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Trump Lays Out 'America First' Foreign Policy; Sanders Campaign Laying Off Hundreds of Staffers. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired April 28, 2016 - 07:00   ET

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

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: ... reckless rhetoric coming from Donald Trump, it's not only offensive, it is dangerous.

[07:00:06] CARLY FIORINA (D), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our country is being taken away from us.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Do not go with the Washington insiders who have sold us down the river.

FIORINA: I am prepared to stand by his side and give this everything I have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. Donald Trump outlining his foreign policy plan with a message: America first. His proposal light on details and igniting some sharp criticism from his critics. This as Ted Cruz announces Carly Fiorina as his running mate in hopes of trumping Trump in Indiana. We will speak live with Carly Fiorina coming up in just a moment.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: On the Democrats' side of the ball, Bernie Sanders laying off hundreds of staffers even as he doubles down on his bid to stay in the race. Can he continue fighting on when the delegate math has him eliminated? He says yes. We'll tell you why, because we have the 2016 race covered the way only CNN can. CNN's Phil Mattingly live in Washington. The latest, my friend?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

Well, let Trump be Trump. It has been the guiding principle of Donald Trump's campaign throughout the entirety of this race, but in recent weeks people have been raising questions, both internally and outside the campaign. What exactly does that mean as he eyes a general election possibility? Is it the boisterous showman we've seen rallying with thousands of people, or is it the back room deal maker, a statesman if you will.

Over the course of 12 hours yesterday, Chris, it became very clear, Donald Trump is not necessarily sure what the answer is yet. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY (voice-over): A tale of two Donald Trumps.

TRUMP: We're just about ready to put it away, folks.

MATTINGLY: Fresh off a resounding five-state victory.

TRUMP: Now we're down to two stragglers. Let's be nice. Two stragglers.

MATTINGLY: Mocking Ted Cruz's last-ditch effort to blunt his march forward by announcing his running mate, Carly Fiorina.

TRUMP: Cruz can't win. What's he doing picking vice presidents?

MATTINGLY: And ridiculing his alliance with Republican rival John Kasich.

TRUMP: This little marriage of the two of them, boy, did that backfire. I call them the colluders. Right? The colluders. I love -- I love talking about this. What stupid decisions.

MATTINGLY: A far cry from the serious scripted GOP front-runner on display during a foreign policy speech just a few hours earlier.

TRUMP: America first will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.

MATTINGLY: Reading from a teleprompter, Trump offered few specifics, instead, repeating campaign pledges on ISIS and NATO, threatening to upend decades-old alliances.

TRUMP: The U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.

MATTINGLY: And forge new ones with countries traditionally seen as threats.

TRUMP: Some say the Russians won't be reasonable. I intend to find out.

MATTINGLY: The speech prompting formal rival Lindsey Graham to declare, "Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave."

Could Cruz's gamble with Fiorina deliver a win in Indiana? Many political insiders say it's do or die for him.

CRUZ: Some might ask why now? It is unusual to make the announcement as early as we're doing so now. I think all would acknowledge this race, if anything, it is unusual.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: Now, the reality is, guys, we've been digging into delegate math for hours on end over the last couple of months, but it really does all come down to Indiana. If Donald Trump wins the state or gets a lion's share of the state's 57 delegates, his pathway toward the nomination becomes very clear.

Ted Cruz now more or less camping out in that state over the next couple of days. The hope is to stop Donald Trump in Indiana, work on the relationship and the alliance with John Kasich going forward. There is still an opportunity to block Donald Trump, but as Trump has said himself, presumptive nominee is a term that not only has a nice ring to it if you work inside the campaign trail or inside the Trump campaign, but it could become a reality very soon, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Phil. Thanks so much for all that background. Let's bring in now North Carolina Congresswoman Renee Ellmers. She chairs the Republican Women's Policy Committee, last month became the first woman in Congress to endorse Donald Trump. Good morning, Congresswoman.

REP. RENEE ELLMERS (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Good morning. Good to be with you.

CAMEROTA: I know that you were with Donald Trump yesterday during this foreign policy speech. Tell us what you made of it.

ELLMERS: Well, I thought he laid out his plan of action. This was a framework going forward. He identified the areas that he feels that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have failed the American people when it comes to foreign policy and national security.

So I think going forward, this is the framework. As a businessman, that's what you do. You put together your business plan. You put together your framework, and you go from there. That's the approach he's taking.

CAMEROTA: Some people felt that there were many mixed messages and that it had a lack of specifics. So specifically, what did you hear that he would do? For instance, I mean, he said that he was very upset that Christians were being persecuted in some places around the world, as everyone is. What would he do?

[07:05:15] Well, there again, he's putting the plan together. He doesn't have the folks at the table yet. He's got his advisers. He's working with his advisers. He's listening carefully to what he needs to do, but at the same time, the plan hasn't been formulated yet.

You know, goodness sakes, this is his first policy speech. And I thought he really nailed it, because he laid out a plan of action. He identified the areas of weakness that all Americans are identifying with.

This is why Donald Trump is identifying with the American people. They understand his point of view. They feel he's very relatable to them, and he's laying out a game plan. We'll know more later as we go forward, but you've got to put the facts together, and that's where the American people have been left behind.

CAMEROTA: Some of his critics felt that there was a lot of flip- flopping even within his speech, as well as positions that he'd taken in the past, and that confused them. For instance on Libya, so let me play for you some of the various positions that he's taken. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: One day we're bombing Libya and getting rid of a dictator to foster democracy for civilians. The next day we're watching the same civilians suffer while that country falls and absolutely falls apart.

Khadafy in Libya is killing thousands of people. Nobody knows how bad it is. And we're sitting around. We are soldiers all over the Middle East, and we're not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage.

Now, we should go in. We should stop this guy, which would be very easy and very quick. We could do it surgically, stop him from doing it and save these lives. We should do it on a humanitarian basis, immediately go into Libya, knock this guy out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively and save the lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So Congresswoman, I mean, there's just one example. You hear him calling very aggressively, very strongly for intervention in Libya and then saying something different yesterday.

ELLMERS: But there again, what he's doing is identifying the issues that the American people are bringing to him. He is basically echoing the confusion that the American people have had on all of the foreign policy moving forward through the Obama administration.

This is also the part that Hillary Clinton played. So he is basically echoing the -- the thoughts and the fears, the concerns of the American people when it comes to national defense. Women are very concerned about this issue. And if you look back, this -- these were comments that he's made over time. And remember, he hasn't been a presidential candidate for all that long.

CAMEROTA: Sure, but isn't he adding to the confusion when he's taking such strong positions, but they are antithetical to each other? I mean, people say it's hard to know whether he believes in interventionism or he doesn't.

ELLMERS: Well, there again, we've got to put the facts together. I mean, he's just going in now and formulating these plans of action. What he is saying is "I want results. I want to send a strong message to our allies and to our enemies that we are not going to stand back as a country anymore."

That's the point he's making right now. How this will go forward will be a plan of action that he will put together with the military leaders that he will trust and move with, but at the same time, not giving away the plan to our enemies.

CAMEROTA: He got his share of criticism for the foreign policy speech. Here's Nicolas Burns, he was an ambassador to both Republican and Democratic administrations. But he says, "Frankly, Trump doesn't have the qualities to be the commander in chief. A lack of in-depth knowledge, a lack of sophistication and nuance about the very complex world that we face, and a lack of humility about the restraint that America sometimes has to apply. What Mr. Trump did today was cast a series of ultimatums and threats, mainly against our allies, against NATO and against Japan and South Korea."

What do you say to the people who have been in foreign policy who say that Donald Trump has been making them nervous?

ELLMERS: Well, I think there are a lot of people in foreign policy that are happy to move along and help Donald Trump formulate his plan of actions.

You know, it's fine for those to come in and criticize him that have a long-standing knowledge of foreign policy and national issues. But here's the person who simply relates to the American people, who wants to get a job done and show results.

I think that's what his speech was about yesterday. It wasn't about details. It wasn't about going in and giving away the plan of action. It was about reassuring the American people that he is going to be on the job, and he is going to do what is right to protect every American family in this country.

CAMEROTA: Congresswoman, do you know who Donald Trump's foreign policy advisers are?

ELLMERS: I do not. I haven't been part of that scene. I know that he has a very good team of advisers in place, but I have not been at those meetings.

[07:10:08] CAMEROTA: OK. Let's talk about the other big news from yesterday, and that is Ted Cruz tapping Carly Fiorina to be his vice- presidential running mate. Do you think that that will help him in Indiana?

ELLMERS: Well, it certainly will help him because Carly Fiorina, I think, is an American success story, especially as a woman who has made it up through the ranks and done very well.

What Ted Cruz needed to do was bring her on, one, to try to change the story from the night before, where he lost big in all five states. He had to have a game changer. I think it was brilliant on his part. He is a Washington insider. He is the lawyer that you're going to want to have as a defense attorney if you find yourself in trouble, but I don't think he's the person we want as commander in chief.

He is a Washington insider. He spent his entire adult life in the public, but not in the private sector. So here's a person from the outside who has been a success in the private sector and, yes, I think she's going to bring some positives to his -- to his campaign, although I do believe it's too late.

CAMEROTA: OK. Congressman Renee Ellmers, thanks so much for being on NEW DAY. We appreciate it. And we should let everyone know that Ted Cruz's newly-minted running mate, Carly Fiorina, will join us live in just minutes.

PEREIRA: All right. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, a shakeup in Bernie Sanders's campaign, his team letting go of hundreds of staffers while vowing to fight on. CNN's Athena Jones is live in Washington with more on this. Hi.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Michaela. Good morning.

Some pink slips coming for a sizable chunk of the Sanders's team. They're laying off 200 staffers out of 550. This is after that disappointing showing Tuesday night, where he lost four out of the five states that voted. You know, Sanders' team says this is the natural progression of every campaign, with so many states already having voted in this primary process.

So the workers in the states that just voted will be affected, but so will workers in some other states and some members of the national staff. And so while the Sanders' folks are saying this is not a big deal, there's nothing to see here, we know these are not generally the moves you make if you think you're going to be the nominee and have to mount a national 50-state campaign in just a matter of weeks, really.

Still, Sanders is vowing to stay in the race until the convention. Take a listen to what he had to say yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We intend to win every delegate that we can so that July, we're going to have the votes to put together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: So there he is saying he hopes to have an influence on things in Philadelphia on the Democratic platform. Meanwhile, Clinton is now pivoting once again to the general election. She's got her eyes squarely on Donald Trump -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right. Foreign policy is on the table, Athena, and we are seeing just how complicated and horrible it can be in the news this morning.

At least 27 people dead after an airstrike hit a hospital in Syria. We're told three kids, two hospital guards, and one of the last few pediatricians in Aleppo were among those killed. The hospital, which is located in a rebel-held neighborhood in that city of Aleppo, was hit by a missile from a fighter jet. At this point, we just don't know who's behind the strike. Obviously, that will be discerned as soon as possible. We do know that this hospital was one of those run by Doctors Without Borders.

CAMEROTA: A Baltimore teenager holding a replica of a gun was shot by police. The 13-year-old reportedly ran when police spotted him with what looked like a semiautomatic pistol. Police say an officer, thinking it was real, fired at the teenager, striking him. When they got close, they realized the gun was a fake. The teenager is expected to be OK. Baltimore's police commissioner said the officer who fired did not act inappropriately.

PEREIRA: Space X is aiming to reach the red planet within a couple of years. Company head Elon Musk tweeted the goal is to send an unmanned Dragon spacecraft to Mars as soon as 2018 and explore how to safely land cargo on that planet without using parachutes. Apparently, NASA will be offering technical support. Just 2018, that's in throwing distance.

CAMEROTA: Well, I saw the movie "The Martian" on the plane ride back from my vacation, so I understand everything.

It could easily happen. Hopefully, I wouldn't get left behind if I were a part of that, but it's fine.

CUOMO: What is definitely happening is they are privatizing the space.

PEREIRA: They are like crazy.

CUOMO: All right. So Donald Trump unveiling his "America first" foreign policy "plan," in quote, suggesting NATO allies don't pay their fair share. Is this a doctrine at all, let alone realistic? We're going to get reaction to the speech from former NATO commander, Clinton backer, General Wesley Clark.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:19:02] CUOMO: Donald Trump is back to the business of campaigning today, stumping in Indiana, later in California. The Republican front-runner coming off his first major foreign policy speech. He even used a teleprompter. He was on the subject of NATO that Trump said America's allies must pay their fair share.

Let's discuss with General Wesley Clark, former NATO supreme allied commander, current Hillary Clinton supporter.

When it comes to things military, it's just about what you know from your experience and whatnot, so we'll kick the politics to the side if you can. Your general assessment -- no pun intended -- of Trump's speech?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK, FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: I'm glad he said he wasn't coming in to start a war. I'm glad he said he will only use the military as a last resort and that they'll have decisive objectives if he uses the military.

But these are things that every president says and that every president attempts to do.

Having a coherent foreign policy, every administration wants to do it, and having NATO allies bear more of the burden, everybody since General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the NATO commander in 1952 has had the same criticism of the Europeans, and yet the alliance has worked in America's favor. It's for us; it's not just for them. [07:20:10] CUOMO: Three different subjects came up. First was

yesterday in an interview with us, I said, "What do you think of the special operators, 250 more going into Syria, President Obama's announcement? Do you agree?"

He said, "I do but I don't like that he's telling people. We should never tell people what we're doing. Be unpredictable." It plays very well with the base.

Isn't there law? Isn't there policy in place that you can't just do whatever you want as president with troops and not tell anybody else?

CLARK: Yes, generally, we do put out the numbers, and we have to report to Congress on this and so forth.

CUOMO: I mean, especially with the America's recent history of the blood that's been expended abroad and the feelings of the general population about whether it was warranted or not, do you believe the next president could be more secretive about where they put America's fighting men and women?

CLARK: Well, I think it's a hollow thesis to go into, because the truth is that you get strength at home from disclosing to the America people what you're doing. When people are asking you to do things and do something about it, the president of the United States says, "I've got a plan. It's secret; you won't know anything about it." Now, that works for a couple of weeks, but after that, people say, "What are you doing?"

And you know, if you're going to be a democratically-elected leader in a democracy you have a responsibility to the public.

CUOMO: ISIS is obviously a big topic of concern. Here was a quick statement on what he said his objective was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And then there's ISIS. I have a simple message for them. Their days are numbered. I won't tell them where, and I won't tell them how. We must, as a nation, be more unpredictable. We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We're sending troops, we tell them. We're sending something else, we have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable, and we have to be unpredictable starting now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Does that work for you?

CLARK: Well, it doesn't work from the respect of ISIS, because we know what the bounds of the ISIS equation are, that you can -- you can attack them with Special Forces, and you can get the allies to fight to a certain extent like the Iraqis and the Kurds and so forth. Ultimately, you've got to bring all of the forces in there together.

Because if you attack them you've got a lot of civilians in there. You cannot do the carpet bombing that Ted Cruz talks about. You can't even use exclusively military force, because even if you could eliminate every one of the people that is in there now, others will come in and think you can govern the space. Who's going to govern that space?

Mr. Trump says he doesn't believe in nation building. That's good. We're not very good at building other people's nations, but you've got to have governance in ungoverned spaces to deal with ISIS. That's the problem in Libya. That's also the problem in Syria and in northern Iraq.

CUOMO: We just saw 27 people killed. The Doctors Without Borders hospital was hit outside Aleppo, and this was with supposedly surgical airstrikes that are going on. So the risk is clear. Predictability, unpredictability, is that a real issue right now? Is that part of the problem in our fight against ISIS?

CLARK: Well, I do think not against ISIS it's not, because ISIS is not -- they're not a major state that you're seeking to deter. The reason for unpredictability comes from the old Cold War strategy, which says you don't want your deterrence to be calculable. You don't want a thinking opponent to be able to figure out a way around what you're trying to prevent him to do. That's fine. So there's a little bit of unpredictability in it.

Saying it's a big strategic doctrine, and ISIS can't know it, no, everybody should know what we're doing. We should be defeating ISIS in multiple means. The allies on the ground, and on the ground fighting, their support, we should be going after them ideologically. We should be going after them in North Africa. We should be going after them in Middle East and in Asia where they are.

CUOMO: The words "America first" smacks familiar to some of America's policy back in the 1930s. Do you see parallels to isolationism in what we heard from Trump, and are there concerns in that?

CLARK: I think he's playing on that strain of America, but you know, every nation's foreign policy is about its own interests. America's foreign policy has always been about its own interests. I don't think there's ever been a president of the United States who came into office and said, "I'm going to give away what's really in America's interest to make other people happy." Presidents don't do that.

It's a question of how you interpret those interests. But the way that Mr. Trump presented them yesterday, it was not a coherent interpretation.

And just to get to the matter of Russia in particular, you know, every recent American president has tried to do a reset with Russia. I remember Condoleezza Rice telling me...

CUOMO: 2000 that was.

CLARK: You people screwed up the relations with Russia. We're going to fix that and we're going to really work with the Russians. Well, we know that didn't go anywhere other than trying... CUOMO: Clinton tried to reset.

CLARK: Absolutely. And it's not about the United States.

[07:25:10] And one of the things that bothers me the most in Mr. Trump's speech is this idea that he personally can redirect American's foreign policy. You know, this isn't a real-estate negotiation. It's not something you can sit down across a table. You're dealing with long-term national interests, a set of allies that we've worked with for 60 years. They expect consistency. They expect reliability.

And this country has consistent long-term interests. So going in and trying to do it like a hotel deal in Moscow -- "I'll put it here and you'll give me this and so forth" -- that may work on the margins of some small agreement, but as a basis for long-term stable relationships and heading off the kinds of conflicts we're heading toward with China and Russia, no, we've got big challenges with China and Russia. And you can't duck those challenges by calling on your allies to spend more on defense.

CUOMO: Understood. General Wesley Clark. Thank you for making the case this morning. Appreciate it, as always -- Mick.

PEREIRA: All right. In a hail Mary move by an underdog, Ted Cruz picking his running mate months before the convention, despite the delegate math not adding up. What is the strategy here? We are going to speak to his new running mate, Carly Fiorina. She joins us next on NEW DAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)