Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Clinton and Trump Post Wins; Fiji Battered by Cyclone; Shooting Spre Takes 6 Live in Michigan. Aired 3-3:30a ET

Aired February 21, 2016 - 03:00   ET

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


[03:00:00] NATALIE ALLEN, CNN NEWSROOM SHOW HOST: The leading names get the big wins they wanted in Nevada and South Carolina. Clinton and Trump add vital delegates in the race for the White House.

But this man won't make it to the finish line. After all, Jeb Bush suspends his campaign after a weak performance in a state where his hopes were high.

Also ahead here. Fiji gets battered by a cyclone. But the island nation appears to have dodged an all-out disaster.

It's all ahead here on CNN Newsroom. We're live in Atlanta. Thanks for joining. I'm Natalie Allen.

And we begin with the U.S. presidential race. And votes in two states that seem to have further cemented the frontrunners status in both parties. In the Nevada caucuses, Hillary Clinton picked up almost 53 percent of the vote. Bernie Sanders got about 47 percent.

And in the South Carolina republican primary, Donald Trump finished 10 percentage points ahead of his closest competitors getting a little more than 30 percent of the votes. With the unofficial vote count completed, Marco Rubio, at 22.5 and Ted Cruz, 22.3 percent. Very tight.

Jeb Bush came in a distant fourth place. A poor performance that prompted the one-time leading republican to end his campaign. So, a pivotal day in many ways for republicans. Here's a quick look at how it all played out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In South Carolina, the polls are closing right now. The early leaders right now, in South Carolina, second tier candidate. CNN projects Donald Trump, the billionaire real estate magnate, will win the South Carolina republican primary.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's getting nearly half of the votes here in the Myrtle Beach area of Horry County; it's a big population center. It's nearly the sixth of the state's population he's getting nearly 50 percent. So, whether you like Donald Trump or don't like Donald Trump, that speaks for itself that this is a thumping.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He will be the best president. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jeb Bush ran a hard race. At one time, considered

the frontrunner. Right now, has suspended to suspend his campaign.

JEB BUSH, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The people in Iowa, in New Hampshire, and South Carolina have spoken. And I really respect their decision. So, tonight, I am suspending my campaign.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a keen battle going on right now for second between Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

TED CRUZ, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Right now we are effectively tied for second place.

MARCO RUBIO, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: After tonight, this has become a three-person race. And we will win the nomination.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump is on the path to become the republican nominee for president. More so than any other candidate in the race.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Joining me now from South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina is McKay Coppins, senior political writer for Buzzfeed, and he has been watching the republican primary unfold. Thanks so much for joining us, McKay. I want to start talking about Donald Trump's win. Rubio and Cruz being neck and neck. Bush is out. What do you make of the outcome?

MCKAY COPPINS, BUZZFEED SENIOR POLITICAL EDITOR: Well, I was just at Marco Rubio's rally nearby here in Columbia, South Carolina. And I will say that, you know, it was widely expected here that Donald Trump would come in first place. The real competition was for second where, you know, between Cruz and Rubio.

And inside the kind of event room where all Rubio's supporters and campaign aids and volunteers were gathered, the biggest applause and celebration of the night, that didn't have anything to do with where Rubio placed in the polls. It was actually when Jeb Bush announced that he was dropping out of the race. There's a widespread sense at that rally and among Rubio's campaign. That was a huge victory for him.

The people who are backing Jeb Bush or who have been backing him up until now, are kind of natural Rubio supporters. And there's an expectation that those people will kind of flow to Rubio.

But I can also tell you, just in the last couple hours, as I've been talking to sources throughout the Republican Party, there is a lot of movement behind the scenes now, to consolidate support and resources behind Mario Rubio, in hopes that they can elevate him to be the consensus kind of standard-bearer of the republican establishment to take on Donald Trump, who is at this point is unquestionably a surging frontrunner and looks hard to stop.

ALLEN: Yes. Absolutely. But Super Tuesday beckons. With Rubio getting more of the quote unquote "establishment support," could that mean he maybe can make some inroads with Donald Trump's train he has got rolling down the tracks?

COPPINS: Well, that's the hope. I mean, look, so, the republicans on Tuesday, have a caucus in Nevada, which is where Rubio will be headed tomorrow after a couple of quick stops and Super Tuesday states.

[03:05:09] There's hope that he cannot -- he can get close to Trump at least. Pull up a close second in Nevada or ideally first place. And then from there, yes, it's Super Tuesday. And the hope is that, among the republican establishment and in the Rubio campaign, is that with Jeb out, Rubio will be able to quickly raise a lot of money. Quickly gain a lot of support, a lot of kind of grassroots support, among kind of more mainstream republican voters so that they can really compete in those Super Tuesday states.

The problem is that Donald Trump has proven inconveniently consistent for the republican establishment in winning over voters that people thought that he wouldn't be able to. So, in New Hampshire, Trump won over a moderate voters. He actually won big among self-described moderates.

And then here in South Carolina, he's won among the Evangelical Christians despite Trump, shall we say spotty personal history, not very Christian attitude on the campaign trail.

So, it really is hard for, at this point, anti-Trump republicans to be able to predict with any kind of certainty that there will be kind of a mass exodus of support from Trump.

That this is why they're hoping that with Jeb out, they'll be able to coax a couple of the other candidates out, as well, such as Ohio Governor John Kasich and Dr. Ben Carson and really whittle this down to a three-man race between Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.

ALLEN: Yes. Kasich and Carson aren't given up that language yet, that they are going to step aside. But, hey, that's fine that they have every right to stay in hat.

But I want to ask you about Trump there, because even in South Carolina. You're right, he came after the Bushes. He had a spat with the pope. Your network exposed some different opinions he had on the Iraq war with Howard Stern a few years ago. But it seems to not matter from the people who had decided they cannot stand politics as usual.

What is it about him that it doesn't matter, he is going to get some sort of support from some section of this country.

COPPINS: Right. This is the -- this is kind of the myth that the political class need to let go of. This isn't about Donald Trump anymore. Not really. Donald Trump has become a vessel for a lot of economic anxiety and the white working class in this country.

A lot of outrage and anger directed at the political establishment and Washington. Voting for Trump for a lot of his supporters is not about supporting Donald Trump so much as it is casting a protest vote against kind of Washington and the republican establishment and call it the political establishment in general.

And that means that it's very difficult for Trump to do or say anything to kind of lose the core of his support. Because these people are not, it's not about, you know, Trump's ideology or his past possessions on various issues even it should be. It's really about casting a protest vote. And that's what I think that a lot of Trump's rivals in the Republican Party needs to come to terms with.

ALLEN: It would be interesting to see how Rubio and Cruz continue to stand up against that as they push forward with Trump. We have another debate coming up this week. Thanks so much for your thoughts. We appreciate it, McKay Coppins, senior political writer for Buzzfeed. Thank you.

COPPINS: Thank you.

ALLEN: Well, the democratic race in Nevada was expected to be close. Clinton's team likely breathed a sigh of relief when the votes started rolling in in her favor. Here's a look at how it unfolded Saturday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three months ago, looked like Hillary Clinton would win easily in this state. But now, her campaign seems to be lowering expectations here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Clinton campaign worked hard behind the scenes with casino owners to try and get paid time off, to the hotel workers, excuse me, could actually go caucus today. They actually let everybody come in without completing the registration process.

Apparently, they are going to complete it while they're holding the caucus.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These are English speakers registering to vote filling out Spanish forms because they ran out of English registration forms.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take a look, and it is close right now, 50 percent for Hillary Clinton, 49.6 percent for Bernie Sanders. It's a dead heat 50-50.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's a dead heat at a winter essentially needs to win Clark County. Secretary Clinton with a lead over Bernie Sanders at the moment. This is the bulk of the votes that will be counting tonight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many of you guys are first-time caucus goers or here for the first time? Raise your hands.

CNN projects Hillary Clinton is the winner of the Nevada democratic caucuses, beating Bernie Sanders.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is certainly a win, Wolf, that she is savoring.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Some may have doubted us. But we never doubted each other.

(APPLAUSE)

[03:10:04] And this one's for you.

BERNIE SANDERS, (D) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We are bringing working people and young people into the political process in a way we have not seen for a very long time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a big win for Hillary Clinton. She needs it and she delivered it.

ALLEN: Well, coming up here in a few minutes, we will be joined by an international affairs expert, to get an idea of what this election means for the rest of the world, depending on who wins.

Well, at least seven people are dead after a shooting spree in the U.S. State of Michigan. A total of nine people and seemingly random locations. A car dealership, an apartment complex, and the restaurant parking lot.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've had several shootings here tonight, in the county, the City of Kalamazoo. They all appear to be related. We have multiple people dead. In summary, what it looks like is where somebody driving around, finding people and shooting them dead in their tracks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Police say they have a suspect in custody now.

It is being called a monster of a cyclone. Tropical cyclone Winston has battered Fiji. It's now swirling out the sea but it has left behind a lot of devastation. We'll have the latest on this massive storm right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALLEN: You're looking at pictures from Fiji, where five people have been killed after tropical cyclone Winston battered the nation of tiny islands. The most powerful storm on record in the southern hemisphere, ripped off roofs and downed trees before swirling out the sea.

Power is out across much of Fiji and there's been heavy flooding. A nationwide curfew remains in effect until Monday, so cleanup crews can do their work. It is feared that some of the worst damage from the storm may be in remote hard-to-reach villages.

CNN senior international correspondent Ivan Watson joins us now. Certainly the death toll, although still low, has increased. Ivan?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Well, the important thing is that Fiji has survived a record breaking tropical cyclone, a category 5 this cyclone Winston. With winds recorded of sustained winds of 230 kilometers per hour, Natalie, and gusting up to 325 kilometers per hour.

So, you have experts telling CNN that this is the most powerful storm to hit that has ever in the southern hemisphere. And it does appear that it hasn't caused the kind of casualties that some may have feared. In part, because the eye of the storm veered off somewhat. And in part, perhaps, because the people of Fiji, were simply ready.

[03:14:58] That the government declared a state of emergency, that will be in effect for another 30 days. It imposed a mandatory curfew and authorized the police to arrest people if they were seen out on the streets.

So, at this point, the prime minister has been quoted saying that there were "five casualties." And they're still doing assessments for the scale of the damage that Fiji is an archipelago of nation of a number of much smaller islands spread out.

We're hearing that of course the electricity is still out in large part of the country that there is still water that's cut off, that there are schools and hospitals that have been seriously damaged.

We're talking about more than 1,000 people evacuated to shelters, as well. But it does appear that Fiji has dodged a bullet right now. And we're even hearing that the universities will be back open on Monday. Natalie?

ALLEN: That's amazing when you consider how powerful the storm was. So, back to normal somewhat for some people there. But what about air travel and international flights?

WATSON: Well, some of the major airlines, Virgin Australia is going to be operating normally on Monday. Also hearing that Fiji Airways and another airline, Fiji Link, that they will resume normal flights on Monday.

And it's important to note, that larger neighbors in the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, they have both offered to send military aircraft to help with the damage assessment phase of this. And they will also pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of emergency assistance to Fiji, as it struggles to cope with the substantial damage as a result of this storm that fortunately did not hurt as many people as had been feared, Natalie.

ALLEN: And as you say they were prepared. And it shows as far as in the low loss of life.

Ivan Watson for us. Thank you, Ivan.

Well, let's get more on this cyclone from our meteorologist Karen Maginnis. Karen, you still see that the satellite picture there of how big the storm is. It's amazing about the low loss of life. They took a very smart precautions there.

KAREN MAGINNIS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. And this was just really traversing the southern portion of the Pacific Ocean, for days. And when it raced right across Fiji. Now this is an archipelago of more than 300 islands, about 110 of them are occupied.

And to have five fatalities, while that's not a staggering number, this is a huge system. The strongest tropical cyclone in the southern Pacific hemisphere that we have ever seen. You can blame it on that El Nino. You can blame it on the exceptionally warm temperatures here.

That's not exceptional, 30 degrees Celsius or about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Very warm waters. The last time that Fiji took a direct hit, well, we didn't see it at the equivalent of a category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.

The last system that was brush by the northwestern quadrant of the main island was Evan back in 2012. And it still was not a direct hit, the winds were not strong, 230 kilometers per hour. But when it did move over Samoa, there were 14 fatalities. And across Fiji the infrastructure was heavily damaged.

So, you can imagine that, even we go back four years ago, we're still looking at a substantially stronger system with tropical cyclone Winston, that had wind gusts near 300 kilometers per hour.

That's 185 miles per hour. Right now, the wind associated with this is sitting just about a category 4 hurricane, or just about 230 kilometers per hour. Actually that's about to come up a little bit since I last checked it.

It is just kind of meandering a little bit towards the west but when you think it's going to make a dramatic turn more towards the south. It moves to the south going to be cooler water. So, maybe the forecast is going to improve for Fiji.

Well, it only gets better from here. But they are flying over. New Zealand has offered their help to see the extent of the damage. But still expecting quite a bit of rainfall. And what we did see whereas some pictures out of the main colonial war hospital there. And they suffered extensive damage, Natalie, there from the very heavy downpour. And that rain is going to be continuing because it is still in that vicinity.

ALLEN: Yes. Ivan Watson said that they lost the roof. That's a big problem. Karen, thank you very much.

Well, the presidential election has major implications for the U.S. What about the rest of the world? We will hear from an expert on what a Clinton, Sanders, Rubio, or Trump win would mean on a global scale. That's next.

[03:20:02] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALLEN: Again, Hillary Clinton has won the democratic caucuses in Nevada. The win helps calm concerns among her supporters that she was in danger of losing her frontrunner status to Bernie Sanders.

Also, Saturday Donald Trump won the republican primary in South Carolina. He grabbed almost a third of the votes there, continuing his national lead among conservative voters.

Jacob Parakilas is the assistant project director of the U.S. at Chatham House, a London-based think-tank. And he joins snow from London. You have worked for homeland security, a lot of different entries surrounding all security and foreign policy, Jacob.

So, we want to talk to you about this. So, where do you rate foreign policy in the list of important issues and decisions that a U.S. president faces?

JACOB PARAKILAS, CHATTAM HOUSE POJECT DIRECTOR: For me, as rate foreign policy analyst, I rate foreign policy very highly. The question is how high American voters rate it? And the answer to that is essentially it's a sort of necessary but not sufficient condition.

You have to demonstrate that you have some knowledge of foreign policy. You have to demonstrate you're comfortable and capable with wielding the enormous amount of power that the United States has in the world.

But fundamentally, most Americans historically have voted on domestic issues, the economic issues, so for policy issues, that sort of thing. Now there are some exceptions to that. Terrorism is a very strong issue right now for republican voters.

And they've responded a great deal to claims about terrorism made about by the republican candidates. but how that will play out in the general election, we don't entirely know yet.

ALLEN: All right. Immigration, security, the implosion in Syria and Russia's involvement there as well. Let's break it down a little and look at some of the candidates and foreign policy views. Let's begin with Trump. A conservative magazine the headline story on his foreign policy ideas, "Donald Trump global voter." What do you hear from Donald Trump and what does that President Donald Trump look like on the global scale?

PARAKILAS: It's a little bit difficult to parse what President Donald Trump would look like. Because he's released almost no information in terms of policy provisions of what he would actually do. His statements tend to be of course very bombastic, a very much in the language that he's perfected over years of being on television and promoting his real estate projects.

So, it's hard to know how you would act, a part of impossible to know how he would actually act in office. He has made a few very specific statements and those put him to odds not only with his republican colleagues but the democrats as well.

Among those, he wants to re-impose tariffs on China. He wants to engage in protectionism, which is largely fallen off the U.S. trade agenda over the last 30 years.

[03:25:02] He wants to pursue as more transactional approach with American allies. He thinks that South Korea, Japan, Europe should all pay for financially or otherwise the presence of American troops on their soil.

And that's completely at odds with the post-World War II history of American of foreign policy. It's not clear what his policy would be with regards to the Middle East. He's talked about bombing ISI and taking the oil.

But again, he hasn't released a specific plan about how that will be operationalized, what that would entail on how he would pay for it. And of course he's talked about building a giant wall on the Mexican border and making Mexico pay for it which Mexico has explicitly stated that they will not do.

ALLEN: Right. We will wait and break it down and see how feasible that wall would be. When we know that a lot of Mexicans tunnel under the border there, at least the cartels do.

Let's talk about Hillary Clinton. Of course she has served as Secretary of State. But as the same time her detractors6 would bring up the Benghazi disaster.

PARAKILAS: Hillary Clinton would be largely a continuation of Obama's foreign policy. She's thought to be more slightly more hawkish than Obama. She pushed for intervention and Libya. And I think she pushed for intervention in Syria as well. And Obama went along with the first of those but not the second.

So, I think she would largely pursue Obama's policies in terms of multilateralism. She would continue the Iran deal. She would pursue the multilateral initiatives in the pivot of the Pacific that the Obama administration has pushed for.

Although, she might be slightly more willing to employ American forces unilaterally. And she might be slightly more aggressive on Iran and Russia than Obama has been.

ALLEN: Well, as the election pushes on we'll come back to you if we get any more details from Donald Trump, if he continues to do as well as he has so far. Jacob Parakilas, thanks again for joining us from London.

And be sure to stay with CNN for State of the Union with Jake Tapper, that's later this Sunday. He'll be talking to most of the leading presidential candidates including Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, the republicans and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the democrats. That's at 2 p.m. in London, 10 p.m. in Hong Kong here in CNN.

Thanks for watching CNN Newsroom. I'm Natalie Allen. Leading Women coming up in a moment. And I'll be right back with our top stories.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[03:30:01] This is CNN Newsroom now. I'm Natalie Allen. Hillary Clinton has won the democratic caucuses in Nevada. And republican Donald Trump won his party primary in South Carolina. The win brings more political momentum to both candidates.