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Trump Hammers Immigration Policy; Drug Kingpin Escapes; Will Greece Get a Third Bailout?; Pope Visits the Poor. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 12, 2015 - 07:00   ET

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


[07:00:00] VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Before a crowd of thousands, Donald Trump keeps hammering on the issue of immigration. But he's not stopping there, calling some American leaders stupid. Can this path lead him to the White House?

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Developing at this hour, a massive manhunt for a notorious drug kingpin from Mexico, Joaquin Guzman, better known as "El Chapo", now on the loose after escaping from a maximum security prison.

BLACKWELL: Plus, live pictures now from Paraguay. Hundreds of thousands of people waiting in the rain for Pope Francis. This is the final stop of his South American tour.

PAUL: We hope Sunday's been good to you so far. Thank you for sharing your time with us. I'm Christi Paul.

BLACKWELL: We've got a lot ready for you. I'm Victor Blackwell.

And we're starting with Donald Trump, a defiant Trump -- 2016 presidential candidate, of course.

PAUL: He addressed thousands during his speech at the Phoenix Convention Center. During this event he cast himself as more than just a reality mogul and a reality TV star. He spoke about rallying a new silent majority who are frustrated with the direction of the country. And he continued his rhetoric on immigration as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That we have to stop illegal immigration. We have to. We have to.

(APPLAUSE)

We have a situation that's absolutely out of control. We have incompetent politicians, not only the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: All righty. So, let's bring in CNN's Sunlen Serfaty, who has more on the big rally.

Sunlen, wondering how Republicans -- how are the GOP are reacting not just to what he said but to the crowds that showed up?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Christi.

Well, as you said, this really was a defiant Donald yesterday. And this after a barrage of criticism, after condemnation from other Republicans, and after that plea from the Republican Party chairman to tone it down.

Well, last night in Phoenix, not a hint whatsoever that he will back it down. Trump did seem to be almost capitalizing on those comments on immigration and was relishing on the size of that big crowd, over 5,000 people. And this approach really does seem to be resonating among some voters who view illegal immigration as a serious problem.

But outside the event, there were some protesters who clashed with some Trump supporters and even inside that rally, a group of protesters, they unfurled a banner and disrupted the speech in the middle of it.

Now, I want to show you the moment when Trump responded to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I wonder if the Mexican government sent them over here, I think so.

(APPLAUSE)

Because I'm telling you I tell about the bad deals that this country is making. Mexico, I respect the country. They're taking our jobs. They're taking our manufacturing. They're taking our money. They're taking everything and they're killing us on the border -- and Mexico does not like it.

Remember this -- don't worry we'll take our country back very soon, very soon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SERFATY: And Trump went on in his speech to promise to fine Mexico $1,000 for every person crossing into the U.S. illegally, and he repeatedly slammed his opponents, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush and also mentioned President Obama by name -- Christi and Victor.

PAUL: All righty. Sunlen Serfaty, thank you so much.

BLACKWELL: How -- how are you going to charge Mexico $100,000 for every illegal immigrant?

PAUL: I don't know. You can charge --

(CROSSTALK)

BLACKWELL: You're handing out tickets like it's a deli? I mean, you can't do that. All right. Let's have a deeper conversation about the 2016 race, and

Trump, we're starting with him.

Let's bring in Mark Preston, a CNN Politics executive editor. We also have with us, CNN political commentator Errol Louis.

Some of these, Errol, just $100,000 fine for each person crossing the Mexican border. Even people who are drinking the Kool-Aid, standing there in the crowd, they have to think -- how is that going work?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I'm not so sure I'd agree with you that they'd have to think.

The reality is, what Trump is tapping into is not something that is entirely rational, is not entirely logical, is not entirely anything like what we usually see in a presidential campaign.

And the fact that he speaks extemporaneously in effect -- he's not reading speeches, right? He's kind of talking off the top of his head. He's ad libbing. And he's kind of trying to tap into something that is other than thoughtful conversation about a very complicated topic.

BLACKWELL: He's using references from -- obviously the Nixon era reference silent majority, Mark. I mean, I wonder what the responses now to adopting this Vietnam era silent majority mantle.

[07:05:00] MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Well, I mean, listen, what he's trying to do is that he's not running a real thoughtful presidential campaign. What he's trying to do is plug into this anger and frustration that a lot of people have about illegal immigration and the border, our porous border and how do you get a handle on it.

I got to tell you, Victor, even in the Republican Party, you know, there's an understanding that something needs to be done, there's an understanding that something needs to be done about the border all across the country. But when you have Donald Trump out there calling our leaders stupid, saying very angry, awful things about our friends to the south. You know, that really does tap into a segment of the population that will eat it up, but it's not going to get him to the Republican nomination.

BLACKWELL: All right. Let's take a look at other candidates in the field. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker scheduled to jump into the race officially tomorrow. Let's take a look at the latest CNN national poll here. He's dropped ten points since May, now falling into the middle of the pack here with just 6 percent support in the latest poll from CNN. But then you compare that to the latest Quinnipiac poll in Iowa, where he's at 18 percent in the top of the heap there.

I mean, how does he -- nationally I guess, because national numbers mean more this year than it past years, Errol -- how does get back to that top three or four? LOUIS: Well, it's going to be very difficult to see how he does it.

I mean, Mike Huckabee won Iowa. He did not become president. You know, you've got candidates like Rick Santorum, does very well on Iowa, never becomes the nominee.

There's a particular kind of emphasis that we all like to put on Iowa. I think it goes back to Jimmy Carter, you know, in 1976 where it starts his long march to the presidency and sort of got renewed with Obama. But Iowa was very much an outlier. And so, we're going to have to see what Walker can do in South Carolina. We're going to see where his polling numbers end up in some of the other swing states, big states like Florida, to see if he really does have national appeal.

We know that he is loved by or he is very much appreciated by the evangelical base, which is really what you see in the Iowa Republican party. But if that's as far as it goes, you know, you can ask Rick Santorum what it's good for him.

BLACKWELL: Yes, yes, what are we expecting from the governor tomorrow, Mark?

PRESTON: Well, I mean, you know, his poll numbers have dropped but we expect he will get a bounce in the days following his announcement tomorrow. He'll go on a tour of the early states. He'll be in Nevada. He'll be in New Hampshire, he will be in Iowa, he'll be in South Carolina.

But what's interesting is he's also going to go to Georgia this week. And that just shows what he's trying to do and I think we're seeing from the other candidates right now, Victor, is they're looking long- term game. This race for the Republican nomination is not going to be over, it won't be over by the end of February, as a lot of Republican leaders hoped it would.

This is going to extend on and extend on into the South. So, we'll see Walker not only going to Georgia this week. We'll also see him going down to Tennessee later this month and Illinois. This is a race for the Republican presidential nomination that is going to continue on and on and on I believe, late into the spring.

BLACKWELL: Mark, is everybody who's getting on this ride in their seat? I mean, is everybody now set who's going to launch a campaign after tomorrow?

PRESTON: No, no, no. Can you imagine that we're not set at this point? We expect John Kasich to shortly announce that he's going to run. He's the Ohio governor. And a former Virginia governor, Jim Gilmore, says he's going to get in. All in, though, it looks like we will have 17 by probably the beginning of August, if you could imagine that.

BLACKWELL: Wow. All right. Mark Preston, Errol Louis, thank you both.

LOUIS: Thank you. BLACKWELL: All right. And, of course, talking about the race for the White House on the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton scored a union endorsement from the American Federation of Teachers. The union backed Clinton in 2007 in her battle in the primary against now President Barack Obama. It is the first national union to endorse a candidate in the 2016 Democrat primary.

PAUL: On the run, a notorious Mexican drug lord has escaped again. Could he be heading to the United States?

Plus, you know, time is running out for Greece, it seems. There is a shift in direction this morning and it's not looking good for a bailout package. The hope of yesterday may be fading. Talks are happening as we speak. We're going to have a live report for you.

Plus, a blast so powerful, it knocked a woman off her chair at the beach. And investigators are struggling to figure out what it was.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:13:03] BLACKWELL: Developing right now, and we'd imagine in a pretty major way -- the manhunt for the head of one of the world's most powerful drug cartels. He's escaped from prison again.

Yes, this is not the first time that Joaquin Guzman, better known as "El Chapo" has escaped. He was last seen Saturday night near the prison showers and guards then later discovered he was missing from his cell. "El Chapo" also escaped prison back in 2001. He was captured last year when authorities found him at a Mexican beach resort.

CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes joins us now for more, former assistant director of the FBI.

So, back in 2001, he escaped prison by hiding in a laundry cart. Any indication this time of how he got out?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Victor, I don't think we've heard specifically. You know, there was a suggestion that he was somehow involved where the laundry is being done again.

But, you know, we have a different situation with drug cartel leaders in Mexico. And they get a little more cooperation in their attempts to escape from prison corrections officers or other employees. And the reason is that they threaten them with beheading their children, pouring them in vats of acid, skinning them alive.

And they do it. They do it just enough to convince the authorities and a select group of people that they mean it, they'll do it, and that's going to happen to their families. So, you know, the sheer terror that they're able to command is what helps them when it comes to the trafficking of drugs in the first place, the murders they commit, but also how to get out of prison once they're in prison.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And the money doesn't hurt. I mean, he's been listed by "Forbes" as one of the most powerful people in the world. I wonder, Tom, what you know about the porousness of the prison system in Mexico and the level of corruption.

FUENTES: Well, as I said, there's a huge level of corruption in law enforcement in Mexico.

[07:15:00] But from my experience, much of that comes from the sheer terror of the threats made to members of law enforcement and what will happen to their children and their families.

So, you know, not every corrupt Mexican official is just greedy and wants to get their hands on money, something like what we see in the movies. You know, some of it is just sheer terror. And the idea behind it for these organized crime figures is they do it often enough to indicate it's not a bluff. They will do that. And family members have been killed and tortured horribly by them in the past.

So, that helps them get a little more cooperation from prison officials or police officials than you might normally expect. It's not so much like matt and sweat here in the U.S. where they had to seduce and convince, you know, people and employees in the prison to help them and hide hacksaws and all that. They don't have to resort to psychological. It's just sheer terror on their part.

BLACKWELL: And beyond the money and the power, this is a man who has songs that are written about him, immortalized in many ways in Mexico. Put some meat on the character here of "El Chapo" for us.

FUENTES: Well, the problem is that happens with every major gangster in the world. And we have that with organized crime figures in this country going back to the Roaring '20s, Bonnie and Clyde and others, that when they become huge celebrities by the sheer nature of their business, you know, unfortunately, it attracts supporters. It attracts the fan clubs. No matter how horrible, no matter how psychopathic, no matter how terrible the things that they do, in some ways the more terrible it is, the more some people like it and like them for doing it.

BLACKWELL: So, last time around, he was found at a Mexico beach resort, which is interesting. What's likely happening now in the search for him?

FUENTES: I think probably, you know, similar. I don't think rumors that he might come to the United States are pretty absurd. If he comes here he won't have the reach that he has, the power that he has in Mexico. If he gets locked up in the U.S. and he's wanted on a huge number of drug related charges and racketeering charges.

So, he could be looking at life without parole if captured and sentenced in the United States. If that happens here, he will -- in a federal prison, he will stay in that prison. He will not be getting out. He will not be, you know, escaping in laundry shoots or anything else. So, my guess is he would definitely want to stay in Mexico and figures that, you know, he'll live the large life he's used to living. And if he gets captured again, he'll escape again.

BLACKWELL: All right. "El Chapo" on the run again. Tom Fuentes, appreciate you. Thank you. FUENTES: You're welcome, Victor.

PAUL: Well, developing out of the Brussels this morning, there's been a sudden shift it seems in the high stakes talk to help bail out Greece. Intense negotiations are going on as we speak here.

CNN business correspondent Richard Quest is there.

Richard, I heard the Slovakian minister today say that the Greek debt deal is impossible today. I know you spoke with some of the Eurozone finance ministers as they were leaving. Did they give you any indication what's happened in the last 24 hours to move from the hopeful tone of yesterday to this impossibility of today?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I don't think there was ever any realistic possibility of a deal as such. The amount of money we're talking about, $50 billion or $60 billion over multiple years, it was never going to be I's dotted and T's crossed.

What they hoped from this weekend, or from these meetings, was that there would be a strong basis to move forward. In other words they could do a deal and negotiations could begin. And even that seems to have evaporated.

And, Christi, it has evaporated because of trust. It's not pleasant to say it. It's undiplomatic in many ways the way it's put. But they simply don't trust the Greek government either has the ability or the willingness to make the changes that they say they're going to do.

Listen to what the Austrian finance minister told me about the difficulties that they are facing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: Are you confident today about (INAUDIBLE)?

HANS JORG SCHELLING, AUSTRIAN FINANCE MINISTER: I'm always optimistic but it's very, very difficult negotiations because there are many points we have not agreed in between the Eurogroup and in between with Greece.

(END VIDEOI CLIP)

QUEST: And so, Christi, what they've agreed to as best they can is they're going to get rid of the last meeting of the day which brought forward all of the European Union, all 28 leaders. And instead it's going to be the finance leaders and the Eurozone leaders who are just going to do whatever they can.

[07:20:00] But what this means for the people of Greece tomorrow, Tuesday, into next week, I am not at all confident that the taps will be turned on and the money will be flowing.

PAUL: All right. Richard, we appreciate it so much. Richard Quest for us -- thank you. BLACKWELL: There's in mysterious blast that investigators are

wondering about in Rhode Island on a beach there. This was so big, so powerful it knocked a woman out of her chair. Just blew her right off the beach. And now investigators are combing through the sand to try to find out who or what caused it.

And Pope Francis waving good-bye to South America soon, but not without a very special meal -- the final meal there. We've got pictures here, live pictures from Paraguay, as hundreds of thousands of people are waiting in the rain for the pope. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Twenty-four minutes past the hour.

And new this morning: this mysterious blast that shut down a beach and sent a woman to the hospital. It happened yesterday. An apparent explosion occurred at Salty Brine Beach, you see here in Rhode Island. And witnesses described it as sounding as though it were an M80 boom or a grenade.

Here's the kicker: officials don't have any idea who or what caused the blast.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL (voice-over): Salty Brine Beach is expected to reopen this morning, but the investigation will go on. Rhode Island Authority has removed sand from the area, looking for clues after reports of a small explosion and an injury of a 50-year-old woman.

[07:25:03] But the exact cause is a mystery.

LARRY MOURADJIAN, DEPT. OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: Explosion is a word that came during the initial reports. I can tell you from personally witnessing the site that there appears to have been some ground disturbance there.

PAUL: The woman was sitting in a chair at the tide line. Witnesses reported a boom. The force pushed her up against nearby rocks and then he fell into the sand.

MOURADJIAN: There are fractures in this wet sand, the gaps like you would see when lightning hits a beach. There's definitely something that happened there.

PAUL: The state bomb squad and the fire marshals office are investigating, along with the ATF.

CHIEF KURT BLANCHARD, RHODE ISLAND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICE: We have no indication there was anything beyond some type of noise, there were some type of energy transfer. We have no evidence or indication that there was a device. This could be natural. It could be manmade. At this point, it's still an investigation.

PAUL: Nobody else was reported hurt, but the beach was declared off limits for the rest of the day.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I literally just stood up and walked away from there. But it blew her right out of the chair. I mean, I've never heard of anything like that and we're at the beach all the time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL: And we hope to hear something some time today. So, stay with NEW DAY all morning. We're going to have the latest for you here.

BLACKWELL: All right. Time check now -- 26 minutes after the hour.

Let's take a look at other stories making headline this is morning. And we're starting with the Confederate flag flying once again at a government complex. This is in Ocala, Florida -- now, after the original was removed during a protest Saturday.

OK. So, here's what went down. We first reported this story yesterday during this program. And the county commission voted to raise the flag. That's why we were reporting it, less than two weeks after removed in the wake of the Charleston church shooting.

Well, after our report, authorities say someone took it down. The protester said it fell down. But then, it was put back up. The flag is actually a Confederate national flag, not the same as the Confederate battle flag that was removed from the South Carolina state house grounds.

The NAACP has ended its 15-year boycott of South Carolina. Of course, that came during an emergency resolution, they're calling it, Saturday, one day after the Confederate flag came down from the ground there in the South Carolina. You see it here. The NAACP says the removal of the flag will not solve discrimination, but it does symbolize an end to the hatred that has divided the country.

Odd, but not that big of a deal -- that's what Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is saying after a woman threw water in her face. This happened at a festival in the city yesterday. Still, police charged the woman with second degree assault. It's not clear if the attack had anything to do with the protest against the death of Freddie Gray. In fact, there are no indicators that it did.

PAUL: Well, it is one final stop for Pope Francis, taking you to a live picture here from Paraguay. The pope is going to have a meal with a special woman. We'll tell you what's going on.

Also, heading the wrong direction on a winding L.A. road and it's caught on camera. Look at this. Police say they need your help to find out who this brazen driver is.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)