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Apple Fights FBI; South Carolina Race. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired February 17, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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


[15:01:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right, top of the hour, 3:00 p.m. Eastern. I'm Poppy Harlow, in today for my friend Brooke Baldwin. This is CNN's special coverage of a critical moment in the race for the White House.

Erin Burnett is in Greenville, South Carolina.

Hi, Erin.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Poppy.

And it is a crucial, crucial moment here in South Carolina. We are just hours away from our town hall with the Republican presidential candidates gathering here to answer voter questions, coming as this race has gotten incredibly hostile and nasty.

And I will give you some examples of that in just a moment. First, though, some breaking political news out of the state, a very big development ahead of Marco Rubio appearing at our town hall tonight. Governor Nikki Haley endorsing Senator Rubio, expecting to make her official announcement in just a few hours. It is a major endorsement.

I want to go to Sara Murray, who is in Walterboro, South Carolina. That is where Donald Trump is going to be holding a rally in just a few hours.

Sara, obviously, that's a crucial moment as well, because when you look at the polls, he wasn't expecting the governor's endorsement here, but she is wildly popular among voters. The majority here are still leaning towards someone or undecided. And yet Donald Trump is the front-runner when it comes to people who have actually decided, by far.

SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Erin. Donald Trump is definitely the front-runner in this state.

But I don't think he is going to be too disappointed to not receive Nikki Haley's endorsement. She has had some tough comments for him before. I don't think he ever went into it expecting it. In fact, I think the person this is a blow to is Jeb Bush. The fact that Marco Rubio is able to pick up this endorsement essentially is a signal to the other establishment candidates in the race that these elected officials are starting to prepare to line up behind someone. That's not Jeb Bush. That's not John Kasich. It's starting to look a little bit more like Marco Rubio. As for Donald Trump, I think he will use it as another feather in his cap, another example of how he is the candidate who is not a politician, he is the outsider. That's the support he has been drawing on in this state.

BURNETT: A very fair point.

When you are getting ready for this Trump rally later on today, Sara, you know, we talk about the nasty tone of this race. Well, look no further than what he had to say about Senator Lindsey Graham, of course, who was running for president, senator from this state who has endorsed Bush. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Graham is a disgrace and I think you have one of the worst representatives of any representative in the United States. And I don't think he should run.

I don't think in this state -- remember, I was at 42 and he was at 2 when he was running. In this state, I am talking about. He was at zero. I mean, the guy was at zero nationwide. I don't think he could run for dog catcher in this state and win again. I really don't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: OK. Sara, I mean, it is over the top, shall we say. Do people just go along with that here, where they are used to nasty politics? Or does that backfire?

MURRAY: You know, I think that people like when Donald Trump goes on the attack, especially in a place like South Carolina.

We have been talking about this for the last couple of days. This is a rough-and-tumble political state. Even though people might like Lindsey Graham here, they like that Donald Trump sticks it to politicians. I think this is just another example of that. Remember, Donald Trump went out and gave out Lindsey Graham's cell phone number. This is something Lindsey Graham has been joking about.

Don't give this guy your number. If that didn't hurt him, I can't imagine that coming down to South Carolina, even though it is the senator's home state, and taking a couple jabs at a local politician is going to hurt him this time around, Erin.

BURNETT: Unbelievable. "One of the dumbest human beings I have ever seen," that's the quote of what Donald Trump had to say.

All right, Sara Murray, thank you very much.

It is all out-war, as you can see, with words like that being bandied about. GOP front-runners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are really going at it, though. That is the heart of the flame. Moments ago, Cruz revealing that Trump has sent his campaign a cease and desist letter, demanding that he stop running this ad. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Would President Trump ban partial-birth abortion?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am very pro-choice.

QUESTION: But you wouldn't ban it?

[15:05:02]

TRUMP: No.

QUESTION: Or ban partial-birth abortion?

TRUMP: No. I am pro-choice in every respect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Donald Trump has since changed his mind. Cruz then challenged Trump to follow through on his threat of a lawsuit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Even in the annals of frivolous lawsuits, this takes the cake. I would note actually in the add we don't say Donald is pro-choice. We simply play video of him saying he is very pro-choice and he is pro-choice in every respect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Trump releasing his reaction in a statement in which he calls Cruz a liar and said a lawsuit would be legitimate if he chose to file one.

Trump also threatening to sue over Cruz's birth in Canada to an American mother.

Let's go straight now to our CNN political executive editor, Mark Preston, here with me in Greenville. Our chief political analyst, Gloria Borger, also made the trek here to Greenville on a rather chilly afternoon.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: But it's getting good.

BURNETT: Yes.

BORGER: I was at this Cruz press conference this morning. And it was very clear to me that he feels time is running out on him.

And he can't believe that is he losing to Donald Trump with evangelical voters according to our poll by 20 points. So what is he doing? He gets the cease and desist letter from Donald Trump and instead of flicking it aside, he decides to make a huge issue out of it to point out to evangelicals, by the way, these are his own words even if they were spoken in 1999. This is war. BURNETT: It is war. Mark Preston, but it is trademark Donald Trump

that he did not say OK. He said, if I choose to file one, it will be legitimate.

So he may, or he may not. But it isn't as if suddenly he has to or else be proven wrong. He has rhetorically gotten around it.

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: He's done this for weeks now. He said if Ted Cruz is nice to me, if he starts being nice to me, then I won't file the lawsuit, which goes against everything in politics in many ways because if he truly believes that this ad should come down, then he should try to get the ad down.

If he truly believes that Ted Cruz is not an American citizen, then he should file the lawsuit. But the threat that he is going to file it just keeps it in keeps it in the news. And, quite frankly, Ted Cruz made a very smart political move today.

BURNETT: Yes.

PRESTON: He held it up. And what did he do? It caused us to run it. It's going to cause every other newscast all evening to run that ad over and over and over again.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: I will tell you what. He also came to the press conference with a big chart that showed you all of the political donations Donald Trump has made in recent years to major Democrats, right?

BURNETT: Right.

BORGER: And he said, you cannot trust this guy to name the next Supreme Court nominee because look at who he has contributed to in the past. You can't trust him because he is really pro-choice, right? You can't trust him to do what I would do as president of the United States.

BURNETT: Is it going to work, though, Mark? Because Donald Trump has already turned his political donations into a point of strength with many of his supporters, right?

PRESTON: Right.

BURNETT: Yes, sure, he gave to Democrats because it was politically expedient, because I was the businessman. But that is exactly why now I won't listen to those people.

(CROSSTALK)

PRESTON: And I think the only mistake Donald Trump has made was during the debate on Saturday night when he went offer George W. Bush and basically said he was the cause of 9/11, basically.

But even though he made that mistake, his supporters are still with him. They're still with him. If you look at our poll right now, he is up 16 points. Let's assume that that poll is not entirely accurate, but he still wins by eight. Guess what, he still wins and he beats Ted Cruz in a state that a lot of people think Ted Cruz needs to win.

BORGER: That's why Cruz did what he did. Because of those evangelical voters. Keep the social issues front and center for those voters.

BURNETT: But the question is, are they front and center for enough of them? So many evangelicals, some of whom have come on board with Donald Trump, have said, look, we are just not voting just because of our religion. We want someone in office who can do the job. We don't need to have a pastor in chief. Right?

(CROSSTALK)

BURNETT: And they have said this at the grassroots level.

PRESTON: Right. And I think in the media, this is our fault, is that we try to put people in these slots and we say evangelicals are monolithic and they are only going to vote on one issue.

Guess what. They vote on gun rights, they vote on fiscal issues. They vote on a whole lot of issues. They just so happen to be social conservatives. And that's a driving force for them.

BURNETT: Gloria, even on this Planned Parenthood issue, Donald Trump is saying I don't support the abortion part of it, but Planned Parenthood does a lot of good, so a lot of Republican women tell me. That's what he said at the debate.

The reality of it is Republicans overall do support Planned Parenthood when you actually look at the poll numbers. It isn't even that, oh, to be a base Republican primary voter by definition you just want to kill Planned Parenthood.

BORGER: But not would-be Ted Cruz voters. And Ted Cruz today made a point of saying, oh, by the way, in that debate the other night, Donald Trump also talked about his support for Planned Parenthood and then went on about that.

[15:10:04]

I mean, Cruz today was looking for this slice of the electorate down here that he can't believe he is losing to Donald Trump. He just can't believe it.

BURNETT: Right.

BORGER: So what he's trying to do is remind them why they should be skeptical about Donald Trump. Whether it works or not, who knows?

BURNETT: Right.

(CROSSTALK) PRESTON: We should also just note, in Iowa, Donald Trump was leading in the polls. Ted Cruz ended up winning Iowa. Big evangelical vote out there. So, we will just...

BURNETT: That's right.

PRESTON: It will be interesting to see, you know, when the results come in, who actually comes out on top.

I still think Trump wins South Carolina. I just don't think he wins by as much as he is up right now.

BURNETT: Well, thanks to both of you.

And keep in mind, as everyone is watching this, this is such a crucial contest, because, sure, he is ahead in the polls, he's by far the front-runner. But, again, when you look at the undecideds and the leanings, that number is greater than Donald Trump's number. That's why we say it really, truly could go any way at this point.

And, of course, a big part is what going to happen is going to be how these candidates answer voter questions tonight at our Republican presidential town hall, right where we are standing in fewer than five hours. The two-day event begins. Tonight, Carson, Rubio, and Cruz, and tomorrow, Kasich, Bush, and Trump -- it all starts at 8:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

Ahead this hour, in the fight to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, President Obama just made a major admission about what he did years ago. It all turns out that, you know what? The shoe is always on the other foot in politics. And one day, it bites you in the tail.

Plus, the FBI wants Apple's help cracking the iPhone of a San Bernardino terrorist. Apple says no way. Are they defending a terrorist?

And the pope like you have never seen him before, truly angry. This is actually a stunning thing that happened, truly angry there in Mexico. What happened? We will tell you coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:15:40]

HARLOW: All right. President Obama lashing out today at Donald Trump, reminding the presidential hopefuls that the job is a lot tougher than, in his words, a reality show. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I continue to believe Mr. Trump will not be president. And the reason is because I have a lot of faith in the American people.

And I think they recognize being president is a serious job. It's not hosting a talk show or a reality show. It's not promotion. It's not marketing. It's hard. And a lot of people count on us getting it right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: And, in true Trump style, he was quick to fire back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: He has done such a lousy job as president. You look at our budgets, you look at our spending. We can't beat ISIS. Obamacare is terrible. We're going to terminate it. We're going to absolutely terminate and replace it.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: I mean, you look at everything. Our borders are like Swiss cheese. This man has done such bad job, he has set us back so far. And for him to say that actually is a great compliment, if you want to know the truth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: All right, let's bring in Carl Bernstein, CNN political commentator.

Thank you so much, Carl, for being here. Always enjoy having you on.

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Good to be here.

HARLOW: What do you think? Do you think that it actually helps Republicans to specifically be called out by Obama, for Obama to call Trump out, their leader by far? Does it is help them?

BERNSTEIN: I have no idea.

I think we don't know what the electorate is going to do until it votes. And that's the lesson of this campaign season. I think also there are times to just take Obama at his word. He is a very earnest man. And I think he is speaking what he believes about how dangerous Trump is and antithetical to the interests of the United States and the presidency.

Also, I think that we are all in the media missing a big story here, which is the chance of a brokered convention. The numbers don't add up for Trump winning. He has no majority in any state that we can see, including South Carolina. And the chances of a brokered convention are increasingly real, somebody like Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney, if Rubio can't go the distance and get a majority.

But how does Trump get a majority? I haven't seen a learned commentator yet on this network on anywhere else tell me how Trump gets a majority of delegates going into the convention.

HARLOW: I'm interested in that. I want you to walk us through a little bit what that would look like to see -- we're only two states in here. Is it a little too early to know? BERNSTEIN: Correct. That's exactly right. But so far, we have no

indications from polls that Trump can command a majority so far in any state.

Now, maybe he will win some states by a majority. But as long as there are particularly three candidates, Cruz himself, Rubio vying for the numbers here, very difficult to see how he does it. Clearly, Nikki Haley today throwing her support to Rubio indicative of how the Republican -- quote -- "establishment" wants to keep Trump from the nomination. That could help Trump, for all I know.

But we need to start looking at the dynamics of the numbers. And the dynamics of the numbers, as far as I see, don't add up yet, no matter what Trump's momentum, to his train rolling fast enough to get a majority, particularly when you add the superdelegates, who come so often from the -- quote -- "establishment branch" of the party.

HARLOW: Right.

Look, it's an important point, right? This is a delegate game when it comes down to it. I want to switch gears, here, though, because, Carl, you also have strong opinions on another major news story happening right now that we are covering, right, the pope's trip. So, take a look at this moment. All the talk today is about this moment at a stadium on this Mexico visit when someone apparently grabbed his hand and wouldn't let go. Right?

[15:20:01]

He pulls away. He sort of pulls down into a young man in a wheelchair. And you see the pope in a way we have never seen him before.

I don't know if we can re-rack that. But you see him visibly angry. What's your reaction?

BERNSTEIN: That the pope is a human being and it's a very logical reaction. He was caused to fall over a man in a wheelchair. And he got a little teed off. Good for him.

I think, though, that what is so interesting if we really look at the second humanizing story about the papacy, which is yesterday's huge story about John Paul II and his relationship with Mrs. Tymieniecka, first revealed in our book, Marco Politi and mine, "His Holiness: John Paul II and the History of Our Time," where we wrote about his secret relationship, not illicit, but a kind and loving relationship that Pope John Paul II had with a woman in Vermont, a philosopher like him who greatly influenced his philosophy.

And now we have the correspondence between the two of them. We have the pope's letters to her, the fact that John Paul II sent her a scapular that she wore all the time that had belonged to John Paul II's father. What we are seeing, as we see that in that video of Pope Francis, is, look, these guys are human beings.

Pope John Paul II, he went to school with girls. He went to a secular school, the only modern pope who did. He danced with girls. In the course of writing "His Holiness," we found a young woman who he had a crush on in high school who had fled Poland and gone to Israel. The pope had stayed in touch with her.

We are seeing the humanization of these popes and perhaps that the Vatican and that the perhaps the hierarchy has tried too long to keep us from seeing them as human figures and only saintly figures, particularly in this earth-shaking story. The BBC has done this great documentary about Pope John Paul II and the relationship with Madam Tymieniecka, which Politi and I first revealed in "His Holiness."

But now they have got the letters. I went back and found my notes of my conversations with Madam Tymieniecka in 1993 in which talks about her influence as a philosopher on Pope John Paul II. She talks about how he came to visit her in her home, how they camped out.

I asked her, was she in love with the pope? She said, well, that's an absurd idea. How could I be in love with a middle-aged clergyman?

But, indeed, it was a kind of loving relationship between two mortals. It's very clear from the correspondence. And now, a day later, we see Pope John Paul II's successor trip fall over somebody, and say, hey, wait a minute, you were rude. Well, that's a really humanizing experience.

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: The humanization of the Holy Father. It's fascinating. You point to your book "His Holiness." Carl Bernstein, we will look out for it. Thank you so much.

BERNSTEIN: Good to be with you.

HARLOW: Coming up next, to politics, and a bombshell in South Carolina. Nikki Haley, we now know who she is endorsing. She will endorse Marco Rubio just days before the critical GOP primary in that state. We will take you live to South Carolina.

Also, Apple fighting the FBI, a judge ordering the tech giant to hack into the phone of a known terrorist, the San Bernardino attacker. But the implications could affect every smartphone in this country. We will talk about it next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:28:21]

BURNETT: Welcome back.

We are live in Greenville, South Carolina, site of the one of the most contentious and consequential primary states in the race for the president, the state where Marco Rubio will pick up a major endorsement today.

We are just learning the Republican governor of the state, Nikki Haley, will endorse him, and, by the way, wildly popular. She is a young daughter of immigrants, Indian-American, 80 percent plus approval rated governor. It could be a big endorsement for Marco Rubio, as the sparring between Rubio, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz is the nastiest it has been so far.

Joining me now to talk more about this is Republican pollster -- Danielle Vinson is a political science professor at Furman University and, of course, Kellyanne Conway -- sorry -- is with me also, Republican pollster.

Kellyanne, let me start with you. I guess what I'm curious mostly about with this Nikki Haley endorsement is, everyone says, oh, endorsement, they just don't matter anymore, maybe a little bit on the margin. But Nikki Haley is as close to a rock star as you can get right now in the Republican Party. She is young, she is a woman, she is Indian-American, she stood up to Donald Trump.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, PRESIDENT & CEO, THE POLLING COMPANY: The governor here.

BURNETT: She is the governor here, right? She has an 80 percent approval rating in this state. Are people going to change their votes because of that?

CONWAY: I think some endorsements matter more than others, Erin, and this is a good endorsement for Marco Rubio.

He has been flat on his back since coming in fifth in New Hampshire. It's been a tough road for him. He is supposed to really seal it all up here in South Carolina. He got in his own way. I think this will help him.

Nikki Haley, as governor, endorsed Mitt Romney early in 2012. People will talk about what took so long, three days left. And can you really -- can you turn out your Rolodex?

You can't drop (INAUDIBLE) between now and then, direct-mail piece.

(CROSSTALK)

CONWAY: You can't do very -- maybe an ad here and there.

But you can't really operationalize it and capitalize on it the way, say, Mitt Romney tried, although he lost to Newt Gingrich here by 12 points.

So, I do think it helps Marco Rubio at a time when he really needs it.