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New Day

Speaker Ryan: We Have to Unify the GOP; Historic Political Gathering Underway in North Korea; How Trump & Establishment Differ on Issues. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired May 06, 2016 - 06:30   ET

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

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CORRESPONDENT, CNN: That should help, but it's also very dry, and they do have wind gusts. They will attack this blaze with 22 tankers, 1,100 men and a lot of heavy equipment today, John, as they try -- excuse me -- I should say Alisyn -- as they try to get all of this under control. Back to you.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CO-HOST, NEW DAY: OK, Paul. Thanks so much for that report.

The raging wildfire in Canada that Paul was talking about is fueled by intense, dry weather. So what will happen this weekend?

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers joins us now with the forecast. What are you seeing, Chad?

CHAD MEYERS, METEOROLOGIST, CNN: I don't see it getting any better for two weeks. I mean it's going to be hot and dry, yes, but the winds yesterday were terrible. Almost 70 kilometers per hour, and you do the division, that's 45 miles per hour, in the fire zone.

That takes embers from the burning fire right now. You see the smoke on the map here. That takes fires and embers and blows it downwind. And so all of a sudden, you get more spot fires.

This is now 14 times the size of Manhattan, or if you add up all the boroughs, Queens and Bronx and Manhattan and Staten Island, you add them all together, and all the sudden, that's the size of what has already burned. So could you imagine what it was if it wouldn't just be a boreal force.

But this is a pine forest. If you've ever seen a pine tree go up in smoke or up in flames, it's like an explosion. And this isn't going to get better for two before the next real rain comes in.

The fire ministers up there already saying, hey, we can't put this out by ourselves. We need rainfall. It's too big now. The big size of the fire ring is too big. You can't get enough men. You can't get enough tankers up there.

The winds will calm down a little bit today, but it gets, again, hot tomorrow. All the way to 83 in the afternoon. Relative humidity will be like 10 percent. That's no help whatsoever. But it's the rain that they need, and it's not on the way. John?

JOHN BERMAN, CO-ANCHOR, CNN: All right, that's a big problem up there, Chad.

MEYERS: Yes.

BERMAN: And those pictures, as I said, just devastating. Thanks so much for that.

All right, let me read you a tweet from Donald Trump that came in just two minutes ago. "So many great endorsements yesterday except for Paul Ryan. We must put America first and make America great again."

This is the chasm now in the Republican Party. The presumptive nominee at odds with the senior elected Republican official. So how does this play out?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

All right, this surprising new schism, or is it a chasm, within the Republican Party. House speaker Paul Ryan and the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump trading jabs, including one on Twitter just moments ago.

The first blow came from Paul Ryan when he revealed to our Jake Tapper that he is not ready to support Donald Trump. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. PAUL RYAN (R), WI, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: To be perfectly candid with you, Jake, I'm just not ready to do that at this point. I'm not there right now. And I hope to, though, and I want to. But I think what is required is that we unify this party. And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee.

I don't want to underplay what he accomplished. He needs to be congratulated for an enormous accomplishment for winning now a plurality of delegates, and he's on his way to winning a majority of delegates. But he also inherits something very special that's very special to a lot of us.

This is the party of Lincoln, of Reagan, of Jack Kemp. And we don't always nominate a Lincoln and Reagan every four years, but we hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln and Reagan-esque. But that that person advances the principles of our party and appeals to a wide, vast majority of Americans.

And so I think what is necessary to make this work, for this to unify, is to actually take our principles and advance them, and that's what we want to see. Saying we're unified doesn't in and of itself unify us. But actually taking the principles that we all believe in and showing that there's a dedication to those and running a principle campaign that Republicans can be proud about and that can actually appeal to a majority of Americans, that, to me, is what it takes to unify this party.

JAKE TAPPER, ANCHOR, CNN: So you're saying you can't -- you can't support or endorse him right now? RYAN: Yes, I am basically saying that. Look, I'm -- that's -- you

know, I thought about this two days ago. I thought actually this thing would go to June 7th at the very least. Probably to a convention. And so this is all pretty new for us.

But at this point, I think that he needs to do more to unify this party, to bring all wings of the Republican Party together and then to go forward and to appeal to all Americans in every walk of life, every background, a majority Independents and discerning Democrats.

And so, you know, I think conservatives want to know, does he share our values and our principles on limited government, the proper role of the executive, adherence to the Constitution. There are lots of questions that conservative, I think, are going to want answers to, myself included.

TAPPER: What you're saying is a fairly dramatic announcement that the speaker of the House, cannot, as of now, support his party's nominee for president. Is there something specific that he has done or said that has brought you to this moment?

RYAN: Well, like I said, I hope to support our nominee. I hope to support his candidacy fully. And I want to do that, but right now, I've got to tell you, Jake, I'm just being candid with you. At this point, I'm just not there right now. And it's because I think of part of the last campaign -- I don't want to go back and roll the tape.

Look, I was pretty clear and I was outspoken on a number of occasions where I think that he did the wrong thing or said the wrong thing. And I'll do that in the future if need be. I hope it's not necessary.

The question is, can our presumptive nominee turn things around, unify and have a different kind of cadence going forward. The way I look at this, Jake, is it's time to go from tapping into anger to channeling that anger into solutions. It's time to set aside bullying, to set aside belittlement and appeal to higher aspirations, appeal to what is good in us and to lead a country and a party to having a vast majority of Americans enthusiastic about choosing a path.

That's why I just feel so strongly about the chance and the choice and an opportunity we have in front of us. But for this to work, our presumptive nominee, I believe, needs to unify the party for the party to be unified. And I want to help him do that.

TAPPER: You think that's even possible?

RYAN: But we're not --

TAPPER: Do you think that's possible?

RYAN: But just so you know, Jake, we're not there right now. We're not there right now. Yes, I think it's possible, but we're not there right now. And I think it is possible, but, yes. I mean, look, this man is going to get the nomination, because he earned it. He deserved it. He won the vote. And more importantly, I think those of us need to learn a few lessons here. I think there's a bit of humility that each of us needs, especially

leaders in Congress, which is, he tapped into something in this country that was very powerful. And people are sending a message to Washington that we need to learn from and listen to. But at the same time, now that we have a presumptive nominee who is going to be our standard bearer, I think it's very important that there's a demonstration that our standards will be beared [sic].

I mean that he will advance our appreciation for limited government, for the Constitution, for the proper role of the executive, for the principles -- not only built our party but built this country and how we're going to apply those principles to offer solution and run a -- run a campaign that Republicans can be proud of and run a campaign that Americans can be proud of.

And, yes, looking back on the primary campaign, I think there are instances and episodes that question that. That's why I, at this point, am not ready to jump in. But I hope we can get there, and that's my goal.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Paul Ryan telling Jake Tapper he's not ready to jump in and support Donald Trump. Donald Trump yesterday said he's not ready to support Paul Ryan's agenda. And then just moments ago, Donald Trump took to Twitter, as he is one to do, and he wrote about Paul Ryan. Again, he goes, "So many great endorsements yesterday, except for Paul Ryan. We must put America first and make America great again."

CAMEROTA: Well, it's interesting. There are reports that they will be meeting next week to try to sort this out. We interviewed Speaker Ryan on "New Day" last week, and during that time, he spoke about the latest conversation that he had had with Donald Trump in which he said that Donald Trump was comfortable with what Paul Ryan was putting out and the GOP platform. So something has changed in the past week.

BERMAN: Yes, it has.

CAMEROTA: A lot has changed actually --

BERMAN: I'd be curious to see if they emerge from that meeting --

CAMEROTA: in the past week, come to think of it.

BERMAN: -- holding hands.

CAMEROTA: Right.

BERMAN: All right, 41 minutes after the hour.

A rare sighting in North Korea. The reclusive nation's congress convening for the first time in decades. What exactly is Kim Jong-un up to? We have a live report from North Korea. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CAMEROTA: North Korea's communist elite convening its first party

congress in 36 years, and true to form, it is a highly secretive event. But experts believe the leader, Kim Jong-un, is planning to solidify his power and lay out his vision for the future.

CNN's Will Ripley is live in Pyongyang, North Korea with more. So Will, help us understand this.

WILL RIPLEY, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, CNN: Alisyn, this is my tenth trip to North Korea, so I shouldn't be surprised what happened today. When we left our hotel, we were taken to this building where this Workers' Party Congress is being held but were only allowed to shoot pictures from the outside across a major intersection, and then we had to come back to our hotel.

But I at least thought that the government would by now in the evening hours release some sort of a statement saying what is happening inside this gathering of 3,000 of North Korea's political elite, members of the Workers' Party.

But the evening news came and gone. There was not a single mention of the Workers' Party congress. Even the North Koreans have been working 70 days straight without day off, starting at 5:30 in the morning, going into late in the evening to clean up this city and build and refurbish projects to get everything ready for the congress.

Nonetheless, North Koreans still don't know what's happen. They don't know if their leader's going to make an economic announcement or talk about the nuclear program. All they can do is wait for the information to be released, just like the rest of the world. And that is what we tend to see happen here in North Korea, and we're seeing it yet again in Pyongyang. John?

BERMAN: Quite a look at what's going on inside that country. Will Ripley for us in North Korea. Thanks so much.

Astros' second baseman Jose Altuve had nine home runs this season, but it was the one he hit last night in the first inning that was extra special for a young man.

Andy Scholes has more in this morning's "Bleacher Report."

Hey, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, SPORTS REPORTER, CNN: Hey, good morning, guys. This is really cool.

You know, Jose Altuve, he may only be 5'6", he's a little guy, but he gave us his best Babe Ruth impression last night. And before the game, Altuve met with a young Astros fan named Dylan, and Dylan has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Well, he asked Altuve to hit a home run for him in the game. Altuve told him, hey, I hit one Wednesday, so I don't want to make any promises. And Dylan says, you know what, you're going to make it happen. Sure enough, in Altuve's first at-bat, crushed this one to left, his

sixth leadoff homer of the year. And Altuve said as he was rounding second base, he thought about how Dylan told him he was going to hit that home run. Pretty cool.

All right, for the second straight game, Raptors and Heat needing overtime to decide the outcome. Picking up (inaudible) DeMar DeRozan hits Goran Dragic with an elbow. Ouch. Not only does Dragic end up needing eight stitches, he was called for the foul on the play.

Now, Dragic would come back in the game. Hit a huge three to send the game into overtime. But in the extra period, the Raptors would prevail. They win 96-92 to even the series at a game apiece.

All right, Alisyn, you guys dust off your giant hat. 142nd running of the Kentucky Derby is tomorrow. Nyquist is the favorite. Undefeated so far. Have to see if he can keep that going.

CAMEROTA: We have the mint juleps ready.

BERMAN: Those are ready every weekend, though. There doesn't have to be a derby for that.

CAMEROTA: That's true. Thanks so much, Andy. Great to see you.

All right, it is safe to say that Donald Trump and the Republican establishment do not see eye to eye on core conservative principles. So we will break down their differences for you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN: This is the party of Lincoln, of Reagan, of Jack Kemp. And we don't always nominate a Lincoln and Reagan every four years, but we hope that our nominee aspires to be Lincoln and Reagan-esque.

It's time to set aside bullying, to set aside belittlement and appeal to higher aspirations.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: House speaker Paul Ryan explaining why he is not ready to support Donald Trump, at least not yet, the latest sign of the conservative struggle that has the Republican Party divided right now. So how do Donald Trump and the establishment differ on the issues?

Here to discuss, CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein. Ron is with us in L.A. We have this great magic wall here, Ron, but you can only look. You can't touch.

I want to start with an issue that is very important to Paul Ryan, first of all. It's entitlement. It's social security. Look what Donald Trump says about social security.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They want to save their

social security, which is under siege by everybody. We're going to save it, folks, and we're going to not do cuts at all.

You know, Cruz, all these guys, they want to cut the hell out of it. We're going to save the social security.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: All right, that is in stark contrast, Ron --

RON BROWNSTEIN, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST, CNN: Right.

BERMAN: -- to everything Paul Ryan stands for. A big part of --

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

BERMAN: -- Paul Ryan's career is entitlement reform.

BROWNSTEIN: Right, this is a very revealing contrast here, because it gets to the larger -- the large issue. It's not that conservatives think that Donald Trump is some kind of secret moderate. I mean anybody running on a platform that includes deporting 12 million people and temporarily banning Muslim immigration is not running as moderate. It's that they think he wants to reorient the Republican party around a fundamentally different set of priorities than the party has been organized around for years.

I mean remember, the famous Reaganite three-legged stool of small government, cultural conservative and assertive foreign policy and military strength. They think that Donald Trump, for the first two of those, just aren't that important to him. The third one he rejects and that instead, his priorities very different.

It's kind of this skepticism of foreign influences and hostility to domestic elites. It's a defensive nationalism, a racially-tinged insular nationalism. And you kind of go through these issues. He simply tilts the Republican Party in a very different direction. Entitlement is a classic example of that.

Now, in Donald Trump defense, what he's shown is that there's a big chunk of the Republican base that, in fact, has a very different set of priorities than the party (inaudible) --

BERMAN: That's really interesting.

BROWNSTEIN: -- in recent years.

BERMAN: He exposed -- he's exposed, perhaps, a schism between the base and Paul Ryan as much --

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BERMAN: -- as Donald Trump and Paul Ryan.

Another issue that's come up is the issue of Abortion rights. BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BERMAN: Donald Trump has held different positions on this issue over the years. Here's a reminder.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: -- in every respect.

Look, Planned Parenthood has done very good work for some -- for many, many -- for millions of women, and I'll say it. And I know a lot of the so-called conservatives, they say that's really -- because I'm a conservative, but a common sense conservative.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, ANCHOR, MSNCB: Do you believe in punishment for abortion? Yes or no? As a principle?

TRUMP: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.

MATTHEWS: For the woman?

TRUMP: Yes, there has to be some form.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Now, it's interesting, Ron, because there have been Republican nominees --

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BERMAN: Mitt Romney is one, George H.W. Bush is another -- who have moved over their lives on the issue of abortion. But it seems, again, that the conservative establishment, what they don't like about Donald Trump on this issue is how he talks about it right now.

BROWNSTEIN: Right, and I think that he doesn't really have these commitments. You know, you could have mentioned as well the bathroom bill in North Carolina, which he opposed, as well as the cutting off funding of Planned Parenthood.

Again, these are positions that take him away on the -- on those first two legs of the Reaganite stool. They believe he is not fundamentally committed to rolling back government, that he is not fundamentally committed to the social issues, that his priorities are elsewhere.

I mean his cultural focus is very different. Right? It is more on the changing complexion of America with his policies on both undocumented and legal immigration. That's where he has put his emphasis on and not on the traditional issues, social issues that have mattered to the social conservative movement.

But again, it is revealing that he won evangelical Christians in more states than Ted Cruz did, and in particularly, he dominated among blue collar evangelicals, showing that in many cases, the priorities that the leaders have assumed are the priorities of the followers may not be those things. BERMAN: I want to talk about the issue of inclusion and particularly

where the Republican Party said it wanted to be on this issue. Remember the autopsy after the 2012 election.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BERMAN: It said, "If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them and show our sincerity. The party must, in fact, indeed be inclusive and welcoming." Well, this is what Donald Trump says that has party leaders alarmed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: We're going to build the wall. Believe me. Believe me.

No, we're going to build that wall, and you know who's going to pay for that wall?

CROWD: Mexico!

TRUMP: Not even a question of a doubt.

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Again, so you hear Donald Trump say these things.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BERMAN: You hear Paul Ryan says he's not there yet in supporting Donald Trump. How do you see Donald Trump backing off any of this to get to where Paul Ryan says he needs to be?

BROWNSTEIN: He's not. I mean I think look, Donald Trump could've been defined in many ways. He could have been defined primary as a business guy, an outsider, bringing his business acumen for making business and the economy work together.

Because of these proposals, he has been defined primarily as a candidate of white racial backlash to big portions of the electorate. And it's going to be very difficult to undo that.

John, the tipoff in Paul Ryan's core dispute with Donald Trump was when in the statement that you just played, he listed not only Lincoln and Reagan, but Jack Kemp, who wouldn't be the third person most people would list in the history of the Republican Party. But Paul Ryan believes in a Kempian conservatism that speaks to all communities and worries that Trump is leading the party towards a European-style racial nationalism that ultimately limits who they talk to. A very dangerous course, and a rapidly diversifying country.

BERMAN: You can see the divisions right here. Ron Brownstein, thanks for being with us.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Following a lot of news, including a live interview with former presidential candidate and former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: I usually say, go out and you're going to vote. I don't have to say that anymore.

RYAN: I hope to support our nominee. I'm just not there right now.

TRUMP: I want the primaries to keep going, but everybody's out.

RYAN: Saying we're unified doesn't unify us.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: People are getting a wake-up call.

BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A Donald Trump presidency would be a disaster for this country.

CLINTON: It matters how many delegates you have, whether it's 60 or 300.

SANDERS: We're going to stay in until the last vote is counted.

CLINTON: I never sent or received any material marked classified.

BERMAN: The FBI is likely to interview Hillary Clinton.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an important moment, because it signals that the FBI is close to wrapping up this investigation.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is "New Day" with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to your "New Day." John is here riding shotgun.