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Inside the Trump Campaign; Honoring Fallen Troops; Cincinnati Zoo Kills Gorilla; Honoring Fallen Troops. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired May 30, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:31:28] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The view from inside the Trump campaign. What is the candidate's management style? What is it like working with him? Our next guest is a former Trump political adviser. His name is Sam Nunberg. He was fired from the campaign last August. He joins us now to talk about the inner workings of Trump world.

That was an ugly situation. Bloomberg came up with these Facebook posts on you, and you wound up being dismissed from your position. Are you bitter about that? Do you blame the Trump organization? Just to have some context of your criticisms.

SAM NUNBERG, FIRED BY DONALD TRUMP: No, not at all. Look, the fact of the matter is, they were up there. And even though they were very old, they were there. They were inappropriate. They shouldn't have been there. And I'd like to apologize to the audience for them. And I would say that I was also -- Reverend Sharpton accepted my apology the day after I was terminated.

CUOMO: All right, so that's that. You were there. You were working inside. There's all -- there are all kinds of stories about this operation. That -- is there really an operation? How much is it? Is it really Trump and then everybody else? What did you observe? What is the system that is this campaign?

NUNBERG: Well, first of all, Donald Trump, of course, is his own adviser. Nobody puts words into his head, and these are all his own ideas. But what Donald was able to do, Mr. Trump, was he hired Corey Lewandowski. And Corey did everything by piecemeal. And Donald being a businessman, he approaches by piecemeal. If the campaign --

CUOMO: What does that mean?

NUNBERG: That means that -- when we started, we were a very lean operation and we didn't have to get large, as opposed to the other campaigns, until we knew where Mr. Trump would be, meaning if he could continue to compete. Remember, he still thought he may have been able to do "Apprentice" when he -- after he first announced. We still didn't know -- and we also didn't know how the response would be with the polls. Obviously he shot up to number one very quickly, but you don't know. And if it didn't work out, Chris, after his announcement, then it would -- then I don't think the campaign would have gone anywhere. CUOMO: How does it compare to other places that you've worked in terms

of the stop down management style? Is Trump a good manager?

NUNBERG: Oh, he's a fantastic manager. I will tell you that I worked for him for four and a half years. And, first of all, he's extremely responsive. His door is always open. And he's also extremely detailed oriented. And he -- and he in a way micromanages in a macro style. And an example would be is that I used to prepare briefings for him in the morning, even before the campaign, and one of them would be about his Twitter followers. So I would say, you have x amount of followers, you've gained x amount of followers in the last week or in the last couple days. so then he would say to me, well, how many have I gained since the last time I asked you, and compare that to the time before I asked you. And if there's a decrease in followers, explain to me why do you think -- why? What is the reason?

CUOMO: Do you think that -- how do you explain his instinct to attack and to go negative? Is that something that people encourage him to do within the organization? Does anybody try to pull him back from saying some of the ugly stuff that comes out of him so often?

NUNBERG: Well, I think that, you know, it -- there's a -- there certainly are. There's advice about how hard to go and there's certainly advise about what to say. Look, I think that in some ways it wasn't very good for him towards the end the way he was attacking Senator Cruz. You know, Senator Cruz came in with -- he ended up with around 7.6 million votes, which was the fifth most amount of votes, and had a lot of individual -- you know, 1.5 million individuals donations. He would have had over 200 -- 2,000 delegates there. And that's -- you know, a problem is going that personal. But that's the way Mr. Trump, you know, is, and he knows how to brand people. And, you know what, we're sitting here saying maybe he shouldn't have done that. But I'll tell you, he's the nominee. Now, compare that to the other side, Chris.

CUOMO: Do you think he did it because of his organization or despite his organization?

NUNBERG: I think he did it with his organization. I think --

CUOMO: Well, but, you know, there are all these stories -- you know, not stories like fabulous stories, like real stories, of the organization wasn't there, they didn't have the people at the right time, you know, this structure wasn't right, you know, that they -- that systemically they were struggling.

[08:35:09] NUNBERG: No, that's not -- look, I think that, first of all, you need to have a good product in any business or any campaign. So, for instance, a lot of people say to me, well, do you think Donald Trump has changed politics forever? My responsible always is, no, Donald Trump is the only one who would be able to have done this. And he's just simply an anomaly. You know, another celebrity may decide to run, let's say, in eight years, and they wouldn't be able to accomplish what Mr. Trump accomplished, only because Mr. Trump has a sense of, you know, great political instincts, marketing instincts, and he -- and, by the way, the one thing, Chris, we do know, is he really believes what he says.

CUOMO: He does. So -- because, you know, some people take some solace in the notion that, ah, he's just saying this stuff because he knows it will works for him, and he has been quoted a couple of times, either on background or, you know, by people on the record saying that, he said, don't worry, once I get in, you'll like me. I'm just saying what I have to say now. You're saying, no, if it comes out of his mouth, it's in his heart, it's in his head.

NUNBERG: Oh, absolutely, because I've had many -- I've had many policy discussions with him and proposals, which he simply doesn't accept -- you know, he won't accept, and they would have been politically convenient for him. And it would have been much easier for him, for instance, to say, I want to defund Planned Parenthood during the primary. And he's having trouble uniting the party because of that. It would have been much easier for him to, let's say, I want to, you know, I -- I want to bomb Iran or I want -- or I will cut off that Iranian nuclear deal. And it would have been much easier for him to take that position in the primary and he was criticized for it, but, look, that's the position he took and now he's the nominee. And he's changed a lot of -- you know, you would never say objectively that those positions, the person would be able to get the nomination. And I would have advised him against that.

CUOMO: Sam Nunberg, thank you for being on the show, giving us some insight. Appreciate it.

NUNBERG: Thank you, Chris.

CUOMO: What do you think? What did -- you know, this food for thought. What is it? What questions is it raising with you? Alisyn wants to know. Go on to Twitter, tweet Alisyn or go to Facebook and send her a message. Please, do that.

Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: I would welcome that. I was just on Twitter reading people's messages.

Meanwhile, this story that everyone is talking about, a 17-year-old endangered Gorilla shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo after a little boy slipped into his habitat. This is a story that has many different sides and terrifying video. We will explore it next for you.

Also, we do want to remember the fallen on this Memorial Day.

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[08:41:22] CUOMO: Welcome to our special Memorial Day edition of NEW DAY. This is Arlington National Cemetery that you're looking at. This is where President Obama will be there in just a few hours to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. This would be his final Memorial Day as president.

We have CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr there live.

Always a heavy heart, but rich purpose in being there on this day.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris, from Arlington National Cemetery, of course, one of the nation's great treasures. Over 150 years old. More than 400,000 people laid to rest here.

But we are her, in a very poignant place, section 60 of Arlington. This is the place, of course, so many young American who fell on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest here.

I want to pan the camera over right away and show you. Cemetery gates have only been open a little more than half an hour, and already you see so many people coming to pay their respects. Families, husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, grandparents. You see military buddies coming.

We have come here for so many years and we see families return year after year. They spend the day. They visit their loved ones.

This is the place where the nation's history of the last several years is written. The names are still in the news. Service members who fell on the battlefields of Fallujah, Ramadi, Baghdad, who, in Jalalabad, in the Korangal (ph), in Kandahar. Names back in the news. But these are Americans very much remembered on this day.

When we first started coming to section 60, much of this was a green, open meadow. And, of course, over the years, more and more Americans laid to reset here. People coming to pay their respects on Memorial Day, 2016.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Barbara, that is a striking visual that you're giving us, just headstone after headstone, row after row. Thank you for bringing us what's happening there today.

Well, another story that is getting so much attention. The Cincinnati Zoo getting hammered by critics. They are livid over the death of an endangered gorilla, but zoo officials insist they had to kill the gorilla to save a little boy who slipped into the 450 pound animal's enclosure. Let's go to CNN's Jessica Schneider. She's live in Cincinnati with all of the details.

What have you learned, Jessica?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, the boy was in imminent danger. That's the word from the zoo director Thane Maynard. He says that the dangerous animal response team had to move in quickly and that their only option was to shoot and kill that gorilla. He says that the team tried other tactics. They tried to lure the gorilla out of the exhibit. The gorilla did not respond. They also said that tranquilizers would have taken far too long to take effect and that the boy was in danger and needed to be saved. Maynard released a statement from the zoo saying that they are saddened and heart-broken at the death of 17-year-old Harambe, but that they had to act quickly to save the boy's life. Meanwhile, the anger out here is boiling over. In fact, an online

petition has garnered more than 20,000 signatures calling for criminal charges to be filed against the parents for their alleged negligence, but the police and the district attorney have not yet commented on whether charges will be filed. As for that four-year-old boy, he had non-life-threatening injuries and he's at home now recovering.

Alisyn

[08:45:00] CAMEROTA: OK, thank you so much for that, Jessica.

That's some of the scariest video that I've seen in a long time, just because you don't know -- you're watching -- imagine being the mother. You're watching it unfold. You don't know what's about to happen next. Is the gorilla going to, you know, bite the boy?

CUOMO: Ten minutes.

CAMEROTA: I really -- I can't really imagine it (INAUDIBLE).

CUOMO: Was the enclosure safe enough? Legitimate issue. Was the parent diligent enough? Legitimate issue. But once your child is in the grasp of a 450-pound gorilla, is the gorilla an innocent victim? Of course it's an innocent victim, but what other choice do you have? They say if they shot it with a tranquilizer thing, it may have made it more angry before it set in.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Right.

CUOMO: Who takes that risk?

CAMEROTA: Right. That is true. I don't think you do have another choice. And one other detail, two other females were in -- female gorillas were in that enclosure and the zookeepers were able to lure them out. They came right out and he stayed.

CUOMO: Right.

CAMEROTA: And so that made everybody nervous as well. They tried, in other words, they tried to do the peaceful, passive thing.

CUOMO: It's just Twitter, but literally it's like eight to one is, they shouldn't have shot the gorilla. They should have seen what happed. Really?

Anyway, today is an important day. It's not just about barbeques and car deals. This is Memorial Day and it's about those who gave their lives for the freedoms that you and we enjoy. We're going to speak with author and filmmaker Sebastien Junger. He wrote a new book about vets and the difficulties they face coming home. If you care, you'll listen and act.

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[08:50:04] CUOMO: Today is Memorial Day, the day that we honor the men and women who have paid the ultimate price for serving their country. Joining us now is journalist and filmmaker Sebastian Junger. He has seen firsthand the tolls of service and what men and women give to their country. He's the author of a new book. It's called "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging."

This is a great book for people to read. It's going to orient them to so many different themes that matter in society, what keeps us together, what holds us apart, how it manifest in our veterans who return. Is that -- what was your core motivation in this?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER, AUTHOR, "TRIBE: ON HOMECOMING AND BELONGING": I wanted to understand why our society, which is so wonderful in so many ways, wasn't that appealing for soldiers who returned to. And it made me think of a quote that I'd read by Benjamin Franklin saying that hundreds, thousands of colonists had run -- had run off to join the Indians, and not one Indian had run off to join civilized society. They went native, basically. And it reminded me of the soldiers not wanting to come home, wanting to stay at these remote outposts in Afghanistan. And I just thought, what is it that's so unappealing about modern society? And my book is an attempt to explain that.

CUOMO: So as you know, you've been a mentor for me for many years, your ability to go in, experience in close quarters what men and women do, how it goes so wrong for so many is unique, and special and powerful. What does that bring to you in terms of perspective on this day, on Decoration Days, Memorial Day? What should people remember?

JUNGER: Memorial Day is -- is very different, important ways from Veteran's Day. Memorial Day is -- our moment as a nation to remember the fallen. I lost a -- I wasn't a soldier, obviously, but I lost a close friend, a journalist, Tim Hetherington (ph), who died in Libya during the civil war and I got an e-mail from a veteran after the terrible news, and he said, you now understand the core truth about war. It's not that you might get killed out there or whatever, it's that you're guaranteed to lose your brothers. And Memorial -- Memorial Day is about our brothers. It's very important to keep that in mind.

CUOMO: Thematically consistent with what you talk about in the book, about the idea of how we come together. Decoration Day was not a given, what we now call Memorial Day. It took time. It took time to orient. It started with people going out on their own and literally decorating the graves, putting flowers, a very specific flow, on the graves of veterans. That tendency to forget -- we all say we support the troops, but the tendency to forget, where does that come from? How can we improve that?

JUNGER: Well, you know, we evolved as a species to live in small groups, in a changing environment, and we had to adapt. And we -- you know, I think there's probably some benefit to not hanging on to the past. Sort of an evolutionary benefit. But we now have changed our circumstances radically. We live in a modern society. We're the same animal we always were, but we've really changed our surroundings. And I think it's extremely important for a nation, for a unity, a political unity, a cultural unity to actually maintain a very, very powerful connection to what got us here historically, and to appreciate -- to appreciate the sacrifice and to understand the problems. It's absolutely key to the future. JUNGER: When you see what's going on in geopolitics, specifically the

efforts in the war on terror as it's called here, do you see the present as a function of lessons learn or of problems in danger or in reality being repeated?

JUNGER: You know, al Qaeda and the Taliban took root in Afghanistan because it was a failed state. And it was a failed state because the Soviet invaded it and then we armed the mujahedeen, and then everybody walked away, the Soviets and the U.S. walked away and Afghanistan collapsed. And some years later we got the Taliban, eventually al Qaeda, evenly the 9/11. I think what the -- what President Obama is doing right now is trying to minimize our footprint over there because it's costly in lives and in money. It's enormously costly. But if you let Afghanistan or any other state fail completely, it's an enormous danger to the world. I mean it really is a kind of cancer. It's terrible for the people who are -- who live there.

CUOMO: What works?

JUNGER: Well, I -- you know, I think the president's trying to figure out like what the minimum amount of activity, military activity is that will keep Afghanistan glued together.

CUOMO: Either you occupy or you don't. I mean I'm not telling anything you don't know.

JUNGER: Yes.

CUOMO: I mean you've lived it. I've sampled it. You've lived it. Either they make it on their own or they live underneath the framework and system of an occupier. Absent those two possibilities --

[08:55:06] JUNGER: Well, they have an elected government. We're 95 percent out of there. Actually, I think we're finding a kind of middle ground where we're not occupiers, but there are enough special force, there are enough aerial assets over Afghanistan to keep the population center safe from the Taliban. And so I think what Obama's trying to do is not have such a heavy presence that we're -- that we look like occupiers, which is a recruiting tool for the Taliban, obviously, but we -- if we pull out completely, it will collapse. So I think he's trying to find that sweet spot that we can live with and that they can live with.

CUOMO: This next administration, you think we wind up deeper in or farther out?

JUNGER: It depends on who it is, right? I -- so that's really hard to say. I mean it's such a crazy political season, I'd hate to -- I'd hate to try to guess what they're going to do with Afghanistan.

CUOMO: Sebastien Junger, fewer know the issues of this day better than you. The new book is "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging." Thanks.

JUNGER: Thank you.

CUOMO: Always a pleasure. Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris, thank you. And thanks to all of you for spending your Memorial Day morning with us. "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello picks up right after this break.

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening new in the NEWSROOM, Donald Trump says he's the best for vets.

[09:00:00] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our veterans have been treated so badly in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: But are vets convinced?