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New Day

Donald Trump Sweeps Republican Primaries; Clinton Wins Four out of Five Primaries; Donald Interview with Barry Bennett; Sanders Vows to Stay in Race Until Convention. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired April 27, 2016 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: This is our last Wednesday with Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: It is. We are all growing together.

CUOMO: Except when we're not.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Except for when we're not, like next Monday.

CUOMO: Enough of that. We can't fix that. Here are things we can discuss that still have progress, and that's the election.

Big victories last night for Clinton and for Trump, dominating the five states in the northeast, Clinton winning four of five, but still getting closer to clinching the party nomination. Trump says the Republican race is a done deal. He calls himself the presumptive nominee. You're going to hear from Trump himself in just a few moments.

CAMEROTA: As for the Democrats, Hillary Clinton winning four out of the five states. Clinton now 90 percent of the way to having the delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders says he is staying in until every last vote. We have the 2016 race covered only the way CNN can. Let's begin with John Berman to break down all of the numbers. Explain it to us, John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Alisyn. Five for Five, you really can't do better than that. Donald Trump won Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware. In Rhode Island and Delaware he had 60 percent of the polls. Ted Cruz, by the way, finished in third place in every state but Pennsylvania.

Let's look at the Democrats right now. Hillary Clinton won four out of the five, including Pennsylvania, the big prize for the Democrats with the most delegates. Bernie Sanders running out of big states left on the map. He did manage to win Rhode Island, won it convincingly. However, didn't do much for him in terms of delegates.

Let's look at the delegate math right now. Hillary Clinton won 214 last night, Bernie Sanders with 160. So she nets 54 delegates at a time when Bernie Sanders had hoped to be closing that gap. On the Republican side, Donald Trump, he picked up 142 delegates, Ted Cruz and John Kasich way, way back with five each.

Donald Trump's total does include some unbound delegates from the state of Pennsylvania. CNN called all of them and figured out which were committed to Donald Trump. He did manage to wrangle some of those unbound delegates. That in itself is interesting.

Let's talk about the overall delegate picture, 988 for Donald Trump, Ted Cruz back at 568. You can see Donald Trump, about 250 away from reaching the magic number, getting ever closer. Hillary Clinton much closer than that, even. She is at 2,168. Bernie Sanders back at 1,041. You can see the big lead among super delegates for Hillary Clinton as well. Bernie Sanders would need to flip those super delegates between now and July, but they seem pretty solid, Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right, John. Donald Trump relishing that clean sweep. Trump on the Cruz/Kasich alliance, actually shifting focus to the next delegate battleground in Indiana. Our senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta is in Washington with more. Jim?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela. We're going to see Donald Trump try to pull off a big general election pivot later on today. He's going to try to show off his wonky side with a big speech on foreign policy here in Washington. The address is designed to demonstrate Trump's grasp of world affairs while calming nervous Republicans who worry he can't move beyond insults and one-liners.

Donald Trump towered over his rivals in a primary night triumph across the northeast last night, steering his rollercoaster candidacy, its' appeared that way at time, onto a steadier path to the GOP nomination. The frontrunner on the Republican side stayed on the attack against his rivals and tried to make that pivot to the general election with some harsh comments about Hillary Clinton playing the woman card, those are his words. Here is more of what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she would get five percent of the vote. The only thing she has got going is the woman's card. And the beautiful thing is, women don't like her, OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: But Trump still has a few more battles ahead as Ted Cruz and John Kasich are testing out a shaky new alliance to slow the GOP frontrunner's momentum in the next big contest of Indiana with Cruz staking the fate of his campaign on winning Indiana. Trump advisors are trying to apply maximum pressure at this point on the Texas senator. They are making the case that if Cruz and Kasich and their plan fails in Indiana that they are basically finished in this race. Back to you.

CAMEROTA: OK, Jim, thanks so much.

Hillary Clinton, calling for pay unity after four more divisive wins on super Tuesday, reaching out to Bernie Sanders and his supporters as she closes in on the Democratic nomination. CNN's Jeff Zeleny is live in Philadelphia with what comes next. Hi, Jeff.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. In three months time the Democrats will gather here in Philadelphia to crown their nominee to move forward for the rest of the general election fight. Hillary Clinton took a giant step toward becoming that Democrat. Now, the race of course not totally over, but mathematically speaking she essentially put it out of reach last night for Bernie Sanders.

You can feel the energy, you can feel this shift in the race last night as she swept on to the stage with that theme song, the anthem from "Rocky III" here. And she had one message for Democrats, and more important, for Senator Sanders' supporters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:05:03] HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I applaud senator Sanders and his millions of supporters for challenging us to get unaccountable money out of our politics and giving --

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: -- greater emphasis to closing the gap of inequality. And I know together we will get that done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: And Senator Sanders issued a statement last night, saying that he is going to continue in these 14 remaining primaries that are left here and run an issues-orientated campaign. But there was not as much mention of winning. He said that he wants to simply build enough delegates to go to the convention here in Philadelphia to try and move the party's platform in a more progressive way.

We'll find out exactly his tone when he campaigns today in Indiana. If he still continues to go after Hillary Clinton, and more importantly, Chris, if he puts any money on television there, if he actually starts advertising against Hillary Clinton, this race is almost over, but not quite. Chris.

CUOMO: Key perspective, Jeff Zeleny, thank you very much.

Let's shift back to the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. Earlier on this show known as NEW DAY Trump talked about the afterglow of his victory, his GOP rivals, and what may be in that foreign policy speech today. He also responded to questions about reports that he rejected the advice of his new advisors to change his tone to be more presidential. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: Paul is a big fan of mine. He made some incredible statements about the way I speak, saying it was maybe the best he has ever seen anybody speak. He made some great statements about -- he went to a couple of, you know, rallies yesterday, and the day before. We had a rally in Pennsylvania for 25,000 people. He said he has never seen anything like it, and he did cover Reagan, Ford, Bush. He said he has never seen anything like these rallies. And he said I get it. And, you know, I'm not going to be changing. I'm presidential anyway. I mean, I can change to presidential, but I'm presidential anyway, I guess.

CUOMO: What does it mean when you say change to presidential? What do you think --

TRUMP: I mean a lower key version of myself and not to use any language that would be offensive. But I don't do that anyway. I feel I shouldn't be doing that. I was doing that for a period of time for emphasis, but I feel that I shouldn't be doing that. I'm not, you know, I'm not doing that. And I used to, when I made speeches, when I was nonpolitical, I would use foul language and it would make things very exciting and people would go crazy. But when you're running for office, it's a little bit different, as your brother knows, right?

CUOMO: I think that trying not to curse is probably the least of reaching that bar. But let's look at why that would --

TRUMP: It might be the most of reaching that bar.

(LAUGHTER)

CUOMO: Well, I hope not. I hope we're going do better in that, especially as we get into the general.

But when you look at why, you're doing very well in the primaries by anybody's math. However, you're only get 25, 26 percent of your party showing up. You have about half the party that hasn't come into the tent with you yet. You're going into a general election, if you get the nomination, you're going to have to sway a lot of people who don't like the harshness. So that's why people are saying, can you show another side of yourself, can you bring people together? Last night, talking about all Hillary Clinton, whom you call "crooked Hillary," you said the only thing she has is the woman card. Now, even Chris Christie's wife standing behind you made a face when you said that. Do you think that's a winning formula to say the woman card is all that Hillary Clinton has?

TRUMP: Yes, it's part of -- it is certainly part. She is a woman, she is playing the woman card left and right. She didn't play it last night with Obama, but she is playing it much harder this time, and she will be called on it.

CUOMO: How do you call somebody on being a woman?

TRUMP: Just tell them you're playing the woman's card.

CUOMO: But what does that mean exactly?

TRUMP: Frankly if she didn't, she would do very poorly.

CUOMO: How do you know that? TRUMP: I know it because I think if she were a man and she was the

way she is, she would get virtually no votes.

CUOMO: I hear what you're saying, I'm trying to figure out what your basis is for it. Most of the measurements of a perspective matchup, not only is she beating you with women, she is beating you with white women. Do you think that this is a good message for them to here is that all she has got is a woman? It sounds dismissive of her.

TRUMP: When I came out I was competing against 17 very capable people. You've heard this. I'm sure you heard it last night. I was competing against 17 very, very capable people, and a woman. And what happened was one by one, they disappeared. And everyone said, what's going on? What's happening? A governor, a senator, a governor, a senator. But one by one, they disappeared.

[08:10:01] And they thought Trump was going to be there for a couple of weeks. He was going to have some fun. Then he was going to go to Monte Carlo and have a good time OK? And it didn't work out that way. It worked out that I knocked every one of them off. And for the most part you would say I knocked them off. They weren't knocked off. I knocked them off. I think you would have said that. They were taken off. And the same thing is going to happen to Hillary. You just don't know me.

CUOMO: So you believe, well, we know each other very well, Mr. Trump. And that's why I'm not completely surprised by the success you've had to this point. But do you believe, then, that what got you here will take you all the way to the White House?

TRUMP: I think so. Now, you know, I may tone it down or I may tone it up. I can't tell you what I'm going to do. I don't know. It depends. You know, I use the word "flexibility." You have to be flexible. And you do. You have to be flexible. Somebody said, well, will you go this way or that way? I don't know. I will determine when I see how the other people punch back.

But Hillary has a lot of flaws, a lot of problems. And she does have the woman card. That's a big thing. But a lot of women, as you know, don't like Hillary, despite the card. And, you know, we'll see what happens. You're going to cover it better than anybody. And CNN is doing a very good job.

CUOMO: Well, that's -- we take great pride.

TRUMP: Errol is very bias against me, which is too bad.

CUOMO: Errol Louis says that is not true and he is very happy --

TRUMP: Errol is totally bias. And there are others over there, but Errol -- someday I'm going to watch him say something good about Trump and I'll be so happy.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Let's talk more about everything you've just heard with senior Trump campaign adviser Barry Bennett. Good morning, Barry.

BARRY BENNETT, SENIOR ADVISER, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: You must feel very --

BENNETT: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: It is a great morning for you. You must feel very good about the five state sweep.

BENNETT: Yes, we won every congressional district in all five states.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about what we just heard Mr. Trump say on NEW DAY, and he keeps repeating a new line of attack against Hillary Clinton. He seems to be now turning his attention away from his rivals in the primary towards Hillary Clinton. And he said she is playing the woman card and she's playing it differently than she did last time. What does this mean?

BENNETT: Well, I don't know. I mean, I hear Hillary talk about she has been fighting for things that frankly haven't been fixed. So I look forward to a campaign that's talking about not just her rhetoric but her achievements or lack thereof.

CAMEROTA: That's not the woman card. That's her talking about her record. How is she playing the woman card?

BENNETT: Well, I mean she did it last night, right. She talked about how she is fighting for women's health, she is fighting for women's -- she has been fighting a lot for 30 years and nothing seems to get solved. So we'll talk about all those issues, particularly how they relate to women.

CAMEROTA: And in terms of women, let's look at the latest polls in terms of how Donald Trump is doing with women. This is a "USA Today," Suffolk University out this week. His unfavorables are quite high with women. The latest poll has him at 66 percent unfavorable, 24 percent favorable. So how do you think this line of attack about the woman card is going to play with female voters?

BENNETT: Well, you know, you can look tea pol at that poll, but you can also look at the votes. He has gotten more Republican primary votes than Mitt Romney or John McCain so far. And he should easily surpass what George Bush got. So he will have more Republican primary votes than any Republican candidate, alive or dead, in the history of our country.

CAMEROTA: Right but in the general, he's going to need women to feel better about him than they do today.

BENNETT: He has won women in the Republican primary, he wins women every week.

CAMEROTA: But in the general, he is going to need women independents and women, and they're not feeling great about him. What do you think it is that is causing that 66 percent number? BENNETT: You know, I -- the 66 percent number is kind of, it has to

be a relative number. Hillary Clinton's negative is about 60. So it's not that big a gap. If you look at the battleground poll out this week, they had the two of them at 66/43 in the fall. We've seen a lot of closing as the nominees get settled. Hillary has a lot of problems, some legal, some just, you know, not getting things done over 30 years. I think those numbers are going to change dramatically as we head towards November.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about what' going to happen next week, and that's Indiana. Does your camp, does the Trump campaign have any fear that Ted Cruz is going to win Indiana?

BENNETT: He is certainly going to try very hard, but so are we. You know, he is won four state primaries, eight caucuses. Last night he finished last everywhere but Pennsylvania. They're kind of on their last breath. If this was a prize fight, they would have stopped the fight.

[08:15:03] CAMEROTA: But I mean, he says that the terrain gets better for him moving forward.

(CROSSTALK)

BENNETT: He says this every week. I mean, you're going to applaud (ph) these things, it's crazy. You know, I don't know why Indiana is better for them than Ohio. I mean, I'm from Ohio. I mean, they're very similar states. It makes no sense.

I mean, the fact that Bobby Knight is going to be campaigning with Mr. Trump today, that's a big, big deal, especially in the middle of, in the Heartland, in the big 10 country. So, yes, Mr. Trump will do just fine in Indiana. Mr. Cruz will have some rhetoric.

CAMEROTA: So the Cruz/Kasich alliance, whereby Kasich has basically agreed to step aside in Indiana so that Cruz can amass more votes there, that doesn't cause you any concerns?

BENNETT: Yes. Well, it seems to have fallen apart within about four hours of it being announced, with Kasich saying, well, no, people in Indiana should vote for me. I'm not going to tell them not to vote for me. I have no idea what that means. Mr. Kasich is low on resources.

They both cannot win. There are not enough delegates left for them to win. They're trying to game the system, create some sort of open convention, which is not going to happen. I think more and more people now understand, look, that Donald Trump will easily get to 1,237, and probably significantly higher.

CAMEROTA: Barry Bennett of the Trump campaign -- thanks so much for joining us this morning.

BENNETT: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Wolf Blitzer will be anchoring the live coverage foreign policy speech, that is today at noon. Stick around for that.

Also, in just a few minutes, we'll have House Speaker Paul Ryan. He'll join us live here on NEW DAY.

Michaela?

PEREIRA: All right, Alisyn.

So, he doesn't have the math or momentum, but Bernie Sanders keeps going. Why stay in the race. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:20:37] CUOMO: Hillary Clinton celebrating and conciliating on this big primary night. Despite winning only one state last night, Bernie Sanders is still very much apart of the equation. What happens next? What did last night mean?

Let's discuss with the host of CNN's SMERCONISH and CNN political commentator, Michael Smerconish.

So, what did you see last night?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, HOST, CNN'S "SMERCONISH": I think it has an air of inevitability on both sides. With regard to the D's, mathematically, it becomes more difficult to envision a path where he can get there. I think Chris we're back to where we began. That it's a campaign that's more about message than victory.

And his supporters don't seem to mind that. The money doesn't dry up and the crowds don't go away. Normally, candidate normally folds his or her tent when they no longer have a funds source and when people no longer care to hear the message.

That's not the case with regard to Bernie Sanders. I'm convinced if he stays into California, he'll draw huge crowds and continue to get $27 contributions.

CUOMO: Who sang that song, back where we started? Here we go round. The Kinks. It's going to bother me all morning.

CAMEROTA: Let's play that, but not yet. Let's talk about what Bernie Sanders said. I mean, he says he's staying into California. He told Chris that yesterday. He also said he'll stay in until every last vote is counted. Is that a problem?

SMERCONISH: Well, I think it's a problem for Secretary Clinton in so far as she would rather dispense with him, stop spending the money that's necessary to run for the next five weeks, and be able to fully pivot toward Donald Trump or the Republicans, which I think she began to do with that speech in Philadelphia last night. To me, that struck me as much more, Alisyn, of general election set of remarks than someone focused on a Democratic challenger.

CAMEROTA: Right. I mean, she also is trying I think to attract Bernie Sanders supporters. That was a much more conciliatory tone. People are calling it an olive branch. What has been so great about the Bernie Sanders campaign and all the issues that he's brought to the fore, that she appreciates it. I mean, that's a totally different tone than what we've heard in the past couple of weeks.

SMERCONISH: It is. I'm more interested to hear what his tone will be in response, whether he'll continue to bang the drum about the transcripts of the Wall Street speech, which I think are directly connected to some of the negative numbers that she has on untrustworthiness or dishonesty or will he take it down a notch, which is what I expect him to do.

CUOMO: Well, what's the catch? The catch is how far can Hillary Clinton go embracing those who believe in Bernie Sanders more extreme solutions to known problems, without compromising herself with those very important people in the middle, in the general election. What's your take?

SMERCONISH: I think you're right, Chris. Especially when we're now going to be envisioning a map, presuming it's Donald Trump, because I think he is right in saying he is the presumptive nominee. It changes the math. I mean, my home state of Pennsylvania might truly be, we say it every four years, this time, it might be true, it could be in play for the first time since 1988.

So, she can't be in too far to the left, Sanders like, if she wants to win the state like her predecessors and her husband have done.

CAMEROTA: Michael, I know you have your handy-dandy white board where you do your wizardry. Can you explain to us about Pennsylvania? I mean, since that is your home state, this arcane, one of a kind system where by Donald Trump can win everywhere and there's 34 unbound delegates. I mean that does -- you know, he says that it's rigged, the system is rigged, but to voters, even if you don't think it is rigged, it doesn't quite feel fair.

Let's look at --

SMERCONISH: So let me start with this. Even though I don't have HD, you can see the map of Pennsylvania that I'm holding up from the "Philadelphia Enquirer" this morning. This is all you need to know. It's all red. Donald Trump won every one of the 67 counties.

What's most stunning to me, guys, the way in which he ran in the Philadelphia suburbs, truly a bellwether, you would have expected John Kasich, I expected John Kasich to run far stronger in suburbia.

To Alisyn's point, it's a nutty system, 71 delegates, 54, no matter what they say today are completely untethered. They can decide between now and Cleveland, when they cast a ballot.

CUOMO: What was the history on that?

[08:25:00] Why did they go that way?

SMERCONISH: Well, OK, so the history and maybe Chris, there is logic to it this year. To empower Pennsylvania to be in the role of a king or queen maker, so for example, in this scenario, they hold the cards, because if they could move as a block, and that's a huge if, these are 54 distinctly different personalities, but they really could put Trump at 1,237, or sticking together as a cohesive unit. They could go to Donald Trump and they could say, we want Tom Ridge, the former governor of the state, the nation's first secretary of homeland security, to be your running mate.

So it was intended with some logic to empower the state, because normally we are so late in the process, we don't matter. But what is nutty is that when I went in to vote yesterday, there were four people running for delegate, three would be elected. There was no indication for whom I was ting, and what they would do.

I happened to have contacted all four of them in advance, because I wanted to know. What will you do on the first ballot? By the way, I am told that the number of the 54 who are saying they'll go to Trump, is somewhere in 35 number range, 35 of 54.

CAMEROTA: That's good scoop, Michael.

CUOMO: Also, good reason that people are frustrated for this process.

CAMEROTA: Totally.

CUOMO: So I voted for Trump and this guy is only 35 out of 54 saying that they're going to go ahead.

CAMEROTA: He is a point.

SMERCONISH: I think as a practical matter, I think we get too hung up on 1,237. Perhaps the threshold is 1,100. I mean, when he gets that close, how do you say to that constituency, sorry. it's not going to be your guy? I know the history of Abraham Lincoln, this is 2016, and I think if he gets close, he gets there.

CAMEROTA: I'm going to pose that very question to Paul Ryan, who as you know, is a numbers cruncher about what to do about what to do with Trump if he gets close.

Smerconish, thank you.

SMERCONISH: See you guys.

PEREIRA: You did my work for me, which was awesome, you have teased what we have coming up.

Take a break. Should I put my feet up?

CUOMO: We're preparing for Mick-less.

PEREIRA: Mick-less, so you're trying to just go this alone? You need me today.

Paul Ryan will be joining us coming after the break. We have all sorts of questions for him. Among them, how will this presumptive nominee, as he is dubbing himself, unite the party will he? Paul Ryan will join us after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)