and stem the potential spread of this here and that's to control the mosquitoes. We got to figure out where these mosquitoes are, you got to control them. They want to work on a vaccine ...

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: ... to do that, right?

GUPTA: Right. And so they're taking money from Ebola, because there was a significant amount of money there still for Ebola that was, by the way, designated to be spent. So it's not that that money was just sitting there and they're going to redirect it for now making it very clear that the money for Ebola needs to be sort of filled.

One thing I want to make a point of because you and I talk about Ebola a lot. They were fewer than a dozen patients in the United States and when that started to happen you remember how much interest and how much anxiety there was around that.

If we start to see local spread of Zika, if more pregnant women are affected, that's the concern. You're going to have all of a sudden a huge surge in demand for resources. They want to sort of preempt that.

PEREIRA: Now the other big news is that the World Health Organization is saying definitively now that Zika does cause microcephaly and Guillain-Barre. What was it to pin-point?

GUPTA: Well, in numbers, Michaela, you know, you're talking about a thousand women now around the world in six different countries, who had children with microcephaly now, also had the Zika infection.

So, you know, these cause and effect relationships are hard to establish. It can take decades sometimes to be certain. But here just because of the sudden increase in numbers and the Zika Association, they're saying it's time to just say it causes it.

PEREIRA: You know, you're sort of the people's doctor. Everybody reaches out to you, and our staff included and I know you've been getting e-mails from people saying "Hey, I'm supposed to travel to a country where Zika has been diagnosed."

What are you telling them?

GUPTA: Well, look, here's what I say, and it falls the guidance I think of what the medical community is saying is, well, now, but this is changing. If you're a pregnant woman, you're thinking about getting pregnant in one of these countries, if you don't have to be there, then I wouldn't go.

PEREIRA: Avoid it.

GUPTA: Avoid it. That's the sort of -- now let's say you're pregnant and you just visited one of these countries, now you're back in the United States saying, "OK, what do I do now?" I think the best answer is, get tested. And also get a cranial ultrasound. So a ultrasound that specifically focus on ...

PEREIRA: You can ask your doctor to do that?

GUPTA: You can ask your doctor to do that, and sometimes it requires a -- what's known as a high-risk obstetrician, to do those, one of their offices. But that's what I would do. If the test is negative, the first cranial ultrasound is OK. You're probably in the clear.

If the test is positive or equivocal then you may need to get a series of ultrasounds throughout the pregnancy.

PEREIRA: And quickly down the pike, we see the Olympics happening in Rio de Janeiro, a big Zika issue there. How big are they concerned?

GUPTA: You know what, one thing to keep in mind is that their summer is our winter and vice versa.

PEREIRA: True. Still hot there.

GUPTA: It is still warm, but it's going to get a little cooler. Mosquitoes will start to decrease in population. They're taking all kinds of precautions in terms of controlling mosquitoes, getting rid of standing water, lots of spring. They want to make it obviously as safe as possible.

They had a lot of issues at the Olympics as you know in Rio.

PEREIRA: Yeah, really have.

GUPTA: But I think the advice still stays. If you're a pregnant woman, you don't need to be in one of these countries, where Zika is circulating, don't go.

If you're my daughter or my wife, that's what I would tell them.

PEREIRA: This is why we need Sanjay around. Thank you so much. We always appreciate it.

GUPTA: Anytime, thank you.

PEREIRA: This one is a little sideways on you though. But I'll let you guys break that out.

We're following a lot of news including the candidates taking a nastier tone ahead of New York's primary. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERNIE SANDERS, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not going to get beaten up. I'm not going to lied about. We will fight back.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Bernie Sanders by his own admission has never even been a Democrat.

[08:00:02] SANDERS: The American people might wonder about your qualifications.

CLINTON: Well, it's kind of a silly thing to say.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Democrats around the country by the way are pretty clear. I will unify one way or another.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I've got this guy talking about do your ...