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CNN NEWSROOM

Huckabee Visits Jailed Kentucky Clerk; Refugees Break Past Border Security; Hillary Clinton to Show More Humor and Heart; Can Fiorina Help GOP's Image with Women?; Cecil the Lion Killer Receives Threat. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 8, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:01] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: A presidential candidate visits Kim Davis in jail. His rally for religious liberty so big area schools are shut down.

And countries on the brink as migrants continue to flood in. But the welcome signs are coming down as Hungarian police use pepper spray to keep migrants at bay.

Plus, Colbert's big debut. Forget punchlines. Get ready for Jebro and a new voice in election 2016.

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.

In just a few hours that jailed Kentucky clerk who refuses to issue same-sex marriage licenses gets a high-profile visitor. That would be Mike Huckabee. Yes, the Republican presidential candidate will step behind bars to meet with Davis and he's been tweeting up a storm about it. And nearly every new message on the White House hopeful's Twitter account is about this controversy and a rally that Huckabee will be leading this afternoon outside of her detention center. A rally that could get so big five schools have already called off classes for more than 1,000 students over traffic congestion fears.

Last hour I asked one of Davis' attorneys if he thinks this will help get Davis out of jail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROGER GANIM, ATTORNEY FOR KIM DAVIS: It certainly can't hurt. Kim Davis has been overwhelmed by the amount of support she's receiving, and the fact that a presidential candidate will take time out of a busy campaign schedule to come not only visit Kim but then to lead a rally on her behalf, it can only help raise awareness about the injustice of Kim Davis sitting in jail for no more than believing that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Martin Savidge is live on the scene where that meeting and rally will go down.

Good morning, Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Yes, people have been showing up here actually for hours now, and you're still hours away from that rally which is scheduled for 3:00 this afternoon. The stage is set or maybe I should say the truck is set. You can see that red cab truck and then the flat bed that's behind it. That's actually where Mike Huckabee is going to be speaking and addressing this rally.

It's not just Huckabee, there are a number of other speakers that are lined up as well. And it's expected there's going to be a pretty big crowd. Grayson is not that big a town, so hence the reason why they've decided to put school off for one more day. There were concern about traffic jams and people getting around. There were also fire trucks and emergency equipment standing by as well because it's going to be a very hot day on top of everything else emotionally.

So I think that they're just erring on the side of precaution and making sure that the scene is set. The other thing that's quite clear is that Miss Davis is going to be able to hear all of this because, well, she's right inside that building there. The rally is right up to the front door of that facility. So it seems pretty clear that it's tacitly got the endorsement of county officials and law enforcement as well. Almost everybody here is in support of Kim Davis -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Martin Savidge reporting live from Kentucky this morning.

Michelangelo Signorile joins me now. He's a Sirius XM Radio host and editor-at-large at "Huffington Post's" Gay Voices.

Welcome.

MICHELANGELO SIGNORILE, SIRIUS XM RADIO HOST: Hi, Carol.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being here.

SIGNORILE: Thank you.

COSTELLO: So Madonna's brother has weighed in. His name is, Michael -- wait a minute, let me get my quote here. OK. Madonna's brother weighed in, I'm going to have to read it off the prompter for most of my quote. On Friday he wrote the following on Facebook, and Madonna's brother is gay, as you know. He said, "Once again the gay community feels the need to be sore winners. Is it so difficult to allow this woman her religion or must we destroy her in order for her to betray her faith? No matter how we judge, it's truth. The rights we have fought for mean nothing if we deny her hers."

Does he have a point?

SIGNORILE: Well, I think he doesn't have an understanding of American law and the rule of law, and the separation of church and state. This woman, Kim Davis, is a public servant, and she took an oath to serve the Constitution and the Supreme Court regularly interprets the Constitution and has said that gay and lesbian people have the right to marry.

She has the power to walk out of that jail right now. The judge said that as long as she allowed her deputies to give out the licenses, she doesn't have to sign a license, but she doesn't even want to give them the power to do that. So she's being very unreasonable. She could walk out right now.

COSTELLO: I think she wants the governor of Kentucky to give all clerks the exemption if they want it based on their religious beliefs.

SIGNORILE: Well, she's the county clerk, the head of the office, and she still has to have her name on the license, and in North Carolina they've done that and a lot of civil libertarians are very concerned about it, exempting the deputy clerks, but ultimately the actual clerk of the office has to have their name on it. They're an elected official and they -- they have to uphold the government's rules and orders.

[10:05:08] COSTELLO: So what would be so wrong if they changed the law that, you know, it wasn't required to have the head clerk on the marriage license? Would that be OK? Would that be a compromise?

SIGNORILE: I don't know that they could do that. I don't know how it works constitutionally, but I think once you start with exemptions, where does it end? If she decided she didn't want to serve or marry a Jewish couple or give them a license or a couple she knew had premarital sex because it goes against her religion, do we allow that exemption? Where do we end? Where do we say, OK, we're just accommodating you? She can have another job. She doesn't have to be a government official if it conflicts with her religious faith.

COSTELLO: Well, Chris Christie actually did suggest that, you know, the governor could say, hey, Miss Davis, you can have this job instead of being the county clerk. Mike Huckabee, he has -- it's a whole different story, right? He wants her to be reinstated.

SIGNORILE: Yes.

COSTELLO: He wants her to have her religious liberty and he's going to jail to demonstrate his support of her. So just your feelings on a presidential candidate visiting Kim Davis in jail.

SIGNORILE: Well, I think we knew -- I certainly knew that this issue and what happened here would galvanize a certain base of the Republican Party and Republican candidates would feel they had to champion her, and we've seen some, though not all. I think conservatives are very split on this. Some of them supporting her, but I think it's going to backfire in a general election because I think the American people not only we know the majority support equality, but definitely support the rule of law. This story is no longer about marriage or religious liberty. It's about the rule of law.

COSTELLO: I don't know. A part of me says this is like the last gasp, right? They're fighting. It's the last gasp because --

(CROSSTALK)

SIGNORILE: It is --

COSTELLO: Even if you look at evangelical voters they're really supporting Donald Trump who is not making such a big deal of Kim Davis.

SIGNORILE: Right. I think it's kind of a George Wallace moment where a certain group is galvanized with him was -- with him against integration, but ultimately -- and against civil rights, but ultimately equality won out.

COSTELLO: Yes. And I should mention that Kim Davis is a Democrat, did you know?

SIGNORILE: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTELLO: She is a Democrat. Thanks, Michelangelo, for stopping by.

SIGNORILE: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Appreciate it.

Now to the worsening migrant crisis in Europe. Right now thousands of families are running for their lives. Their goal to escape poverty and war in places like Syria and Iraq. Earlier this morning CNN was on the ground when a group of refugees broke past a security line along the Hungary-Serbia border. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're running now with these migrants and refugees who just broke out of the holding area right along the border with Serbia. The police are literally right behind them -- CNN. The police are literally right behind them and in front, trying to bring them under control.

There are hundreds of them that staged this breakout because they were fed up at the conditions they were being held in. They couldn't take it anymore. Young, old, men, parents with families, all breaking through. And now also being pursued by the police force through this cornfield.

This all kicks off about half an hour ago. And there are people who have been carrying their children. There are some elderly among these crowds. These are people who at this stage are literally running for their lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Overwhelmed by the flood of refugees coming in, Austria and Germany are now calling on the European neighbors for help. All of this as the U.S. weighs how to deal with this crisis.

With violent attacks against refugees on the rise, there are also major concerns that ISIS militants could try to hide among migrant crowds.

Joining me now to discuss all of this is CNN's senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen. He's at a train station in Vienna.

Set the scene for us, Frederik.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Yes, and the train station here in Vienna really is a focal point of the refugee crisis that's going on in Europe. What happens is that the refugees who come from Hungary, pretty much all of them are brought here to the Vienna railway station and then pretty much all of them or almost all of them will try to continue on to go on to Germany.

That's where they want to go. There's trains departing for places like Munich but also like Hamburg. Very, very often from here. And we've been speaking to some of the refugees, and they say, you know, they've been through so much and now they're hoping that this will be their last leg and that they'll finally make it to where they want to go.

What I have to say is that the -- there has been an outpouring of support from the Austrian civil society. There's been so many volunteers who have made immense donations and more importantly are also donating their time. What we saw just a couple of minutes ago is there's actually a children's play area that was set up by volunteers inside the railway station just so the kids can get their mind off that horrible trek that many of them have had to endure.

[10:10:11] Now nevertheless, of course, there is also that political dimension to all of this where you have European countries at odds with some of them saying that more refugees need to be taken in. Like for instance the Germans and others taking a more restrictive approach. For instance, Denmark, but also a lot of the Eastern European countries. And then of course you have the Obama administration now also very much, they're on top of this issue.

In fact, there is a statement from the National Security Council that I want to share with you. It says, "The administration is actively considering a range of approaches to be more responsive to the global refugee crisis, including with regard to refugee resettlement." That, of course, the big issue here in Europe as well as where you are going to put the many, many people who are arriving on Europe's shores at this point in time -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Frederik Pleitgen reporting live for us this morning. Thank you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, critics say the Republican Party has a problem with women. So is rising star Carly Fiorina the solution?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [10:15:17] COSTELLO: A kinder, gentler Hillary Clinton? "The New York Times" says she could soon be coming to a campaign stop near you. As team Clinton looks to retool in the face of sagging poll numbers and an e-mail controversy that will just not go away.

Senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny joins me now with more. Good morning.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Carol. Anytime you see a headline in a newspaper saying campaign reboot, you have to ask yourself why is this happening? Who is this intended to send a message to? And certainly that's the case with the Clinton campaign coming the day after Labor Day as this next phase of the campaign sort of opens here, but the Clinton advisers I have talked to this morning and throughout the weekend when I was on the campaign trail with her in Iowa said that Hillary Clinton believes that the real her is not coming out.

They believe that she's not showing her humor enough. She's not showing her -- you know her humanity enough, and they want to try and, you know, take those small conversations that she's been having with voters across the country into a bigger setting to try more of who she is.

But, Carol, what's -- let me translate that for you here into English. They want to put the e-mail controversy aside, at least try to, and try and show why she wants to be president, why she's running. So they're going to put her in more presidential settings. She's giving a big speech on Iran tomorrow. She's going to be giving policy speeches sort of week by week.

They are trying to kind of counter this narrative that she's lost a bit of control of her campaign, but, Carol, when I was talking to voters out in Iowa over the weekend, over the last several days, I was struck by Bernie Sanders supporters. I would ask them, why are you drawn to Bernie Sanders and not Hillary Clinton, and they would say, we like what Bernie Sanders is saying. This isn't anti-Clinton, this is pro-Bernie Sanders.

So there might be a more complicated issue here going on among some Democrats. They -- frankly it's not necessarily a no vote against Hillary Clinton. They like what Bernie Sanders is saying. That's why we're also going to see some message changing from the Clinton campaign. She's out this morning calling for new campaign finance restrictions. So we're going to see a bit more of a liberal message from her and more of a presidential side of these speeches trying to get in the sense that she could be the next president, trying to get beyond all this controversy. We'll see if it works.

COSTELLO: And at the same time she's going to be warm and fuzzy, too. We'll see how that goes.

Jeff Zeleny, many thanks to you. I appreciate it.

Donald Trump and Ben Carson may be the most famous outsiders but a third Republican hopeful Carly Fiorina is also gaining traction, enough to make it onto the debate stage as the next Republican face- off right here on CNN.

Fiorina thanked her grassroots supporters for the change in debate rules but voters aren't the only ones taking notice of Fiorina, as "Politico" reports, so was the Republican Party. In an article "Politico" writes, in part, "Carly Fiorina is the only presidential candidate with the advantage of two campaigns, there's the one she's running herself and the one the rest of the Republican Party is conducting on her behalf.

The party being accused of waging a war on women and facing a likely general election campaign against Hillary Clinton has gotten wise to the advantages of having Fiorina stay in the race.

So let's talk about this. Noelle Nikpour is a Republican strategist and Mindy Finn, a Republican Republicans political consultant.

Welcome to you both.

NOELLE NICKPOUR, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Thanks.

Good morning.

COSTELLO: So -- good morning. Thanks for being here.

So, Noelle, what do you make of this notion that the Republican Party is actually not only supporting Carly Fiorina but pushing money her way?

NIKPOUR: You know what? This is the best thing for the Republican brand as far as a woman is concerned. And we're about to see if she can bring back and make popular conservative feminism. This is going to be very, very interesting how she plays out.

Look, she has come -- her story is great. She has come from a secretary to a CEO. She is smart. She's articulate. She looks great. This is something that we have been needing, especially when a lot of people have identified the GOP female brand with Sarah Palin.

You know, this is something that really looks strong, and a lot of women can get behind and a lot of women that are on the fence and they want a woman president but they're looking at Hillary Clinton and they're going not so much.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTELLO: But, Mindy, shouldn't Carly Fiorina be like good enough to raise money herself? Should the RNC really be pushing money her way to keep her in the race for the sole reason of making the Republican Party look more inclusive?

MINDY FINN, REPUBLICAN POLITICAL CONSULTANT: Well, look, I mean, one of the primary barriers for women entering politics is they're afraid they won't be able to raise the money. And historically they have faced challenges. In this case Carly has been raising the money on her own, on her own merit. After the first debate and her really knockout performance, her fundraising started flooding in. I don't think it's too surprising that some donors are supporting

Carly as well as supporting another candidate just like voters. You know, they might like a couple candidates and they're kind of waiting to see how it shakes out but they want to make sure that their favorite candidates have a platform.

[10:20:13] Carly's gender is an asset, no doubt, but it's on a list of about 10 other things and many of those trump -- certainly trump her gender where she showed incredible grit, courage, and has a really long resume to boot.

COSTELLO: Yes. But isn't there like the smell of hypocrisy in the air? That, you know, you shouldn't want Carly Fiorina in the race only because she's a woman, you want her in because she's good.

NIKPOUR: Well, and you know what, you're totally right on that but let's look at this. When she entered the race, she was the only woman in the race and she wasn't really polling well. She was the last in the heat. You know what? She did so well on her own merit, be it female or not female, on that second tier debate that she actually -- she rose to the top by just being a good debater and being able to attack Hillary.

When a guy attacks a woman, it's kind of a fine line. But Carly can attack Hillary and she can do it with grace and not come off as a bully.

(LAUGHTER)

NIKPOUR: You know what I mean?

COSTELLO: Well, actually, I must -- I must say, Mindy, that I'm actually excited about her taking on Donald Trump because I just think that, A, a woman needs to do that, and, B, I think Carly Fiorina is tough enough to kind of make him uncomfortable.

FINN: I don't think you're alone in looking forward to that debate moment. I think many people are. But, you know, I absolutely agree that Carly is where she is today based on her own merit. If some people are giving her some extra money or support because of her gender, so be it. But she's here because she -- she really aced that first debate. She's been doing the hard work on the ground in the early states.

She's already believed one of the best communicators in the race and to your point not only as -- you know, as a woman but generally she's been willing to face tough issues, to take the fight to Hillary, to Trump, and to anybody else that she thinks is necessary in this race.

COSTELLO: All right. Mindy Finn, Noelle Nikpour, I have to leave it there.

And remember on September 16th, on September 16th the Republican presidential hopefuls will take part in their second set debate that will happen at the Reagan Library and I believe right here on CNN. All right. A bit of breaking news to pass along to you now. I want

to take you now to the Hungary-Serbian border where tensions are rising. We told you the Hungarian authorities, they tear gassed these migrants and now they've en chasing them through cornfields and down railroad tracks.

Arwa Damon joins us with more on this. Hi, Arwa.

DAMON: Hi, and we've stopped now on these railroad tracks. You can see everyone -- most of them seated and then surrounded by the police force. Now these people broke out of the holding area that is where they report to when they first cross into Hungary. They broke out because they were absolutely fed up with the length of the wait and the conditions that they were having to wait and it was not an organized effort.

They just made a run for it, and then one group made it through the police lines. Everyone else immediately followed and they bolted, ran as fast as they possibly could for the longest time, especially difficult for the children. Some of them actually even lost their shoes like this family that's over here. I don't know if you can see them, but those two little kids right there, brother and sister, both of them losing their shoes as they did try to make that run for it.

Everyone eventually forced to slow down, especially with everything that they were carrying, especially those that had kids. A lot of them tried to throw away their bags, their few belongings that they had so they could run a little bit faster but eventually they were surrounded by the police.

What we can't really tell at this point is if they were leading the way or if the police are trying to shepherd them in one direction or another. So far they have stopped them here. They tried to push through this location. They stopped them here. But they said to them, please wait 10 minutes. We're going to bring food and water for the children. Just wait 10 minutes.

People very wary because they don't trust the police at all, so we're just going to have to wait and see what happens here at this point, but this is just really an indication of how desperate these people have become that they would take such extreme measures and how exhausted people are. They are emotionally, mentally, physically absolutely exhausted and they just want to keep going.

They don't want to be held up any longer, they just want to get to whatever their final destination is, Germany for most. A place where they can finally relax and feel that weight that they've been carrying, that stress, that fear, that agony, they just want to be able to relax and start what they hope will be a new future.

COSTELLO: All right. Arwa Damon reporting live for us this morning. Thank you.

I'll be right back.

[10:24:50] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Police in Colorado are on high alert this morning after a chilling call to 911. The anonymous caller targeting officers in Aurora and Denver.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are about to start striking fear shooting down all the cops that we see by their selves. This will go for the sheriff's department. You guys are evicting innocent people. Let us catch you by yourself and it's shots fired.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Chilling, right? The head of the Aurora Police Association says officers will ride in pairs in patrol cars to help ensure their safety.

It's back to work for the man who killed Cecil the lion. Just over an hour ago and without much uproar the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer walked back into his practice. For months the dentist and big game hunter has found himself on the other end of the hunt becoming a target of protests and death threats.

Boris Sanchez joins me now. He's following the story. Good morning.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. A relatively smooth greeting for Dr. Walter Palmer as he walked into his office. Only a handful of protesters out there. Some of them you might have heard chanting extradite Palmer very different from what we saw that last week of July when his office had to be shut down after there were so many protesters outside. Very aggressive and very angry.