Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Bernie Sanders Surging; Debating Iran Nuclear Deal; Trump Tops Republican Presidential Polls. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 11, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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


[15:00:04]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And we will continue on, top of the hour. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Donald Trump speaks, controversy often follows, and as new polls out today show, he keeps a tight grip atop the presidential race here on the Republican side.

First, let me show you numbers from Iowa. This is where this new Suffolk University poll finds Trump has pulled out ahead of Scott Walker. You see there at the top 17 percent to Walker's 12. That is a switch from the two previous polls that showed Walker leading Trump.

In the new survey, Marco Rubio has 10 percent, followed by Ben Carson with 9, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz both at 7 percent. The other one here, let's go to New Hampshire and I will show you some other numbers. "The Boston Herald" and Franklin Pierce University poll here finds Trump leading the field with 18 percent.

But this is interesting here, Jeb Bush with 13 percent there under him. Then you have Ohio Governor John Kasich on his heels with 12 percent and Ted Cruz at 10, Carly Fiorina at 9.

Let's begin with Dana Bash, our chief congressional correspondent, who joins me now.

And so here you have Donald Trump at the top of both of these polls. And with everything that happened last week, the debates, everything that happened afterwards, all of the conversations, he doesn't really seem to be dinged too much.

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: He really doesn't. And not just that, one of the things that, frankly, surprised me about the Iowa poll was that much of that controversy had to do with women, Megyn Kelly, FOX News moderator's questions about Trump's comments about women, and then the later controversy about what Trump said to CNN's Don Lemon about Megyn Kelly.

And guess what, women actually say he should that be the presidential nominee. He's winning in Iowa among women better than anybody else in that poll. The one thing that is a little bit of a warning sign for Donald Trump in Iowa is that 55 percent of the viewers of that debate said that they were less comfortable, Brooke, with Trump as a candidate. That is again a little bit of a warning sign, but given what we were hearing, what I was hearing on the ground in Cleveland from Republican establishment figures about how poorly they thought he did, particularly not pledging to run as a Republican nominee, pretty good for him.

BALDWIN: Right. Right. And we talked about this right after the debate.

You said you were in Cleveland and those two -- two separate stages, but you had Carly Fiorina who really did an excellent job in that earlier debate and then you had home field advantage with John Kasich, Ohio governor, and now we're seeing clearly the bounce in the polls from those performances and especially given all of the eyeballs on the screen, people are now -- I don't know how many people knew John Kasich and Carly Fiorina's names, but they are learning.

BASH: They absolutely are learning.

First about John Kasich, you showed that poll at the beginning showing that he was at 12 percent. He was barely registering in polls before that and he just announced a few weeks ago, a few weeks before that debate. Obviously, he did well. There were questions about whether the maybe more moderate stance he took on same-sex marriage, saying he actually went to one, that he would not judge his daughters if they --

BALDWIN: That a huge applause line.

BASH: A huge applause line there, but again talking to some more of the ardent conservative activists who work on these things, they said that maybe it would hurt him. Guess what New Hampshire is called? It's called the Live Free or Die State. Didn't hurt him there at all.

And then on Carly Fiorina, you're exactly right. One of the biggest lines that I heard from a lot of the activists in Cleveland before the debate last week was, why isn't Carly Fiorina taking off more? She has a good resume and it's all about being an outsider right now, she's a woman.

She did extraordinarily well in that debate. And it's paying off for her in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, which put her in a position to be on the stage with the big boys maybe, Brooke, at CNN's debate in September. We will see. No promises.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: I cannot wait until September 16.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: I know. I want to ask you a question about that.

Please, my friend, stick around. I want you to be part of this next panel.

I have a panel of women set to join me. And we will discuss Donald Trump, women's issues. With me now, I have Amy Holmes, a conservative and registered independent and an anchor for The Blaze, comedian July Gold -- Judy Gold. Hello. My good friend Judy Gold, forgive me. I'm just spitfiring here. Judy Gold is with me. And also Susan DeLemus is with me from Manchester, New Hampshire, and she's also a supporter of the Women for Trump Coalition.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the women here.

First, let me just play some sound. This is Donald Trump on "NEW DAY" this morning talking about the women who work for him.

[15:05:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have many women executives and I have always had.

When I was back in the construction days, the big construction days, I had women in charge of big developments.

QUESTION: Do you pay them what you pay the men?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: So I was very, very pro-woman many years ago, and I have found they are incredible executives.

QUESTION: Do you pay them the same as men?

TRUMP: They are absolutely incredible executives. And so I get the picture better than anybody.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: It's something that I'm studying very closely and I will make a decision on soon.

QUESTION: Do you pay the women at the top of your organization the same way you pay the men?

TRUMP: Yes, I do, absolutely.

QUESTION: Because that's what it comes down to. It's not that everybody is equal. It's that's you're equal when you deserve it.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: The real choice is, do you do that -- like I pay, in many cases, I pay the women more. I have women that get paid a lot of money.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: We laugh on the panel. But this is what Donald Trump says. In many cases, he pays some of these women more. By the way, we can't fact-check that. Private company, salaries aren't public. That said, let me share some poll numbers with you today. We ran through this just a second ago, but the Suffolk University poll from Iowa, again, Trump moved into the lead and the poll found no real gender gap, just a five-point gap in his support between Iowa men and women post-debate, post comments on women and the whole blood comment.

We don't even have to go there now and what he said about Megyn Kelly, but first just rapid fire to all of you, the fact that he really didn't seem to be too dinged by the debate.

Amy, you first.

AMY HOLMES, THE BLAZE: It doesn't surprise me at all, Brooke.

I wouldn't accuse Donald Trump of being a sexist. I think he's juvenile and a vulgarian, you I wouldn't necessarily say he's a sexist and those who support him are well aware and familiar with Trump's bombasity, his pomposity, his remarks about women, about Rosie O'Donnell many years ago. None of this is a secret and it's not a secret to his supporters.

BALDWIN: Susan, same question to you, 30 seconds, thoughts?

SUSAN DELEMUS, WOMEN FOR TRUMP COALITION: Yes, I don't believe that he keeps any secrets.

He's right out there. He speaks his mind. I think people really like that about him. And I certainly do. I appreciate it a lot. And I believe him when he says that he pays his women a lot of money and more money than he pays some of his men.

And we know that there are rumors that there are other people who haven't paid their women as much as the men get, especially in the executive branch of the government right now.

I know that women are not being paid the same as men and I just think that Trump is right up there. People are really responding to him and I know a lot of women myself. I communicate with all my friends and they are loving him. So --

BALDWIN: OK. OK.

DELEMUS: I don't know what else to say. He's really great.

BALDWIN: Got you.

Judy Gold, thoughts?

JUDY GOLD, COMEDIAN: Hi, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Hi, Judy.

GOLD: You know, look, Donald Trump is a personality. That's what he is. He's a personality. He's making the race exciting. Come on, for a comic? This is like the greatest thing that ever

happened to me. But, you know, he is who he is and we're always talking about, oh, can you believe he said that? He says stuff like that all the time. It's the people who love him, like the woman -- the women -- head of the women's coalition --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Susan.

GOLD: Susan. Sorry -- that I'm fascinated more by the people who are going to vote for him because his personality is not really presidential.

(CROSSTALK)

GOLD: I can imagine him going overseas to negotiate something. Oh, his wife is a fat slob. You know, it's not how you do politics.

BALDWIN: That wouldn't go over well.

GOLD: And before he attacks me, I just want to say, I know I'm tall and I know I'm a lesbian and I can't get a guy. OK. I just want to -- Donald, there's nothing. And I'm not funny.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Dana, let me bring your voice in here.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Gee, thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: You're welcome. You like how I teed you up there?

Here's my question for you. When I was watching with Tapper on "STATE OF THE UNION" on Sunday, I thought his interview was great with John Kasich and he was asking about Trump.

And Kasich didn't want to step into it, but he said, listen, my campaign manager is a woman, I'm surrounded by women. Whatever women touch is basically gold. I'm paraphrasing. Do you know how many women are in Trump's campaign and especially in those upper echelons?

BASH: His campaign is quite small.

His spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, is a woman, but, beyond that, there are a lot of men. But I also don't think that it's because he's not hiring women. I just don't think he's hiring very many people at all. He is kind of his own adviser, his own spokesperson, his own strategist, his own everything. The one thing that I was thinking about and have been thinking about was his daughter.

BALDWIN: Yes.

BASH: Ivanka Trump -- (CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: In point of fact, the co-chair of his Iowa efforts is a female, and she's been very vocal in saying that she thinks Megyn Kelly is fair game.

You saw those women who made a video saying, don't touch our Trump. We love our Donald. There are women who love this guy. I think he's basically Jesse Ventura with a billion dollars. And they're cheering from him from their side of the wing.

[15:10:07]

GOLD: You know, the scarier group of women are the women who will vote for Rubio, who believes that, even in the case of rape or incest, that a woman should -- you have got to look at these people's --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Dana?

BASH: That's an excellent point by Judy, because what I have actually been hearing by some Republican activists in the days after the debate is that on -- never mind kind of the personal issue that he got in with Megyn Kelly and so forth.

But just on the issues, the issue of abortion, for example, that Judy was just talking about, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, in the eyes of some Republicans I have talked to, their position, not wanting any exceptions on a ban on abortion, for any reason, whether it's the health of a woman, whether it's rape or incest and so forth, that that makes them perhaps unelectable.

And Donald Trump is not there. He said again to Chris Cuomo this morning that he very much agrees and supports exceptions for those reasons.

(CROSSTALK)

DELEMUS: Honestly, I'm going to butt in here for just a second on that one.

BALDWIN: Go ahead. Butt in. And then I have another question. Go ahead. Go ahead.

DELEMUS: OK. Just really quick, we're not looking for a priest or a pastor. We're looking for a president.

BALDWIN: We're looking for a president. No, point taken, absolutely.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: And I think Donald Trump keeps saying over and over, he keeps saying, listen, I'm sick of this political correctness in the nation. We need to move past that. This is someone who doesn't forget things and doesn't apologize. GOLD: Right. He is who he is. He makes no apologies for it.

But a larger question is, they are having a debate, and why did they talk about their relationship with God? That was one of the topics on the debate was God. And they don't talk about gun control. I mean, it's this --

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Well, we are talking about the Republican primary.

BALDWIN: Right.

(CROSSTALK)

DELEMUS: -- led him to go there.

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: Republican and Republican leaning voters who are most likely going to be Second Amendment supporters, as are all of the people on the stage, right?

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: Yes, that's not a big controversy among Republican candidates.

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: But getting to Donald Trump on the contraception issue and Planned Parenthood, he actually I think might have made a big mistake with Republican female voters this morning, when he suggested to Chris Cuomo, your colleague, that he wouldn't necessarily want to defund Planned Parenthood, fund the stuff he likes, not the abortion stuff.

Again, Donald Trump being very unprepared to address women's issues for --

(CROSSTALK)

HOLMES: Particularly, particularly for Republican primary voters.

BALDWIN: Yes. Yes. You think he should be specific on that?

HOLMES: Absolutely.

(CROSSTALK)

GOLD: It would be -- if he was really specific on his policies and his plan, you know, perhaps we would take him more seriously. But we don't.

BALDWIN: Or perhaps it would give everyone else an entire year to pick it all apart.

(CROSSTALK)

GOLD: This is what he's going to do. But it's really like a reality show now.

BALDWIN: Susan, just finally to you, as a Trump supporter, you hear reality show, you hear bombasity, you hear these words thrown around. You support Donald Trump.

Just in the final little bit here, how do you characterize some of these criticisms? I mean, even Hillary Clinton yesterday just called him entertainment before going on to jab Jeb Bush instead. What do you think?

DELEMUS: I think -- I will tell you what I think about the entertainment part of it.

I'm more entertained by hearing the talking heads and the people who are the experts in all of this. And they are running themselves around in circles trying to figure out what it is about Donald Trump that is so successful and strikes a nerve so deeply. And I'm entertained and happy to watch people wondering about this.

I think he's straightforward. He says what he means. And I'm hoping that we can have America back again and make America great again.

(CROSSTALK)

DELEMUS: I think, right now, America is not great.

BALDWIN: Are you raising your hand?

(CROSSTALK)

GOLD: Yes, I'm raising my hand.

BALDWIN: Go ahead, Judy.

(CROSSTALK)

GOLD: I think the point is, is that, no matter what he says, he gets a reaction out of everyone. And that's maybe good, bad, but he gets a reaction. And people are still interested.

So, please stay in the race, so I have more jokes. Thank you.

BALDWIN: For all comedians in America.

Dana and Judy and Amy and Susan, thank you all, ladies, very, very much. I appreciate it. Let's do this again.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Coming up, he says it's one of the toughest decisions he's ever made. Senator Chuck Schumer today explaining why he's voting against the president's Iran nuclear deal. Could his no-vote start a momentum shift that could kill the deal entirely?

And the story out of Michigan, have you heard about this? Two state representatives caught up in this alleged sex scandal, with one accused of faking an e-mail smear campaign. There is so much more to that. We will unpack that for you.

[15:15:07]

And Lil B, a rapper with a massive following on the Internet, he is all over social media, and he's now making national news because with this kind of influence now taking his support away from Hillary Clinton, rallying behind Bernie Sanders. We will have him join us live to discuss, Lil B, live on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

New York Democratic senator Chuck Schumer says rejecting President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is one of the toughest decisions he's ever had to make.

[15:20:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: This agreement sanctions a threshold Iranian nuclear state after 10 to 15 years. That means the United States and all the governments of the world say it's OK for Iran to be a threshold nuclear state. That's a lot different than doing it on its own. And that caused me real trouble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Is Senator Schumer's no-vote really enough to kill the deal? Answer, not even close, when you look at the numbers here.

Let's say, for example, that all House Republicans vote against the deal. It would still need a whopping 44 Democrats in the House, along with 13 in the Senate to join their cause and ensure a veto-proof majority. As it stands right now, not looking very likely. In the House, just nine Democrats are vowing to vote no.

And on the Senate side, Schumer remains the only Democrat to oppose the deal so far. And I should also point out he's hoping to be the next Senate minority leader.

Joining me now, Fareed Zakaria of "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS."

And I just wanted to bring you back, especially because of your interview just days ago with President Obama, where you went through this in detail, and, if I may, if people haven't seen it, this is what he told you, what is on the line with regard to this deal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's a complicated piece of business. And we are negotiating with a regime that chants death to America and doesn't have a high approval rating here in the United States.

But the people who know most about the central challenge that we're trying to deal with, which is making sure that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon, they are overwhelmingly in favor of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: I should also just point out that was before Senator Schumer publicly said he would be a no-vote. I don't know what the president knew or didn't, but -- and we ran through the numbers.

Do you think the deal is in jeopardy?

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN WORLD AFFAIRS ANALYST: I don't, because, first of all, you have a firewall in the House.

House Democrats, it's going to be very difficult to get those many House Democrats to cross over and not just vote against the president, vote against the party, but also vote against the standard bearer of the party in 2016.

Remember, Hillary Clinton very early and very fulsomely has supported this deal. So, you would be voting against Obama, against Hillary, against the party. I don't think you would find enough House Democrats. I actually don't think you will probably find enough Senate Democrats either.

BALDWIN: What about the fact that we have heard Senator Schumer say they just need to start all over? That seems -- is that preposterous?

ZAKARIA: It's not preposterous, but it's entirely -- it's inconceivable.

Remember, this is a deal where first you had to put the sanctions in place. You had to get a international coalition to get the sanctions in place. The United States has had sanctions against Iran for 36 years. Many of them stay in place.

This is all about the international sanctions that were put in place during the Obama administration. Then you began. Then you reached out to the Iranians. Then you get the Iranians to the table. Then you get the P5-plus-one -- that is the permanent members of the Security Council, Russia, China, France, Great Britain, plus Germany -- and they all sit down.

You had to map out a coordinated position with all these countries. So you're talking about so many moving parts. And, remember, every other nation that negotiated with Iran thinks this is a good deal. The U.N. Security Council voted 15-0 to support the deal. At this point, because the United States wants to go back, it's difficult to imagine you would be able to do that. BALDWIN: You mentioned going back -- the firewall in the House, and

we know there's a contingency of Congress, men and women, who are in Israel right now, just on the numbers, most notably, 22 Democrats, including the number two ranking Steny Hoyer. Most of them are undecided.

The fact that they are in Israel, the fact that this is all going on, which way will they vote, do you think that this will be a decision- making trip for them?

ZAKARIA: Look, it's entirely understandable that they should go and it's entirely understandable that people in Israel are worried. Israel faces a much more direct security challenge from Iran than the United States.

Israel has many enemies in the region. And it is vigilant, rightly vigilant about its security. I think what they will discover is there are many people in Israel who believe that this deal is the least of the bad alternatives that exist, because --

BALDWIN: The least of the bad.

ZAKARIA: The deal does a lot of things that retard the Iranian program, that push it back in very, very significant ways. They have to destroy 98 percent of their uranium.

Now, is it perfect? No. But no deal would be perfect. And is a military strike perfect? No. A military strike have many complications of its own. Somebody once said about another problem, we're in a land of lousy options.

[15:25:02]

And I think there are a lot of people in Israel who recognize that, of the lousy options, this may be the least --

BALDWIN: The least lousy.

ZAKARIA: The least lousy. And I think it's a good idea for the House to hear that.

Of course, they will hear from many people in Israel who are absolutely opposed to this deal, you know, which is -- again, as I say, Israel has real security concerns, and it's entirely understandable they feel that way.

I would just ask them, run the tape forward. You know, the last time Iran walked off -- walked from the table, it had 164 centrifuges. It built up to 19,000 under international sanctions. In the year before it froze its program during this negotiation, it built 5,000 centrifuges.

So the likelihood is, if they walk away, they are not going to sit back and do nothing. They are going to start building centrifuges again. That doesn't seem like something that is good for the security of Israel. BALDWIN: Fareed Zakaria on the Iran deal, having just spoken with the

president of the United States, thank you so much, as always. Love having you on the show.

And make sure to watch Fareed every Sunday morning here on CNN at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS."

Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up, breaking news. We have new polling just released showing Donald Trump maintaining his lead as the Republican front- runner for president.

On the other side, it's the kind of crowd shot that could cause concern for the Hillary Clinton campaign. Bernie Sanders, look at these crowds, drawing 27,000-strong. Can he turn this momentum into votes? We will talk to one Internet famous rapper who says he's leaving Hillary Clinton and now backing Bernie Sanders.

Plus, political a sex scandal like no other, a lawmaker under investigation for allegedly devising a smear campaign targeting, of all people, himself. Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)