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Melania Trump Calls GQ Profile On Her "Dishonest"; Danger Of Opioid Medication Leading To Addiction; Sources: Clinton Email Investigation Wrapping Up; Trump Slams Clinton Over Benghazi In New Video; New Book Examines Lincoln Political Shrewdness. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired May 11, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The Justice Department taking the death penalty off the table in the upcoming trial of one of the accused ringleaders in the deadly attacks in Benghazi.

This revelation coming in a court filing as the government prepares to try Ahmed Abu Khattala for carrying out that assault on the U.S. Consulate that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, on September 11, 2012. The Libyan Militia leader has pleaded not guilty.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Bridgegate rearing its head again for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. A judge has ruled the names of public officials with knowledge of the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge -- those names can now be released.

Until now, they've only been known as unindicted co-conspirators. Prosecutors say that Christie will not be criminally charged. The ruling comes as two former aides do prepare to stand trial.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Here's an out of this world discovery for you. NASA announcing the Kepler space telescope has spotted close to, wait for it, 1,300 new planets outside our solar system, including nine that are "potentially habitable".

Previously, the Kepler team had only known of a dozen earth-like planets. The Kepler telescope also spotted more than 1,300 additional planet candidates but they need more study before confirmation.

CAMEROTA: Everybody's a candidate. All right, not satisfied with being the king of beers, Budweiser is rebranding. Their new name, "America". The marketing stunt runs through election day. The slogan "America Is In Your Hands". Budweiser, by the way, is brewed in St. Louis, but it is owned by a company in Belgium.

BERMAN: America is my (INAUDIBLE).

CAMEROTA: (Laughing).

CUOMO: Why do you drink beer? Because "America".

All right, one member of the media found herself in Donald Trump's crosshairs and is now fighting back. The reporter is Julia Ioffe. Now, she's filing a police report after receiving death threats and anti-Semitic messages, many from Trump supporters, allegedly.

Who knows who these people are online, but they say they're Trump supporters. Why? This profile that was written about Melania Trump by Ioffe for "GQ Magazine". Trump called the article dishonest, full of inaccuracies. Let's talk about this case, in particular and in general. What has been going on with different candidates, certainly Trump, and the media.

To discuss, experts CNN senior media correspondent and host of "RELIABLE SOURCES", Brian Stelter. And, CNN senior media and politics reporter Dylan Byers. We don't want to dig too -- dive too deeply into this specific case but Ioffe wrote an article about Melania Trump in "GQ". She didn't like it, Trump didn't like it --

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Right.

CUOMO: -- but that happens. But then, it's about what happened online.

STELTER: Yes. Melania Trump posted a Facebook comment where she criticized the article. She didn't ask for any specific correction but she said the article was inaccurate. Then there was this torrent of hate directed at Julia Ioffe on Twitter and on Facebook. Julia highlighted online, showing people some of this trolling that happens.

As you know, Chris, sometimes this happens to public figures, media types, and others on Twitter, but she really highlighted how anti- Semitic these comments were and she has gone to the police and asked for an investigation, as a result.

CUOMO: Now, what do you think can come of something like that, though? It's so hard to find out even who someone is on Twitter.

STELTER: Yes, I think very little can come of it, frankly. These could be people in other countries. These could be computer robots that are doing some of this tweeting. I noticed that myself, for the first time the other day, a person photoshopping me, putting a Jewish star on my chest. I guess they didn't like something I said about Trump.

But we should keep in mind, some of these supporters online who are tweeting these hateful things say they're Trump supporters but who knows?

CUOMO: Right.

STELTER: What does it actually mean, right? They could, for all we know, try to demean and hurt Trump by saying they support him.

CUOMO: Maybe. Well, here's what we do know, Dylan. Things have changed. Social media -- Rush Limbaugh had an interesting point the other day. Talk about how things have changed. Media Matters, which is a lefty outlet, has an article about Limbaugh, who is not a lefty, saying that Donald Trump has introduced trolling to campaigning.

And there is no question that these campaigns have waves of haters who come after the media and others who go against them. What do you make of the dynamic?

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR REPORTER, MEDIA & POLITICS: Well, I think that's exactly right, and I think that Donald Trump has played a very unique role in doing that and that's because he's been more active on social media, and especially on Twitter, than any presidential candidate in history.

[07:35:00] At the same time, he's run a campaign that has been full of some pretty hateful rhetoric. And certainly in the case Julia Ioffe -- you know, you've got a campaign that sort of trafficked in male chauvinism and at the same time propagated a lot of strong anti- media rhetoric. And you see those two things sort of hitting ahead in the case of Julia Ioffe. And, of course, there's that anti-Semitic strain, as well.

Look, I think Donald Trump has a very aggressive and vocal group of supporters and while we can't identify every anonymous Twitter troll, I think there are a lot of people on there who are ready to take on anyone who they think would stand in the way of Donald Trump's nomination or anyone who they see as opposing Trump.

And in the context of all the rhetoric that he's used, I think that makes for a very powerful and potentially poisonous force.

CUOMO: Now, it isn't just him, OK?

STELTER: That's right.

CUOMO: You get waves of Berners, you know, the Berner bros. Cruz had a nice team of people. Hillary's got some people who can come after you. In fact, David Brock is supposedly organizing an outfit to go online and go after trolls, but that would fundamentally risk being trolling itself.Here's the concern for me.

STELTER: Yes.

CUOMO: It's happening. How do you own it as the candidate? Now, if it's anti-Semitic or if it's white supremacists --

STELTER: Right.

CUOMO: -- do you think Donald Trump has a responsibility to come out and say look, I don't know who the heck these people are? I'm not putting them up to it, but whoever they are they better stop. I reject them. He and other campaigns have been slow to own the invective.

STELTER: Yes. Generally speaking, yes they have, and I think there's pressure that mounts as this continues to happen, right? You think about the internet -- all the positive consequences of the rise of the internet. This is not one of those positive consequences.

The trolling and the hate speech that we see polluting the Web is one of the negative consequences and candidates and presidents and leaders do have a role to play in discouraging as opposed to encouraging it. The question I asked about the Trump campaign is when Donald Trump

criticized the media so harshly and so commonly, when Melania Trump writes a Facebook post criticizing this woman, Julia Ioffe, for example, does that encourage these trolls to target these journalists?

CUOMO: Of course it does.

STELTER: They're not saying, explicitly, go harass this person, but doesn't attacking the media contribute to this kind of environment?

CUOMO: Yes, of course, it does --

STELTER: I think it does.

CUOMO: -- but where's the line of responsibility, Dylan?

BYERS: Well, look, I don't expect any presidential candidate to call attention to an issue like this. I don't see how it serves their campaign to sort of get the national media discussing, and continuing to discuss, cases like this.

You know, you have to remember for how robust and vitriolic the conversation on Twitter can be and for how hateful and extreme a lot of that speech can be, the truth is is that the vast majority of the country is not paying attention to things like this. It's only when a reporter, like Julie Ioffe, files a police report that we start to see some media coverage about this.

I don't see a candidate on either side of the aisle, whether that's Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton, wanting to draw attention to cases like this and you can understand why.

STELTER: Yes, more speech is a good thing, even hate speech. People can post whatever they want online but leaders, whether they're candidates or others, can have a role in encouraging civility and maybe that's what this is about. Civility versus incivility.

CUOMO: It's very interesting. You want that marketplace of free ideas but the first amendment isn't just about exercising the worst of what can come out of speech. But it's certainly something that is an ongoing dynamic in this election --

STELTER: It is.

CUOMO: -- and we'll see just how ugly it gets going forward -- J.B.

BERMAN: All right, Chris, thanks so much.

The death of Prince bringing the American painkiller epidemic to the forefront right now. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us next and you're going to be pretty shocked at who he says is partly to blame for what's going on here.

[07:38:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [07:42:00] BERMAN: All right, there is mounting evidence that music legend Prince may have been abusing or dependent on painkillers and his death possibly connected. That death, though, is shining a spotlight on the prescription addiction in this country.

Americans consume 75 percent of the world's opioid prescription drugs. That is an amazing statistic. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta is co-hosting a CNN town hall tonight on this very subject. Sanjay joins us now, and Sanjay, it's interesting. You say that a lot of the blame here goes to the doctors.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the doctors are the ones that are prescribing these pills. I mean, most of these are legitimate prescriptions that come from doctors. There are things like diversion, where some people take prescriptions from other people and things like that.

But, you know, what was amazing to me, and we've been reporting on this for some time, is the original paper that sort of made the claim that you could give these pills indiscriminately, safely, and for long-term -- was based on just 38 patients. It was a tiny little study that people glommed onto and basically used it to change the entire paradigm.

We only used to give it to cancer patients, people near their life, and for very short durations. That very small paper changed the entire paradigm.

CAMEROTA: So, it appears we've learned that doctors are overprescribing opioids. When one of their patients then becomes addicted, as so often happens, then what do they do?

GUPTA: Well, you know, a lot of times the doctor that has been prescribing the medications isn't someone who's also a specialist in addiction, so oftentimes they have to go to someone who may -- first of all, they've got to recognize that there's a problem.

Recognize that there's either a physical dependence or an addiction and they get the person to someone who can actually treat that and the system's just not designed to this. Again, because I think everyone's sort of turned a blind eye to this. We didn't believe, for a long time, that people could become addicted to these things.

CUOMO: The therapeutic community is applauding you doing this and coming forward with this special. They say this is most ignored, the most pernicious, the most difficult to deal with. They say it's a perfect storm of addiction. It comes from doctors and pain clinics.

GUPTA: Yes.

CUOMO: It comes from the medicine cabinet. People don't have the barriers to prevent putting a knife in their vein because it looks like medicine. What do people have to know about what happens when you take this stuff in excess?

GUPTA: Yes, one thing I just want to say about that. This is the number one cause of preventable death in America today.

CUOMO: The number one?

GUPTA: Number one. More than car accidents, OK? More people die in this manner from an accidental prescription drug overdose than they do from anything else. It's a remarkable statistic and totally preventable. And it's legitimized, I think, because you think look, I got a prescription from a doctor. How could this possibly cause me this sort of harm?

CUOMO: Well, what does it do to you and how easy is it to get over?

GUPTA: What these things do, they're opioids. The same thing that comes from the poppy plant. The same ingredients that are, for example, in heroin. Ultimately, they affect the brain in very specific ways. What it can do in an overdose situation -- it turns off the brain's drive to breathe.

[07:45:00] You have a drive to breathe. You're not thinking about it, you're just breathing on your own right now. You're OK if you're awake. When someone goes to sleep who has taken too many of these things they basically lose their drive to breathe. You can see what it looks like, specifically, there.

BERMAN: We keep saying these things and we use the phrase opioids here, but name names here. What specific drugs are we talking about?

GUPTA: I mean, Morphine is the one that people think of in hospitals. Hydrocodone, OxyContin, Oxycodone, Percocet -- these are all things that have that same active base ingredient. Some are synthetic, like some of the ones I just mentioned. Heroin is a more natural form of those opioids but they all come from the poppy plant. The poppy plant is sort of the base ingredient for all these.

CAMEROTA: If you get hooked, how do you get off them?

GUPTA: Very challenging. Look, our body has natural opioids circulating in them, so when you start giving lots of opioids the body says great, I'm getting this, I don't have to make it anymore. But then when you start to take it away you crash.

You have no opioids. You have no natural opioids, you have no extra opioids, and you basically are in withdrawal. It's miserable. You've got to get opioids somehow. That's the physical dependency part of it.

BERMAN: Is that the difference between dependence and addiction there because you've been talking about that in relation to Prince?

GUPTA: Yes. I think there is a distinction here. Physical dependencebasically means you have those physical withdrawal symptoms. You feel terrible once you stop taking the pills. Addiction -- you can have those, as well, but you also have this tremendous interference with your life. You're just making poor choices, you're starting to drop out of work, dropping out of your family life. Things like that. CUOMO: What's the message, though, because this is a sneaky killer, this one? I mean, you know, as we look more and more into this there's something about it that's not as scary as well, I don't want my kid to -- I don't want to catch him with a syringe. I don't want to catch him with a pipe. I don't want to -- you know, oh, it's a bottle of pills. At least it's medicine. You know, how do we deal with this?

GUPTA: Well, it's challenging and I think, you know, part of -- one thing I will tell you, as well, in terms of statistics, is that we talk a lot about heroin addiction. You're talking about pipes and --

CUOMO: Which is also just spreading all over the place.

GUPTA: Eighty percent of new heroin addicts start off using pain pills. They start off using pain pills. They get cut off from those pain pills at some point -- the doctor says I'm done writing you these prescriptions. They turn to heroin. Again, same active ingredients.

CUOMO: Or, it gets too expensive. These pills are $40 apiece on the street. The heroin is getting cheaper and cheaper. The dealers know how to make their money on this.

GUPTA: That's right. So you think about your kid or whoever you're thinking about, and think well look, this could be the path to something that's even more serious. So, it's a problem but I think it's a fixable problem.

BERMAN: Look, these are just a few of the questions that we have here. Imagine how much information you can relay tonight on this special. Sanjay, thank you so much. Do not miss this town hall tonight.

It's an "AC360" town hall "PRESCRIPTION ADDICTION: MADE IN AMERICA. It's hosted by Anderson and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. That's tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. This is important to watch. It's right here on CNN.

CAMEROTA: All right, back to politics. Donald Trump hammering Hillary Clinton over Benghazi, plus the results of her email probe are due out soon. What effect will these have on her race? Friend and advisor to Hillary, Sidney Blumenthal, here next.

[07:48:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:52:00] CAMEROTA: No holds barred -- that's one way to describe the presidential campaign. If it is Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton, Trump says the Benghazi attack and Hillary Clinton's emails will be part of the fight.

Our next guest is a friend of the Clintons. His new book is about another president, Abraham Lincoln. It's called "The Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1849". The author, Sidney Blumenthal, joins us now. Mr. Blumenthal, thanks so much for being here. SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL, AUTHOR, "A SELF-MADE MAN: THE POLITICAL LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1809-1849": Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's start with Hillary Clinton's emails. The big fear of many Democrats who I've spoken to is that Hillary Clinton will become the nominee of the Democratic Party and then something will happen during the general. There will be some bombshell. Another shoe will drop and it will scuttle her race. How confident are you that that won't happen?

BLUMENTHAL: I'm very confident that that will not happen.

CAMEROTA: How do you know?

BLUMENTHAL: My understanding is that this is a security review. It's certainly not a criminal investigation.

CAMEROTA: But it is an investigation.

BLUMENTHAL: It's in inquiry into whether or not anyone intentionally put classified information where it shouldn't be. And my understanding is that they will conclude and the Department of Justice will issue a statement at the end that that was not the case. And then all those who were involved in this kind of political hysteria will have to unravel it.

CAMEROTA: Do you think it is a problem that it continues to drag on? That the email investigation is dragging on. We don't have an outcome of that yet. The Benghazi commission -- the one run by Trey Gowdy and Congress, says that they will release their findings in the summer. So, all of this drags on until it butts up against the general.

BLUMENTHAL: Well, I'm sure that the Department of Justice is not a political investigation at all and that it wants to resolve this as quickly as possible, and when they do they'll issue a statement.

CAMEROTA: Donald Trump does not to resolve this as quickly as possible and, in fact, he says that he will make an issue of these things, among others, if he is going against Hillary Clinton in the general. So, he's just put a new ad about Benghazi -- a new video, I should say, on Instagram, about Benghazi. Let me show this to you and our viewers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video.

PATRICIA SMITH, MOTHER OF BENGHAZI VICTIM SEAN SMITH: She lied to me. She told me it was the fault of the video.

CHARLES WOODS, FATHER OF BENGHAZI VICTIM TYRONE WOODS: She said we are going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of your son.

MEGAN KELLY, FOX NEWS: So she did say to you that the Benghazi attack was caused by protests?

BENGHAZI VICTIM GLEN DOHERTY'S SISTER: Absolutely.

CLINTON: (Laughing).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, I don't know why that's funny.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: How damaging do you think something like that is?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, there've been inquiries already that have concluded there's no wrongdoing. After the first one, the Pickering, Mullen commission -- Hillary implemented, as Secretary of State, all of their recommendations for security.

[07:55:00] So, let's see what this Benghazi committee winds up doing, and if it's inconsistent with the other ones in its core findings then we might conclude that it is consistent, instead, with what House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, which was that it's a partisan political inquiry intended to upset Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

CAMEROTA: Back to her emails for a second. You know, the Republicans say that it shows bad judgment. That she used her own email, her personal server. She has said, clearly, why she didn't want to use more than one device. She has described herself as sort of not technologically adroit enough to be juggling different devices. We all understand that.

But why did she set up a personal server? That's behind just using one device for personal and professional emails. Why did she need the personal server?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, that's a question I don't know the answer to, and it's a question that she's explained. And so, you'd have to go her explanation about that.

CAMEROTA: I mean, I ask you because you -- the emails that have been released show that you were in regular contact with her. You're one of -- you were giving her advice on all sorts of policy things and political things. Did you talk to her about setting up a personal server?

BLUMENTHAL: Oh, no. I had nothing to do with that. I write about -- I write Lincoln and I write Hillary, and one of them has replied.

CAMEROTA: (Laughing) Really? You haven't heard from Abraham Lincoln?

BLUMENTHAL: Not while I was doing my book on his formative education.

CAMEROTA: If you had known she had a personal server would you have told her, not a good idea?

BLUMENTHAL: I have no idea. We're old friends and when you're a friend of somebody who's in the middle of politics you get caught up in politics, too.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about your book, "A Self-Made Man, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln". What more is there to say about Abraham Lincoln?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, there's a lot to say about Abraham Lincoln. You know, we're involved in a campaign about the making of a president and my book is about the making of America's greatest political genius.

Somebody who was lucky to have a log cabin and transformed himself into the man who was a political, skillful, professional politician, and through those skills ended slavery and saved the United States. So, that's a lesson here for this campaign, so there's something to say about that.

There's not a difference between politics and principle, and that if you want to achieve your principles you need to be politically skillful to be able to do it. And there's another point, which is that looking for people beyond politics -- for a hero, for a man on horseback -- can also be something that can undermine our democracy and doesn't advance it.

CAMEROTA: That's interesting. You write here in the book, "Lincoln always believed that politics offered the only way to achieve his principles. He discovered the promise of American life and created the man who became Abraham Lincoln, through politics itself."

I mean, that is the sort of rosy inspirational view of politics. Now, we often don't see it that way.

BLUMENTHAL: Well, I don't know if it's rosy and inspirational. The kind of politics that Lincoln had to deal with was as rough and tumble as the politics today, and maybe even more so. He grew up on the frontier and they were as contentious, competitive, and even combative as today. There were even dual, as we know, between people.

And Lincoln was subjected to withering criticism, including racist criticism of him. So, you know, what we're seeing today is not so different. And what Lincoln had to go through to achieve his ends provides a lesson for us today.

CAMEROTA: Lots of parallels. Sidney Blumenthal, thanks so much for coming in and being on NEW DAY.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you very much.

CAMEROTA: All right, we're following a lot of news, including more from last night's primary results. Let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think we're going to have a very good meeting.

REP. PAUL RYAN (R), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We shouldn't just pretend that our party is unified when we know it is not. SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My differences with Donald are well-documented and they remain.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I can see no viable path to victory. If that changed we would reconsider things.

JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I feel confident that Hillary will be the nominee.

SANDERS: You are looking at the Democratic nominee for president.

CLINTON: The American dream is within reach.

SANDERS: We are in this campaign to win.

BIDEN: I feel confident she'll be the next president.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: There's not evidence of like a top-down systemic bias.

ROMANS: Facebook on the defensive.

STELTER: It's become a political football now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)