Return to Transcripts main page
New Day
I s The GOP Inclusive Enough With Minorities?; Does GOP Have A Diversity Problem?; Poll: Most Latinos See Trump Unfavorably; Sen. Cruz Booed After Failing To Endorse Trump; NYT: Trump Sets Conditions For Defending NATO Allies; Ivanka On Growing Up Trump. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired July 21, 2016 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:32:50] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Senator Ted Cruz's snub of Donald Trump last night seems to steal some of the headlines this morning but others things are standing out, as well, at this convention.A very diverse set of speakers addressing the crowd last night, but a lack of minorities among the delegates on the convention floor -- not a lack, but a very small fraction, I would say, and that's raising a lot of questions.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: I think you could go with lack.
CAMEROTA: Well, it's raising eyebrows, either way. So here to discuss is Kentucky state senator, Ralph Alvarado. He spoke during last night's convention. Thanks so much for being here.
STATE SEN. RALPH ALVARADO (R), KENTUCKY: My pleasure, thank you for having me.
CAMEROTA: So, do you think that there are enough diversity, people of color, represented?
ALVARADO: I don't know what that number would be and people always talk about that. They ask you do we have enough, do we need more? I always try to think of, you know, quality versus quantity sometimes. But, you know, I'm here. I'm pleased to be here as a Hispanic, a Latino. I'm the first one elected in the Kentucky General Assembly to kind of -- to represent.
And I've met quite a few people, at least last night. I keep meeting people every night that come over and introduce themselves. Folks that are Hispanic, African-American, and from folks that are there, so I've seen diversity on the floor. I haven't counted them, per se, to see how many there are. I know some folks like to do that but for me it's not always about finding out how many you've got, you know. You want to have a diversity of what people are there to represent those views.
CUOMO: Well, two things. One, your message was powerful and it really is a projection of what the best potential future possibility is for the party --
ALVARADO: Sure.
CUOMO: -- which is this kind of reconnection with an emerging middle- class --
ALVARADO: Sure.
CUOMO: -- and it was very well received, as you know. The second thing is that there ain't enough of you. These are the lowest -- this is the lowest number, ratio-wise, in a long time, when the idea was to grow the tent, right? You spent all that money on that report coming out of the last electoral cycle to figure out how to make the GOP resonate with your community and others --
ALVARADO: Sure.
CUOMO: -- and it seems to have gone backwards. Why, when there are lot of Alvarados out there?
ALVARADO: Yes, I think, well, my message is part of that attempt to reach out, right? There's a lot of -- if you're wanting to reach out you've got to start at some point. You know, I had sent out a kind of a communication earlier requesting for us to start reaching out. To that, I know Sen. Rand Paul, he's obviously in Kentucky. He's been making an attempt also, at least within our own state.
[07:35:00] CUOMO: But you guys pick a lot of the delegates. I'm saying that, you know, that you have control over whom you tap for these things. They're not, you know -- there's a very small number that are actually elected in there.
ALVARADO: Sure.
CUOMO: Why didn't they pick more?
ALVARADO: Yes, I don't know. I mean, I know in Kentucky we have a pretty good representation and you know, the Hispanic population isn't huge in Kentucky, it's growing. But I can only speak for Kentucky as far as states --
CUOMO: Because it's the second largest population in the United States --
ALVARADO: Yes, sure, absolutely.
CUOMO: -- so, you know --
ALVARADO: Absolutely, and we have to do a better attempt of messaging, getting that message out there, I think, in connecting with people that are Hispanic.
CAMEROTA: I don't think that we have the number of Hispanic delegates but we do for black delegates and it is a really surprisingly low number. Eighteen out of the 2,472 delegates are black, and that is the lowest number in a long time in people's memory. So what do you think is going on? ALVARADO: I don't know. I mean, I don't know what's going on. I know in terms of when people go to selections for a lot of these state conventions it goes from grassroots and makes its way up. So, you know, when we do ours in Kentucky we go from county level and the county would pick delegates that then go to the state convention.
From state convention, you pick delegates to go to the national convention. So it goes from grassroots up in different states. So, I don't -- I mean, I can't answer that question as to what they do in different states. I'm in Kentucky.
CUOMO: You're not to blame.
ALVARADO: No, I understand.
CUOMO: You're part of the solution --
ALVARADO: Yes.
CUOMO: -- and Latinos are certainly on the rise in this country --
ALVARADO: Right.
CUOMO: -- in all kinds of beneficial ways, and that's reflected somewhat at the convention. The question is just why it isn't more and is the answer Trump?
ALVARADO: Yes, well, I think -- well, I don't know that it's person. I think it's more of a message that -- again, last night in my speech I talked about that a little bit, is that we have values within the Republican Party that I think are shared by Hispanics in general and by the Latinos in general. We have -- you know, they're congruent.
We want to make sure that we reach out. That they understand this is what we stand for. That this is your party. And I think until that outreach occurs and we start getting that messaging out so the people can hear it, they're going to know that they can belong with us and that's just the attempt that we have to have. It's -- you've got to start at some point.
For me, as far as on a national scale, last night was my attempt to do that to get -- you know, to reach out to folks and say here's who we are. We're just like you. Come with us, you know, and let's grow this country.
CAMEROTA: Let's take a little listen to what you said in the convention hall last night.
CUOMO: Powerful.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALVARADO: What my parents did give me was family structure, discipline, support, high personal expectations, love, and faith in God. They were Hispanic, they were Americans, and they were very proud of being both. But this story is not unique to my family. It's the story of many legal Latino immigrants who come to America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: All right, so that's the message that you want to send. There are legal immigrants and they come here and they work hard and they believe in family --
ALVARADO: Sure.
CAMEROTA: -- and they have family values. But, somehow, that message is not getting out to lots of Hispanics. Here is the latest poll about how they feel about Donald Trump. Seventy-nine percent unfavorable towards Donald Trump, only 17 percent favorable. What's the disconnect?
ALVARADO: Yes, I think it's messaging is part of it, obviously. We've had, unfortunately, some rhetoric in messaging that hasn't been good, I think, at this point. So, again, I view myself as part of that attempt to reach out to folks to say --
CUOMO: How do you reach out when they say Trump doesn't like us? When you talk to Hispanics, he doesn't like us, he wants to send us back. That's their perception, real or fake. What do you say to them?
ALVARADO: Yes, I think it's the message that we had last night. I mean, you start -- you've got to reach out to people and say here's who we are. I'm Hispanic, I'm very proud to be Hispanic. I'm bilingual. You know, my parents came to this country legally. The message I want to get across is that people somehow perceive that all Latinos -- not all, but a lot of people perceive it that we're just a bunch of peasants --
CUOMO: Right.
ALVARADO: -- crawling across the border begging for handouts. We're professionals -- lawyers, engineers, doctors. Even the people that often work in our hotels that you see there making your bed may be an engineer or they may be a lawyer back in their home country that don't have the credentials to practice that here in this country. But they are people that are very bright and very capable.
And I want to mention that people out there, particularly the Republican Party, particularly people at home, and Latinos watching know that we know that about them. That we know that hey, we know that you're professional, you're capable, that you're more than just somebody that's looking for a handout. We want self-sufficiency. We want to be able to provide for ourselves and we don't want the government to support us.
CAMEROTA: Senator Alvarado, thanks so much for being here on NEW DAY.
ALVARADO: My pleasure, thank you.
CAMEROTA: Great to see you.
ALVARADO: Appreciate it, thank you.
CAMEROTA: All right, Donald Trump breaking precedent, setting conditions to defend NATO allies. How is his strategy being received in the U.S. and abroad? One of the men behind the Brexit will weigh in on Donald Trump next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:42:45]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you love our country and love your children as much as I know that you do, stand and speak and vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: All right, that was Sen. Ted Cruz last night, and his speech has people here at the Republican Convention talking. The Texas senator did not endorse Donald Trump and he left the stage to loud boos.
Here to discuss is former Republican governor of Texas and former presidential candidate, Rick Perry. He has endorsed Donald Trump. Governor, thanks so much for being here.
RICK PERRY (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, FORMER GOVERNOR OF TEXAS: You're welcome.
CAMEROTA: What did you think of what Ted Cruz did last night?
PERRY: Well, I wasn't on the floor so I didn't get the full impact, but I was watching it on T.V. so -- you know, if a convention's goal is to unite your party behind one candidate, Sen. Cruz didn't get the memo.
CAMEROTA: That went off message. I mean, you know, do you think that the Trump campaign knew he was going to do that?
PERRY: I suspect they did. I mean, again, I don't know all inner workings and behind the scenes, but I would have been shocked if they didn't have a preview of that speech before it was given, so probably one of the reasons that Mr. Trump made a very dramatic entry at a particular time last night.
So, listen, this is about the party coming behind Donald Trump and I've been very vocal about that -- listen, nobody peeled Donald Trump's skin off any more than I did during the primary process. It was a --
CAMEROTA: You called him a cancer on conservatism.
PERRY: I said some very harsh things, he said some harsh things. There were, you know, 15 -- excuse me, 14 other people that were saying some harsh things, by and large. Some were not quite as harsh, but the --
CAMEROTA: As colorful as yours.
PERRY: The point is, I'm a competitor. I understand how this process works and at the end of the day we all made a pledge that we were going to support our nominee. And if you don't want to keep your word then don't be signing pledges, is kind of one of the things I look at.
CAMEROTA: But what's more important, a pledge or your principles?
PERRY: Well --
CAMEROTA: I mean, can't you argue that Ted Cruz was standing on principle last night?
PERRY: You know, I'll let him make that argument. I'm more interested in a Republican being the president of the United States and Donald Trump, in this case, who is our nominee, making the appointment to the Supreme Court.
I don't want to have to go back to Texas and explain to people why I was part of the problem, not part of the solution and a very left- leaning Ginsburg clone is put on the Supreme Court next spring because I couldn't bring myself to support Donald Trump. That's a pretty hard argument, I think, to make.
CAMEROTA: So there was no part of you last night as you watched Ted Cruz that you thought, good for you?
PERRY: No, not at all. I think it was -- I think it was a bad call, from my perspective.
CAMEROTA: So, about party unity, it didn't feel like that was happening, to your point, last night and it hasn't felt every night as though it's really coalescing. Where do you think the party is right now?
PERRY: Well, at the end of the day, this is going to be about Donald Trump going out, laying out his vision for America. He's going to talk about how to build our military back up. That's one of my big focuses.
Not only how to bring our young men and women in the military to a very high comfort level that not only the resource is going to be there, but if they get in a sling halfway around the world the United States is going to be there to help them and use every resource they have to bring them home and bring them home safe.
Hillary Clinton has a problem with that. I mean, after Benghazi, these emails that were top secret -- you know, I'm here with Marcus Luttrell and Marcus is very concerned that his brothers in arms have been compromised because of Hillary Clinton's interest in protecting her political world. And that's just a very corrosive thought process. Obviously, Donald Trump's going to go out and make the pitch and lay
out his ideas to how to get America's economy back on track. He's going to talk about how to secure the border so that our communities are safe. Those are the things we're focused on.
CAMEROTA: Did you read his comments in "The New York Times" about NATO and whether or not he would just, across the board, support the allies?
PERRY: I think it's time for us to have a conversation about is NATO -- are the members of NATO doing their part?
CAMEROTA: So you agree with Trump?
PERRY: Are they living up --
CAMEROTA: You agree that there could --
PERRY: Listen --
CAMEROTA: There should be conditions?
PERRY: I was one of the people back five years ago that called for -- if you'll recall, I think it was a CNN debate, as a matter of fact, where I called the Turkish government terrorists because of the way that they were treating their own people in their country. We look at what happened there about a week ago and there may be a lot more people going, you know what, Perry was kind of prescient.
I called for zero-based funding of foreign aid, so the idea that we ought to say hey, NATO, you want to be a part of NATO, you do your part. Don't expect Americans to come in here, pick up all the costs, and send our young men and women to die in your countries when you're sending --
Marcus and I were talking about this walking over here. He said in his entire time of being deployed -- and this young man got deployed a lot -- he said, I saw four French Foreign Legion guys during that entire period of time. He said that doesn't build a lot of confidence in us that they're going to be there.
So, I don't have a problem with us having a conversation about, you know, is -- are you pulling your part of the wagon or are you expecting America to come do all the heavy lifting and paying a huge price, both in our treasure or money and our treasure of our young people.
CAMEROTA: Governor Perry, thanks so much --
PERRY: You're welcome.
CAMEROTA: -- for being on NEW DAY. Great to see you.
PERRY: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: Well, Donald Trump making headlines around the world for what we've been talking about, these controversial comments about defending our allies. So what does the man behind Brexit think about Trump's foreign vision? We will ask him, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:52:55] CUOMO: Donald Trump, the father. That has been an image in focus. CNN's chief political analyst Gloria Borger sat down with the Republican nominee's daughter, Ivanka, before her big speech tonight. She's going to introduce her father. But this time she was talking about what it is like to grow up Trump. Here's some of it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: How would you describe your father, as a parent, growing up?
IVANKA TRUMP, DAUGHTER OF DONALD TRUMP: He was funny, sometimes wickedly so. Great sense of humor. He was demanding of us. He had very high expectations for us because he knew what we had the potentials to accomplish and he saw the potential in us before we saw it in ourselves. And I think that he encouraged us to pursue our passions.
He wanted us to find meaning and purpose in our lives but was very careful not to push us into real estate, and I think that's partially because his excitement -- his passion for real estate and everything that he did, he brought home. And so, I think we inherited a little bit of that excitement and perhaps it's in the blood.
But, he always said to us you have to do what you love and you'll never succeed, you'll never be able to compete at the highest level if you don't deeply love what it is that you do.
BORGER: So, when you were young, was your dad sort of the kind of a dad who would play games with you, read you bedtime stories, or different than that?
TRUMP: No, he was different. He was not really the type of -- he wasn't long on diaper changing and things like that. But, you know, he -- I think maybe he was a little bit more traditional in that regard. But he was very accessible and very available. And, you know, I think one of the things that I think about so often is that I never questioned that my siblings and I were his top priority. He wasn't always physically present but he was always available.
[07:55:00] Actually, as a little girl -- a friend of mine reminded me about this recently, that she used to hang out with me in a janitor's closet where there was a pay phone at school, and on recess I'd go there and I'd call collect to his office. I was probably, you know, 10 years old, and I'd call collect to The Trump Organization, which is hilarious, but --
BORGER: Did you say hi, this is Ivanka?
TRUMP: I'm calling collect from the Chapin School and he would pick up the phone every single time, and he'd put me on speakerphone. It wouldn't be a long conversation. He'd introduce me to whoever was in his office.
But only in retrospect I laugh now, but it didn't matter who was there. It was colleagues, it was titans of industry, it was heads of countries. He'd always take my call and he'd always tell everyone in the room how great a daughter I was and say cute things and, you know, ask me about I test I took. But, you know, I think that's really telling of him as a person and a parent. We always came first.
BORGER: And let me move on now to the campaign a little bit.
