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EARLY START

Results of Tuesday's Primaries: Trump Wins All 5 States, Clinton 4, Sanders 1. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired April 27, 2016 - 03:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[03:01:23] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this special edition, very, very special edition of EARLY START. I'm John Berman on delay -- tape delay.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: A very special John Berman this morning. I'm Christine Romans. It is Wednesday, April 27th. It's 3:00 a.m. in the East. That's our problem here.

Overnight, a very, very big night for the presidential front-runners, but for Donald Trump, an especially huge night. He swept all five states voting on Tuesday, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. You can drive an Acela train through all the states where he won, winning by more than 50 percent in all states.

Results have Trump leapfrogging ahead to the convention, all but declaring himself -- well, declaring himself the Republican nominee for president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I consider myself the presumptive nominee, absolutely.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

Senator Cruz and Governor Kasich should really get out of the race. They have no path.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

They have no path to win, and honestly they should get out of the race, and we should heal the Republican Party, bring the Republican Party together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You see the delegate math right there. Donald Trump now more than 400 delegates ahead.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton, she won four of the five states that voted. She did lose Rhode Island to Bernie Sanders by about 12 points. But the other four, she won, some by big margins.

For the very latest, let's bring in CNN politics reporter MJ Lee, who is sitting right smack-dab next to us.

MJ, the headlines?

MJ LEE, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Well, the headlines certainly is that Donald Trump had a very impressive night. As you mentioned, Christine, he swept the map, winning all five contests that he competed in, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, and very impressive because he won by such big margins. He even said when he took the stage tonight that he did much better than he thought that he would.

Now, what does this mean for the delegate race? Of course, all the Republican candidates are trying to get to that magic number of 1,237 delegates. Tonight, Donald Trump picking up 142 delegates, and that brings him to a total of 1,000 -- I'm sorry, 988 delegates. Ted Cruz obviously very far behind at 568 delegates. Kasich obviously near the bottom of the pack at 152 delegates.

ROMANS: Fascinating numbers. We know who won. Big nights for the front-runners.

To help us figure out why, I want to bring in our special EARLY START panel. MJ stays with us. She's CNN politics reporter.

Angela Rye is here. She's a former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus. And Dylan Byers, a CNN senior media and politics reporter.

And, Dylan, when you look at the exit polls, you look at the numbers, you look at how well these front-runners did last night, what you see is you see them, you know, kind of coalescing around their core base, the people who have supported them until now but also adding some ground.

I mean, in the case of Donald Trump, he pretty much really swept through most of those categories and won those supporters.

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR MEDIA AND POLITICS REPORTER: Yes. I mean I think that's absolutely right, and I think this is how you know that the race is nearing its end.

I mean, you know, certainly, if Ted Cruz were going to make a case that he still had a chance here, you know, he says the Northeast was Donald Trump territory. Fine, but he's going to have to demonstrate that he at least had some support among, you know, some sort of key groups, some sort of key set that can give him more momentum. Now, he's moved on and he's looking for that in Indiana.

[03:05:01] But I think the case that Donald Trump is making is that he has, at least among Republicans, that he actually does have a broad base of support. You know, he spent so much time talking about what Donald Trump's ceiling is in the Republican primary, and it's jumped from 25 to 30, 35, 40 percent. And he's winning these states with like 60 percent. So, you know, I --

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: He needs 50 percent of the delegates from here on out.

BYERS: He needs 50 percent of the delegates from here on out, and you look at -- look, he's leading in Indiana. He's leading in California. What is Cruz's path to victory here?

ROMANS: On the Democratic side, Angela Rye, it was a big night for Hillary Clinton. Four out of the five states, she won. She did drop Rhode Island. She also made big gains in the delegate match. She netted, you know, somewhere about 50 or so delegates more than Bernie Sanders did overnight.

And Bernie Sanders is running at opportunities to catch up, particularly with Pennsylvania off the board here. And perhaps changing the tune a little bit of his campaign, saying from now on he's going to run an issue-based campaign.

ANGELA RYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He is, and, John, just like we talked about before, I think the thing we have to note is the fact that this is the Bernie Sanders that we initially saw. But because of the way in which he came in, the way in which he seemed like he was outside of the establishment, he attracted quite a bit of support. So much so that last month, just in March alone, he outraised every other candidate in this race. He raised $44 million, and if you let him tell it, we could all say it at the rally -- $27 on average, right, like that is what he did.

And so he's made quite -- he's made quite a bit of noise, and he's made a huge difference in this race. And if he doesn't do anything else, he absolutely will shape this primary -- not only shape the primary but the messaging for Democrats going forward into the general. I really hope we get to Indiana. I have something I want to say so bad about Ted Cruz. It's 3:00 in the morning so you should let me do it, John Berman.

BERMAN: Go. Do it now.

(LAUGHTER)

RYE: OK. So, John Dingell, who is the former dean of the House of Representatives, has the -- I mean if you all aren't following John Dingell, you really need to. Shameless plug. It is amazing.

So, he got Ted Cruz -- and Ted Cruz was not going to lose Indiana. He's absolutely going to lose Indiana now. He got him from the scene of Hoosiers that Ted Cruz tried to recreate, and John Dingell's tweet is as follow, "Holy hell, I'm not supposed to laugh as hard at my age. Basketball right, because Ted Cruz called the basketball hoop a basketball ring. He lost Indiana already tonight just from that epic fail."

ROMANS: What's wrong with calling it a basketball ring?

BYERS: It was a layup and he blew it.

RYE: You can do that in Montana maybe, not in Indiana. Not in Hoosiers state. You can't do that. Bad.

ROMANS: All right. Dylan Byers, let's talk about what -- how does Hillary Clinton have to treat the Bernie Sanders presence on the campaign trail from here on out because she needs to win those independents. She needs to win young people. She needs to win young women. She needs to bring those people on board, you know, with a nod to what they want, you know, free education, you know, free health care, et cetera, et cetera.

But he is still this presence that is on the trail. He's not giving up. Yesterday, our Jim Acosta said, why don't you drop out here? And he basically told him to hit the road.

BYERS: Yes, no, he's still a presence, and he's still very much a thorn in the side of the Clinton campaign, and he's going to stay through of course June 7th when California votes and all the way to the convention. What she needs to do is what she's already doing. She's extending an olive branch, many olive branches, in fact.

She's basically saying, look, whereas Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and John Kasich might be at each other's throats, fundamentally, Sanders and I value many of the same things. We just see different approaches to get there. And, you know, it's clear now that she's almost the nominee, going to become the nominee, and what she's saying to Sanders supporters is, look, I'm here for you. I've been fighting for progressive causes for nearly three decades. You can come around to me, and I'll be there for you. I'm a safe bet.

BERMAN: MJ, our friend Ron Brownstein, who has since gone to sleep, made the point that this is what you sort of start seeing with normal presumptive nominees at this stage of the campaign, I'm talking about Donald Trump right now. Perhaps voters coalescing around as it gets later.

Now, from New York to these five states of voters, we're seeing Donald Trump at more than 50 percent of the vote. It's taken a long time to get here. What does the Trump campaign want to do? Do we have a sense of how they intend to use this moving forward? What do the next seven days look like leading up to Indiana?

LEE: Look, I think Donald Trump's message has been very clear over the last few weeks, and it has been that the system is completely rigged. He has not stopped talking about that issue on the campaign trail, that the system is rigged, that only the establishment can win and that Donald Trump is here to prove otherwise.

When Donald Trump goes out on the trail and tells his supporters, look, John Kasich and even Ted Cruz, they are part of the establishment. And let me tell you the Republican Party and the Republican National Committee and this Reince Priebus guy -- all these people are trying to work to stop me.

[03:10:07] I think that is a powerful message that resonates and it has been resonating, and that is why when you talk to Trump supporters, they know Paul Manafort's name.

I went to a Trump rally the other day and was fascinated that a Trump supporter just mid-speech dropped the Manafort name. I didn't think that the average person would be that tuned in to the ins and outs of the Trump campaign but they are because they are so passionate and they also are starting to feel that somehow Trump is going to get cheated.

ROMANS: Do you guys -- I wonder, though. Do you think that the Paul Manafort team and -- is the Trump team managing Trump, or is Trump managing the team? I really wonder, guys.

BYERS: Trump's managing the team.

ROMANS: He's still the guy?

BERMAN: Wow, that was unanimous.

RYE: I think they're trying to manage Trump and this new team is going to soon find out, just like the other folks did, that he is not manageable. Just like he said at the question and answer today, like, oh, well, you know, I can pivot. I can do both. I can be presidential.

I'm going to be so presidential. It's going to be boring. All this stuff that he normally says, but he's uncontrollable.

BERMAN: I got to tell you, though, he should realize or better realize that this new team has done some things that have helped his campaign. If you look at Pennsylvania, MJ, you know, it does appear, as we sit here at 3:11 a.m. Eastern Time, that the Trump campaign has won a lot of those unbound delegates for people who don't know. In Pennsylvania, there are 17 delegates that go to the winner of the state. But then there are 54 delegates who can vote for whoever they want the convention.

Donald Trump won a majority of those tell CNN when CNN has called them, that they're going to vote for Donald Trump in the election. So, he actually picked up a lot of delegates because of organization in Pennsylvania.

LEE: There is no question that the Trump campaign had to up its game in terms of the delegate wrangling, but that is very different from Donald Trump, the candidate, and Donald Trump's message that has resonated so powerfully.

Look, if the takeaway is that Paul Manafort and the team that he has brought on and is going to bring on is going to help Trump get these delegates in a way that he hasn't been able to in the past, then I think Trump would see that as a plus. But you see him get out on the campaign trail and address this issue of should I be more presidential?

And I think he has a real fear. He said when I saw him in Waterbury, Connecticut, Saturday morning, he told the crowd there, I wouldn't be standing here tonight if I had acted presidential all this time. I don't think I would be the GOP front-runner if I had acted presidential.

ROMANS: Very clear that persona has appealed to a lot of people who have not been inspired by the Republican electorate in a long time. So that is a big part of the story line.

Guys, don't go anywhere.

Donald Trump has got a lot to celebrate. He's going to do probably a little bit of celebrating on CNN this morning. He's appearing live on "NEW DAY" this morning at 6:00 a.m.

BERMAN: It should be interesting.

Also on "NEW DAY", Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, he is not running for president. He is warning the current Republican candidates not to wait until the convention to get their acts together or it will be, quote, "too late".

ROMANS: All right. Coming up, why did John Berman say I was rolling my eyes like Mary Pat Christie? We're going to tell you exactly what that moment was all about and what the battle of the sexes could be evolving on the campaign trail, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[03:17:23] BERMAN: So Donald Trump swept all five Acela primary states overnight, and during his victory speech, he was not riding in the quiet car. Oh, no. He turned his fire on Hillary Clinton, discussed the general election. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And today we came u even against Hillary, but we will beat Hillary so easily.

Hillary is -- I call her crooked Hillary. She's crooked. She'll be a horrible president. She knows nothing about job creation.

Hillary will be horrible, absolutely horrible on economic development. She will be terrible on jobs. She knows nothing about jobs except for jobs for herself.

And when it came to answering the phone --

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

When it came to answering the phone at 3:00 in the morning, she was sleeping, OK? She wasn't with Benghazi and all of the other problems. You look at what she did with Syria. You look at what she's done in so many different ways.

She will not be a good president. She doesn't have the strength. She doesn't have the stamina.

I'll do far more for women than Hillary Clinton will ever do, including -- remember this. (CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

Including protecting our country because she will not be good with the military. She will not be good with protecting our country, and she's had her shot. And she also raised her hand when it came to Iraq, and she shouldn't have voted.

Look, Hillary Clinton is funded by Wall Street, folks. She's going to get the nomination unless she gets herself indicted with respect to what's happening with the e-mails.

What she did is an outrage. It's an absolute criminal outrage, and for her to be able to run as a Democrat, that's why maybe Sanders isn't finished. But the only way you can say that is if something happens to her.

She's being protected by the Democrats because what she did -- and I see it, and whether I read about it in the papers or I watch it with experts, legal experts on television, virtually every single one of them said what she did is a criminal act and what she did is a very, very dangerous for our country. And yet here she is running for president.

So I think that Hillary honestly, she's a flawed candidate. And when I'm one-on-one with Hillary, she will be, as I said, easier to take down, much easier to beat than the people -- many of the people that I've already beaten.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Donald Trump says it's over. He says it's over. He's got the nomination and that he will be head to head with Hillary Clinton. So what do we know about his plans for November?

We want to bring back our panel and add in CNN politics reporter again, Tal Kopan.

There's another piece of sound I want to listen to, a wide-ranging victory speech yesterday.

We also heard him say that if Hillary Clinton -- Hillary Clinton is only winning, is only a viable candidate because she is a woman.

[03:20:07] Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, I think the only card she has is the woman's card. She's got nothing else going. And frankly if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she get 5 percent of the vote.

The only thing she's got going is the woman's card, and the beautiful thing is women don't like her, OK? Look, how well I did with women tonight.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ROMANS: So, Donald Trump playing the woman card on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Dylan Byers, what do you make of injecting that into this race?

BYERS: Well, look, it's obviously an appeal to sort of his core supporters, which are white, disenfranchised men, and I have to imagine there are many of them who sort of see the rise of women in the workplace as sort of part of the cause for their disenfranchisement.

But, again, like this is Trump playing to his base and not thinking about a general election crowd. I go back to this point. I keep bringing it up. The negatives among women are very high. If you look at him going after Carly Fiorina, Megyn Kelly, Ted Cruz's wife, Hillary Clinton, how is that going to play with the general election population in which women are, you know, a majority and in which women might very well determine this election?

I just don't -- I understand the primary calculus. I don't understand the general election calculus.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Go ahead, MJ.

LEE: I noticed that Hillary Clinton, in her victory speech, said that she was now going to appeal to Democrats, independents, and thoughtful Republicans. I thought that was a very careful choice of words. She's sending the message out there, look, among the Republicans who are not satisfied with Donald Trump and frankly find his rhetoric to be too much, here I am. Here I am as an alternative.

And I can imagine Republican women hearing Trump saying something like that, perhaps finding it offensive, and then considering --

BERMAN: And the Clinton campaign took a pass on commenting on that speech.

BYERS: They don't need to. Let him hang himself.

BERMAN: One person who did not take a pass, at least not with her eyes, was Mary Pat Christie, the wife of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

ROMANS: The eye roll gate.

BERMAN: I want to go back to the moment and we've highlighted Mrs. Christie, so you can see what she looked like during that statement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, I think the only card she has is the woman's card. She's got nothing else going. And frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5 percent of the vote.

The only thing she's got going is the woman's card. And the beautiful thing is women don't like her, OK? And look how well I did with women tonight.

OK. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Tal, there's been a lot of talk over the last few months about how awkward Chris Christie has looked behind Donald Trump. Now the debate is raging over that was either an eye roll, or was it side eye? Where do you come down?

TAL KOPAN, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: I never thought I'd be asked the question whether it was an eye roll or side eye at the end of a voting night, but that's where we are. The Christies, the gifts that come out of them standing behind Donald Trump.

You know, it is important. There's a reason we're talking about this, and it is that it is emblematic of the struggle that Donald Trump is having sort of sealing the deal, as Dylan said, with women writ large.

We showed some statistics. He is doing better among Republican women in many of the primaries. But at this point, he needs to be winning more of them. And when you look at the entire general electorate, he's still lagging quite substantially among women.

And this attack, to me, just doesn't make sense. It's sort of playing to all of Hillary Clinton's strengths, which is playing -- is responding to these sorts of attacks and really skillfully because she has for a lot of her career, whereas if Donald Trump focused on some of the issues, you know, for example, trade, which is somewhat a place that both Bernie Sanders and he have had a lot of success during this campaign in pinning her into a corner. He mentioned the Wall Street attacks, you know, with Republicans especially, the Benghazi, the e- mails references. Those are all strong.

To get sort of sidetracked in this way and to a very personal attack and a gendered attack, if I were advising his campaign, would be where we would tell him sort of not to go. So, it's an example of how Donald Trump, even when he says he can focus, he can be presidential, he can sort of change his tone, he still sort of gets off track. And that may be the source of the eye roll that we saw from Mary Pat Christie.

ROMANS: Unless, Angela, it's not off track. He knows exactly what he's doing as he has in other controversies, and he is trying to stir something up here.

BERMAN: Five for five last night. Five for five.

RYE: He's doing a little bit more than stirring, and it's so funny because we focused on the first lady, Christie, but we did not focus on Chris Christie, who looked like he was like, why won't this dude read the teleprompter? He is off doing his own thing, and then he looks like he's saying this can't be my life, JB, like this can't be my life, why am I standing up here behind this guy again?

[03:25:05] And so, the Trump campaign, I say why do you guys keep putting this dude on the stage? He is looking so crazy.

Mary Pat Christie, of course, has to be thinking, wait until we get home and I'm going to tell him about himself. Like this is so bad.

And then, at the end, we don't call that an eye roll, a side eye, or anything. At the end, she has this smile. That is a painkiller smile. That is what that is. It is so bad.

This whole scene is so bad. It's definitely "Saturday Night Live" material, definitely.

BERMAN: It is. But, look, we're going to talk and come back a little more after the break.

But Chris Christie has a choice whether or not to keep showing up. He clearly does choose to keep showing at these events with Donald Trump. Many of these events that Donald Trump keeps on winning and despite the fact we're talking about the eye roll or side eye or the comments there, it was a big, big night for the front-runner. Both front- runners.

ROMANS: He won.

BERMAN: So, guys, stick around. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton extending their leads on Super Tuesday. How close are they to clinching the nominations? We're talking real-life math. John King breaks it down for us, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[03:30:36] ROMANS: A big night for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, each of them inching closer to their party's nominations. But how close, how close are they to the actual goal line? Those magic delegate count numbers that clinch their party's nomination.

BERMAN: The goal line or as Ted Cruz would call it, the ring.

John King broke it all down earlier this evening with Wolf Blitzer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Let's look at this right now. I'm a little ahead of the CNN official delegate estimate because we've not allocated them all. It looks like we're going to end the night ballpark Trump in the 964 range, right? That does not include the 54. There are 54 non-committed, non-pledged delegates on the ballot in Pennsylvania.

But CNN reporters have been in touch with many of those delegates in recent days. Again, there are 54 of those delegates. Based on what we know tonight, at least half -- at least half, so let's just make it 27 -- 27 have said either they're committed to Donald Trump or that they're committed to vote as their district went, and Donald Trump is winning across the state of Pennsylvania. So remember that number, 27. If you add the 27 to the 964, at that point heading forward to the

primaries, it gets Donald Trump down to about 50 percent. That's all he need is about 50 percent.

But I want to tell you something else as we go forward. New Jersey is at the very end of the California, Wolf, so I'm jumping ahead here in terms of the math. New Jersey is at on June 7th. But Donald Trump is heavily favored. Look ago the geography in the area. It's winner take all.

If you add that in and you add in the state of West Virginia, again it is Indiana that's next. We're jumping ahead a bit here. But if you say Donald Trump is going to take them all in West Virginia, if you add those in as well, plus tonight, plus least half of those Pennsylvania uncommitteds, at this point here, Donald Trump would have to win only 41 percent of the remaining delegates.

So, is Donald Trump's math improving so dramatically tonight that he is in a position, assuming he keeps New Jersey and keeps West Virginia, Indiana is next week, the big prize out in California. Without a doubt tonight, Donald Trump has so improved his delegate math, A, winning in these states, B, the commitments of at least half of the unpledged delegates of Pennsylvania, and his prospective in New Jersey and West Virginia, when you look at these other states going out, he's in the -- tonight, he's going to end in the ballpark of meeting half of the remaining delegates. If you add these two states in, drops that number down --

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And the polls in California, which is June 7th, show him considerably ahead, at least right now.

KING: Very encouraging.

So, let's do something. I'm going to go out to the June for the Republicans here. I'm going to project this out.

Now, in this scenario we had Cruz winning Indiana, but the polls show Donald Trump winning Indiana. So, let's say Donald Trump wins it but not by a huge margin, shares the delegates there, right?

Right now, we have Oregon. This is the Kasich/Cruz alliance. In the scenario we built, we gave these two to Governor Kasich, but Donald thinks he's going to go in here and win. He picks them up by not by a huge amount, but he gets some.

Look where he is now. He's at 1,121, right? He's at 1,121. A big win in California, let's say it goes something like that, gets them there. Over the finish line.

BLITZER: Twelve forty-one.

KING: That does not include the 27. When I went to this map, those 27 that we know he has in Pennsylvania at least tonight were not included in that.

So even if in this scenario, let's say John Kasich held on and won New Mexico and Donald Trump came in second, even there, he's still at 1,237 plus he has these. So it is -- it's not easy, but he's so dramatically improved his position tonight that it is more than doable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Not easy, says John King, Dylan Byers, but it is doable. When you look at that math -- our whole panel is back but I want to ask Dylan Byers. When you look at the math, you k now, that whole fantasy or, I guess, dream depending on which side of the map you're on about a contested convention diminishes last night.

BYERS: It absolutely diminishes, of course you can't rule it out. But, look, Donald Trump has to win 50 percent of the remaining delegates. He won a lot of these states tonight 60 percent or even higher.

So, the question is where can Ted Cruz stop that momentum? Well, Indiana is obviously one spot. But of course Donald Trump is leading Ted Cruz in Indiana by six points. OK, maybe Ted Cruz makes that up. But I say probably, you know, barring some sort of major reinvention in the Cruz campaign, that may very well go to Trump.

Then you look at what states you have left. You have California, where Trump is leading by a 17 percent margin. You have New Jersey which is part of this Acela corridor. Where does Cruz intend to stop Trump? Outside of Indiana, I don't see it.

[03:35:02] BERMAN: Well, I think that is the answer.

I mean, I think the answer is Indiana or bust at this point, Tal. And you're hearing things. Not only do you have this team-up, this like marvel team up, the likes of which we've never seen before between Cruz and John Kasich splitting up states, you also have the Cruz campaign floating the notion maybe they'll say who they're going to pick for vice president before Indiana.

You sense they know that it is now or never.

KOPAN: Oh, absolutely. I don't think there's any doubt in anyone's mind that Indiana has turned into a must-win for Ted Cruz. You know, we were sort of here with Wisconsin. It was like if Cruz can pull it off, you know, it could give him momentum.

I just keep thinking, though, over the course of this campaign, we have been told so many times with so many candidates, if someone would just get out of my way, I can stop Donald Trump. Over and over we've heard this. This was the Marco Rubio theory. If just the other establishment candidates would leave the race, everyone would realize that there's an alternative to Donald Trump.

And we haven't seen it. Donald Trump has grown his support time and time again, starting in New York. We've started to see him hit the 60 percent mark, which people said was impossible for him.

People are coming around to him. They're getting used to the idea of him as the nominee. And it's really, really hard for Ted Cruz and John Kasich to stand in front of voters and say, you still need to vote for me even though I'm mathematically eliminated because if you do, we might get enough delegates that we force a contested convention, and then the delegates at the convention can come up on the second and third and fourth ballots.

You see why they're losing voters? It's not a compelling argument. It's just confusing at this point.

ROMANS: Can I tell you what's so awesome? What's so awesome is math at 3:36 a.m. Eastern Time after a very, very long primary night.

Everyone stick right there because we've got a lot more math to do. Just one win last night for Bernie Sanders.

BERMAN: It's like the worst tease ever. Coming up, math.

ROMANS: In fact, Bernie Sanders says he likes his chances against Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Almost. Almost every national poll and every state poll has us defeating Trump, and that margin for us is significantly larger than that of Secretary Clinton.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Hillary Clinton picked up four out of five states overnight, losing only Rhode Island to Bernie Sanders. Most importantly, though, she extended her delegate lead by more than 50, netting more than 50 delegates in the race against Bernie Sanders, making it ever more difficult for Bernie Sanders to catch up.

Our John King explains just how and why.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: There's two sets of math here. The first math is she's going to end the night tonight. This is our ballpark, we haven't completed allocating all the delegates yet.

But our ballpark is she's going to end the night, this 295 lead among just pledged delegates. Not only that, she wins four of the five states tonight, starts to add more Clinton blue to the map, including a big industrial state like Pennsylvania. A big important Democratic state with a diverse electorate like Maryland.

So, she wins big in these states. She stretches this out to 295. But inside the Sanders campaign, Wolf, they don't like to talk about the super delegates because they say they don't vote until the convention. They can change their mind.

But they're also well aware that after a night like this, those super delegates are unlikely to change their mind. So, 295 just in pledged delegates, when you add in the super delegates, Hillary Clinton has 502 super delegates who have pledged publicly their support to her. Senator Sanders has just 42. When you add those in, it becomes a 755- delegate lead when you factor them in.

If you look at the remaining contests, it's a simple mathematical, not impossibility because they can change their mind, but beyond improbability. Even if you take the super delegates away for a minute, Jake was talking about the remaining contests -- if you look at the remaining contests and you think, OK, look at the demographic so far -- states Senator Sanders has won, states Secretary Clinton has won, if you project those remaining contests based on those demographics, this is just pledged delegates. Clinton gets well out here.

Even if Sanders won them all, Wolf, even if he won every contest left, 55 percent to 45 percent, ten-point wins in every state, unlikely to happen, almost impossible to happen. But even if he did, he would not catch her. If we split them, as we just did here, now we gave her Indiana, it's a bigger prize. We gave her California, the biggest prize of all by a 55 percent margin there.

But again, even if you switched that to Bernie Sanders, Secretary Clinton is still well out here. Just a loss in California, which the Clinton campaign says won't happen, but even if Sanders won that one state of California, that would not be enough to swing the super delegates.

So, if you project to the end based on the demographics, based on this huge win tonight, Hillary Clinton is out here. She could actually get closer to 2,383, the magic number in terms of pledged delegates. But without a doubt again, when you factor them in, you get off the chart. You come way past the line here with these 502.

Again, this is a conversation Sanders supporters loathe when we have it. But inside the Sanders campaign tonight, they are acknowledging winning four out of five, winning big states like this, locks these people in. When you lock these people in, the math becomes impossible for Senator Sanders, barring a miracle and that's what he's acknowledging tonight.

BLITZER: Huge leads she has, especially with those super delegates, assuming they stay with her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Let's talk about this with our panel, MJ Lee, Tal Kopan, Angela Rye, and Dylan Byers.

Angela, let me go to you first. A miracle is the word John King just used. Even if Bernie Sanders could win California, she has got the clear delegate advantage here. RYE: Well, that's absolutely the case. I think Hillary Clinton has

demonstrated why she's been formidable from the outset. Tonight with these wins, not only with the pledged delegates but also with the super delegates.

I think one of the most notable quotes from this past week was the fact that, I think it was Ed Rendell said, how are you going to talk about us this February and then courts in April, talking about Bernie Sanders.

[03:45:05] So even if there wasn't a clear pledged delegate problem, he also has a super delegate problem, which makes it really impossible mathematically.

John, that was for you at 3:45.

BERMAN: I appreciate that, Angela. Thank you so much.

You know, Bernie Sanders doing something interesting though. He put out this statement overnight where he talked about how this will now be an issues-based campaign. He looks forward to an issues-based campaign, competing until the last votes are cast, winning as many delegates as he can to go to the convention to argue about issues.

I wonder what the Sanders campaign plans to do when it comes to the platform, when it comes to shaping the message from the Democratic Party. Because that seems to be what they're after right now.

LEE: Yes, that's right. I think the statement clearly showed that the Sanders campaign is acknowledging that there really is no path for Sanders to the nomination. However, he really has a very powerful platform.

You look at how well he has done so far. We never thought that he would get this far. We never thought that Bernie Sanders would be the one giving Hillary Clinton such tough competition.

When he talks about issues like Wall Street, when he talks about raising the minimum wage, I notice that Hillary Clinton in her victory speech tonight spent a good chunk of it talking about people she had met, you know, in places like the Rust Belt, families she melt whose house was going to be foreclosed upon, and how she wanted to be the voice for those people.

That is a message that Bernie Sanders obviously has been talking about a lot, and I think that Hillary Clinton is indicating now, with her talk about uniting the party, that she's hearing Sanders' supporters and that she's determined to win them over.

ROMANS: She talks about student debt a lot about too and how you shouldn't have to go into debt to get a college education, but she doesn't go as far as Bernie Sanders about calling for free public education. We'll see how that message might be fine tuned in the months ahead.

Guys, don't move. Up next, some call the GOP a fractured party. Some people say it's

the year of the outsider. We're going to break it down with a rising Republican star, next.

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[03:51:17] ROMANS: Internal battles, brokered conventions, year of the outsiders. Is this politics as usual or is the GOP headed down a path we've never seen before.

Let's discuss this with Alexandra Smith, chairman of the College Republican National Committee.

So nice to have you on board here this morning. First off, let me get your perspective on what we saw last night from Donald Trump -- another big night for the front-runner. He says even if he doesn't get to that 1,237, if he just gets close, he should get the nomination.

ALEXANDRA SMITH, CHAIRMAN, COLLEGE REPUBLICAN NATL. COMMITTEE: So I think that what we're seeing from Donald Trump is an acknowledgement on his part that he has won a tremendous amount of primary battles in the different states out there. And what he's, I think, speaking to is a reluctance among many GOPers to not see a kind of convention where it looks like party insiders are the ones that are deciding who's the nominee.

I think if it appears that way from the convention floor, the GOP can expect to lose just the same way as we have done in previously brokered conventions where it felt like it was kind of like the closed room deal where the people weren't choosing the candidate. It was the party insiders.

BERMAN: You know, we're talking about Donald Trump and who he's playing to, which audience he's playing to. There's some suggestion he's playing towards, you know, white male voters, particularly with comments he made last night when he suggested Hillary Clinton, if she were a man, she wouldn't even be getting 5 percent of the vote. You obviously are a younger woman voter.

How does that comment appear to you?

SMITH: You know, I think that first of all, for any Republican candidate out there, we have to acknowledge as a party that we have to do better with women, particularly young women out there. So I think that is going to be a major sensitivity in the general election, particularly when we're running against an historical first female potential president out there.

What I will say, though, is that I think that just as the same way as Donald Trump has put forth his business record as something, you know, to be evaluated on by voters, Hillary Clinton's done the same with her gender. I think that we've seen that really backfire in a lot of places, thanks to instances where she had surrogates go out, suggest that the people who were supporting Bernie Sanders, the young women who were supporting Bernie Sanders were doing so because they wanted to get to boys. I mean we've seen that this has sort of backfired on her.

And truthfully, I'm more offended by the idea that Secretary Clinton and her foundation chose to do business with so many countries that mistreat women and that she, herself, has been particularly damaging to young women throughout her husband's political career. So, I think that she has some things to answer for on her own on that charge.

ROMANS: But do you think that you could end up in a situation where we have a general election that is sort of this battle of the sexes or battle of the genders, would that be a good situation for women voters?

SMITH: Well, I think in particular in the general election, what we should be focused on is young voters. Young voters decided the presidential election in 2012. They're going to do it again in 2016. They're going to make up 20 percent of the vote.

I think what we've seen from the Hillary versus Bernie primary is that gender really has not mattered to these younger voters. In fact, like I mentioned, Hillary Clinton and her surrogates attempt to pander to young voters along those lines just has really fallen flat with young people.

Young people are primarily looking for problem solvers. They're not looking for candidates that sort of fall into one particular bucket. So I think that that's where, you know, if it does really come down to a supposed gender battle, that's not something that young people -- you know, it's really going to engage them or bring them out to the polls.

BERMAN: You know, you're a national leader of Republicans, albeit young college Republicans. Could you support Donald Trump if he's the nominee?

SMITH: Look, I think any of our nominees -- any of our candidates at this point is better than Hillary Clinton and certainly better than anything that the Democrats have to offer.

[03:55:05] Young voters have suffered tremendously under this president. We've seen double-digit youth unemployment over the last eight years. We've seen skyrocketing student loan debt, skyrocketing credit card debt.

So, I think the party is absolutely going to get behind the nominee. If it's Donald Trump, if it's Ted Cruz, we'll have to see come Cleveland who it is, but I think that the party will absolutely get behind that person because we just cannot take another eight years of Democratic leadership.

ROMANS: Eleven million jobs created though, and a stock market that has soared too. So you can flip that Obama economy upside down and maybe you'll see that coming in the general election as they try to take more credit. Democrats try to take more credit for digging out of the economic crisis.

BERMAN: Alexandra Smith, the establishment rallying behind the possibility of Donald Trump, albeit the younger establishment here, National College Republicans. Thanks so much for being with us. Get some sleep or go out, whatever college kids do these days. Thanks so much.

SMITH: Thanks so much.

BERMAN: Everyone else, stay with us. We have so much more at the top of the hour as we discuss these huge Super Tuesday wins for the front- runners and the new look of the 2016 election.

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