Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Donald Trump Surges in New Polls; Police Hunt for Suspect in Shrine Attack; Crews Find Crashed Plane's Black Boxes; Republicans' Choice for Nominee; Guardian Angels Back on Patrol; Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 18, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:00] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Police in Bangkok say he is the suspect in the deadly bombing of a popular shrine.

Also, Donald domination.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm leading by double digits.

COSTELLO: New CNN polls out this morning show he's making big gains. Republicans picking the billionaire on every issue. Is it time for establishment Republicans to worry?

JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Oh, I'm so worried. No. It's a long haul.

COSTELLO: Plus, making history for fighting like a girl. Two women will graduate from Army Ranger school. The grueling training they passed and what's next for them.

Let's talk. Live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Presidential hopeful Donald Trump soars as his competitor slide. The real estate giant has officially stolen the spotlight surging ahead of his Republican rivals in a new CNN/ORC poll. Trump now tightening his grip around that top spot garnering support from 24 percent of registered Republicans. That's almost double the support for Jeb Bush.

And when it comes to how Trump would do in the Oval Office, the candidate was big among Republicans on issues like the economy, immigration, and even fighting ISIS.

Let's bring in CNN political reporter Sara Murray. She's in Washington with more on this poll.

Good morning.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Let's dig into these numbers a little bit. Let's start with the top line, like you pointed out there. A big lead for Donald Trump. He's drawing support from nearly 1 in 4 Republican voters.

Take a look there at Jeb Bush as well, though. He's coming in at second. Not a very close second, but still faring a little better in our poll than he did in that FOX News poll we saw yesterday. Rounding out the top three we have Ben Carson, another anti-establishment candidate who got a big bump from July. Now the person we're not seeing on there who also is getting a big bump this month, Carly Fiorina. She's up four points after the first GOP debate.

Now one of the really striking set of numbers in this poll is how Donald Trump is faring on the issues. Let's take a look at those. This is a guy who has not put out very many policy specifics. He just came out with his immigration plan yesterday after we were done polling, but still you can see here he has a wide lead on a lot of these issues and is improving. 45 percent say he would be best on the economy. 44 percent say he would be best on illegal immigration. 19 percent say he would be best on social issues even though this is a guy who has flip-flopped on his view of abortion and all of that, and 32 percent said he would be best on dealing with ISIS.

So it seems like voters trust him even if he does have, you know, a history of shifting positions and even if he hasn't given a lot of policy specifics.

Now, as always, there is one big caveat here, and for Donald Trump it is how he will fare and how he affects the Republican Party heading into 2016. When you ask voters what he does for Republicans' chances for 2015, 58 percent said the GOP would be better without Trump, 38 percent said they would be better with him.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTELLO: I was just thinking about that ISIS number, you know, all -- 19 percent say Donald Trump would be better at fighting ISIS than the other candidates? He gets -- he gets his analysis from watching television.

MURRAY: It's pretty incredible. I mean, it's like he has said on the stump before voters don't really care that much about the specifics, they trust me, they think I'll make a good deal for them and these numbers sort of bear that out.

COSTELLO: Sara Murray, thanks, as always. I appreciate it.

MURRAY: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Police now have a -- you're welcome.

Police now have a suspect in that deadly attack at a popular Bangkok shrine. They're looking for that man on the screen. He's wearing a yellow shirt and he has glasses on. He's seen on surveillance video dropping a backpack at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, Thailand shortly before Monday's explosion. And less than 24 hours after that first bombing, a second blast rocked Bangkok today, this time at a river pier. No one was injured.

CNN's Nic Robertson is following the latest developments for us. He's in London this morning.

Hi, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, hi, Carol. The man in the yellow T-shirt does appear to the -- a prime suspect at the moment for the police. They are saying they don't know whether he is Thai or a foreign national. There's been no claim of responsibility. So as far as we know at the moment the motives of this man are in question. Was this an attack by Muslim separatists from the south of the country? That seems unlikely.

Experts in Thailand say because this doesn't mirror the pattern of attacks that they've had before. Those attacks have been mostly in the south. There has been political violence in the capital over the last few years in particular, a couple of small explosions earlier this year, but that political violence nothing to the scale of the blast at the temple site.

Why? Because we say not on this scale because so many people were injured and witnesses at the scene say that the bombs themselves were designed to cause maximum injuries. Now there is a potential here with this second blast today on a pier by the river that didn't injure anyone.

[10:05:05] The blast itself captured on video, but there is a possibility here for the police again using close circuit television cameras from the vicinity, that they may get a lead on another suspect, possibly the same suspect again. So whoever is responsible doesn't seem to be afraid of getting out in the public and doing this again -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Nic Robertson, reporting live for us this morning. Thank you.

A wave of arrests in China after a series of blasts left hundreds dead. Thousands take part in traditional memorials on the seventh day since the disaster. State media reports that 10 senior executives who worked for the company that owns that exploded warehouse have now been detained, including the president of the company and vice president.

Homeowners are also calling on the government to buy back their homes saying chemicals in the air make it unsafe to live there.

CNN has also learned that search crews have now recovered both of the so-called black boxes from the wreckage of a crashed plane in Indonesia. We're told the flight data and voice recorders are in good condition. Investigators are, of course, hoping they'll help unlock the mystery of what happened to the Air Trigana flight.

CNN's Kathy Novak has more for you from Seoul.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KATHY NOVAK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been more than two days since villagers saw the plane cash into the mountains in the Indonesian province of Papua. Now confirmation no one on board survived. Search aircraft spotted debris on Monday but couldn't get to the crash site because of bad weather. Ground teams have now found all of the bodies and the plane's black box, but the operation to retrieve the bodies has once again been suspended because of bad weather.

Ground teams are working to build a helipad so a chopper can land and transport the bodies tomorrow, weather permitting. If conditions don't allow for that, it's about a 14-kilometer hike through steep mountains and heavy jungle to the airport at Oksibil.

The Trigana airplane was about a half an hour into the short domestic flight when it lost contact on Sunday. No distress signal was sent. Investigators will be hoping that the black box will reveal more information about what caused the plane to crash killing all 44 adults, five crew, and five children on board.

Kathy Novak, CNN, Seoul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, countering Donald Trump. How can the other GOP candidates grab attention away from the Republican frontrunner?

We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:11:45] COSTELLO: A stunning 100 wildfires have now torched more than one million acres across seven states destroying hundreds of homes. The fire is now so bad that for the first time in nine years the military is joining in the firefight. Hundreds of active duty soldiers will monitor quieter parts of a fire in Washington state and California. This to free up experienced crews so they can better battle the larger fires.

Chad Myers is in Atlanta following this for us.

Good morning.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Carol. There are 82 active, large wildfires across the west. Obviously it has been a drought-ridden number of years, but on the satellite picture we can determine that smoke and clouds here, smoke across northern California, here's Nevada, all the way through Washington and into Oregon, and that smoke is not going away.

The smoke is still burning. The fires still completely out of control and the air quality alerts across parts of the northwest and temperatures are going to be very warm, 99 Portland, 90 Boise today. You get a little bit of heat, you get the haze, you get the humidity, and then you get a little bit of wind and that's when you get your problems. But look at the temperatures down south. Yuma will 112, Palm Springs

112, and it will even be hotter in some spots here across parts of northern Arizona.

Look at all the fires here. I said 82, 82 fires burning, one million acres across the west. Now total for the fire year, we're talking -- this is -- I can't even get my number -- my hands around this. 10,000 square miles, which is the size of New Jersey, has been on fire this year so far.

Here's one of the fires I'll take you to right here. This is just near Prescott. Between Prescott and Phoenix. It's kind of hard to see because of all the haze, area burned here, about 2,006, but this is one of the wildfires out here now. Only two square miles yesterday but burning in this grassland, another area that's obviously just so dry. You can just see there's not a bit of green here.

All of that, all of that sage, all of that cactus, all of that area there, completely dry from the regular drought because it is a desert out there. You don't get much to burn here, you don't get much real big vegetation here but across parts of the Pacific northwest where there are very large trees, there are very large trees that are dying out there because of either pine needles or the drought, that's where the fire is the most intense -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Chad Myers reporting for us this morning. Thank you so much.

MYERS: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Checking some other top stories for you at 14 minutes past. If you're looking for a Christmas getaway, how about Cuba? The White House is reportedly trying to secure a deal that would establish commercial flights to the island by the end of this year. A congressional ban on travel to the country still stands but the administration has been chipping away at it by granting several exceptions which effectively allow Americans to travel to Cuba for the first time since the 1950s.

New data shows driving is becoming more dangerous. According to the National Safety Council, traffic deaths are up 14 percent so far this year with nearly 19,000 people being killed. The sharp rise is being attributed to busier roadways due to cheap gas prices and more people being distracted because of their cell phones.

Anger wins big time. Take a look at the new CNN/ORC poll and you can see that rings true. Donald Trump now clearly the frontrunner. Bush lags behind by double digits, and then come the rest. Some of them anti-establishment candidates.

[10:15:11] Trump's staying power is worrying many conservatives, though, like Erick Erickson, who again this morning called for happy warriors on this Red State blog. He writes, quote, "Right now the right is at each other's throats screaming one way or the other about Trump and angry. Where are the happy warriors on the right? Where is the laugh at the lunacy?" In fact it appears no one is listening to the one-time anti-

establishment blogger because Trump is gold at the moment.

With me now to talk about this, CNN national political reporter, Maeve Reston, and CNN politics senior reporter Stephen Collinson.

Welcome to both of you.

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER: Hi, Carol.

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Hi. So, Maeve, at this point in time there doesn't seem an effective way to fight the Trump surge, does there?

RESTON: Well, I think that's what's been most fascinating to watch is actually how all of the other Republican campaigns are dealing with this. The strategy for a lot of them seems to be come out and say where they differ with Trump if it's a really outrageous statement and then just kind of let his bubble continue to move on.

I think that what they are betting on is that over the long run this novelty of the Trump candidacy is going to wear off on people, that people will start to get more nervous about his outbursts and some of his policy positions. We saw him putting out a lot of new details on his immigration plan this past weekend, and it sounds really expensive.

So, I mean, you have to think about how conservatives and those voters who are actually going to show up to caucus and vote are processing all of this information. I will say for the hundredth time that the polls right now really don't mean a lot other than who has the most name recognition and who is absolutely like getting a lot of the media attention and Trump has both of those things going for him right now.

In Iowa this weekend I talked to a lot of voters who are still just looking at about five or six candidates. They're in no hurry to make up their mind and a lot of people will change their minds in the last 48 hours of the race.

COSTELLO: OK.

RESTON: So let's keep that in mind.

COSTELLO: So I hear you, but with that said, there are candidates trying to fight back effectively against Trump, and I just want to play a sample for our audience.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Anybody can do well for a month in this business, especially if you have talent and you have personality. Donald has both those things.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's a jackass.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Really?

GRAHAM: That he's bringing his name down and he's not helping the process.

RICK PERRY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But, again, the presidency of the United States isn't for sale, so if it was, then Donald Trump would just write a check and be done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So, Stephen, they're just not as good as that anger-insult thing.

(LAUGHTER)

COLLINSON: Yes. The common theme of those three clips you showed there is they're all from candidates who are not doing very well in the polls at all. The three candidates that most analysts think have the best chance of winning the election, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, have not really got into a one-on-one fight yet with Donald Trump.

There was an interesting development yesterday, though. Scott Walker came out and tried to harness this anti-establishment wave that Donald Trump is riding. He had some quite, you know, tough criticisms of Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, at the Iowa State Fair. So it seemed like he was trying to present himself as someone that understands this anti-Washington, anti-establishment wave, but he's trying to harness it to present himself as a more appropriate vessel for that anger, as someone that understands it and sees it's happening but is someone that could come to Washington and actually channel that anger through the political process and get something done like, you know, repealing Obamacare which he criticized McConnell for not being able to do.

COSTELLO: Yes. And something else Scott Walker did that was interesting, he embraced Donald Trump's wall idea. Other candidates, though, Maeve, have sort of really jumped on the Trump bandwagon and, you know, they just want to profess their love for Mr. Trump.

Here is an example.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I like Donald Trump. He's bold, he's brash, and I get that it seems the favorite sport of the Washington media is to encourage some Republicans to attack other Republicans. I ain't going to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Smart move by Ted Cruz, Maeve?

RESTON: Well, I mean, you have to think about the fact that who is going to lose the most votes as Donald Trump continues to rise in the polls? It's going to be exactly someone like Ted Cruz. They line up on a lot of the issues, and so Cruz has to be very careful not to push away those voters who are supporting Trump right now because if, for example, Trump should decide to leave the race eventually because he doesn't like the scrutiny or the process, Ted Cruz would like to sweep in and take those voters back, and so it's a very delicate balancing act that all of these candidates are having to do in terms of not going too far to alienate the people who really are finding that Trump's message resonates with them.

[10:20:23] COSTELLO: All right. We'll leave it there.

Maeve Reston, Stephen Collinson, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.

COLLINSON: Thanks.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, it's been 20 years since the Guardian Angels patrolled Central Park in New York City. Now they're back at it. We'll tell you why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: All right. No, this is not a time warp. Your eyes are not deceiving you. The Guardian Angels are back on patrol in New York City with their berets and red jackets.

[10:25:01] The anti-crime volunteers were a common sight in the city back in the '80s and '90s, and now they're back. A visible symbol of nationwide unease about crime.

An op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal" last week declared a new nationwide crime wave, a consequence of the so-called Ferguson effect, but let's deal in facts and focus just on New York City for now.

As the "New York Daily News" points out, so far this year burglaries, robberies, and larcenies are down from last year's ultra-low levels. The total homicides so far this year are at 135. Higher than last year, but 30 percent lower than 2010.

So why are people so on edge right now? Curtis Sliwa is the founder of the Guardian Angels, he joins me now.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

CURTIS SLIWA, FOUNDER, GUARDIAN ANGELS: My pleasure.

COSTELLO: So we just looked at the statistics. Why are people on edge now?

SLIWA: Because there's a feel in the streets. You see the mentally ill roaming about, you see the homeless everywhere, and you see more aggressive behavior and shootings are up, the homicides are up, the rapes are up. These are the kinds of crimes that scare people and obviously make them fear, are we sliding back into the abyss, are we crawling back into the belly of the beast?

And look, I got street smarts. I'm 61. We're in 18 counties and 130 cities, and I know when a city is on a decline like a Detroit, a Chicago, Baltimore. We're showing the first effects. We don't want your pre-emptive strike. And the crown jewel of the city, Central Park, there's a good chance the rest of the city will start sliding into that criminal abyss, too.

COSTELLO: Do you have patrols operating in other cities as well?

SLIWA: Yes. Baltimore, where I'll be this weekend, Chiraq, Spike Lee named it because it's like Iraq. Detroit, right on down. But listen, right around the world. But those cities have had a tremendous spike in crime. New York was the safest city, large city in America for 20 years. First with Rudy Giuliani and them Bloomberg.

COSTELLO: But it's still -- it's still very safe in New York City.

SLIWA: Well, you know, in the hood, and I'm a hood rat. So when you go into the projects and in one week alone nine women were shot. I'm 61. At no time, as bad as it's ever been in the city, were nine women ever shot in the city. And this mayor with window chains on his eyes, cotton balls in his ears, he says, why are you getting hysterical, Curtis? Hysterical because I love this city and I don't want it to return to the criminals.

COSTELLO: OK. I understand that, I totally get that. And I understand you got a warm reception when you guys patrolled in Central Park and I totally get that. But the crime statistics were so unbelievably low over the last decade or so, and there's been this little spike, right? And so because the crime statistics were so low, does it just feel bad but in reality it's not really that bad?

SLIWA: You could see it from the cops who are busting their shoes and pounding doughnuts. They're not aggressive out there. They're laying up in their cars and the criminals are beginning to taunt them, they're not showing respect, they're not showing respect to the citizens and economically, if these crimes continue, particularly in the hotspots, you got the machete man, you got the brick man, you got the hammer man, midtown Manhattan where all the tourists are, hey, pretty soon tourists are going to be saying, maybe New York City isn't the place we want to be. That's why we have to watch our P's and Q's.

COSTELLO: I'd like my director, Scottie, to put that graphic back up because those are statistics from across the country. So we'll look at those while we continue to talk. This op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal" blamed the increasing homicide rates, the increase in violence across the country on Ferguson, Missouri. Do you agree with that?

SLIWA: "The Wall Street Journal" should stay down there with the 1 percent-ers. They couldn't be more hopelessly wrong. There's nothing to do with the dysfunction of Ferguson. Never before have I seen more dysfunction of white and black people in one place in America. And it continues to go at it.

No, this is the result of young men carrying guns and using guns and cops not doing stop and frisk. Not preemptively preventing this kind of horrific violence. And all it's going to lead is the more young men becoming Uzi-toting, dope-sucking psychopathic killing machines. And then we're going to say, what happened? How did it get to out of control?

When a city is named Chiraq and it's the hometown of our president, don't you think we ought all to be saying, we're not doing enough, we're more concerned with violence in other parts of the world than we are in some of the cities that have birthed us. New York City has birthed me. I've shed my blood on this city, I've been shot, I've been stabbed. I don't want it to go back and I will do everything within my power with the Guardian Angels to prevent that here and in 18 countries and 130 cities around the world.

COSTELLO: Curtis Sliwa, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate it.

SLIWA: My pleasure.

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Within the next few weeks we could learn whether Vice President Joe Biden will run for president. If he makes a late jump into the race, he could become a major competitor for Hillary Clinton. There's just one problem, there doesn't seem to be a lot of support from inside the White House for Joe Biden.

So let's bring in CNN's senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta. He's in Martha's Vineyard where President Obama is vacationing to tell us more.

Good morning.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning. And no doubt Joe Biden is the talk of the Democratic Party right now as he is taking his time deciding whether he will run for president.