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Candidates' Economic Plans; Beyond the Call of Duty; Manhunt for Killers; Greatest Gymnast. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired August 12, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] ALI VELSHI, GLOBAL AFFAIRS & ECONOMIC ANALYST: What do you mean, Stephen? Every presidential candidate in history has said they want to create job. Everybody wants to be the president who created more jobs and better growth than anyone else. So how is that a bold new plan? I've - in all the time I've been alive, that's all I've ever heard.

STEPHEN CALK, CHAIRMAN & CEO OF THE FEDERAL SAVINGS BANK: That - that is good that - yes, look, Chris, I mean, what you're saying makes a lot of sense and that's typical rhetoric.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: (INAUDIBLE).

CALK: The difference is now we've got people who are actually going into office, willing to volunteer, willing to get involved, that have done it. They have actually been job creators. And Mr. Trump has created tens of thousands of jobs. He spurred people like me that have never been involved in politics, that aren't even necessarily interested in politics, to offer their advice, offer their guidance, and tell them, what does it take to get a business started from dollar one. I've done that as a main street guy. I live in the heartland.

VELSHI: And you are a good guy to advise him on that because you - you've been a successful businessman. I definitely appreciate not only the fact that he's attracting guys like you, but a whole lot of people who are not in the political process. But the concept that no one's ever thought of this before, and that, wow, wouldn't job creation be a great legacy for my presidency, is one that the Trump people should just stop saying because it's just silly.

CALK: Well, I do disagree with you, and here's why. At the end of the day, I think that Americans want a leader who's going to show them a path to prosperity. I think that America is sick of playing second fiddle. I know that here in the heartland we certainly are. And we want to begin leading again. The best way to lead again is not to ask the government to give me money so that I can then, you know, match it and go on and build a business. What I want is to use my own money, my own creativity, my own powers and the - on the skills that I've developed, or when I say "I" I'm talking about middle America and I'm talking about working class Americans, and I'm talking about middle class Americans. My mom was a schoolteacher.

VELSHI: Right.

CALK: My father was a salesman. And the one thing I learned from the get-go, get a good education and get your butt up and go to work every single day, right?

VELSHI: Right. Because Hillary Clinton's offering that for free.

CALK: And so, at the end of the day, I don't want to wait on government funding.

What's that?

VELSHI: Right, but Hillary Clinton's saying everybody who can - who can qualify to go to college can go to college. And I'm not arguing that it's a financially good policy.

CALK: Right.

VELSHI: But everything you've just talked about, she's offering a 10 percent cap on child care expenses, a cap, totally, so that nobody in America - you know a third of Americans pay 25 percent of their income on child care, which when you account for tax -

CALK: Right. Right.

VELSHI: Means one person shouldn't work. The wife, the mother or the father, has to stay home. She's talking about the very things you seem to care about a great deal.

CALK: Right. So here's the deal. Are we talking about the 53 percent of the people that pay tax in America, or the 47 that don't? My goal, and I know Mr. Trump's goal is, to get the other 47 percent, as many of those as possible, back into working America. Now, I can tell you, as a single dad, child care is a major expense.

VELSHI: Yes.

CALK: It is something that one worries about, not just financially, but emotionally every single day. I think both parties have come together on that idea.

VELSHI: Yes.

CALK: The semantics of how the math will work, I think that will be worked out. What I love is that both parties have come together -

VELSHI: Yes, I'm with you on that.

CALK: And want to advance that idea together. Now we need to talk about how to get people back to work. And the best way to do that is to spur growth within America, no wait around for the government to hand that money out.

CUOMO: You know what I love -

CALK: I don't want to wait for the government to control my money.

CUOMO: You know what I love -

CALK: What's that? CUOMO: Stephen and Ali, you guys are so smart. You're making great points that people need to hear. I'm going to have you both back.

VELSHI: I'm going back to Chicago to have lunch with him so I can talk to him about this some more.

CUOMO: Great. Great. And then let us know what you learn.

CALK: We'd love to have you in the heartland, Ali.

CUOMO: Thank you, fellows.

VELSHI: Thank you.

CUOMO: The discussion matters. Brianna, we always say, the more content about policy, the better.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: That is very right. All right, Chris, thank you.

Female joggers murdered within a week of each other. There are eerie similarities, even though the killings happened hundreds of miles apartment. Is there potentially a connection here?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:37:37] CUOMO: All right, we have a series here at CNN where we recognize police officers going beyond the call of duty. We have a story about two NYPD officers faced with an incredibly difficult situation. What a decision to make. What would you do if you had a device that looked like a bomb and it was thrown into the lap of your - of your lap, in a squad car, in the middle of Times Square. That's why these officers had to go beyond the call of duty, putting the lives of others before their own. Here's CNN's Brynn Gingras with the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): NYPD Sergeant Hameed Armani was born and raised in Afghanistan and came to the United States on a calling.

SGT. HAMEED ARMANI, NYPD: I seen a lot of people die in front of my eyes. I was a kid but it was helpless. I couldn't do anything for them, you know what I mean. And I always wanted to be able to save someone's life.

GINGRAS: He's now raising his 12-year-old daughter in New York. Armani is a single father.

ARMANI: So every time I leave home, she gives me a big hug and she holds my hands and looks in my eyes and says, dad, promise me you're going to come home.

GINGRAS: It's a promise the ten year veteran almost couldn't keep. Armani was patrolling New York's Times Square, the crossroads of America, with Officer Peter Cybulski.

PETER CYBULSKI, NYPD OFFICER: I'm sitting in the passenger's seat. He's sitting in the driver's seat. And the next thing I know, something hits my hand, my right hand, and then it hits the dashboard. So I look over to see who just threw something at me and I see a man giving me a really mean grin and speeds off very quickly. So I look back to see what the device -- like what it was that was thrown at me.

ARMANI: He goes, boss, this is a bomb.

CYBULSKI: It was making a clicking sound. It was flashing a bright light. I felt like we had 15 seconds before this thing detonated.

ARMANI: In my mind, I accepted that we were going to die. I wanted to get as far as possible because I didn't want anybody else to die with us.

GINGRAS: The officers drove away from the crowd, bomb in hand. With seconds passing, they prayed together, two men, different faiths.

ARMANI: And I looked up and said, God, I just don't want to feel pain. And at the same time, Peter was praying.

CYBULSKI: I made the sign of the cross, starting saying the "Our Father."

GINGRAS: The bomb squad eventually determined the device was fake. And hours later, police captured the man suspected of throwing it in the van. The pair returned to their homes as heroes, an Armani's promise to his daughter remained intact.

[08:40:04] ARMANI: The minute I hugged her, she goes, dad, don't you dare do that again.

GINGRAS: Brynn Gingras, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Two joggers murdered within a week of each other. The killings happened hundreds of miles apart. But could there be a connection? We have John Walsh with us next here in studio.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Two women killed while jogging within a week of each other. These cases are being investigated hundreds of miles apart. But there are many similarities. Their killer or killers still on the lose at this point and a lot of people are wondering if there are connections between these two cases. Joining us now, we have the host of CNN's "The Hunt," John Walsh, with us live in studio.

Thank you so much for being here. And I do want to - you have a great new episode coming up. You've got a big capture to add to your roster of captures. But I want to first talk about this case. These cases that we're seeing. Two female joggers. You have Vanessa Marcotte in Princeton, Massachusetts, and then Karina Vetrano in Howard Beach in Queens. The two - these are attractive young brunettes. They are jogging. It seems that their profiles are similar. What is your read on this and what are you hearing?

[08:44:58] JOHN WALSH, CNN HOST, "THE HUNT": Well, the M.O. seems to be similar because they were both young ladies jogging, but they were miles and hours apart. So when the Princeton Police and the Massachusetts State Police get the DNA, because that girl in Massachusetts fought that man very hard and he burned her hands to try to get rid of DNA evidence. But I think they'll find some of his skin scrapings under her fingernails. And when they get that DNA back, if it matches the NYPD case, the Karina here in New York, then you've got a serial killer on your hand, and then you've got to let everybody in the northeast know that you've got a guy out, a predator, that's hunting down girls that are jogging. So everybody has to say, hey, tell your wonderful daughter, wife, sister, whatever, not to go jogging.

So I don't think that they're the same guy, but it very well could be. So people should be on the alert, number one. And Karina's family did a great thing by raising over $200,000 for a reward. So people say, look, John, I don't want to call the cops. I don't want revenge if I know the killer, if it's my cousin and I'm dragged into the case. There are ways, and we've done it over the years, that you will get your over $200,000 if you make that call. No one will know who you are. That's set up through Crime Stoppers all over the United States. So I'm saying to people, if you think it's weird Uncle Harold, don't ever worry about weird Uncle Harold coming back and hurting you. Make that phone call. You'll get your reward. Nobody will know who you are and you'll take a killer offer the street. So - but people should be very aware because of the similarities between the cases.

KEILAR: So you mentioned in the case of Vanessa Marcotte that her hands were burned. She was found just several hours after she went missing, and so that was, you believe, to destroy DNA evidence, but is that - does that destroy DNA evidence?

WALSH: No, I don't think that the bad guys out there realize how sophisticated the recovery of DNA has become. And, actually, I did a case of a five-year-old girl who was kidnapped and raped and the rapist tried to burn her body, burned her face. We were able to get a forensic scientist to come and lift this guy's fingerprints off of her skull -

KEILAR: Wow.

WALSH: Off of one layer of skin. We have three layers of skin. I was amazed. I went - but they got a hit through the FBI data bank. And when this DNA comes back from the Massachusetts case, they'll check it against CODIS, the FBI DNA data bank. Hopefully there will be a hit there. The NYPD didn't get a hit off of CODIS, but that DNA is crucial and I think they're going to get DNA from the Massachusetts case.

KEILAR: Big capture from an episode in season one, Christopher Ponce. Tell us about this and just what a big deal this is.

WALSH: You know, I can't get involved in all the cases, but I live in Florida and this is a Florida case of a wonderful young man, William Angel, who went out one night with a friend of his, a veteran of Afghanistan, a British veteran. Go out to have a good time, and police say that Christopher Ponce was double the legal limit drunk, over the limit. He had ten speeding and DUI violations, yet he got a family car, went out that night. I don't know how they didn't keep him in jail until the trial, but somehow he was able to convince the judge that he could stay home with an ankle bracelet so he could go to the doctors. He really wasn't hurt that badly.

So when it came time for the trial, about eight months after the incident, cuts off the ankle bracelet and disappeared. It's been four long years, but I talked to William Angel's father two days ago and said, look, some fans pushed the case to Spain. The marshals did an incredible job. They always do. I say they're one of the best man hunters in the world, the U.S. Marshals. And our partners at Interpol put him on the red list. So Spanish police nailed him in Spain. It will take about eight months for this family to get justice, but they'll be able to end that chapter. And talking to that dad, I'm the father of a murdered son, he's the father of a murdered son, he went, this is great that this - this creep is coming back.

KEILAR: It is so - it is fulfilling work that you do, I know when you talk to a father like that.

You have new episode coming up. And this has to do with sex trafficking here in the United States. We have some statistics. More than 19,000 cases reported in the U.S. since 2007. More than 2,600 sex trafficking cases reported this year alone. This is a big issue that doesn't get a lot of attention.

WALSH: It's the ugly underbelly of the United States. So you ask anybody on the street, where is the number one country for sex trafficking of children? They're going to say Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and I've done shows in Cambodia and, yes, it happens there, and in Vietnam, India, for example. But the number one offender is the United States. We are the number one offender of sex trafficking of children. And this guy that we're doing on Sunday night has a rap sheet this long. He's a Mexican, Poncho Diaz-Juarez. I'm hoping people will see him coming back and forth across the border.

He kidnaps underage Mexican girls. One girl he brought here in 2010 and he raped her. She became pregnant. She had his baby. She gave the baby to someone to take care of. He had no interest in it. He kidnapped the baby to force her back into prostitution.

[08:50:06] He was caught. Guess how much time he served in a Texas jail? This is all in Houston, a big port of entry for sex traffickers. Three years and he got out. What did he do? Immediately went back to work.

KEILAR: Right back.

WALSH: At a big cantina in Houston, and they took down 13 people, including a madam that ran that cantina, and this guy got away. He's right on the top of my list. He's a horrible, horrible sex trafficker of young girls. KEILAR: It's going to be a great episode. John Walsh, thank you so

much. And be sure to check out "The Hunt" with John Walsh. That will be this Sunday night at 9:00 p.m.

Chris.

CUOMO: Boy, oh boy, John Walsh, what a hero for all of us. Great to have him on the show.

So, there are many organizations that help the homes, providing food, shelter, medical supplies, guidance, but what about clean clothes. That's where CNN hero Nicholas Marchesi comes in. He and his friend turned a van into Australia's first mobile laundromat. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICHOLAS MARCHESI, CNN HERO: Most people take for granted putting a fresh clean set of clothes on. For someone who is sleeping rough (ph) and who really doesn't have access to washing and drying their clothes, this is something that's continually overlooked.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: What a great idea. Marchesi's group travels every day to nine cities in Australia, and he's going to be in the U.S. next. You can watch his stories at cnnheroes.com. And, please, when you go there, nominate someone you think that they should be a 2016 CNN hero.

Now, speaking of heroes, the unstoppable Simone Biles dominating the Olympics. Is she the greatest gymnast that we have ever seen? High bar, right? Well, what does Olympic legend Shannon Miller say, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:55:49] CUOMO: Simone Biles makes it four straight Olympics with an American woman being crowned the Olympic all-around champion. Nineteen-year-old superstar now, Biles is on everybody's mind, right? She just clinched her second Olympic gold medal because she won the women's all-around after winning the team medal as well.

Now, her teammate, Aly Raisman, also was a big finisher there. She finished second behind her, obviously got the silver. So, who's the best? Who's the best of all time. The most decorated gymnast in American history is Shannon Miller. She joining us with her own perspective.

Let's put it more politely, other than you, who would you say is the best of all time?

SHANNON MILLER, U.S. GOLD MEDALIST IN GYMNASTICS: Oh, you know, it's so hard because we have this discussion in - us gymnastics geeks, we have this discussion time and time again. But it's so hard because it's kind of apples and oranges. You look at someone like Larissa Latynina, from back in the day, 18 Olympic medals spanning three Olympic games, two of those all-around gold. So you think, she was pretty good. So - and you try to compare that to Simone Biles, and when you look at the gymnastics, it's like you're watching two completely different sports because the sport has changed so dramatically. But if I think you're going by difficulty and power and really just where gymnastics is today, I think you have to say hands down Simone Biles is the best gymnast ever.

CUOMO: She reminds me, because I'm old, of Mary Lou Retton. I remember when Mary Lou Retton came on the scene, she was so strong. There was so much power in it. Of course she had that big smile, and so did you, and they were very telegenic, of course, but the power of it. What categories of excellence matter to you when you're assessing a gymnast?

MILLER: You know, I think you - you play to the rules. And so gymnastics, the rules kind of change every four years. And right now the rules of gymnastics are very forgiving for those athletes that have a lot of difficulty, a lot of power. And so that's where Simone Biles is, is she's born to do this sport. She's got the right height. She's got the right build for that power athlete. Just like Mary Lou in her time. They've both got that infectious smile, that personality, and I just think it - you know, yes, it makes her a star, but it's - she's just such an incredible gymnast in the way that she can have that difficulty, but yet also maintain the consistency, which is really hard, and also the execution. You look at her routines and they're just beautiful to watch.

CUOMO: Well, you were known as a perfectionist, and I know that that's how they used to talk about Nadia Comaneci, right, is that there was perfection, that everything was done exactly as it was supposed to be. Even accounting for the rule change, do you put that as a premium also? Should Comaneci be in the discussion?

MILLER: Oh, absolutely. You've got to think of Nadia Comaneci, Olga Korbut, Mary Lou Retton. Hopefully a few from my team, and that's the Olympian Shawn Johnson. I mean there's so many great athletes that we've had over the years. (INAUDIBLE) from the Soviet Union and from Belarus. She was one that I looked up to. But I think it's - it's evolved over the years. So I think, you know, while I'm more compared to the Nadia Comaneci, Simone is more compared to the Mary Lou Retton just because of body types and power. But I think we all have to have that perfectionist attitude and that's what Simone Biles brings. It's a very rare combination to have that amount of power and difficulty and combine that with the execution, the perfection, the precision of each skill.

CUOMO: I know that you are an all-around athlete. You know other sports. Is there anything that you think is comparable in terms of difficulty of sticking a landing the way it has to be done off the vault or even in a floor exercise?

MILLER: It's hard to say because, you know, you have most - most Olympic sports, you're thinking about racing for time and just get - get to the finish line. And ours is different, where it's not about racing to a finish line. It is about absolute precision. You have to stick that landing. You've got to nail it. that's the last and final impression that you leave with the judge. And it's - it's probably the most important impression. CUOMO: I can't think of another sport where you have to stop so much

momentum all at once and do it perfectly. Well, when we're talking about perfection, you will have to be in the - you will have to be in the conversation every time, Shannon, because you're great at what you're doing now and you made the country so proud. Thanks for joining us here on NEW DAY. Appreciate it.

[09:00:10] MILLER: Thank you.

CUOMO: All right, there's a lot of news going on this morning, from the world of politics and in the Olympics.