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Carson Campaign Shakeup; Gray May Have Had Prior Back Injury; Major Manhunt for Israeli Gunman. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired January 1, 2016 - 10:30   ET

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


[10:29:42] SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Armstrong was on CNN yesterday and, you know, he acknowledged that the Carson campaign has sort of been working on their candidate and that sometimes, you know, after these terrorist attacks people have gotten the sense that Ben Carson maybe isn't as tough as they wanted their candidate to be.

Take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS, BEN CARSON BUSINESS MANAGER: Dr. Carson is not the one that stands like Mr. Trump or Mr. Cruz and say all these things sometimes incendiary and people think that Carson should speak loud and say fiery things you're a leader and you're in control.

He's soft-spoken and sometimes people confuse soft-spokenness with not being strong enough. But Dr. Carson has learned that sometimes soft- spokenness is not enough. He'll be more authoritarian in the way that he speaks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: So you see the campaign is acknowledging that there are weaknesses, both with the candidate and with the operation. I think the challenge after a shakeup like this is what happens next. Can you regroup and can you deliver a solid ground game in Iowa? Can you prevent additional unforced errors and just sort of buckle down in the final weeks before the caucuses and get your poll numbers up? And we'll have to see if the Carson campaign can pull that off.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Sara Murray -- thank you so much.

We'll talk about this right now, this 2016 race with CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein -- good to see you; along with CNN political commentator Peter Beinart -- good to see you as well. Happy New Year -- gentlemen.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Happy New Year.

WHITFIELD: All right. So let's talk about this Carson shakeup. Ron -- is this as simple as Dr. Carson puts it, to reinvigorate? To invigorate -- that's the word that he used, or is it a sign of something else? BROWNSTEIN: I think, you know, I think it is a sign of the situation

that he's in. You know, the Presidential campaign and the primaries have really become something of a national audition where everybody sees the candidates at some big moments and makes judgments. And when Carson had the spotlight in the fall when the Republicans were looking at him in a series of events he simply did not seem prepared for the presidency.

Many Republicans admire his life story but I don't think he projected the executive authority or understanding of some of these issues that are required in a president. And I think as a result his moment has probably passed in terms of being a major factor in this race, with or with out that (ph).

He still has an audience, but it's a much smaller audience and I think it's going to be hard for him to restore anywhere near the support that he had earlier.

WHITFIELD: And Peter, how do you dissect that those who were, you know, leaving the campaign, those who elected to leave has very complimentary words on their exit. The statement is very gentile.

PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Well, look, I think that there are a lot of people who hold Ben Carson in high esteem. But as Ron correctly said, this is a campaign which has basically been in freefall. I mean back in the fall Ben Carson was actually leading the race at a certain point nationally.

Now he is way down in the pack both nationally and especially in Iowa which is a key state for him, given the influence of the evangelical Christians. And so I think that, you know, it's not surprising. You tend to see staff shakeups and all kinds of internecine warfare in campaigns that are struggling in this campaign.

No campaign in the second half of 2015 saw a more dramatic rise and dramatic fall than Ben Carson.

WHITFIELD: So Senator Ted Cruz now is making some bold predictions in this New Year, too, to campaign volunteers during a conference call. This is what he told them about 2016. He told them, quote, "There is a very good possibility that the Republican primary will be decided by the end of March. First thing tomorrow we've got a 90-day sprint to get the job done," end quote; and then added that he expects to be the nominee.

So Peter -- your reaction to the statement, the timetable that Cruz campaign is forecasting there.

BEINART: Well, I think, you know, the Cruz campaign has always had a clear strategy. You have to give them credit for that. And I think it's to win Iowa. It's to do very well in South Carolina. Now that's a very conservative state where evangelicals are very strong, and then to clean up in what's been called the SEC primary -- a lot of states in the deep south where Cruz, given that he's emerged as the evangelical candidate in many ways, is well-positioned. I think the danger for him is that the race is not over. And that the establishment wing of the party consolidates around someone, probably Marco Rubio, and then the states that come after those big southern states are more in the Midwest and east and states where someone like Rubio might begin to have a better chance.

And you might see the establishment really rally around an alternative to Ted Cruz because first of all most Washington Republicans hate Cruz and secondly, most of them think that he would lose big and hurt them in Congress. So if they get the chance, they will rally around someone else.

WHITFIELD: And so Ron, Senator Cruz's GOP rival, Donald Trump, he was on Fox last night and just before midnight gave a prediction of his own in this election year. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I hope you're going to be calling the White House, and I promise you will get through. You'll always be invited and we're going to do something really special. We're going to make a lot of amends for the mistakes that have been made over the years. So I hope you're going to be calling the White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: So, Ron -- I loved your facial expression right away.

[10:35:00] BROWNSTEIN: He's nothing if not -- no, he's nothing if not confident, as, you know, you should be in the primary. Look, the Ted Cruz assumption is that the race will quickly reduce to two candidates. He will consolidate the right. There will be one center right, more establishment opponent and that he will win.

Historically, by the way, the center right opponent has won in the first place. But more importantly, Cruz's strategy kind of assumes the second part disappears, which is that Donald Trump isn't there. And Donald Trump is, I think, a big -- you know, Trump and Cruz are a challenge for each other if the center produces a candidate because they do overlap in their support, particularly among blue-collar evangelical Christians.

And I think that, you know, the Cruz assumption is that Trump kind of goes away and that he can consolidate the right against someone in the center. That may or may not happen -- Fred. You may have a race where Cruz and Trump end up as the two finalists. You could also have what the Republicans haven't seen in the modern era which is a three- way race with Trump, Cruz, and then someone from the center right -- each holding on to distinct wings of the party and this race going on in that scenario probably all the way to June.

WHITFIELD: Wow. I love these predictions. 2016 is going to be a very interesting, bumpy year, isn't it?

All right. Ron Brownstein, Peter Beinart -- thank you so much. Happy New Year again.

BROWNSTEIN: Happy New Year.

WHITFIELD: Be sure to stay tuned because in just a few minutes we will be speaking live with Dr. Carson's new campaign manager. We'll be asking him more about this shakeup.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right. Welcome back. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.

[10:40:02] This just in to CNN: new documents reveal Freddie Gray, who suffered a spinal injury and later died while in Baltimore police custody, may have had a previous back injury. This according to defense attorneys for one of the officers charged, Cesar Goodson.

Goodson seen here all the way on the right there charged with depraved murder and has already pleaded not guilty last month. A judge declared a mistrial for Police Officer William Porter after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous decision on his case.

Let's go straight to CNN's Miguel Marquez. One has to wonder if this will change the argument for prosecutors who are trying to establish that something awry happened that led to a fatal injury for Freddie Gray.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It's not very clear. The document that we're talking about is a document of defense lawyers for Cesar Goodson who have filed seeking medical records of Mr. Gray. They want everything in his medical past and also his incarceration records. A separate document filed by the defense says that there was an anonymous tip that they've never been able to confirm that Mr. Gray tried to harm himself while in central booking in Baltimore.

This particular document about the medical records indicate that on March 31st -- the timing of this is a little curious to me -- on March 31st they say Mr. Gray was in the Western District Police Station. That's where he eventually wound up not breathing, but this was weeks before he was arrested by police in that incident and that he was giving police information about a robbery.

So, one, it tells us that Freddie Gray worked with police or at least on that occasion was. And secondly they say that he complained of a bad back. Not that he had a previous back injury or there was a surgery or anything else, but that he had a bad back and his back was in pain that day.

What is curious is that that document was filed on May 1st. So the conversation happened March 31st, according to the officers, prior to Mr. Gray's injuries while in police custody and then it was filed on May 1st after those injuries had occurred; so that I think will be looked at as well.

The prosecution in all of this has filed documents saying that the defense should have none of this because none of it is relevant to what happened to Mr. Gray in the back of that police van. They say that whatever happened to him in the back of that police van was so traumatic it snapped his spine, essentially hurting him very badly and then leading to his death some days later -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: All right. Miguel Marquez, thank you so much for bringing that to us.

MARQUEZ: Sure.

WHITFIELD: Appreciate it.

All right. Still to come, gunfire explodes as a gunman opens fire just outside of a cafe window. We'll have the latest on this morning's deadly rampage in Tel Aviv.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[104604] WHITFIELD: All right. We're following breaking news out of Tel Aviv, Israel's second largest city. A gunman has opened fire on a crowd outside of a pub and at least two people are confirmed dead and several more wounded.

You can see in this video right here, supposedly showing the gunman's rampage. It is worth noting that we don't know how the video was obtained and it does not match what some witnesses are describing.

Police are swarming and neighborhoods searching for the shooter and any clues as to whether this is terror-related.

CNN's Ian Lee is in Jerusalem. And, Ian -- do we know what the shooter was doing right before the attack? Were people able to, you know, monitor the movements of this suspected gunman?

IAN LEE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fredricka we're seeing new CCTV footage or what they're saying -- appears to be CCTV footage on Israeli media. This showing the gunman in a supermarket right before the attack took place. A bit bizarre behavior -- he is looking at some of the produce. He puts some in the bag. He walks off camera, comes back, dumps it out and then he proceeds towards the exit.

He puts a backpack that he is carrying on some shopping carts. He pulls out the gun from there. And that's when he steps around the corner. That's when he starts shooting the pub and the sidewalk, injuring eight and killing two people.

It appears to be just one person but Israeli police are looking into the chance that he had help as well. But the attack taking place over less than half a minute, really, a real quick hit, and then the gunman running away.

Right now Tel Aviv, they're going door to door. They're going house to house, street by street, looking for this gunman as he is still at large -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right. Ian Lee, keep us posted. Thank you so much there from Jerusalem. All right. Checking our top stories.

Bill Cosby breaking his silence on social media posting this tweet, thanking his fans for their support as he is charged with sexual assault against Andrea Constand. Reaction was mixed, some backing the comedian while others rebuked him over allegations of sexual assault. His wife Camille could be in court next week after a judge overturned an effort to block her testimony.

And Tonya Couch's attorney is now speaking out, saying her client did not violate any laws. The mother of the affluenza teen, Ethan Couch, returned to the U.S. in handcuffs. She was then charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon.

Her son meanwhile is still in Mexico. Officials say legal proceedings for Ethan Couch's extradition could take weeks or months.

Investigators are dealing with the aftermath of a massive fire at a hotel blaze in Dubai. Clouds of smoke are still coming out of the 63rd floor of that building. Firefighters battled the blaze as a New Year's fireworks display lit up the sky. Officials say as many as 16 people were treated for injuries related to the fire. And a source tells CNN the fire may have started when curtains inside a residence in that building caught fire.

And we continue to follow the latest this morning in the shakeup on top of the Ben Carson campaign -- Dr. Carson's presidential campaign manager, deputy manager and communications director all resigning.

Here now to discuss is Carson's new campaign manager, Ed Brookover. Good to see you -- Happy New Year.

ED BROOKOVER, BEN CARSON CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Hi.

WHITFIELD: So Dr. Carson says this shakeup is necessary to invigorate his campaign. What's meant by that statement, exactly?

BROOKOVER: Well, first, Fredricka, thanks for having me. I'd be remiss if I didn't say that our prayers go out to the victims of the shooting in Israel. It's a very sad situation.

[10:50:00] Inside Dr. Carson's campaign we're always re-evaluating where we are, what we're doing, how to get better. Dr. Carson did that, added General Bob Dees as his campaign chairman. And that situation led to a couple of aides resigning and we're moving forward.

WHITFIELD: Some might interpret this kind of shakeup at this juncture as a real sign of trouble, especially since Dr. Carson is slipping in the polls. How does the campaign respond to that?

BROOKOVER: We've raised more money than any other campaign. We have over five million followers on Facebook. We have hundreds of thousands of volunteers across the country. We think we need to do a better job always of getting Dr. Carson's message out. And that's what we plan to do.

WHITFIELD: So, raising money but losing traction?

BROOKOVER: I would say that polls go up and down especially national polls. February 1st is what we're very focused on in the caucus night in Iowa. We've had over 7,000 donors in Iowa. Over 19,000 people have attended our events in Iowa. We feel good about our opportunities to do very well when we get to the caucuses on February 1st.

WHITFIELD: So Armstrong William, Dr. Carson's business manager, as you know was on CNN yesterday, characterizing this announcement as a burden being lifted off of Dr. Carson. What do you suppose he meant by that?

BROOKOVER: I don't know. He's a guest here often. Ask him next time.

WHITFIELD: But when that message is sent by someone who is a close associate, close aide of Dr. Carson, and saying that, you know, a burden has been lifted, I mean how does the campaign respond to that? Or what burden might he be speaking of?

BROOKOVER: I don't know what burden Armstrong may have been speaking of. I do know that we're still operating today as we did yesterday and the day before and will do tomorrow. Very focused on working with our team, our staff, our volunteers, our donors to get Dr. Carson's message out across the country.

WHITFIELD: As the new campaign communications director, what is the message being sent within the campaign that needs to be the primary focus in this New Year as it pertains to resuscitating Dr. Carson's viability?

BROOKOVER: We want to get our message in front of as many voters as possible, especially those voters who agree with Dr. Carson's message of wanting to heal what's wrong with our country and revive the American spirit once again. We're going to focus on that through our social media, through our volunteers, through our door knocking as we move forward.

WHITFIELD: Heal the country. I know that's the big moniker, but specifically, can voters expect to hear something more concrete from Dr. Carson, the campaign, from you, the communications director, in this New Year?

BROOKOVER: I think that -- I think that you will. I think Dr. Carson's been pretty specific about what he wants to do in terms of taxes, in terms of dealing with ISIS, in terms of dealing with the race problems that this country faces. And I think that you will continue to hear those kinds of plans and programs as we move forward.

WHITFIELD: And just with days away from say, the Iowa caucuses, is there a direct message, a particular strategy that you as the new communications director want to reveal to try to capture some of the support that may have been lost in recent weeks?

BROOKOVER: We just want to keep getting Dr. Carson in front of as many people as possible. When people hear Dr. Carson's message they respond very well. And that's our job over the next 30 days as we move to the Iowa caucus.

WHITFIELD: And I apologize -- as new campaign manager, what do you think --

BROOKOVER: You gave me another new title there.

WHITFIELD: Yes. Well, you're doing it all, right, as the campaign manager. What in particular do you believe needs to be done to kind of better support, better, you know, recapture some of the support that Dr. Carson may have lost, particularly after his visit to the refugee camps in Jordan? It seems as though that's when some of his support took a dip in the polls.

BROOKOVER: I think that we just need to stay very focused on our task at hand. And our task at hand isn't simple -- I mean isn't hard to describe, but it's one we need to execute better on, and that's getting our message out to the voters.

WHITFIELD: All right. Ed Brookover -- thank you so much. Appreciate it. Happy New Year.

BROOKOVER: Happy New Year to you -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right. This Sunday on CNN -- a ground-breaking look at the man who virtually reshaped how we view technology -- Steve Jobs. The documentary "THE MAN IN THE MACHINE" gives us an inside look at the iconic innovator, including what Jobs called the artistry of the very first computer he helped design.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the things Steve thought was important and Gerry Manik (ph) facilitated was, this is where all the signatures are. They're all the people -- the original group that actually signed the machine. There's Steve Jobs right in the middle. My name is over here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why did you do that?

STEVE JOBS, FORMER APPLE CEO: Because the people that worked on it consider themselves, and I certainly consider them, artists. These are the people that are under different circumstances would be painters and poets but because of the time that we live in, this new medium has appeared in which to express one's self to one's fellow species, and that's the medium of computing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: How interesting. You can catch the entire documentary "STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE" Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. right here on CNN.

And 2016 entered with big celebrations around the world including the big one in New York City.

More than a million people packing into Times Square to celebrate and security, of course, was very tight. More than 6,000 NYPD officers on hand after New York, Los Angeles and Washington were targeted by terror threats.

[11:00:00] All right. Thanks so much for joining me. Happy New Year everyone.

I'm Fredricka Whitfield.

"AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan starts right now.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Hello, I'm Jim Sciutto.

We begin with breaking news.