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New Polls Show Clinton and Trump in Dead Heat; Sanders Ramp Up Feud with New Establishment; Submarine Joins Search for EgyptAir Flight's Black Boxes; Supreme Court Rules in Jury Selection Bias Case. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired May 23, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:38] PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good Monday morning. I'm Pamela Brown in for Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me.

Well, Hillary Clinton is brushing off a pair of poll that shows her big lead dissolving in a November showdown. They show her now locked in a statistical dead heat with likely Republican nominee Donald Trump. The "Washington Post"/ABC survey shows Clinton now trailing by a couple points. The NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll shows her leading by just few points. Both are within the margin of error.

Meanwhile, Trump may be inching closer to picking a running mate. He's due to meet today with Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. And of course we will talk about what Corker would bring to the ticket coming up.

We're going to break down all the angles for you with CNN's political correspondents and guests. Let's begin with the new polls and CNN's Phil Mattingly -- Phil.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Pam.

That was quick. That was the three-word e-mail I got from one Republican operative talking about those polls and not just how quickly Donald Trump closed what had been a double-digit gap with Hillary Clinton over the last couple of weeks, but also the willingness of Republicans to get behind Donald Trump.

Over the course of a month 14-point increase in support within his own party and that is largely driving these numbers that have obviously gotten a lot better for Donald Trump since he became the presumptive nominee and it's also something Hillary Clinton can't claim, still in a fight with Bernie Sanders, even though she's not necessarily willing to admit she's still in a fight. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm going to keep focused on Donald Trump because I will be the nominee, I will be running against Donald Trump in the fall, and I do not want Americans and, you know, good-thinking Republicans as well as Democrats and independents to start to believe that this is a normal candidacy. It isn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Hillary Clinton obviously moving past Bernie Sanders who still very much is in that primary looking exactly at Donald Trump, and, again, trying to continue a message she started on CNN last week, that he is almost disqualified from being the president of the United States, but what's interesting here going forward and as you start to dig into these polls is where are each of these candidates looking for votes.

Donald Trump has made very clear he believes he will benefit from Democratic crossovers in states like Ohio or Pennsylvania, in Michigan. And he's not the only one. Take a listen to what House Speaker Paul Ryan, someone who still hasn't endorsed Trump, told Politico's Glen Thrush.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GLEN THRUSH, POLITICO: Is it your sense that there is a Trump voter or are there just essentially Republican conservative leaning voters?

REP. PAUL RYAN (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: I'm not a data guy so I haven't looked at -- I spend my time focusing on what my job is here but I do believe that there are Trump Democrats. I see that in Wisconsin. So we have Reagan Democrats in Wisconsin and Michigan. The upper -- in the upper Midwest is where I think the term Reagan Democrat got coined.

THRUSH: Sure. That's right.

RYAN: And I do see Trump Democrats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Trump Democrats are essentially what Donald Trump's team is pointing to as the ability for Donald Trump to expand the map and really take advantage of areas where Democrats traditionally have lost support.

Now Hillary Clinton's team kind of scoffs at that, and again, Pam, as you noted, brushes aside the most recent polls. She's still in a heated primary battle and still targeting a number of Democratic areas right now where she believes she will absolutely succeed in going forward. Still the polls are tightening. This race is getting a lot more interesting -- Pam.

BROWN: All right. Phil Mattingly, thank you so much.

And it will continue to be interesting over the next five months until the general election, and today Bernie Sanders is back on the trail in California where some 475 delegates are up for grabs in the state's June 7th primary. Sanders hopes a win in California will boost his odds of being the next Democratic president nominee. And this weekend the Vermont senator had a message for anyone who may still be on the fence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you want the strongest candidate to make sure that Trump does not become president, we are that campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And as Sanders courts voters he's causing friction amongst Democrats escalating his war of words with the party.

Senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns has more on that. Joe, good morning to you.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Pamela. What do establishment Democrats want? They want unity, but the Sanders supporters want him to keep fighting and that's what he's doing, asserting that if he's elected he'd get rid of the current Democratic Party chair but also suggesting that if Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the nominees, the American public would essentially be faced with a hold your nose election, though it is true that the polls suggest both candidates have sky-high negatives. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[10:05:12] SANDERS: We need a campaign, an election, coming up which does not have two candidates who are really very, very strongly disliked. I don't want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Is that how you would describe Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump, the lesser of two evils?

SANDERS: Well, if you look -- no, I wouldn't describe it, but that's what the American people are saying.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: So the question today and for the immediate future is how will the Democratic Party put up a united front after all of this? Now they have been unified before. Eight years ago when Hillary Clinton was running against then-senator Barack Obama, there was a lot of hand wringing over the divisiveness of the primary race, and that party still ended up winning the White House, but there is a concern that Donald Trump has gotten a head start on the Democrats and that once they get their nominee settled, they're going to have to do some catching up -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Joe Johns, thanks so much.

Let's discuss all of that. Sanders' refusal to surrender means Hillary Clinton is forced to fight on two fronts and is now losing precious time and momentum. In fact according to the new polls, her double-digit lead from last month has dissolved into a statistical dead heat with Donald Trump.

Joining me now to talk about all of this, "Daily Beast" columnist Sally Kohn. She's joined by Donald Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord, who is also a CNN political commentator, and Bernard Whitman, a Hillary Clinton supporter.

Thank you to the three of you for coming on. We do appreciate it.

JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hello there. Yes.

BROWN: Hello there.

SALLY KOHN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hi.

BROWN: Sally, first to you, just on the heels of what we heard Joe say, do you think that Bernie Sanders, whom you supported, needs to scale back his rhetoric when it comes to going after party leaders, Democratic Party leaders? We heard him say that if he was president, that Debbie Wasserman Schultz would no longer be the chair of the DNC.

KOHN: Well, I think Sanders feels, and there's some good reasons for this, that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Democratic Party have not treated his campaign favorably, and so I think that's fair game. And, look, you know, I'm glad Joe brought up 2008. In 2008 everyone was saying this is the most divisive Democratic primary ever, and weeks after, weeks after this point in time in 2008 then-senator Barack Obama was polling under John McCain in national match-ups, and he went on to win by, what, you know, seven, eight, almost nine points.

So you know, I think we have to sort -- and by the way, before that polls said that 28 percent of Hillary Clinton's supporters would not go on to support Barack Obama if he was the eventual nominee. So everybody can just cool their jets. This is a Democratic process. We are the Democratic Party. This is good. This is good for Hillary, this is good for Bernie, this is definitely good for the voters. And this election is plenty long enough. We got plenty of time to heal and unite whoever the nominee is.

BROWN: So then what do you think, Jeffrey? Do the polls matter right now five months out from the general election? You heard Hillary Clinton brush them off saying right now they don't matter. You heard Sally say cool your jets.

LORD: Well, I actually think to some degree Sally is right. These things are a snapshots of a moment in time. What's interesting is -- there's a couple things interesting about them. Number one, the thing to watch with these kind of polls this early on is the trend. The fact that Donald Trump has gained on Hillary Clinton and overtaken her in some cases is interesting. And we need to see where this trend goes as the months ahead move along.

The second thing we need to watch is not to be so mesmerized by these national polls that we forget that it's individual polls of states that matters. That is how we elect presidents after all with the electoral college. So, for instance, the polls that came out I think it was last week or the week before of the battleground states of here in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio that showed the two of them either nip and tuck or with Donald Trump ahead by, I think, four points in Ohio, those are the kind of polls that you really need to pay attention to as we move along. BROWN: And I know that within that context perhaps the polls aren't

going to predict what's going to happen come November, but, Bernard, something that the polls do show when you look back the last few months is that Clinton was up double digits against Trump just a few months ago, back in March, I believe one poll had her up 11 points. Now there's this dead heat between the two.

In your view what's going on here?

BERNARD WHITMAN, HILLARY CLINTON SUPPORTER: Well, there's no question that Donald Trump has been able to consolidate the Republican Party probably faster than any of us would have thought. And he should be sending daily love notes to Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders for the ability to do just that. And I mean -- and frankly, the lack of ability for Clinton to unite the Democratic Party is largely due to Bernie Sanders persistence in perpetuating the myth that he actually can somehow wrest the nomination from Hillary Clinton which I think is both disingenuous and dishonest.

But I think what's really behind those numbers are independent voters, independent voters who have supported Bernie Sanders both in the polls and in states, in open primary states and caucus states where independents can vote.

[10:10:08] And I think once we get past June 7th California votes, New Jersey votes, and Hillary Clinton can unite the Democratic Party ultimately unite progressives behind her cause, you're going to start to see her numbers go back above 50 percent.

But I will say one thing with respect to the polls. What those polls don't show are the fundamentals of the race, and the fundamentals of the race really actually give an advantage to Hillary Clinton largely because 1 in 3 voters in this election are going to be people of color and Donald Trump is underwater with Latinos by 3 to 1, and among African-Americans by 4 to 1. You have states like Arizona which has been a reliable Republican battleground for years potentially in play, and that's why people like John McCain are staying as far away from Cleveland as possible.

BROWN: Right. Jeffrey, both have unfavorables, historic unfavorables, but as he noted there, Donald Trump is particularly under water with Hispanics, with women, with African-Americans. What does he plan to do to bridge that gap? Are you concerned that if he becomes more measured, more conciliatory that perhaps he could, you know, risk his base? What does he do here?

LORD: No. I don't -- I don't think so. I mean, what I think he's going to do is appeal on economic grounds and frankly humanitarian grounds. I received a note from a Latina woman the other day who is a Trump supporter, and she went into great detail about how the wall is not just a national security measure but is a humanitarian measure, and she described the plight of illegal immigrants and how they're taking advantage of and a family member who had been taken terrible advantage of, coming over, expecting a job, and being badly mistreated. So I think he can make this pitch to people, and I think he can make

it on economic grounds. After all, when you look at the unemployment rate, for example, in the black community, it's sky high, and, you know, they've had an African-American president for eight years. This has nothing to do with race. This has to do with policy.

(CROSSTALK)

KOHN: All right. Sally, you're laughing.

KOHN: I'm sorry --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Dump in, Sally.

KOHN: Donald Trump who wants to round up, detain, and deport 11 million people and bar Muslims, 1.4 billion of the world's Muslims, 20 percent, 30 percent of the entire world, ban them because of their faith from this country, ban them --

LORD: That's not correct, Sally.

KOHN: Ban them from seeing their family members and loved ones let alone traveling and enriching this country.

LORD: That's not correct.

KOHN: No, no, but he's going to run as a humanitarian. That's going to be fun.

(LAUGHTER)

KOHN: You know.

LORD: Well, Sally -- Sally, we're talking about a temporary ban until we straighten out the immigration system, the legal immigration system. Surely you're not saying that we should allow people in who want to mass murder Americans, are you?

KOHN: You know what, let's not -- let's not say it's either or nothing. You know that we can allow people into this country as we have historically and preserve our safety and our values --

LORD: Well, we need to fix the immigration --

KOHN: And, again, you want to rationalize this in any way you want to rationalize this, everyone said that those policies would be bad for national security and bad for our economy but good god, don't call it humanitarianism. That's just -- that's (INAUDIBLE).

BROWN: OK. You have all -- you've all gotten your points expressed here.

Thank you so much, and this conversation, of course, will continue. We still have five months to go until the general. Thanks so much to the three of you.

LORD: Thanks, Pam. Exactly.

WHITMAN: Thank you.

BROWN: And meantime, President Obama forging new ties with Vietnam announcing that the U.S. is lifting the decades' old ban on armed sales to Vietnam. The president is defending this decision stressing that it's dependent on Vietnam's commitment to human rights.

Mr. Barack Obama says both sides have established a level of trust.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The decision to lift the ban was not based on China or any other considerations. It was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving towards normalization with Vietnam.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And during his visit to Vietnam, the White House says the president is having dinner with CNN's Anthony Bourdain. Their conversation will be featured in an upcoming episode of "ANTHONY BOURDAIN: PARTS UNKNOWN" in September.

And still ahead on this Monday, the mystery of EgyptAir Flight 804. Crews got a new tool to help them in the underwater hunt for answers and we have a live report from where the search is under way up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:18:26] BROWN: Well, a submarine has joined the hunt in the Mediterranean Sea for the flight data and voice recorders that could reveal what caused the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804. Meanwhile, an Egyptian aviation official who said terror was likely now taking a more cautious tone warning the media not to jump to conclusions about what happened.

CNN's Nic Robertson is in Alexandria, Egypt, where the search is underway for more wreckage. What's the latest, Nic?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Well, the latest is the French have now brought a patrol vessel and just got two specialist divers, its own submarine, and most importantly acoustic detectors. Now these acoustic detectors are what will be needed to help find the black boxes. When the black boxes hit the water, we know that the transmitters on them switch on and send out a ping, and it's these acoustic devices that can hear that ping.

But what the French are also telling us is that before they can put those acoustic detectors in the water, they really need to focus in and know more precisely where the plane went down, and they say they're still working on that. Could be days, could be works. Now the Egyptians have got their submarine in the water, they say. It could operate to a depth of 3,000 meters. You know, we've been talking about how deep the Mediterranean is, and

in places as much as two miles, as much as 5,000 to 6,000 meters. However, in that search area, and it's a large search area, there may be areas that are at a depth of about 3,000 meters, and that may mean that that Egyptian submarine is able to get closer to the bottom to get a visual inspection.

[10:20:02] But it's going to be the pings and these devices brought in by this French patrol vessel that are going to be critical now in moving forward to getting closer to the black boxes.

BROWN: OK. Nic Robertson, thank you so much. Keep us posted on what happens out there as the search for more wreckage continues.

And still ahead on this Monday morning, what will it take for Donald Trump to win the White House? Paul Ryan has some ideas and you will hear what he has to say right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[10:25:02] BROWN: Well, good morning. I'm Pamela Brown in for Carol Costello. Thanks so much for being here with us on this Monday.

The high court just issued a major opinion on a case involving racial discrimination and jury selection in a 7-1 vote. The high court ruled in favor of a black defendant who was charged with killing an elderly white woman. This black defendant right here claimed that there was racial discrimination in the jury selection in his case.

I want to go straight to Jeffrey Toobin for more analysis on this. How significant is this opinion, Jeffrey?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST (via phone): Well, this is a case about -- about discrimination by prosecutors in jury selection, and what made this case so unusual is that well after the verdict the defense was able to obtain actual notes that prosecutors took during jury selection indicating very clearly that they were focused on the race of prospective jurors and eliminated all the black possible jurors in the case.

The court almost unanimously, except with Justice Clarence Thomas, who dissented, decided that this was clear evidence of discrimination and they have overturned his murder conviction.

BROWN: And I want to go to Ariane de Vogue who is at the Supreme Court with more on this opinion.

Ariane, what did the justices say in this case in terms of the racial discrimination and how will this impact future jury selection?

ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN SUPREME COURT CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you know, they came down with this decision about this racial discrimination in jury selection. It was a 1987, Timothy Tyrone Foster, an African- American, was convicted of killing a white woman and he was convicted by an all-white jury. Twenty years later his team obtained the prosecutor's note which they said illegally took race into consideration. Today the Supreme Court, 7-1 with Chief Justice Roberts writing, has ruled in his favor.

This may not have a broad implication because it's very re obviously to get smoking gun documents like his lawyers did, but the chief's words are firm here. He said, "The focus on race in the prosecution's file plainly demonstrates a concerted effort to keep black prospective jurors off the jury." This is going to come as a welcome relief to those people who believe that racial discrimination in jury selection still persists too much today.

BROWN: And on that note, Jeffrey, I'm going to bring you in because in the amicus briefs there were both Republicans and Democrats who said that this is a huge problem where prosecutors will basically eliminate jurors based on race, but then they will get around that by showing a nonracial reason for striking out a potential juror.

Tell us how this will impact that situation. Will it make it harder? Will this opinion make it harder for prosecutors to get around this?

TOOBIN: Well, I think actually this case doesn't really address that problem because the evidence was so obvious of racial motive in this case. The problem, the really difficult cases, involve cases where prosecutors strike black jurors are much harder for the courts to believe than a circumstance like this where the racial motive of the prosecutors was just laid right out on -- with pen and paper. The problem you address, you raise, which is sort of the secret and difficult to discern racial motive, that just remains problem and something that the legal system struggles with all the time.

BROWN: And I want to bring in CNN contributor Steve Vladeck to talk more about this.

How significant in your view, Steve, is this ruling when it comes to weeding out racial discrimination in future jury selections and how broad is this opinion?

STEVE VLADECK, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: It's a fairly narrow ruling because these cases tend to be so fact specific and because it really is rare that you're going to have such a smoking gun in the notes of the prosecutors. That said, I think it's a very important symbolic step from the Supreme Court today. It's a 7-1 ruling, so you have both liberals and conservatives joining together to basically say even in this day and age, this kind of behavior is still intolerable when it comes to prosecutors. I think we're going to see this giving new life to these so-called Batson claims in the lower courts and perhaps greater attention to the role of racial bias in jury selection.

BROWN: Just quickly, though, the dissent was from Justice Thomas. Can you expand on what he had to say in the dissent?

VLADECK: Sure. I mean, so Justice Thomas actually offered two different arguments in his dissent. The first was a technical one, that the court shouldn't have even taken this case because of the weird way it got to the Supreme Court from the Georgia state court.