Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Gov. Pence Has Been Vocal Trump Supporter; 84 Killed in France Terror Attack; France Terror Attack Impacts 2016 Race. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired July 15, 2016 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:01] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump said months ago he wanted a political insider as his number two. Mike Pence certainly fits that description. He's the former or current governor and also former congressman. He's got a lot of experience and connections in Washington that frankly Trump just doesn't have.

So, what more do you need to know about this man?

Our Sunlen Serfaty reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOV. MIKE PENCE (R), INDIANA: I'm supporting Donald Trump because we need change in this country.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Indiana Governor Mike Pence, a veteran Washington insider --

PENCE: I'm prepared to make that case anywhere across Indiana and anywhere across this country that Donald Trump would want me to.

SERFATY: Bringing that expertise and executive experience, noted for message discipline while bringing social conservatism to the ticket.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: You have a really good governor here. You have a Nice guy and he's a good governor.

SERFATY: Pence hasn't always been aligned with team Trump. During the GOP primary, he endorsed Trump's opponent, Senator Ted Cruz.

PENCE: I'm not against anybody, but I will be voting for Ted Cruz in the upcoming Republican primary.

SERFATY: But in this interview, he also singled out and praised Donald Trump.

PENCE: I particularly want to commend Donald Trump, who I think has given voice to the frustration of millions of working Americans with a lack of progress in Washington, D.C.

SERFATY: That endorsement of Cruz was seen as lukewarm at best.

PENCE: I'm going to work my heart out to make sure we elect a Republican president in the fall of 2016.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Even if it's Donald Trump?

PENCE: Look, I'm going to support the Republican nominee because Indiana needs a partner in Washington, D.C.

BASH: Even mocked by his future running mate.

TRUMP: Most people think it was more of an endorsement for me than it was for Cruz. It was the weakest endorsement anyone has seen.

SERFATY: But there have been times when Governor Pence has also been critical of Donald Trump, calling Trump out over his attacks on the ethnicity of the judge overseeing the Trump University case.

PENCE: Of course, I think those comments were inappropriate. I don't think it's ever appropriate to question the partiality of a judge based on their ethnic background.

SERFATY: And splitting with the GOP nominee over his call during the primary to ban pence calling Trump's proposal offensive and unconstitutional, criticism that Pence has tried to downplay in recent weeks.

PENCE: I'm supporting Donald Trump, not because I've agreed with everything that he's ever said. I've occasionally taken issue with things that he said myself. And Republicans have every right to do that. But I think at the end of the day, it's important we come together around our nominee.

Let's do more.

SERFATY: Pence served as a congressman for six terms in the U.S. House, rising quickly to prominence by taking on top House leadership positions.

PENCE: This fight is not over.

SERFATY: A role that could help pence now as he works to unite the Republican Party.

Sunlen Serfaty, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. We'll certainly be hearing more about that throughout the morning.

You are looking at live pictures of French President Francois Hollande. He's now on the ground in Nice. He's going to go to the scene of the attack, and we do expect him to speak. When he does, we will bring it to you live.

The latest information is that there is no claim of responsibility yet for the terror attack there. We have an eyewitness to the attack, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:37:21] HARLOW: The Bastille Day celebrations along the French Riviera quickly turning into absolute horror. Witnesses are describing chaos and confusion. Let's just take a moment and look at some of this video coming in and listen.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

HARLOW: A man caught in the middle of that, Eric Drattell. He and his wife were at a nearby restaurant and bar when the attack broke out. He joins me live from Nice.

Take me back to the moment. What was going through your mind as you and your wife ran from the gunshots?

ERIC DRATTELL, WITNESS TO NICE TERROR ATTACK: I didn't even realize what they were. We heard these sounds, the pop, pop, pop sounds. My wife, oddly enough she's deaf, she recognized the sounds as gunfire. We immediately ran toward an open area underneath the Promenade des Anglais, with the restaurant had storage, and toilets and whatnot.

And we crowded in with about 100 people into that storage area. We were in one toilet stall. There were probably about ten people in the stall.

You had no time to think. You just had time to react. That's what we did.

HARLOW: The fact that this happened just as the fireworks were going off is something that so many people are pointing to as a sign of how perhaps well-planned and horrifically executed this was. Did this happen immediately at the same time as though fireworks were ending in your experience?

DRATTELL: No, the fireworks had ended probably about 10:30, maybe a little bit before. We were having a glass of wine and settling our bill, so it had to be, I would say, anywhere from five to ten minutes after the end of the fireworks.

The finale was very obvious. So, we certainly didn't mistake it for the official fireworks. It could have been somebody setting off fire crackers. I wouldn't have known. As I said, my wife immediately recognized the sound as gunfire.

HARLOW: This is the third major attack in France in the last 18 months. You had "Charlie Hebdo," then the attack at the Bataclan in Paris in November. And now this. As an American going to Paris, did you think about that? Did it go through your mind? Were you nervous at all about security?

DRATTELL: So, we were in Paris initially, and there was a pretty extensive police presence throughout Paris.

[06:40:03] We went then to Provence and there was again pretty extensive police presence.

We came to Nice last Saturday. There weren't a lot of police obvious. We went to the fan zone for the football finals with Portugal and France on Sunday night and decided at the end not to enter, in part because there was such an enormous congestion of people.

We were worried if there was going to be something that happened, it could happen there. So, once nothing happened, we sort of pushed it out of our minds. Last night, the promenade was closed to traffic, and everybody was just enjoying being outside.

Terrorism was the furthest thing from our minds while we were enjoying the fireworks.

HARLOW: Let's look at this map, because this shows you over a mile, that is how long the attacker drove, running over people over and over and over again. It is stunning. We are now hearing that there are some 50 children in the hospital being treated.

What can you tell us, if anything, especially about the children, the youngest of the victims? Did you witness any of that?

DRATTELL: The only thing we saw as we were being evacuated from the beach to a hotel was we saw a child's stroller, a program that had been obviously run over. And then, later, as we were being allowed to go back to our hotel, we could see bodies all over the road, but honestly couldn't tell which were children and which were adults. They were all covered.

HARLOW: What were people saying?

DRATTELL: I'm sorry?

HARLOW: What were people say? What were you hearing in those moments?

DRATTELL: Initially after the attack, there was just a lot of screaming, people were crying. People of all ages had crowded into the restaurant area.

There were maybe 100 people initially, some of whom had jumped off the promenade down to the beach, which is probably three to four meters off beach level. And when we moved over to the first hotel, where we were evacuated to, there were -- the emotions were full range from people who were going to sleep on the floor, to people who were just standing there sobbing. Of course, there were children, some playing and some obviously pretty shocked by what they saw.

HARLOW: And now today in the aftermath, as the sun has come up to display just a beautiful Nice, for everything that it is, a place where people go to enjoy themselves in the summer. This is the height of the tourist season. What is the mood there today?

DRATTELL: Very, very somber. We were in our hotel. Our hotel made special accommodations for everybody.

The mood is very somber. A lot of people were trying to check out. You can hear perhaps overhead planes are flying in and out of the Nice airport. We're scheduled to fly back to London, where we live, tomorrow. We intend to keep that flight.

It's just -- we're not ready to leave today. It's too shocking.

HARLOW: I can imagine.

Eric Drattell, thank you so much for sharing that with us. I'm very sorry you had to experience it. Thank you.

DRATTELL: Sure.

HARLOW: Chris?

CUOMO: All right. So, a big question now becomes, how do you respond? France's anti-terror officials are investigating the brutal attack in Nice. If it were terror, it would be the latest attack outside ISIS territory. What can we make of this widening spread of terror, and are there any patterns to the attack?

CNN contributor Michael Weiss is a co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror", he's a senior editor at "The Daily Beast."

Michael, thank you for joining us.

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Sure.

CUOMO: Let's just start with the basic proposition here before we get to these specifics of comparison. You cannot stop attacks like this, certainly not in France, not with the population the have. They have as much police power now as they can. They have a state of emergency, it was just extended.

A random lone wolf guy who's going to rent a truck and get a weapon with these contiguous borders very easily is not something you have a very good chance of anticipating, true?

WEISS: No, exactly. Is knows that, and that's why in 2014, their spokesman al-Adnani came out with this global injunction saying, look, you don't have to be a trained operative, you don't have to spend time in Syria, you don't even have to know how to wield a gun. You have a knife, take a knife, stab somebody in the heart. You have a rock, take a rock, smash the infidel's head. You have a car, get in your car and just drive over people.

That seems to be what this guy did.

CUOMO: And here's the frightening simplicity is that this is Nice. This is an old in number. We know there are at least 84, there are many people who are still in critical condition fighting for their lives. That number could go up.

WEISS: Yes.

CUOMO: This was one guy, fake stuff in the back.

[06:45:03] As far as we know, one weapon and one truck. In terms of planning and sophistication and a need to cultivate somebody like this, how low is the bar?

WEISS: He had one active rifle that he was armed with. He either rented or bought a truck. That's all it took.

CUOMO: That's all it took.

WEISS: This is very low-tech kind of operation.

CUOMO: By contrast, the last time we were in Paris, it wasn't for an anniversary of an attack but for an actual attack, was something very different.

WEISS: Yes.

CUOMO: How so?

WEISS: Well, these guys were trained up operatives. After the attack, ISIS released a propaganda video showing them running around the cow patches of Raqqah, giving these lectures to the camera, identifying themselves, dressed in the black-clad outfits and so on. They were trained.

And in fact -- and this is what makes it so scary the guy who is in charge of what's the foreign intelligence apparatus of ISIS is a French national. He's from Toulouse. We don't know his legal name. Maybe the French do at this point, but his kunya is Abu Sulayman al- Fransi.

The French are all over this guy. French counterterrorism officials, the French intelligence. The rumor was a few weeks ago the Turkish-Syrian border by the Turks. If that's the case, it's because he was fleeing from northern Syria, where the caliphate continues to be shrunk by the pro-coalition forces.

This could well be the reason or the incentive for his entire network back in France to start escalating these attacks, and not just a network, but to encourage people. If you were in ISIS-held territory and you managed to go back to Europe, maybe you're not going to set something off, but you're going to start to talk to your friends and your cousin and your brother and encourage people.

CUOMO: Very early on, experts like you drew a very simple conclusion that we've all been ignoring, which is you are fighting an idea. If we look at the map here right now, OK, you have San Bernardino and Orlando. Those have been the two latest flash points here in the United States. Zero level of sophistication. Maybe this guy was duped by this woman online, he wound up marrying, he got radicalized.

But very low level. It was the idea. Orlando, this madman who goes in there and does whatever he does under the guise of zealotry. That was the idea. What happened here, in all likelihood, will turn out to be the idea. Then, you have these ones happening farther east that are just as likely to be planned as unplanned and random.

WEISS: Exactly.

CUOMO: So, what is the real enemy and how do you combat it?

WEISS: Well, it is the ideology, first and foremost. But it's also -- it's a banner, I should say. A lot of people -- I spent three days interviewing an ISIS defector who was actually imprisoned by them in Raqqah. The question everyone asks of these guys is, why did you join?

Invariably -- and we're focused on the broad, international phenomenon, guys in California or Florida. When you're in the region, a lot of people are going over to the caliphate because of guns and money, for pragmatic reasons. And they are living the caliphate for similar pragmatic reasons.

But for them, it was, look, these guys are successful. They built a nation state called the Islamic state. They have a welfare system.

They pay their fighters well. They subsidize the families. Your wife gets money. Your in-laws get money. Your kids get money. If you're sick, they'll send you to Turkey to go to hospital and get health care.

They're broadcasting this world historical messianic vision. It's not jus about ushering in the end times and apocalypse. It's about, look, we've managed to achieve in a very short period of time what other quasi or dysfunctional governments in the Middle East have not achieved.

CUOMO: Yes.

WEISS: That's a rallying cry. You don't have to be an Islamist to be even be drawn to it.

CUOMO: At the end of the day, it's just what they can give them.

WEISS: Exactly.

CUOMO: That's why the big battle against the idea to create opportunities for these people so they don't have to seek out extremists.

WEISS: Exactly.

CUOMO: Michael Weiss, we keep having the same conversation because we keep dealing with the same reality.

Poppy?

HARLOW: Absolutely. Important perspective. It all plays into the politics of today.

The terror attack in France, the third in 18 months, and other major terror attacks around the world having a major impact on the presidential race in the United States. The candidates are responding in different ways, very different ways. We'll discuss it all ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:51:57] HARLOW: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton striking very different tones as they respond to yet another deadly attack.

Joining us now to talk about all of this, CNN politics digital reporter Eric Bradner. CNN political commentator and political anchor of Time Warner Cable News, Errol Louis, and CNN political analyst and national political reporter for "The New York Times", Alex Burns.

Thank you, all, for being here.

Let's just take a moment and let's listen to how Hillary Clinton responded in the wake of this attack and how Donald Trump responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE (via telephone): If you look at it, this is war. If you look at it, this is war, coming from all different parts. And, frankly, it's war and we're dealing with people without uniforms.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE (via telephone): It's a very different kind of war and we could be easily misled. We've got to be smart about this. Not, you know, not get pushed or pulled into taking action that doesn't have the positive effects it needs to have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Alex, to you. More measured response, some would say, from Clinton. And Trump says this is war. When you look at the polling, "Times" polling, your own paper, has them tied on terror, but Trump does a lot better when people are asked who can combat ISIS more effectively.

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It's one of the really interesting phenomena in this campaign, Poppy. Even though Clinton is generally seen as stronger on national security and stronger on whether she has the temperament to be commander in chief, on that narrower question of ISIS, Trump pretty consistently outperform her. I think you're seeing exactly why. His response to an attack like this is to vent the anger and the fear the people are feeling right now.

And over the long run, it may work for Clinton to be the candidate who's out there saying, let's slow down, let's not do anything rash. But in the moment, Trump is offering people that kind of instant gratification.

CUOMO: Eric Bradner, this gets complicated though because, you know, calling it war, really touches on a mistake that the U.S. has made from the beginning here. Congress has not declared war. They haven't wanted to. They haven't wanted to own this. They haven't even debated the authorization for use of military force.

It's the only time in our political recent story where we've seen them say, no, no, it's OK. The president can do whatever they want, whatever they want.

So, it's interesting that Trump is kind of coaxing out this idea of, hey, let's get going on this, isn't it?

ERIC BRADNER, CNN POLITICS, DIGITAL REPORTER: That's absolutely right. So in terms of tone, Trump is reacting in force while Clinton reacts with precision. But in terms of actually implementing, what they're talking about, Trump would have less power. He'd have to go to Congress. He would need authorization that Clinton is not talking about getting.

It's one of the sort of fascinating elements of this. And perhaps reflects a candidate without the long political experience on this topic. He doesn't perhaps know or isn't used to the dealings of Congress, asking for an authorization for use of military force would require, and why that's so touchy.

So, if you listen to their answers, Trump is more forceful, bit in effect less powerful, perhaps, in terms of his ability to execute what he's talking about.

[06:55:03] HARLOW: And here's the thing, Errol Louis, to you. Hillary Clinton is inextricably tied to the Obama administration when it comes to fighting terrorists. And that is something that Donald Trump, after every attack like this, can come at her with and say you are part and parcel of a failed policy, he would call it, in Syria.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICS COMMENTATOR: In some ways, she's not only tied to the Obama administration but she's tied to a diplomacy as traditionally practiced in the United States. Donald Trump says what in effect amounts to bouncing the rubble around in Damascus a little bit more. I don't know how much more of a plan he's got here.

She's really talking about let's bring our allies together, let's have a conference, what she calls an intelligence surge which invokes the military surge of the Bush administration but also sort of talks about intelligence, which is something that doesn't involve troops on the ground and people's sons and daughters.

So, she's very carefully and very deliberately trying to sort of find a way forward, and he just says let's bomb the heck out of them. As long as you say that, any administration, whether it's the Obama administration, bush administration, talking about traditional diplomacy, lining up allies, trying to figure it out, starts to sound weak by comparison. Trump appeals to a different kind of, sort of part of the brain of the American public.

CUOMO: So why wouldn't everybody do this, Alex? Why wouldn't you always come out of the box as strong as possible? There's a fear of overreach. There's a fear of then scaring the American people and taking them to a place they don't want to be, which is certainly the case when it comes to boots on the ground overseas.

Let' make no mistake, Obama won this election by saying he'd get out of Iraq.

HARLOW: Yes.

CUOMO: You know, for all the talk about his history as a person, you know, that was very big in that election. Then you had the economic downturn.

So, then, you have Newt Gingrich, who takes it a step further, this idea of how do we be forceful here. Let's play what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH (R), FORMER HOUSE SPEAKER: Western civilization is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background. If they believe in Sharia, they should be deported. Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right. Let's put aside the possibility of this. I don't know how you get this past any kind of institutional muster. I don't.

HARLOW: Or how you carry it out.

CUOMO: But forget about all that. I'm just saying the concept, Alex, of doing this, what's the plus/minus politically?

BURNS: Oh, politically, I mean, if you're Newt Gingrich and you see Donald Trump vacillating over a choice of vice president and you see this backdrop of terrorism, as Trump is making that decision, as Newt if you go out there and play to the gallery and go even further than Trump has gone in talking about cracking down on Muslim- Americans, maybe you get another look at the top of the ticket.

HARLOW: That's assuming, Eric, you were a former reporter at the statehouse in Indiana and know Pence well, that's assuming that perhaps Donald Trump might make a flip-flop here on his choice on V.P. that we have all indications it's going to be pence. Do you read it the way Alex reads it?

BRADNER: Absolutely. Donald Trump has not publicly announced that Mike Pence is his running mate yet. He's sort of tried to build drama for this to keep the suspense. We know that he has made an offer, and it's been accepted, but until it's publicly announced, this is Donald Trump after all. This is a candidate who's done a million things that we've not seen before.

So, yes, absolutely. Newt Gingrich is sensing an opportunity here. His argument as Trump's running mate, as a Trump ally, anything along those lines has been that the two of them are simpatico on these sorts of things. They're both willing to go farther than many politicians would. And this is a great example.

HARLOW: As he described it, two pi pirates on one ticket. Gentlemen, thank you all. Important discussion. Thank you.

CUOMO: All right. We have a lot of new developments on the France terror attack. Let's get to it.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CUOMO: If you're just joining us, welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY.

There has been another major terror attack in France. A man firing into a crowd in Nice, then getting into a truck, plowing through people celebrating Bastille Day, which is the equivalent of the American Fourth of July. At this hour, at least 84 have been killed.

There are many still fighting for their lives. Among the dead, two Americans on vacation there. A mile-long rampage all along this city's famed promenade.

HARLOW: It was a horrifying scene. Hundreds and hundreds of people running for their lives, all captured on the video you're seeing now. French President Francois Hollande in Nice, landing just moments ago, meeting with officials there.

He will soon visit the injured in the hospital.

We begin our coverage this morning with CNN's senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward who is live for us in Nice.