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Trump Fires Back after Clinton's Foreign Policy Speech; Trump Keeps Up Attacks on Judge; 5 Soldiers Killed in Texas Flood; UCLA Gunman Had 'Kill List'. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired June 03, 2016 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This isn't reality television. This is actual reality.
[05:58:52] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Lyin', Crooked Hillary.
CLINTON: He is temperamentally unfit.
TRUMP: Four more years of this stuff, we're not going to have a country left.
CLINTON: It's not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war, because somebody got under his very thin skin.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A female was located in a residence with a gunshot wound. A list was located. That list has been described as a kill list. He went there to kill two faculty from UCLA.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Five soldiers dead as floods ravage parts of Texas.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We urge all citizens to take these evacuation notices seriously.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's cars floating down the street.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Friday, June 3, 6 a.m. in the east. Ana Cabrera along our side. Thank you, Friday. It's true!
All right. So we have the big headline from Clinton's foreign policy speech. You ready? Here's the headline: Trump is thin-skinned and a danger to the U.S. Clinton did lay out ideas for several levels of strategy on foreign policy, implying Trump doesn't even have a plan.
Trump responded by saying Clinton should be in jail because of her use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Trump also continuing his verbal attacks against the Hispanic judge overseeing two lawsuits against Trump University, saying the judge's Mexican heritage presents a conflict of interest in the case, because Trump is building a wall.
This as more violent protests erupt as a Trump rally.
We have 2016, the race, covered as only CNN can. So let's start with Phil Mattingly. Hi, Phil.
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alisyn.
Well, like two prize fighters in the opening round, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is really -- have really spent the last couple weeks sizing one other up: throwing jabs, testing new lines of attack. No more. Thursday marked an escalation of sorts, the reality that this race will be defined by head-on attacks, escalating rhetoric and the constant presence of protests and even violence.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TRUMP: I watched Hillary today. It was pathetic. It was so sad to watch.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Donald Trump coming back swinging.
TRUMP: Lyin', Crooked Hillary.
MATTINGLY: After Hillary Clinton's scathing foreign policy speech, eviscerating the Republican nominee with her toughest lines yet.
CLINTON: I will leave it to the psychiatrist to explain his affection for tyrants.
MATTINGLY: Trump calling for the former secretary of state to be imprisoned over use of a private email server.
TRUMP: Hillary Clinton has to go to jail. OK? She has to go to jail. She's guilty as hell.
MATTINGLY: The pair trading stinging one-liners.
CLINTON: He says he has foreign policy experience, because he ran the Miss Universe pageant in Russia.
The tools Donald Trump brings to the table: bragging, mocking, composing nasty tweets.
TRUMP: To watch her is like Sominex. You ever hear of Sominex? Sleep all night. It's hard to stay awake.
MATTINGLY: Over the issue of trust.
CLINTON: It's not hard to see Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.
TRUMP: Crooked Hillary said, "Oh, Donald Trump, his finger on the button." She's the one that stupidly raised her hand to go into Iraq and destabilized the entire Middle East, OK? Because that's what she did.
MATTINGLY: And the question of temperament.
CLINTON: Donald Trump's ideas aren't just different, they are dangerously incoherent.
He is not just unprepared. He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility.
TRUMP: My temperament is so much tougher and so much better than her temperament. And by the way, we need a tough temperament.
MATTINGLY: Outside Trump's rally in San Jose, even more tense confrontations.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED)! (CHANTING)
MATTINGLY: Mostly peaceful protesters but some going fisticuffs with supporters, throwing eggs, water and surrounding their cars as they exited, some anti-Trump demonstrators waving the Mexican flag.
Just hours early Trump claimed District Judge Gonzalo Curiel has a, quote, "absolute conflict" presiding over the civil fraud lawsuits against Trump University. In an interview with the "Wall Street Journal," Trump saying the judge's Mexican heritage is an inherent conflict of interest, because he's building a wall.
TRUMP: The judge, which happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great.
MATTINGLY: Curiel, an American citizen, was born in Indiana, the son of Mexican immigrants.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: The idea that is a judge, simply because of his heritage, has to recuse himself has never been part of the American system. I don't see any explanation for this, other than, I'm sorry to say, bigotry.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTINGLY: And, guys, all of that coming the same day House Speaker Paul Ryan, the once lone major holdout of the support for Donald Trump, decided in his hometown paper to back Donald Trump.
Now, aides say there was no deal for his support, no concessions, even, from Donald Trump, just Paul Ryan getting more comfortable with the presumptive nominee after a series of conversations. Mostly on the fact that he will be willing to help Ryan move the House Republican agenda forward -- Chris and Alisyn.
CUOMO: All right, Phil, appreciate it.
So what exactly did we learn as a result of this exchange? The speech and the response? Let's bring in CNN political analyst and presidential campaign correspondent for the "New York Times," Maggie Haberman; and CNN Politics executive editor Mark Preston.
What is your headline, Haberman?
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Clinton unbound in a speech that actually wasn't about foreign policy. She gave a stakes- framing speech yesterday, where she essentially said -- she didn't make a case for herself so much, but she made the anti-case against Trump.
We haven't really heard her do that. She's been criticized by Democrats for not doing that. And she's been criticized for basically staying above the fray and relying on surrogates to do this for her, saying, "I want to keep it on ideas." That's not possible. You are facing completely different, as she said, candidate in Trump.
[06:05:10] I think the issue for her is going to be sustaining this. I don't think it's going to be a one-off, where she does this speech and then, you now, her aides were laying out sort of a tick- tock with some reporters of how this came to be, and it felt a bit victory lap-ish. You can't sort of do this and then move on. She's going to have to do this basically every day for the next several months.
CAMEROTA: It did feel like she'd been waiting for that moment, and it felt like she was relishing it. Finally, she was sort of consolidating all of the different complaints, or insults that she had about Donald Trump into one speech. And she was delivering it with some zeal.
MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: She was, and to Maggie's point, is that she's got to figure out a way how to sustain it. I think going bare knuckles, toe to toe with Donald Trump for the next four or five months is going to be a losing strategy for her.
In fact, Gallup just came out with a poll this morning where her biggest asset right now in this election -- and we saw this on display yesterday -- is her experience. By 2-1 voters, 62 percent of voters think that she is more experienced than Donald Trump, only 31 percent do.
So, as we saw in that speech, a very political speech yesterday, she was trying to put forth the idea that he is reckless, that don't -- don't allow him to have any power over the nuclear codes, and look at me, I have the experience. That's a winning strategy. To go bare knuckle, toe to toe for the next few months? Total mistake.
CUOMO: You know, the second part is really what she needs to do more of. And maybe I'm just numb to it at this point, but I felt like it lowered her to be going at him and insulting him. I get that there's some lefties who wanted to see her mettle. Nobody tests her mettle. The Clintons fight. We all know that. She's not going to be a victim for long.
But when she started talking about why certain dynamics were in play in the Middle East, why certain things were more complicated, why you needed to think about it, I thought that was her better angle against Trump, because look what his response was after. He didn't match policy points with her. He said, "You should be in jail." You know what I mean? So where's going to be the balance there?
HABERMAN: You're right. I think she's going to have a tough line to walk. And I think that's Mark's point, too. I think that there were points where she did get sort of toe-to-toe insult with him.
I do think she had to do some of that, because so much of what he -- we saw him do with 16 people in the Republican primary was essentially bully them. And scare them. And they all ignored them, for the most part, for months and months and months and months. There is this idea out there that nothing sticks to Trump, because look at all of these people who tried. They didn't really try. Most of them didn't really prosecute a case against him until it was way too late, and he was about to win the New Hampshire primary.
She's trying, I think, to avoid that. But I think you are correct, that she can't look like she is doing sort of an insult-to- insult fest. That doesn't work for her.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
HABERMAN: That won't work for her as well.
CUOMO: It's not what we need either.
HABERMAN: But what she did feel authentic on -- and this is really going to be her challenge as feeling authentic -- was talking about policy, to your point, and trying to frame the debate that way.
CAMEROTA: But also, I mean, she was trying to characterize some of his own statements as being, you know, off the reservation, basically. For instance, she talked about -- she said that he has a, quote, "bizarre fascination with dictators," because he had talked seemingly favorably about Putin and Kim Jong-un.
So let's go back and remind people what she was referring to and see if this passes muster. This is Trump on Kim Jong-un.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If you look at North Korea, this guy, this -- he's like a maniac, OK? And you've got to give him credit. How many young guys -- he was like 26 or 25 when his father died -- take over these tough generals, and all of a sudden -- you know, it's pretty amazing when you think about it. How does he do that? Even though it's a culture, and it's a cultural thing. He going in; he takes over, and he's the boss. It's incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one. I mean, this guy doesn't play games.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: OK. So, Mark, I mean, he says this guy's a maniac.
PRESTON: Right.
CAMEROTA: So he will always be able to hang his hat on that: "I called him a maniac." But then he says, "And he should -- deserves a lot of credit. He was young when he started killing off people."
PRESTON: So let's take the political playbook that we all know, and let's just throw it out the window. Because what we're seeing here from Donald Trump, we've seen it in the debates, we saw it in the town halls, we see it in his speeches, he just speaks off the cuff. It's as if he doesn't think about what he's going to say, and he just says whatever's at the top of his mind.
But to the point that we saw with Hillary Clinton yesterday and Donald Trump was so effective in the primary and has been trying to do this with Hillary Clinton, is that she's going to make sure she's not defined by Donald Trump during the dog days of summer right now. So that's why she's so effective. Right? As Maggie said at the top. That's why she was so effective yesterday. But she has got to do some kind of strategy that shows that she's the one who understands how to deal with these world leaders.
CAMEROTA: Because that is, in effect, showing his words and telling people that's...
PRESTON: That is effective.
CAMEROTA: That one was effective?
PRESTON: That is effective, but you cannot sustain that. You cannot go into a bar brawl with somebody who effectively fights in bars every night. Like -- you just can't.
HABERMAN: It's not just that. I think it's also -- I think part of that is that she -- she made the case against him. She has not, and I think I said this earlier, made her case...
CUOMO: For herself.
HABERMAN: ... for herself.
PRESTON: Right.
[06:10:03] HABERMAN: I think that is what you're getting at.
These races are not really defined between September and November. These races are defined basically between now and August.
PRESTON: Right.
HABERMAN: And we saw that in 2012. We saw that in many previous races. We saw it in 2004. That is what we are looking at right now. Trump has -- I want to be clear, though. Trump has had a terrible last week. I mean, it is hard to overstate this.
And so the idea that, well, he constantly gets free media, and he's got free attention, a lot of this attention is very, very negative.
CAMEROTA: With all the Trump University stuff.
HABERMAN: Not just that, the judge.
CUOMO: But he only has himself to thank for that. You know, if you say, "Kim Jong-un, you've got to give him credit"; if you say, "You've got to give it to Putin. He's strong"; if you say, "Interesting question, Chris Wallace. Yes, I guess nukes, too." If you say things like that about Japan, they're going to come back to haunt you. This is a new level of the game.
PRESTON: Which is why, to Alisyn's point and to Maggie's point here, is that these one-offs on Trump University as a one-off is not going to hurt Donald Trump. But the idea that, if she can continue to try to build up this case against him, where she can try to prosecute it going into November, that is going to be the most effective.
CAMEROTA: OK. We do need to talk about the judge in the Trump University case, and we will do that shortly. Stick around, if you would.
Let's get over to Ana.
ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: We have some breaking news we've been following overnight. Two more soldiers have been found dead after an Army truck overturned in floodwaters at Fort Hood, Texas. This now brings the death toll to five soldiers just in this one incident. Four other soldiers are still missing.
Let's get to CNN's Ed Lavandera, live at Fort Hood this morning with the latest on the search -- Ed.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Ana.
Well, the search will continue this morning for the still missing soldiers. There was a group of about 12 soldiers riding in a tactical -- large tactical vehicle which kind of resembles a pickup truck, with an open bed in the back. We're told that that truck was passing through a low-lying area. This was an area that was hard-hit by heavy rains yesterday, flash flood waters very intense, and that the truck overturned, those 12 soldiers spilling into the water.
Three of them were recovered. As you mentioned, five have been found dead, and the search will continue this morning for the remaining four.
Although more rain expected here in the area, which would obviously complicate the search-and-rescue efforts as that process continues, but it has already been some time. This accident happened just around midday yesterday, and they weren't able to find all the bodies yesterday. So that search will continue. Obviously, as I mentioned, complicated by -- the search efforts today will be complicated by the fact that probably more rain is expected to fall on this area. Flash flooding, a major concern -- Chris.
CUOMO: Ed, not an easy situation. Thank you for staying on it for us. Appreciate it.
All right. We have some new details -- and they're not good -- about the gunman who opened fire on UCLA's campus, killing a beloved professor in a murder/suicide. The police now say they found a kill list, leading investigators to another victim in Minnesota, who was the gunman's wife.
CNN's Stephanie Elam is following developments. She's live in Los Angeles -- Stephanie.
STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.
Yes, he left behind a note that was cryptic and suggested that someone needed to check on his cat. This being the shooter in the story, and that led police to find out that this tragedy was even worse than previously thought.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHIEF CHARLIE BECK, LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT: He had two semiautomatic pistols: one that he used for the homicide and the other that was in his backpack.
ELAM (voice-over): Investigators discovering rounds of ammunition and a kill list, spelling out the names of three people at UCLA shooter Mainak Sarkar's Minnesota home.
DEPUTY CHIEF MARK BRULEY, BROOKLYN PARK POLICE DEPARTMENT: They did locate an adult female who was found deceased from an apparent gunshot wound.
ELAM: CNN affiliate WCCO reports this woman was Ashley Hasti, one of the names on Sarkar's list. Documents obtained by CNN show Hasti was married to Sarkar in 2011. Investigators finding her body in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
Police say after killing Hasti, Sarkar then drove nearly 2,000 miles to Los Angeles, descending on UCLA's campus Wednesday morning, intending to follow through with the rest of his list.
BECK: He went there to kill two faculty from UCLA. He was only able to locate one.
ELAM: Sarkar opened fire, killing his former professor, William Klug, a father of two, then turned the gun on himself.
The third name on Sarkar's kill list was another UCLA professor, who was off-campus that day, escaping what police say was a revenge- fueled plot over intellectual property.
ART RODERICK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: He perceived that he had been done wrong, and he just stewed on this for several years.
ELAM: UCLA denies any dispute between the school and Sarkar.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ELAM: Now, as far as Sarkar's relationship to UCLA, it is worth noting that he graduated in 2013 with a Ph.D. in engineering. He listed Professor Klug as his adviser during -- for his dissertation and was also part of Klug's research group.
But from what we can understand at this point, Alisyn, there was no grudge that was understood to be there, as far as UCLA was concerned, between the school and the student.
[06:15:05] CAMEROTA: Oh, what a mystery and what a tragedy. Stephanie, thank you for that reporting.
Well, it's a delicate balance for Democrats: how to support Hillary Clinton without alienating Bernie Sanders supporters. We'll tell you what's going on behind the scenes, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Donald Trump continuing his attack against the judge presiding over two of the civil fraud lawsuits against Trump University. Trump says the judge's Mexican heritage is an inherent conflict of interest.
Let's bring back Mark Preston and Maggie Haberman to discuss.
Maggie, he says that, because he has announced that he's going to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, that this judge is not qualified or has a conflict of interest to sit on the Trump University case. Have you ever seen anything like this?
HABERMAN: No. I have not. This judge was born in the United States. He is an American citizen. He has Mexican ancestry. But you could make this argument -- and I think we saw a clip from Jeffrey Toobin earlier -- saying that he had never seen something like this, this is a very overtly racial statement.
Trump a few months ago said -- "We have a judge on the case who" -- I think he called him Spanish at first and then said Hispanic, and then said, "Which is fine," which is sort of how he often does these things. He's inject it, and then he'll say, "But that's not a bad -- thing; we like that."
[06:20:09] This was a very different type of statement, and it had two strains to it. One was the racial component. And the other is -- and the "Times" did a piece on this today, and others have, as well -- it represents something of an authoritarian streak that we have seen with Trump before, where the judiciary is a separate branch. And if you are the president, you do have to respect that. And this is where we are seeing this confluence of Trump the businessman and Trump the candidate is very hard to untangle.
CUOMO: Well, here's the problem also, though, is that this is probably the first or maybe best example of where what he does to stimulate the base may have really just hurt him with the people he wants to impress most, which is the party right now.
I can't tell you how many people half-jokingly in that -- in the Republican world said to me, "What can I give you to leave this alone? What can I give you to leave this alone?"
CAMEROTA: And what did you accept?
CUOMO: That's right. Wait until you see what I drove here.
The interesting part of it is, he goes after this judge as having an inherent conflict.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
CUOMO: Has he moved to have him recused from the case?
CAMEROTA: Yes. There are legal avenues.
CUOMO: No. Did the judge actually go along with him and may have saved his bacon by continuing these trials, maybe after the election? So if anything, you'd think he'd be liking this judge.
But how dangerous is this for those Republicans who are on the fence right now when they hear that he's just calling this judge a Mexican and saying he's conflicted?
CAMEROTA: Before you answer that, let me play for you what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said. He was talking about Susana Martinez, who Donald Trump has also sort of...
CUOMO: The New Mexico governor.
CAMEROTA: ... gone after, the New Mexico governor, and that he, McConnell, feels it is time to unify. Stop doing these things. So listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), MAJORITY LEADER: I do. And I think that the attacks that he's routinely engaged in, for example, going after Susana Martinez, the Republican governor of New Mexico, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, I think that was a big mistake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: That's about taking care of your team. He didn't call her a Mexican or anything like that. He was saying that she wasn't doing a good job -- and he's right to be worried about that. But this is ten times worse, isn't it? PRESTON: So -- so as Chris said, you said the fuel that has
gotten Donald Trump the primary win, OK, which is this really harsh rhetoric, this attack on the mainstream media, which we've seen from Republicans and conservatives anyway, but he has really amped it up this election. So his attack on the media, his attack on his own Republicans, his attack on the Washington establishment, and now, literally, his attack on this judge because this judge's family came from Mexico. Not him. He was born here in the United States.
And mind you, let me just sidetrack just for a second. My parents came from Ireland, OK? They came over here. And if you were to ask my father, you know, a very simple question -- and I asked this when I was 10 years old -- "Would you fight for Ireland or would you fight for the United States in a war?" And he said, "I would fight for the United States, and the reason why is that it gave my children everything in this country."
And I think that you would hear that time and time again from immigrants, you know, who come over here to try to find a better life for their kids.
But the rhetoric that Donald Trump is using right now worked in the first part of this contest, but this is a two-part contest. And I'll tell you what: going into the November election, and you're dealing with independents and undecided voters, this kind of rhetoric scares me.
CAMEROTA: Now we have to talk about what's going on on the Democratic side, because there's a lot of intrigue. Back channels, we understand, from our own Manu Raju, who's done reporting on this, and it will be released today, that there have been people, high Senate Democrats, including Harry Reid, who have made phone calls to Bernie Sanders to sort of figure out a graceful exit, and how after California, these Democrats are pressing him to sort of exit stage left. But Bernie Sanders does not seem interested in doing that.
HABERMAN: So, Bernie Sanders and a supporter of his said this to me a long time ago, has been saying a version of what he's been saying for 30 years. He's been pretty consistent in what he thinks. We think he has never accused of his being a flip-flopper. There are a couple of specific issues criticized.
But he basically has been talking about a revolution for a very long time. And finally, he has tens of thousands of people showing up and listening to him and voting for him. That becomes a very compelling thing to stick with, and it's very hard to walk away from.
And he genuinely has influence on the party right now. He is not a Democrat, which is what you hear from Clinton supporters; and I think that is something that you will hear from, you know, establishment Democrats.
Harry Reid and Sanders have fought before. There are few credible Democrats or people who Sanders, I think, would see as credible to negotiate this at this point. I know Chuck Schumer's name had been floated at one point. I don't know that Chuck Schumer would be seen by Sanders's supporters as the one they want. He is seen as, you know, very close to Wall Street. That's what Sanders's supporters are against.
So it's not really clear yet what it's going to take for Sanders to get out. If he does win California on Tuesday, it -- we are in for a very, very long seven weeks on the Democratic side.
CUOMO: I'll tell you what: that might wind up being what the Democrats need. Yes, the big names have been going to Bernie. It's true. But there are a lot of other people in that party who have been going to the big names and saying, "If he leaves, we're going it look like we co-opted the system. His people won't come with Hillary, and then they have a real problem."
[06:25:14] So I think they need him at the convention.
CAMEROTA: Guys, thank you. Great to have you. Have a great weekend.
Let's get to Ana.
CABRERA; So will the parents of a 3-year-old who fell into that gorilla enclosure be charged? And what's the Cincinnati Zoo now doing to prevent future tragic incidents like this? We have new developments in a live report, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CABRERA: We could learn as early as today whether the parents of that young boy who fell into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo will face any criminal charges. All this as officials there are beefing up security around that exhibit.
Let's get to CNN's Jessica Schneider, live in Cincinnati with the very latest.
Jessica, what's going on?
JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Ana.
Gorilla World will reopen on Tuesday. And the reopening will spotlight a brand new barrier around that exhibit.
If you can take a look at the side-by-side, on the right there is the previous rail that was in place during Saturday's incident. It's a simple metal railing that's about three-feet high.
Now, on the left, the zoo has released images of the new one that visitors will see on Tuesday. Officials say it's about 42 inches high, about 6 inches taller...