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New Day

President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Senator Elizabeth Warren Endorse Hillary Clinton; Interview with David Axelrod; GOP Divided on Trump As Attacks Intensify. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired June 10, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is a sentence that shocked the country, six months in jail for sexually assaulting a defenseless, unconscious stranger.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Brock Turner will not serve his full six months sentence in jail.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Six months reduced to three for so-called good behavior.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is no scenario where your son should be the sympathetic figure here. He is the rapist.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This entire sentence is outrageous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Friday, June 10th, 8:00 in the east. That Stanford rape story continues to have developments every day. They continue to try to get the judge off the bench. So we'll tell everybody all of the developments.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Very frustrating on two levels. People don't understand how the judge can come to this decision with the facts being what they were and the conviction being what it is. The second one is there's not much you can do about. If there is not a mistake of law, the sentence stands.

CAMEROTA: We will talk to our legal experts about all of that.

But up first Hillary Clinton capping off a very big week with a trifecta of endorsements, President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Senator Elizabeth Warren all saying that they are with their party's presumptive nominee now. Clinton is set to meet this morning with Elizabeth Warren, while Bernie Sanders' campaign seems to near its end.

CUOMO: On the Republican side, Trump is in a hole. He is now struggling to get those party leaders back around him. We all know what caused this. It was his latest attacks, this time on a judge and on the legal system.

So let's begin our coverage with Suzanne Malveaux live in Washington. Suzanne?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris. This was really an extraordinary coordinated effort by the White House and Hillary Clinton camp. The president hosting this high profile visit with Bernie Sanders at the White House. That was in the beginning of the day. Then just 90 minutes later the president releases this well- produced video on Facebook endorsing Clinton. The video that he made two days prior, Clinton getting a heads up about the endorsement as early as Sunday.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: An incredible show of force, top Democrats lining up behind Hillary Clinton.

BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm with her. I am fired up. And I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary.

MALVEAUX: President Obama endorsing Clinton just hours after meeting with Senator Bernie Sanders at the White House. The president and Clinton set to hit the campaign trail together in Wisconsin next week. Vice President Joe Biden following suit, making it clear who he thinks the next president should be.

JOE BIDEN, (D) VICE PRESIDENT: God willing, in my view, it will be Secretary Clinton.

MALVEAUX: And progressive senator, Elizabeth Warren, backing Clinton too.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, (D) MASSACHUSETTS: I am ready to get in this fight and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next president of the United States.

MALVEAUX: Warren, a liberal favorite, could be crucial in bridging the gap between Clinton and Sanders supporters. The coordinated endorsements stealing the thunder of Sanders trip to D.C. as his campaign winds down.

BERNIE SANDERS, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Needless to say, I am going to do everything in my power, and I will work as hard as I can to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the unit, states.

MALVEAUX: Sanders also helping to project unity by meeting with the vice president and Senate congressional leaders.

SANDERS: Here we are in mid-June, and we're still standing.

(APPLAUSE)

MALVEAUX: The question now is when will Sanders fully support Clinton as the nominee.

OBAMA: My hope is that over the next couple of weeks, we're able to pull things together. The main role I'm going to be playing in this process is to remind the American people that this is a serious job. You know, this is not reality TV.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: President Obama and Hillary Clinton will hit the campaign trail on Wednesday, that is in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It will be the first of several joint appearances that will lead up to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia just weeks away now. The president hopes to use his high approval rating and his appeal to the young voters and help garner support for Clinton. He also has a legacy to preserve in future Supreme Court nominations that are critical to the Democratic Party. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, Suzanne, thanks so much for all of that.

If Hillary Clinton was looking for an attack dog to unleash on Donald Trump, she found one in Elizabeth Warren. The Democratic senator unloading on Trump in a fiery speech, some wonder whether it was an audition for the VP slot. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARREN: Even disqualifying judges based on their professional background isn't enough for Donald Trump. Trump tells everyone who will listen that he is a great businessman. But let's be honest. He is just a guy who inherited a fortune and kept it rolling along by cheating people.

In America, we have the rule of law. And that means no matter how rich you are, no matter how loud you are, no matter how famous you are, if you break the law, you can be held accountable even if your name is Donald Trump.

(APPLAUSE)

WARREN: Trump is criticizing Judge Curiel for following the law instead of bending it to suit the financial interests of one wealthy and oh so fragile defendant.

(APPLAUSE)

[08:05:08] WARREN: Now, Trump also whined that he is being treated unfairly because the judge happens to be, we believe, Mexican. And when he got called out, he doubled down by saying "I'm building a wall. It's an inherent conflict of interest."

(LAUGHTER)

WARREN: He has personally, personally directed his army of campaign surrogates to step up their own public attacks on Judge Curiel. He has even condemned federal judges who are Muslim on the disgusting theory that Trump's own bigotry compromises the judge's neutrality.

(LAUGHTER)

WARREN: You can't make this stuff up.

(APPLAUSE)

WARREN: We will not allow a small insecure, thin-skinned, want to be tyrant or his allies in the Senate to destroy the rule of law in the United States of America. We will not.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right, let's discuss the impact of that, the strategy behind it, and the road ahead with CNN's senior political commentator and former senior advisor to Barack Obama, David, "The Ax," Axelrod. How are you doing, my friend.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning. I'm great. I'm great.

CUOMO: We have three big issues. Warren insertion and what it will mean to the race. We have what this race seems to be about now, which is your word, temperament versus ethics, and then what we're seeing in terms of the Clinton process toward unity.

Let's start with Warren's impact. What do you think about this tactic, using her to go after Donald Trump in a way that Clinton seems slow to want to do. And what does it mean for her future within this campaign, Warren? Is this an introduction to her as a VP?

AXELROD: Well, look, she has taken on this role herself, even before she endorsed Secretary Clinton. She has been out there, and she has been hitting Trump hard, and obviously getting under his skin, because he keeps reacting to her both on Twitter and in his public interactions. So she is striking a nerve, and she'll continue to do that, I'm sure.

And that, you know, often is the role of a vice presidential nominee, to take the attack to the opponent. Whether she becomes the nominee or not, I don't know. Bur she is smart. She is incisive, and obviously speaks to a base of the Democratic Party.

CUOMO: And let's go to what this means. You know, there was all this talk out of the Clinton campaign, give Sanders room. Let's see what happens. Maybe he goes to the convention. And then as soon as the door shuts on his way out of the Oval Office, all these endorsements roll out. The president has a video ready where he is supporting Clinton. You have got Biden there. You have Warren there. What do you think of the timing, and what does this remind you of with your experience in 2008 when Clinton dropped out and you had to negotiate the unity with then senator Obama?

AXELROD: Yes. Well, first of all, I think the most important thing that happened yesterday is what Bernie Sanders said when he came out of the White House. His statement was about as good as it could be from the standpoint of Hillary Clinton. Though he didn't endorse her, it was clear that he was declaring himself part of the team, that he was going to be out there in the fall, working, you know, to defeat Donald Trump, and by implication to elect Hillary Clinton. And none of the sort of fractious language we heard before was part of his statement. Any Democrat could have embraced the statement that he made. So I think she must have been very heartened by what Bernie Sanders said yesterday.

And he clearly knew that that tape was coming. These endorsements were coming. The president, it seems to me, has been very, very careful throughout this process to be of Bernie Sanders and of his supporters. Remember, this is a president who was elected by a movement such as the movement that really propelled Bernie Sanders, and he wasn't going to lie on the tracks to stop that movement.

But now the race is over. It is clearly over. And that process is moving forward. And it's different, Chris, than 2008, because there wasn't a sitting president in 2008 popular within the Democratic Party to bring people together.

And I will say this. I have great sympathy for Senator Sanders and his supporters in that you're going 100 miles an hour, you're completely dedicated to what you're doing, and then the thing comes to a screeching halt and expected to extend your hand and say, OK, now I'm for you. That's a hard thing to do. It's a process. I think yesterday was a big step forward in that process.

[08:10:02] CUOMO: Temperament versus ethics. What we're seeing with Trump right now, his comment about the judge, his misstatement of the conditions of his own trial, his refusal to apology, his doubling down, the GOP now recoiling, the leadership, versus well, what about Clinton? What about what she did in Benghazi? What about what she did with the e-mails? What about what we see with her and the Clinton Global Initiative? How do you see this match-up?

AXELROD: Well, look, he is going to try to insert that discussion back into the bloodstream on, apparently on Monday is what he said, and we'll see how successful. He isn't changing the narrative. We just went through a week that was the best week by far for Hillary Clinton and her whole campaign, starting with her speech last Thursday in San Diego where she really took it to Trump hard, and I think provoked him to react in ways that sent him in the other direction. And now you see the Democratic Party unifying and he having trouble unifying the Republican Party.

He needs to change the narrative, and he is going to try and do it apparently with a big blast on this question because her liability, if you look at polling, is on some of these questions of trustworthiness. His liability is on preparedness and temperament and whether people can actually picture him in that office. And so he needs to sort of blast the thing back to the other discussion. And it's going to be hard to do because right now, it is very much the debate is very much on her terms. CUOMO: It's interesting. It sounds like you're making this week

not to be a complete accident. You think Clinton helped Trump have a bad week. How so?

AXELROD: There is no question about it. I think her speech was so provocative last Thursday that, you know, and some of his intemperate remarks about the judge followed her attack. It is almost as if he wanted to change the subject. So, you know, I think that what we've learned is that he is very reactive.

What happened in the Republican primaries was that many of his opponents tried to navigate around him without going right at him, and they ended up playing the game on their side of the field, and he was on offense. She put him on defense, and he doesn't play defense particularly well. So I think there was a message in that for the Clinton campaign, which is try to keep him on defense. And I think you'll see that moving forward.

And, you know, one thing I want to say, these are -- there is an eternity between now and November.

CUOMO: It's 150 days.

AXELROD: Each of these candidate will have -- each of these candidate also have good days and bad days and we'll undoubtedly be breathless abo all of it. but at the end of the day, I have this feeling that you saw the outlines of at least the Clinton campaign this week, and the potential it has to set -- to put Trump on the back of his heels.

CUOMO: Well, Ax, you were a ballplayer. We now know who Clinton's five are, right. She has Obama, Biden, she's got Bill Clinton, she's got Warren, and maybe Sanders will be on the starting team as well. We've got to see who Trump can put around him because you can't do it all by yourself.

Let's take a look at the road ahead because you see something in the choice the candidates are making. Let's put up where Clinton is going, all right. These are somewhat typical stops, except for Wisconsin. What do you think that's about, going to Wisconsin? What do you see in her first choices? She'll thereby with Obama, of course.

AXELROD: Yes, it's not surprising that she would go to the Midwest. Wisconsin, honestly, Democrats have won the last two elections in Wisconsin, but it is a competitive state.

CUOMO: She lost it to Sanders too.

AXELROD: It's not one to be taken for granted. She did. You know, the Midwest generally is going to be a battleground. I expect you're going see her in Ohio, you're going to see her in Pennsylvania, you're going to see her surrogates there.

I want to go back to the point you made for a second, though, which is you named the big five she will have out there. Then you say, well, who does Trump put on the court? And the problem for Donald Trump is that he is the only player on the court. You know, he takes up so much room, and there is so much reluctance on the part of other Republicans to take the court with him that he is outmanned right now. And it is going to be a problem for him unless he can find a way to bring some of these big Republican guns in, very few of whom match up with the people who Clinton has. So, you know, when you make yourself the entire show, it's hard to field a team of five.

[08:15:04] CUOMO: President Obama is one of the best of using late night to get across serious messages within the entertainment context. Let's take a look at what he did with Jimmy Fallon and get your take on it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY FALLON, THE TONIGHT SHOW HOST: Thank you, Hillary Clinton, for possibly becoming the first president. I would have said female, but someone deleted the e-mail.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you, Congress, for spending eight years wishing you could replace me with a Republican. Or to put it another way, how do you like me now?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: He plays the straight man very well. But obviously, a little relish there in his tone as well. Your take?

AXELROD: Oh, yes. No, look, I think he -- I've known him obviously for a very long time. I think he is in a very good place right now. He feels good about what he has been able to accomplish, very focused on preserving those gains and building on them.

He has deep affection and respect for Hillary Clinton. So, he is not going out there ambivalently. He is going to go out there full bore. He is waiting for the moment to jump into the race and engage in the debate. And you know, I think we're going to see a lot of him between now and November.

CUOMO: David Axelrod, always a pleasure. Enjoy your weekend, my friend.

AXELROD: Same to you.

CUOMO: Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris, Democrats fire all cylinders at Donald Trump. Next, we ask a Trump surrogate how the presumptive Republican nominee is responding.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:20:26] JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It is not the racism that frightens me. We've dealt with racists before. It is the potential impact on the courts.

To use the office for presidency, were he to acquire it, to intimidate and undermine an independent judiciary would be blatantly unconstitutional abuse of power.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. Hillary Clinton expanding her arsenal with the president, the vice-president, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, all of them ramping up attacks against Trump.

Let's bring in Boris Epshteyn. He's a Trump campaign surrogate and a Republican strategist.

Boris, thanks so much for being here.

BORIS EPSHTEYN, TRUMP CAMPAIGN SURROGATE: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: It has been exactly two weeks since Donald Trump first made his comments about the judge's Mexican heritage and not being able to sit on the Trump University case, he felt fairly. Why do you think this one, these comments of Donald Trump have stuck around longer than some of the other things he has said?

EPSHTEYN: Well, you're seeing the message move on. You are seeing the news of the day get past it. Hopefully, we'll move on quickly as well.

I think this was an issue that got misconstrued completely. What he was saying and we talked about this before, this specific judge based on his believes cannot be fair to the specific --

CAMEROTA: Because of his Mexican heritage.

EPSHTEYN: Not that he is somehow unable to be a judge or not fit to be a judge in general, just unfair to Donald Trump. And if you look at the background of the judge, look at his beliefs, look at his membership of a group that supports illegal immigration, that makes perfect sense.

CAMEROTA: Let's remind the audience, since you think that the media misconstrued. Let's remind the audience of what Donald Trump said about this judge's Mexican heritage. Listen.

EPSHTEYN: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This judge is of Mexican heritage. I'm building a wall, OK. His Mexican heritage and very proud of it.

I'm building a wall, OK. I'm building a wall. I'm trying to keep business out of Mexico. He is proud of his heritage, OK, I'm building a wall. We're building a wall. He is a Mexican.

We're building a wall between here and Mexico. This judge is giving us unfair rulings. Now I say why. Well, I want to -- I'm building a wall, OK. And it is a wall between Mexico. Not another country.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

CAMEROTA: Boris, I don't want to spend time re-litigating, but it was perceived as racist, even by fellow Republicans. For this particular statement, more than the Muslim ban, more than anything that he had said about women, this one is what fellow Republicans have fastened on to and it doesn't seem to be going away.

EPSHTEYN: Some Republicans, it is going away. Paul Ryan who made the racist comment, I completely disagree. Definition of racism, by saying one ethnicity is better than another. This is no wayside that, nor did it in that sound byte that you play.

And Paul Ryan then came back and had a meeting internally on the Hill the next day, and said, we should unify behind Donald Trump.

So, Republicans --

CAMEROTA: Are you sure? That's not what he said publicly. Who did he tell privately to unify behind Donald Trump?

EPSHTEYN: Tuesday was the comment he made I believe, and on Wednesday, he had an internal meeting and came out and said we need to unify behind Donald Trump. If you look at the news coverage day-to- day, that's what happened.

CAMEROTA: He said again yesterday how disheartened he was by Donald Trump's comments. Let me lay for you --

EPSHTEYN: Disheartened and move on.

CAMEROTA: No, he was offended. I mean, I think that's actually a stronger word.

EPSHTEYN: Why was he offended?

CAMEROTA: Because he thinks the comments were racist and he doesn't think that the standard bearer of the party should be making comments like that.

EPSHTEYN: Paul Ryan is somebody who's one congressman. He's speaker of the House. Now, Congress has 20 percent approval rating. What we need to be focusing on what Donald Trump will be doing for this country, for the economy, for national security, for foreign policy.

CAMEROTA: It's more than just one congressman. Let me play for you all of the Republicans who have come out to speak against Donald Trump.

EPSHTEYN: And then let's talk about what Donald Trump will do for the country, right?

CAMEROTA: Let's first hear this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY), SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: He needs to quit these attacks on various Americans.

GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R), WISCONSIN: It's at odds not just as a party. It's at odds with who we are as Americans.

REP. SCOTT KINZINGER (R), ILLINOIS: I feel like a broken record because I say this all the time. But I continually am disappointed.

SEN. JEFF FLAKE (R), ARIZONA: It's kind of a moot point whether you'll have a Trump presidency, because he won't be in the White House if he continues to make these statements.

REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Do I think these antics and give us a campaign we cannot be proud of? Yes, I've spoken very clearly about it.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

CAMEROTA: They couldn't be more clear. They couldn't be stronger.

And, Boris, here is the thing. It now does appear to be affecting his poll numbers. For the first time after incendiary comments, we're actually seeing a dip in Donald Trump's poll numbers.

Let me pull up the latest. This is a FOX News poll out this week, he has dropped six points since last month.

[08:25:00] Not the same can be said of Hillary Clinton, who has stayed steady since May. Donald Trump went from 42 to 36. Clinton, 39-39. Gary Johnson in the race, he has gone up from 10 percent to 12 percent. So

So, it does seem to be affecting him.

EPSHTEYN: Well, first of all, it is the margin of error, right. He is effectively tied with Hillary Clinton, with five months to go.

CAMEROTA: He's going down from last month.

EPSHTEYN: And if you look at the state by state polls, which are extremely important, Trump is up in Florida, tied in Pennsylvania, which is huge for a Republican this early on, and up in Ohio.

CAMEROTA: So, you're not concerned about the national polls. Do you think that had he come out and apologized when this started to get a ground swell of people who said it was offensive it would have helped?

EPSHTEYN: Absolutely not. Dukakis was up by 10 points after coming out of the conventions in 1988, and we know what happened. So, I'm not worried about polls early on, again within the margin of error. I'm very confident that Trump will win on November 8th.

And apologizing, not what he stands for, been disappointed to a lot of his backers. So, I think, he did the right thing and staying on message, making America great again and on the economy, foreign policy, national security and immigration.

CAMEROTA: Boris Epstein, thank you for representing the Trump side.

EPSHTEYN: My pleasure.

CAMEROTA: We want to tell you about this: CNN exclusive, Wolf Blitzer will interview Mitt Romney on "THE SITUATION ROOM" at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. It is great timing for this interview. You'll see it only on CNN.

Chris?

CUOMO: Another big name: Vice President Biden adding his name to the chorus of people supporting the rape survivor at Stanford. His passionate words of encouragement and more on the efforts to oust the judge, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)