Return to Transcripts main page
New Day
Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Win New York Primary. Aired 6- 6:30a ET
Aired April 20, 2016 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hillary. Hillary.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hillary. Hillary.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hillary. Hillary.
[05:58:17] HILLARY CLINTON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There's no place like home.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We don't have much of a race anymore.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: People in state after state cry out for a new path.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We believe we have a path for a victory.
TRUMP: We're going to go back to the old way. It's called you vote and you win.
SANDERS: I am really concerned. Three million New Yorkers were unable to vote.
GOV. JOHN KASICH (R-OH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Some politicians say that America's losing on everything. What, are you kidding me?
CRUZ: America's always been best when she is lying down with her back on the mat.
CLINTON: It's about lifting each other up, not tearing each other down.
(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. It's Wednesday, April 20, 6 a.m. in the east. Alisyn is off. Brooke Baldwin is here, Mick is here, and we are ready to give you the headline of the morning. They delivered. Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, crushing their rivals. Huge victories in their home state of New York. Clinton now on the brink of clinching the Democratic nomination. Trump, cementing his past, still facing a battle to reach the party's delegate threshold, but much closer now.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: So much to talk about this morning. All eyes now on the five northeast primaries for next Tuesday. Will it mean the end of the road for Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, possibly even John Kasich? Or will the battle rage on?
We have the 2016 election covered for you this morning the only way CNN can. Let's begin with John Berman here to break down the numbers and the delegate score card. Mr. Berman?
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Ms. Baldwin.
BALDWIN: Good morning.
BERMAN: Decisive wins for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump here in the Big Apple. On the Republican side, Donald Trump, he got more than 60 percent of the vote. That is a high-water mark in this campaign.
John Kasich in second. Ted Cruz way down at third at 14 percent. Let's look at the Democrats right now. Hillary Clinton at 57 percent, 15 points higher than Bernie Sanders. That is more than either campaign thought the margin would be heading into the election yesterday. That means Hillary Clinton walks away with 139 delegates. Bernie Sanders gets 108. She increases her delegate margin in this state.
On the Republican side, way more one-sided. Donald Trump gets at least 89 delegates. John Kasich gets at least 3, Ted Cruz will emerge with zero. Zero in a state that he did campaign in, by the way. Donald Trump, he's in a stronger position now to get to the 1,237 delegates he needs. It will not be easy. He needs to run a disciplined campaign ahead to get at or close to that number.
As for Hillary Clinton, she's less than 500 delegates away from the magic number she needs. She holds an edge over Bernie Sanders in pledged and the super delegates. And the proportional allocation for Democrats makes it much harder for Bernie Sanders to chip into that margin. His campaign now all but admitting going to flip super delegates in the coming weeks and months if they want to emerge the winner at the convention -- Michaela.
PEREIRA: All right. Excellent John Berman, thanks so much.
So Hillary Clinton shifting her focus to the general election after stopping Bernie Sanders's winning streak. He flew back home to Vermont, taking a day to recharge. So what is his strategy heading into next week's five northeast primaries?
Our senior political correspondent, Brianna Keilar, live here with us on this big morning.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, after what was a very big win for us for Hillary Clinton. And she is trying yet again to pivot to the general election. Victory is in sight. That is the message out of camp Clinton, but not if Bernie Sanders has anything to say about it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CLINTON: In this campaign we've won in every region of the country. But this one's personal.
KEILAR (voice-over): Hillary Clinton with a big win in her adopted home state, addressing Senator Bernie Sanders supporters, with her sights set on the White House.
CLINTON: It's humbling that you'd trust me with the awesome responsibilities that await our next president. And to all the people who supported Senator Sanders, I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us.
KEILAR: Clinton ending Sanders' winning streak, where he took eight of the last nine contests.
SANDERS: Today we took Secretary Clinton on in her own state of New York, and we lost. I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her victory. There are five primaries next week. We think we're going to do well.
KEILAR: In New York, three million independents across the state did not vote in the state's closed primary. Sanders also railing against voter irregularities at the polls with some 100,000 Democrats unable to vote because they were purged from voter registrations in Brooklyn.
SANDERS: I am very concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York state, and I hope that that process will change in the future.
KEILAR: Time running out for Sanders to catch up to Clinton's delegate lead.
CLINTON: The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight.
KEILAR: Now, Hillary Clinton offering a bit of an olive branch to Bernie Sanders supporters, but shortly after her speech, her communications director talked about some of the rhetoric that Bernie Sanders and his campaign has been putting out there, and she said that it is destructive.
She said it's not been productive for the party or for the country. She called these false character attacks. So some pretty sharp words after you saw Hillary Clinton trying, maybe, to dial it down a bit and, also, I'm hearing from a lot of Democrats, including those who back Hillary Clinton, and they're saying this needs to be ratcheted down, not up. So that was something to note.
CUOMO: Hmm. Thank you very much, Brianna Keilar. Big night any way you look at it. On the Republican side, New Yorkers coming through big time for the Donald. A landslide victory, giving him a much- needed boost on the path to the nomination. The question now is will Trump reach that 1,237, that magic number? And what's going to happen with his rivals ahead of next week's northeast primaries? CNN's Jason Carroll has that tale for us.
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Chris. Donald Trump telling his supporters last night basically he's impossible to catch. He took to the podium as Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" played. His tone much different than we've seen in the past. No name calling, but he did call out the GOP establishment, warning them not to try to stop the will of the people.
TRUMP: We can't be caught. It's impossible to catch us.
CARROLL: Donald Trump giving a rousing victory speech, befitting his New York blow-out win, and signaling a new phase in his campaign.
TRUMP: We don't have much of a race anymore. Senator Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated.
CARROLL: The billionaire front-runner dropping most of the insults and sounding more presidential.
TRUMP: Nobody should be given delegates, which is a ticket to victory.
CARROLL: Trump sharpening his focus on Ted Cruz, continuing to criticize his courting of delegates and the possibility of a contested convention.
TRUMP: It's a system that's rigged, and we're going to go back to the old way. It's called, you vote and you win.
CARROLL: With a shutout in New York, Cruz defending his delegate strategy.
CRUZ (via phone): I cannot help that the Donald Trump campaign does not seem capable of running a lemonade stand. If you lose, don't cry about it. Go back and learn how to win an election.
CARROLL: Cruz trying to look past his big defeat, debuting a new stump speech in Philadelphia.
CRUZ: This is the year of the outsider.
CARROLL: The self-proclaimed outsider calling for unity within the Republican Party.
CRUZ: We must unite the Republican Party, because doing so is the first step towards uniting all Americans.
CARROLL: Runner-up John Kasich ready for a fight in Maryland, continuing to argue he's the strongest candidate to take on Hillary Clinton in November.
KASICH: When you have the sky-high negatives, nobody's voting for you. The delegates will look at that, and you know, I think they're going to make a pick my way.
CARROLL: Kasich is wrong about that. Someone is voting for him. Trump is now closing in on that magic number needed for the nomination. He swept the entire state last night in four of the five boroughs. The only place he lost, right here in Manhattan where Kasich just edged him out -- Brooke.
BALDWIN: Jason, thank you. So how did the two front runners score such decisive victories here in New York? CNN's Christine Romans is with us this morning with a look at the deciding factors from all those exit polls. What are you seeing, Christine?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Brooke.
Let's start with Trump. In a word, he dominated across age, across ideology, income, ideology, the works of primary voters age 18 through 44. Donald Trump took half that group, Kasich a distant second.
An even more impressive performance with primary voters age 45 and older. That's three-quarters of the GOP primary electorate, 63 percent of those. A good chunk of New York Republicans identify as very conservative. They broke overwhelmingly for Donald Trump. Ted Cruz, a distant second there, 27 percent.
When we turn to more moderate voters, though, the race got much closer: Trump with 46 percent; John Kasich with 42 percent. You have a top issue among GOP voters in New York: the economy and jobs. Trump scores another big win there, 54 percent. John Kasich holding out at about 32 percent of that vote. On terrorism, 63 percent breaking for Donald Trump. Kasich and Cruz pulling in just 37 percent combined.
Similar domination on the Democratic side for Hillary Clinton, 75 percent of black primary voters favor Clinton. An established trend in the exit polls across the state. Latino voters side with Clinton over Sanders, 64 percent to 36 percent. That's not new. What is new? The in-roads she made with white voters in New York, split 50/50.
Outside the south, he has won white voters in almost every state. Now, one of Clinton's biggest wins, a stunning 91 percent of voters who say the quality that they really want in a candidate is experience. They side with Hillary Clinton on that. Just 9 percent chose Bernie Sanders.
And finally the top issue among New York primary voters, economy and jobs, of course, of that group. Sixty-one percent breaking for Clinton, 39 percent for Sanders. The only economic issue Sanders won, income inequality, you guys. That is pretty much the hallmark, right, the cornerstone of his campaign. Income equality. He won that category in New York -- Chris.
CUOMO: Christine, it seems like Hillary Clinton heard everything she wanted to hear last night except an early call on the race. So we know that the returns were big for her. Now you've got to start looking at what this means for Bernie Sanders moving forward. It's all about what happens next in these races. Let's get to that right now.
We have CNN political analyst and host of "The David Gregory Show" podcast, David Gregory; Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast," Jackie Kucinich; and CNN political analyst and presidential campaign correspondent for "The New York Times," Maggie Haberman.
So we can all hear Ron Brownstein somewhere in the distance, holding up a big stack of cross-tabs, saying, "This is what needed to happen." It is what needed to happen, especially the last number that Christine gave us, Maggie. She had been losing to Bernie with white voters, less educated voters, one of those crosstabs -- I hate the description of it but a real demographic. Is this where she needed to be?
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. This is a state that looked a lot more like the rest of the Democratic Party than other states we've seen. That's the argument you're going to hear from her campaign going forward and in other states that they're about to go into in this contest look more favorable for her.
Sanders had a tough night last night. I think that you have seen repeatedly, Sanders is going to keep going, I think, regardless. That was clear last night.
[06:10:02] But the margin of wins here was much bigger than any of us expected, much bigger than the Clinton campaign was spinning for literally weeks, and I think that this is -- not -- you know, the moral victory conversation is long out the door. She has now a pledged delegate lead. This is going to be very, very hard for him to catch, and now they're talking about flipping super delegates. Not a great argument if you're him. It is one that will convince supporters, but it just keeps the idea going that he has changed his position on, "I will win with pledged delegates," to, "I'm going to change approach to this."
BALDWIN: On the flipping super delegate notion, David Gregory, question to you. You know, it's been interesting. We've heard from Bernie Sanders. We've heard from Jeff Weaver, saying, "We're in it. We're in it until July." Of course, Tad Devine, interestingly, I think his phrase, we might re-assess. Moving forward, starting today, what does Bernie Sanders need to do?
DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, there's almost nothing he really can do. I mean, he's had ample opportunity to try to grow his share of the electorate, and it's still not happening. He's dominating among younger voters, but he's not winning Democrats.
In New York, Hillary Clinton is winning Democrats over 60 percent. So she is clearly on a path to secure this nomination.
What Sanders is doing, because he's got a huge base of support; he's got a lot of money. He's a real factor in the party, and how that moves playing forward we don't know. He is still in a position to do damage to Hillary Clinton, to keep criticizing her. The race has gotten testier. Not like the Republicans, but it's still got ramped up in how contentious it's gotten.
So the question is what does he, what does Hillary Clinton -- what do they owe progressives at this point in terms of trying to unify the party? So there's not so much ammunition that the Republicans will use against her. They've already got a lot, but he's adding more into that mix.
CUOMO: Over 60 percent with women, over 60 percent with blacks, over 60 percent with that -- that crop of voters that say the economy matters the most.
The only surprise last night, Jackie, was when the results came. You know, when the polls closed, people had Trump's margin within, like, four or five points set. Right at 9:00 when polls ended. It was too close to call on the Democratic side. Then it was two; then it was five. Then all of a sudden, it just ballooned.
JACKIE KUCINICH, "THE DAILY BEAST": Right. I mean, but as Maggie was saying, the Clinton campaign was telling us, it wasn't even going to be double digits. They were really managing expectations.
On the flip side, the Sanders campaign just really kind of messed up how they were spinning this. Because you had Bernie Sanders at one point saying he was going to win New York, which was ginning up his supporters who were -- who were saying to me at this rally in Prospect Park obviously the polls are wrong and the rules were rigged. So there's a lot of disappointment on the Sanders side at this point.
CUOMO: He said if turnout is huge, I think Democrats in the early number down a few points. Right? Like even to last year, down to maybe a little from 2008?
Yes. It was going to be very hard to top 2008. I remember the excitement between the first potential black nominee and the home state senator was quite high.
BALDWIN: So looking at the states ahead, and I honestly give you, sir, credit for sitting here. Bernie Sanders was sitting in that studio.
CUOMO: Rare day.
BALDWIN: You liked that? When you asked a great question, you know, have you begun to think what you would say to your, you know, "feel the Bern" faithfuls as far as if you don't clinch? What message, you know, would you say to them in order to ultimately elect a Democrat?
And he said, "Listen, it's a two-way street. I don't really feel like the Clinton campaign has done enough to address these young voters." The issues she directly addressed the Sanders supporters last night. Brianna called it an olive branch, Maggie Haberman. What did you make of that? What does she need to do?
HABERMAN: Two things that she did yesterday that were interesting. One was she did that, but she also made very clear that she was irritated by the repeated statements that she's had trouble energizing her base, or energizing her supporters. She referenced that a couple of times, but she is aware that she needs Bernie Sanders voters. She is trying to reach out to them.
But I thought she was trying to do it in a way where she did not sound like she thinks this is all done. They are mindful at this point now of not trying to say, essentially, Sanders has to go. You know, he's not allowed to be here anymore. This race is moving on. She came close. She said essentially that the nomination is in sight. This fight is basically almost over. And I think that's true, but she's trying to be mindful of how she does it.
CUOMO: David Gregory.
GREGORY: I just think the issue here of young voters, too, is that the question is not whether they just fall in line in the Republican Party. These are a lot of voters who could stay outside of the process if they are not sufficiently inspired. That's a big challenge for her to try to get to a place where she finds a way to bring them into the party.
CUOMO: Well, momentum matters, right? And what you're hoping is you get these wins and it starts to give you that excitement. And if you look at the states coming up, you've got Maryland and Pennsylvania. They're not New York, but they resemble New York compared to the groupings of states we've had recently. And you've got 95 and 189 delegates there. So those are going to be big. Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, as well. Places where it's seen, Jackie Kucinich, to end up the segment.
Hillary is supposed to win those states; it's supposed to give her more of those traditional models of Democrats. And each state makes her more likely and maybe draws people into the tent?
HABERMAN: Very true. Maryland is supposed to be a lock for Hillary Clinton, where the Sanders campaign is looking at Pennsylvania. They're going to use a similar -- I would expect they're going to use a similar playbook as they did in Wisconsin and Michigan. Talk a lot about trade in those Rust Belt states where a lot of jobs have been lost.
CUOMO: Maggie, Jackie, D. Greg, thank you very much. We're going to talk about the Republicans in a little bit. First to Michaela.
PEREIRA: All right. Criminal charges are expected today in connection with the Flint water crisis. A source tells CNN that Michigan's attorney general is scheduled to announce felony and misdemeanor cases against at least two and possibly four people affiliated with the State Department of Environment Quality or the city of Flint. Now, that is according to a report in the "Detroit Free Press."
BALDWIN: A former New York City officer who gunned down an unarmed man will not serve time in jail. Rookie officer Peter Liang was instead sentenced to 800 hours of community service and five years' probation. The 28-year-old said he accidentally shot Akai Gurley back in 2014 after hearing a strange noise in a dark stairwell. A judge reduced Liang's manslaughter conviction, saying there is no evidence he intended to kill or injure Gurley.
CUOMO: A federal appeals court overturning a policy that barred a transgender teen from using the boys' restroom at a Virginia high school. The three-judge panel said it violated Title IX. That's the anti-discrimination law. The ruling could have implications in North Carolina, which just enacted a law banning transgender people from using public bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity.
PEREIRA: So New Yorkers delivering a landslide victory for Donald Trump, moving the Republican front-runner a giant step closer to the nomination. Where does the race go from here? We'll take a closer look, ahead on your NEW DAY.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[06:21:02] TRUMP: We don't have much of a race anymore, based on what I'm seeing on television. Senator Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Donald Trump, basking in the glow of a landslide victory in his home state of New York. The Republican front-runner topping 60 percent of that primary vote, winning nearly all of the 95 delegates. So what does this mean for the Republican race moving forward?
Let's bring back our political gurus: Maggie Haberman, David Gregory and Jackie Kucinich.
David Gregory, to you first. I don't remember the last time I heard Donald Trump refer to Ted Cruz as senator. So used to hearing Lying' Ted. So change, maybe, in tone there. A message about, you know, working for your vote, you know, creating jobs. It seemed like -- what's the word? More subdued, more on-message Donald Trump last night?
GREGORY: Well, it's amazing how much credit Trump can get for just sounding like a normal candidate, when he's been so far outside the lines, now he tones it down a little bit, and it's like, you know, a whole new person.
You've got to give Trump credit; you've got to give him his due. He had a series of self-inflicted wounds. He was circling down. The idea of the "stop Trump" movement getting a resurgence after the Wisconsin loss. You know, winning does a lot to wash that away, and Donald Trump won big.
He is in a position, I think, to get this on the first ballot or to get very close. He's got this outside game, as I keep saying, arguing against a rigged system but a beefed-up inside game.
All the talk of letting Trump be Trump without Paul Manafort has come in and has said, "How about we let you be less of you and let me take over a little bit and put a little discipline into the campaign."
Hey, you talk about message last night? You know when he talked about jobs being sucked out of the country? Who did that remind you of but Ross Perot, the great sucking sound that Perot talked about in 1992 of jobs going to Mexico. Here he is in the northeast, thinking about states like Pennsylvania. Donald Trump has a tighter message moving into these big states next week.
GREGORY: Well, Maggie, the inside/outside game David is talking about is, of course, accurate. But now it's about the balancing of it. Right? The outside game of this system is rigged. That helps him in the primary. That helps him with these enraged Republicans who see their party fracturing and are picking a side. Doesn't help him in the general, necessarily.
That's going to be where this new Senator Ted Cruz, as Brooke points out, comes out. And he does have a Manafort and a Wiley to establish that, saying to him, "We've been there before. You haven't."
HABERMAN: I know. That's exactly right. We've been there before. You haven't. Talk about the economy, to David's point. Talk about jobs. Talk about trade. He was very focused on those points last night.
CUOMO: And how, too. And how he did it, also.
HABERMAN: And I was very struck by something else he said last night. He said it twice at the end of his speech: "Tomorrow we go back to work." And I've never heard him say something like that in this campaign. It was very clear "I'm going to keep on fighting. I'm taking nothing for granted."
CUOMO: Working for your vote.
HABERMAN: Exactly. Which is actually where he's heading in this dual message.
CUOMO: He has been saying, and his friends -- we have Rudy Giuliani here. They say, "You are not giving Trump credit for his ability to shape shift." He really does believe that he needs to be a certain kind of person right now. And, now, the question is, where does that leave people in terms of assessing you? But as long as it's a positive change, it's easier to sell.
HABERMAN: Right, right. I think the issue was that -- and you hear this over and over again. The Trump -- the media around Trump he has often talked about is free media. "I'm not paying for ads as much as other people," but it all basically turned negative. And that was made very clear to him in recent days. You have to change.
So they are, to your point, doing this outside game. It's a rigged system. A lot of voters, and not just in the Republican Party, feel like the system in general, whatever that system is right now, is rigged. So I don't know that that message hurts him going forward, as long as he's not personally attacking people. That where it becomes problematic.
BALDWIN: Ted Cruz, it is now mathematically impossible for him to hit the 1,237 ahead of what people hope will be a contested convention and getting on that second ballot. What do they do between now and Cleveland?
[06:25:00] KUCINICH: Indiana. Indiana is going to be a very big state, for lots of reasons. It's a much -- it's a really tough state to poll. There isn't a whole lot there, but look at Mike Pence. Mike Pence was Ted Cruz before Ted Cruz was Ted Cruz.
He was a Washington outsider. He's someone that -- he's someone that the establishment really hated, and he is someone that, you know did very well in Indiana. So I think that the lay of the land there for Ted Cruz is positive, and they're going to focus there. Because it's one place that they can hash tag #stopTrump.
CUOMO: Is Pence a cautionary tale? One of the other reasons that Indiana is also really important is it comes the week after May 3. So whatever happens on April 26 when you have, you know, Connecticut, these other big northeastern states...
KUCINICH: Right, right.
CUOMO: May be blunted. Because after that, he's going to wait until May. What is it? Oregon -- and so May 17. He'd have to wait for two other states to give him a chance after that.
But Mike Pence you just mentioned, governor of Indiana, is he a cautionary tale for Cruz, as well, after what happened with those gay marriage laws that basically he tried to put in effect, in terms of where you go with your conservative model?
KUCINICH: Absolutely. You can't overplay your hand. That's it. It seems like Pence is going against, you know, what his state wanted. And so that was -- it is a cautionary tale.
However, when it comes to the raw politics, he's very much like Ted Cruz, ideologically.
GREGORY: But I just think it's important to look at the math here, because even if Cruz wins in Indiana, even if he captures some more western states, we'll see what California looks like. Trump is obviously in command here.
BALDWIN: Yes.
GREGORY: He's been in command even when he lost in Wisconsin. So if he gets closer and closer to getting to 1,237, he has the inside part of the game, which is to work over these delegates. He may not like the system. He says he's not going to wine and dine people. Let's see what they actually end up doing to get to 1,237. They know how to negotiate. This is what -- he's got to shine.
If he doesn't get it on the first ballot, he opens up this kind of bazaar. But if he's able to choke these guys off, I think it's still the route to go. And if you're Cruz, you -- it's almost impossible for you to do this mathematically. Kasich, you're already out. These guys are just waiting for a contested convention.
Trump is in a much better position to say to the party writ large, "Look guys, I have consolidated this."
But for both Trump and for Clinton, what is awaiting them in a general election, extraordinarily high disapproval among a wide swath of the electorate that's going to be problematic for both of them in a general election.
BALDWIN: David, let me just jump in, final question to you, just being in Washington. I want to play some sound from the Senate Armed Services Committee. We're going to hear from Army General Vincent Brooks, who's been nominated commander of U.S. forces in South Korea, and he's agreeing with Senator John McCain on U.S. troops in South Korea being cheaper to keep there. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Isn't it a fact that it costs us less to have troops stationed in Korea than in the United States?
GEN. VINCENT BROOKS, NOMINATED COMMANDER OF U.S. FORCES IN SOUTH KOREA: I would give two examples of that. The first is that they pay about 50 percent of our personnel costs of being there. The second example would be, the largest DOD construction project we have anywhere in the world, about a $10.8 billion project, that is really being used to relocate U.S. forces further to the south.
MCCAIN: So it could cost more to keep those troops stationed in the United States than it would be in Korea. Is that correct?
BROOKS: Absolutely, Senator.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROOKS: Now Donald Trump wasn't name-checked there. What was that about?
GREGORY: That was about making a really big shot, by McCain, against Donald Trump, who has said that America is getting fleeced, because we've got all these -- these troops overseas in places like Korea, and we're not getting anything for it. To show that wasn't true. This goes to the Maggie Haberman and David Sanger's piece in the "Times" about what Trump doesn't know about American power overseas, about foreign policy. This kind of thing could play much larger in a general election.
BALDWIN: OK. David and Jackie and Maggie, thank you so much -- Michaela.
PEREIRA: All right, Brooke.
President Obama touched down in Saudi Arabia just moments -- moments ago. He is hoping to rally support for the fight against ISIS and repair relations with a longtime ally. Can he accomplish both? We're going to bring you a live report from the Saudi kingdom, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)