Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Sanders Escalates Feud with Democratic Establishment; Submarine Searching for EgyptAir Black Boxes; U.S. Lifting Embargo on Lethal Arms to Vietnam. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired May 23, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We need a serious discussion about the role of super delegates.

[05:58:43] REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D-FL), DNC CHAIR: We have a process set up that is eminently fair.

SANDERS: If elected president, she would not be reappointed.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will be the nominee.

SANDERS: I don't want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're going to make our country absolutely great again.

CLINTON: There's no evidence he has any ideas about making America great.

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton gets in, I don't know if our country can ever recover.

CLINTON: You've got someone running for president who's afraid to release his tax returns.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have recovered small pieces, not big pieces and some human remains.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Something catastrophic occurred.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We cannot rule out some type of terrorist act.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Turkish 814, 804 this is Turkish 814. How do you read me?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. it is Monday, May 23, 6 a.m. in the east. Up first, a defiant Bernie Sanders escalading his feud with the

Democratic establishment. The Vermont senator said, if he's elected president, he will replace the party's chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Sanders also calling Hillary Clinton, quote, "the lesser of two evils" when compared to Donald Trump.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. There is proof of the toll that this could all be taking in the Democratic Party. In two new national polls. Trump and Clinton are locked in a dead heat. And get this: a majority of Americans say they would consider a third-party candidate.

Meanwhile, speculation is building this morning about who's on the short list to become Trump's V.P. pick.

We have the 2016 race covered the way only CNN can. Let's begin with senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns live in Washington. Good morning, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

It's a sign of the bitterness in the race when one of the two top candidates running for a major party's nomination suggests that, if elected, he would get rid of the leader of the party, though to be sure, the feud between the Sanders campaign and the DNC has been going on for a while now.

And while the Sanders campaign and the sound bite over the top this weekend suggesting Americans could be choosing between the lesser of two evils in November, it might have Democrats shaking their heads, the latest polling does show sky-high negatives for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANDERS: Thank you!

JOHNS (voice-over): Bernie Sanders coming out strong over the weekend against the head of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

SANDERS: With all due respect to the current chairperson, if elected president, she would not be reappointed to be chair of the DNC.

JOHNS: Sanders going as far as backing her challenger for her Florida House seat.

SANDERS: Clearly, I favor her opponent. His views are much closer to mine than is -- is Wasserman Schultz's.

JOHNS: The head of the DNC responding, insisting she'll stay unbiased, saying in a statement, "I remain as I have been from the beginning, neutral in the presidential Democratic primary."

Sanders further challenging the establishment, doubling down on charges that the party is unfairly propping up Hillary Clinton's campaign before the primary contests are finished. SANDERS: You had 400 pledged delegates come onboard Clinton's

campaign before anyone else was in the race. That's called an anointment process. That's called the establishment talking.

JOHNS: Sanders saying he's going to carry the party to victory in November.

SANDERS: Virtually every national poll and every state poll, we defeat Trump by larger numbers than does Secretary Clinton.

JOHNS: Pointing out the unfavorable ratings plaguing both Clinton and Trump.

SANDERS: I don't want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils.

JOHNS: But quickly walking back that description when pressed.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Is that how you would describe Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump? The lesser of two evils?

SANDERS: No, I wouldn't describe it, but that's what the American people are saying.

JOHNS: Clinton less than 100 delegates shy of clinching the nomination.

CLINTON: There's no way that I won't be.

JOHNS: Taking a jab at Sanders' viability on Sunday.

CLINTON: I have been vetted and tested, and I don't think he's had a single negative ad ever run against him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: All eyes on the West Coast this week, as the candidates continue to get ready for the California primary on June 7. Bernie Sanders is spending most of the week there, and Hillary Clinton heads out west today after her speech in Detroit -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Joe. Thanks so much for all that. Listen to this. Two new national polls have Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton locked in a dead heat. Clinton is at 44 percent, Trump at 46 percent. In a "Washington Post" ABC News poll, and the "Wall Street Journal"/NBC News poll has Clinton at 46 percent, with Trump at 43 percent. This as Trump is set to meet with a possible V.P. candidate.

CNN correspondent Phil Mattingly joins us now with more on all of this. Hi, Phil.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you've got it right on the polls, Alisyn. With the party clearly coalescing behind its nominee, Donald Trump numbers have showed substantial improvement, even as his negatives remain at historic highs. Guys, I want you to take a look at this. Fifty-eight percent of

registered voters in the NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll have a negative opinion of Trump. That's the highest for a presumptive nominee in the poll's history. Yet even in that, there's actually good news.

His negatives have actually improved by 12 points since April. Now this is something his advisers have predicted could happen. Now, these numbers are all coming as Trump continues to reach out to various crucial blocks that make up the Republican Party, as well as its top officials.

Today, Senator Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, speculation that perhaps he may be in the running to be Trump's running mate selection.

Now Corker is just the latest top foreign policy official to meet with Trump, a tacit acknowledgment of his need to beef up expertise in that area.

Now, as for the vice-presidential selection, Trump and his advisers continuing to maintain. That selection he announced in July at the Republican National Convention.

CUOMO: Oh, but, oh, the intrigue. Phil, so much intrigue. Stay with us right now. And let's also bring in CNN political commentator and political anchor of Time Warner Cable News, Errol Louis; and CNN political analyst and host of "The David Gregory Show" podcast, the man himself, D.G. Good to have you all with us.

[06:05:01] Errol, it is only a little bit of facetiousness that I inject into this conversation, because the intrigue is now what this is all about, headlines by these new polls that show the unusual matchup we have. You put the numbers back up again here that Phil just took us through.

You see that it's tied, basically, statistically. Right, the margin flips both ways, and it's also tied in terms of whom do we like less? Have you ever seen numbers like this before that are so much a margin of relative unfavorable?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, this is an extreme case of a trend that's been building now for a decade. This is polarization. I mean, that's what the title should be over all of it, which is to say that people really, really feel strongly against a lot of things in this country. Not just the candidates, but also the issues, and they are prepared to vote in that way, as well.

So we're going to see the lead swap back and forth a number of times, but those unfavorables are going to be there all of the time. What it also points to, though, Chris, is a strategic decision that these candidates will probably make, which is to -- you can either sort of promote yourself, or you can knock the other person. They're going to knock the other person, because that's -- it's easier to do. There's some real sort of opportunities there that sort of try and disqualify the other candidate in critical states, and that is a path to victory. Unfortunately, it works. People don't do negative ads because they

don't work. They do negative ads because they do work. They drive up the other person's negative. They convince some people to actually stay home, which actually can work in your favor, depending on what your strategy is. And that's what we're going to see.

And we in the press are going to lament all of it, but it seems like that roller coaster, we're right at the top of the hill, and we're about to swing down into some really, really negative campaigning.

CAMEROTA: I feel it in my stomach, right there at the top of the hill, where you're about to go over.

CUOMO: Not some bad guacamole from over the weekend?

CAMEROTA: Well, that's always possible.

David, what about those historically high unfavorables, as Errol was saying? Does that give Bernie Sanders an argument for staying in for a long time? His favorables are better than theirs?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It will give him an argument. Of course, he's not being tested in the same way. He is not exposed to the same kind of scrutiny within the Democratic election or general election race, which I think would drive up his own negatives.

Frankly, people have not paid enough attention to what a Sanders presidency would actually look like, because it is looking more improbable.

Nevertheless, he's got an argument to make. There's also a freshness to Sanders, despite the fact that he's been in the Senate for so long, and there's a freshness on the national scene that he benefits from. And I think that's really what hurts Trump and Clinton. They are not fresh. They are not -- they are extremely well known, which makes it hard for them to reduce those negatives and increase those positives, because the race is only going to get nastier between now and November.

CUOMO: The #poorDonald hash tag. Phil, what's your take on that? Do you think that the campaign is trying to strike a chord that will bother Donald Trump, the Clintons, by saying #poorDonald?

MATTINGLY: They're trying everything right now, and they have no problem seeing what will actually work.

CUOMO: The implication is what? You didn't pay any taxes?

And so they think the tax issue is a very big deal.

CUOMO: Why?

MATTINGLY: They feel like, well, if you look at the polling, the vast majority of people believe you should, as a presidential candidate, as everybody has since 1976, release your tax returns. And they want to jump on this issue right now, and you've seen them hammer it home over the last couple of days.

CUOMO: You don't think the audit thing gives him cover?

MATTINGLY: No, because I think if you talk to any tax analyst or official related to tax policy or tax returns in general, they say that you can still release them. Maybe your lawyer might not want you to, but that's not a very legitimate reason.

Now, that's the one that Donald Trump is going to -- his campaign has made very clear, when the audit is over, they will release the tax returns. They're not moving off that.

The Clinton team loves the idea of the unknown. Right? You can attack him by, well, what's he trying to hid from? His associations? Is he paying any taxes at all? Is he not giving money to charity? This is a wide-open area for them. And as long as he doesn't send out the -- release the tax returns they believe they can attack him on pretty much anything related to taxes because of that unknown.

CAMEROTA: And Errol, there has been no chink in the armor thus far for Donald Trump. Anything that they've tried -- anyone, the media, or his opponents have tried to throw at him has not stuck. So the Clinton campaign is sort of casting about for something, a narrative that might work: #poorDonald. Is that it?

LOUIS: I don't know if I would agree with that. I don't know if it's nothing sticks. I'd say nothing disqualifies him. He gets away with things. You know, facts have come forward that, if any other candidate we've seen in, you know, 20 or 30 years, that would be the end of their campaign. You know, the lying, the violence, all kinds of things, so he hasn't been disqualified. But on the other hand, he has those very high negatives.

And then they go and look state by state, and you look at what people think about him in swing states, in Virginia, in Florida, you know, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These are states where Hillary Clinton is still leading. And so if she wants to sort of let people know what is wrong with him and try to disqualify him, Phil is right. You can try it now. Will it disqualify him from the race? Well, look, he's going to be the nominee.

So you're going to see him on the ballot in November no matter what. I don't think that's what's going to happen, but she's going to continue pounding. They use a lot of sophisticated analytics. They're going to try to beat him in the states where they need to beat him. That's how a traditional campaign is run.

[06:10:21] CUOMO: And see this as the ultimate reflection that he is not the system. So it doesn't really matter what his negatives are, because he's still not the system, and that's good enough for at least 55 percent of the people who are voting for him.

GREGORY: Yes. You're talking about Trump in this case, right? That he's not the system.

CAMEROTA: Yes. GREGORY: I think that's right. And -- but, look, there's an

opportunity right now the Clinton team knows that they have, which is to try to define Trump in a really negative light. And the argument here is that he's not as successful as you think he is, and his major calling card is something of a fraud. That he has not been subjected to, which is lot of -- negative advertising over a sustained period of time, and she wants to try to do that now, and her supporters want to do that now at a time when he's consolidating in the race.

To your point, Chris, I mean, one of the -- there's a lot of negative for both of them in polls. One of the things that Hillary Clinton can point to is that if you look at the Obama numbers in 2012, she tends to mirror that a little in terms of how she's doing at this stage. That's at least a positive sign and has yet to consolidate as much of the liberal Democratic vote, because she's still in a fight with Sanders.

CAMEROTA: Very quickly, Bernie Sanders is not going gently into the good night. And his argument is the if he wins the upcoming states, that he might have more pledged delegates than she does by the end of this. She would have more super delegates, that he would have more pledged delegates. Then what happens?

MATTINGLY: He would have to win by a lot, first off. Around the 70 percent range of delegates remaining, which in California, I think this is a really important point. We need to be quick here. California is a very expensive state to play. It's a very large state to play. The latest FEC filings came out, Bernie Sanders has less than $6 million left in the bank. Hillary Clinton has $30 million left in the bank.

I talked to one Democratic analyst who said basically, game, set, match on the money right now. If you want to win in California, and this is an area where the Clinton campaign doesn't want to spend, but it's very, very expensive.

Bernie Sanders raised more than $200 million in his campaign. He's down to $6 million. The burn rate is extensive. To answer your question, if Bernie Sanders somehow manages to do very well in California, very well in the District of Columbia and come in, win in an amazing clip, certainly, he would have an argument. I just don't know how realistic it is to get anywhere near the pledged delegates you need to.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you. Great to get all of your insights this morning.

So how big of a threat is a third-party ticket? Coming up in our next hour, we will speak with former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who is the V.P. candidate on the Libertarian Party ticket.

CUOMO: All right. Now we have the latest for you in the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804.

A submarine is now joining the hunt for the black boxes. They are the all-important clue that investigators need. We already have new details emerging about the plane's final moments before it plunged from the sky.

For that we go to CNN's Nic Robertson. He's in Alexandria, Egypt, with more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Thousands of feet below the Mediterranean Sea, the search for EgyptAir 804 continues. Egypt deploying a submarine scouring the bottom of the ocean floor, 200 miles off the coast of Alexandria, hoping to retrieve the plane's black boxes in waters nearly two miles deep in some parts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello, hello, EgyptAir Flight 804 flight level 370.

ROBERTSON: This is audio recordings of the two men flying the doomed flight, a release, the pilot making this final haunting call to air traffic control.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you so much. Good day. Have a good night.

ROBERTSON: Just minutes before falling off radar.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eight zero four, this is Turkish 814. How do you read me?

ROBERTSON: Flight data obtained by CNN indicate multiple smoke alerts occurring near the cockpit minutes before the crash, the smoke indicators providing a new clue for investigators. Was it mechanical failure or something deliberate, like terrorism, that made Flight 804 suddenly drop 38,000 feet out of the sky?

SAMEH SHOUKRY, EGYPTIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY: This is certainly an important element in the jigsaw puzzle that has to be fully combined.

ROBERTSON: A French official telling passengers' families that no theory has been ruled out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We cannot at this stage come up with any conclusions. Stop making, how you call it, speculations, without having facts.

ROBERTSON: Wreckage found over the weekend, reminders of the 66 lives lost, including a purse, and a child's pink backpack.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[06:15:00] CAMEROTA: All right. So up next we will speak to two experts about the latest thinking on what brought down EgyptAir Flight 804. Was it a malfunction or was it something more sinister? The search for answers, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Egypt is deploying a submarine to the crash site in an effort to locate EgyptAir Flight 804's data and cockpit black box recorders. It is still not known what caused that Cairo-bound plane carrying 66 people to go down. Was it a malfunction or something more sinister?

Joining us now, CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation Mary Schiavo; and CNN terrorism analyst and former CIA counterterrorism official Phil Mudd. Great to have you both with us this morning.

Mary, we do have some new information that came out over the weekend from the airplane's communication system. There's a screen grab of the airplane sending out its automatic sort of communications, and you see here that it says, right below the line, smoke, lavatory smoke. Then it says avionics smoke. Tell us what we should read into this, Mary?

[06:20:05] MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, unfortunately, we have -- also have an announcement from Airbus over the weekend, who put out a statement saying that the heat sensors -- the first indication were the heat sensors in the cockpit, and those are indeed heat sensors. So they got some indication of heat sensors on the two right windows in the cockpit, what we commonly call the copilot side. And those were followed by the smoke detectors in the lavatory, which are optical sensors, meaning they are sensing some kind of particulate matter in the air, be it smoke, be it some kind of a mist, be it mace. They can detect things optically, where the other sensors were heat.

And then finally, you have electrical fault failures. So there were several things going on at once and, again, it -- without having the fact that the smoke detectors in the rear, the lavatory in the rear, apparently also went off, too, one would assume it was a fire in the electronics bay or the cockpit.

CAMEROTA: So...

SCHIAVO: But Boeing says these facts don't -- Airbus says these facts don't fit.

CAMEROTA: But Mary, help us understand. Does that mean, to your mind, this was some sort of electrical fire that was the problem with the plane or that this was a bomb that exploded?

SCHIAVO: Well, unfortunately, it could be either, but with these facts, with the first thing happening, as the heat sensor in the cockpit on the right-hand side window, one might suspect that it was an electrical failure.

CAMEROTA: Yet, Phil, there are officials that are still sticking with the terrorism angle. Here is what Congressman Peter King said over the weekend about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PETER KING (R), NEW YORK: Right now, the indicators are that if you took the scales of terrorism, the longer it goes without responsibility being claimed, it also could be a malfunction on the plane itself, an electrical malfunction. I think on these investigations, by the way, something like this, we

always have to start out with the premise that terrorism is the most likely option and then work our way back from that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So Phil, where are you today on what brought this plane down?

PHIL MUDD, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: I think that's complete nonsense. You start in the other direction. You take the facts, and you determine where the facts take you.

We're 15 years after 9/11, and the responsibility of political leadership is calm, cool and collected. What do we get? Rush to judgment.

If you're an analyst and you determine ahead of time where the facts are going to take you, that leads to -- that leads to what you call, in the analytic business, confirmation bias. You try to take the facts to confirm what your theory is.

There is not a theory here. We have a series of facts. We have no claim from terrorists. We have no identification of a terrorist onboard. And now it appears that we have smoke and/or heat near the cockpit. That takes you in a direction to say it's increasingly unlikely that this is terrorism, but I couldn't disagree with the congressman more. You don't start with a theory. You start with the facts.

CAMEROTA: Mary, here's another graphic of the airplane that helps us to understand where the fire might have been. You can see below deck there, below the cockpit there's an electronics bay that may have been where the fire or an explosion of some kind started. Then you see where the lavatory is, where smoke was detected. You see the window. You see the copilot, sliding window.

So, Mary, explain to us, if there were a fire, if this were an electrical malfunction at 37,000 feet, have you seen something like that before? How unusual would this be if it was not a bomb that set it off?

SCHIAVO: Well, unfortunately, I mean, all things are rare. Fortunately, in aviation. But yes, the Australian Safety Transport Board, which is like the United States NTSB, they encountered this in 2009 on several planes. And curiously, it was at 37,000 to 39,000 feet, and it was a malfunction of the window heater. You know, it's very cold at altitude, so the windows have to be heated. And there was a malfunction there, and they actually issued a warning that suggested that -- an airways bulletin, in other words, a warning go out to all operators to replace the windows.

And then also, we've seen fires with the entertainment system. We've seen fires in cargo holds. And the front cargo hold is very near there. So there are several scenarios that could explain it but so, too,

could an incendiary device in the front cargo hold, or if someone could have accessed this -- the electronics bay.

CAMEROTA: Phil, why wouldn't ISIS just claim responsibility for good measure?

MUDD: I think one of the reasons they have is they've got to maintain some sort of support among potential people who would join or pay for the organization in places like Europe and North America.

We're going to determine what happened here, over time. ISIS isn't stupid. The people doing media for ISIS, many of them are from the west, from Europe, from the United States, from Canada. They will know that eventually, airline experts will determine what happened on this flight. I don't think they want to be embarrassed over time by claiming something and having the black box show it was actually an electronics or some other kind of failure.

CAMEROTA: Phil, Mary, thank you. Great to get your expertise.

[06:25:02] CUOMO: All right. President Obama is in Vietnam, making a major announcement just hours ago. He has decided to lift the decades' old lethal weapons embargo against the Southeast Asian nation. We're going to tell you why some critics say that is not such a good idea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Breaking news overnight: President Obama making history in Hanoi. Just hours ago, the president announcing the U.S. is fully lifting a decades-old arms embargo on Vietnam.

CNN's Michelle Kosinski is live in Hanoi with more.

Hi, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alisyn.

This will mark the first time in more than 50 years that the U.S. can sell arms to Vietnam, something that would have been unthinkable decades ago.

This points to the growing trust, deepening relationship. The arms embargo was partially lifted two years ago. And President Obama was careful to say that this is not about China. Here's how he framed it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States is fully lifting the ban on the sale of military equipment to Vietnam that has been in place for some 50 years. As with all our defense partners, sales will need to still meet strict requirements, including those related to human rights.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KOSINSKI: It's interesting to hear President Obama pay heed to human rights, but said that human rights was not tied to the lifting of this embargo.