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Hillary In Iowa Says Experience Counts; Rand Paul Separates Himself From GOP Hawks; Was Amtrak 188 Hit By Projectile?; Stocks At Records. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired May 19, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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


CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. But I think it's brave of him. People say he's just doing this for the exposure. I don't buy that. And I don't think -- when you talk to people in that community, you'll say you do not do this...

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Not at all.

CUOMO: You don't do this just for attention.

PEREIRA: Not at all.

CUOMO: It's interesting to behold as painful as it is for him.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Let's turn our attention now to "Inside Politics" on NEW DAY. Gloria Borger is in for John King this morning. Good morning, Gloria.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN GUEST ANCHOR: Hello.

CAMEROTA: How are you?

BORGER: Great. Great to see you. We have a lot to talk about today, Alisyn and has an awful lot to do with mails, so it's Hillary Clinton e-mails. With me are Jackie Kucinich of "The Daily Beast," and Olivier Knox of "Yahoo News." Thanks to both of for being here.

As we all know the government of the United States works at its own speed, and the case of Hillary Clinton and her e-mail it seems to have hit a speed bump. This morning we learned that the State Department says it will not be able to release those 55,000 pages of e-mails she handed over to the agency last December.

I want to read you a little bit about what the government said about it. The government said the department understands the considerable public interest in these records and is endeavoring to complete the review and production of them as expeditiously as possible.

The collection is, however, voluminous and due to the breadth of topics, nature of communications, and the interest of several agencies presents several challenges. One of them is apparently the Christmas holidays, the filing says.

So the release is further delayed until January 15, 2016, 13 months from when Hillary Clinton handed over those e-mails. And by the way, guys, that's two weeks before the Iowa caucuses. What does that mean for Hillary Clinton, Olivier?

OLIVIER KNOW, "YAHOO NEWS": Well, it means that if there was even a scintilla of doubt we would be talking about the Hillary e-mails through to the election, that's extinguished. We'll be talk about this forever.

BORGER: She wanted them released sooner.

of course she did. The further from the election this is there's more to cover if there's anything in them.

JACKIE KUCINICH, "THE DAILY BEAST": Of course, she did because the further away from the election this is, there's more to recover if there is anything in them. The interesting thing you hear Republicans talking about is that the e-mails can't be released because the server was --

BORGER: OK, but there are some e-mails that are going to be release, there's 900 pages of e-mails the Benghazi committee is going to release soon. And today the "New York Times" reported about some e- mails between Hillary Clinton and her old friend, Sidney Blumenthal, who advised her on Libya to a degree, was employed by the Clinton Foundation.

Does this create a problem and raise more questions about the blurred Clinton network between Clinton friends, philanthropy, business and government?

KNOX: Well, if you're the Hollywood screen writer writing about the Hillary e-mails for a movie, you would basically write this story a long time conciliary to the Clintons, working with the Clinton Foundation, advising Hillary on her private e-mail system on policy about Libya and doing so in a way that benefitted his paying clients. So absolutely, this is a --

BORGER: Yes.

KUCINICH: Yes, he's kind of the personification of the appearance of impropriety.

KNOX: That's right.

KUCINICH: He is that person.

BORGER: I think the question still remains to be seen actually about whether the public cares about the e-mails, what the public cares about at least Hillary Clinton thinks is her experience. This is what she was talking about in Iowa yesterday. Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We are living in an incredibly complicated time in American history. It is not a time for easy answers or glib answers or one-liners or applause lines. Those are all great. That's part of campaigning.

But at the end of the day, we need a president, who has both the experience and the understanding to deal with the complexity of the problems that we face.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BORGER: Now, that could be campaign 2008. Yes, because that's when Hillary was running on experience. Not so subtle whack at her Republican opponents.

KNOX: Obviously in a week in which the Republican field really struggled to answer the question about would they have gone into Iraq, would they have ordered the war. This is an obvious rebuttal or obvious comment from Hillary Clinton playing to one of her strengths which is experience.

KUCINICH: And look at those candidates. Look at me, look at all the experience I have, which is basically what she's saying, but she also made sure to say this is also about you, which is the theme of this campaign.

BORGER: And I'm the adult in the room here, but by the way, not taking reporters' questions. Does anybody care about that except for us?

KNOX: I think the only people who care about her not taking reporters' questions are some staffers on the Republican presidential field. I don't think the public really is paying that much attention. And frankly if we cared that much we could be writing stories that said, look, that said, look, there's this important issue and she's not answering it.

BORGER: Right. So we do have Republicans taking questions, as many as they can actually because they have to distinguish themselves and get known to the American public unlike Hillary Clinton, who is the most-known politician in America perhaps.

And yesterday, Rand Paul spoke to our own Alisyn Camerota, it was about Iraq. He was trying to distinguish himself. Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[07:35:03] SENATOR RAND PAUL (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not sure why it's so hard, but it shows some differences between the candidates. And I think if people want another Iraq war they know who they can vote for.

If they want someone who's not very likely to have another Iraq war and will only go to war when we have to when it's the last resort when we have to defend America or American interests, there are going to be some other alternatives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BORGER: So what segment of the Republican Party is Rand Paul trying to appeal to by saying if you want to go to war you know who you can vote for?

KUCINICH: The Iraq war was unpopular. So he's looking at those Republicans that are like this ruined our party in a lot of ways and saying take a look at me because those people are the same people who are nervous about Rand Paul, who are worried about him being an isolationist. And he's trying to sound like the reasonable guy who's not going to go running into something without all the evidence.

BORGER: I mean, does this have a great appeal to the base?

KNOX: To the young part of the base I suspect it does. The young Republican voters are concerned about military intervention overseas, domestic surveillance and that's really Rand Paul's sweet spot. This is an opportunity for him to go on offense, I guess, ironically, in the sense that he's been hit as an isolationist. He isn't really. He's a non-interventionist. His rival fumbles this week and gives him a chance to seize that platform.

BORGER: But don't you see the party as growing more hawkish? I mean, when you look at polling over 70 percent of Republicans would use some type of force, for example, combatting ISIS. The general public as a whole seems to be growing a little more combative, not just the Republican Party. So does he seem his, you know, nonintervention does that seem a little out of step with the party?

KNOX: You know, he's the only candidate to have actually introduced a declaration of war in Congress against ISIS. So, no, I don't think this is as much of a problem for him as it's being made out to be. I mean, he has a tough path.

As you say, the Republican Party as a whole is pretty hawkish and he's going to have a tough time with some older voters. But I think in terms of the younger ones, this is great.

KUCINICH: But hawkish on Iraq, I think there's a very distinct difference.

BORGER: Speaking of younger voters, we have to talk about social media and something that's hilarious that occurred yesterday because the president now has his very own personal, as in I will be tweeting myself, Twitter account @potus.

Let's take a look at it. So we have Obama's very first tweet, hello, Twitter, it's Barack. Really six years in they're finally giving me my own account. Here's what's great.

Bill Clinton responded to the president, who I guess is late to the game. Welcome to Twitter @potus. One question, does that user name stay with the office? #askingforafriend.

And Obama of course responded, doesn't he have anything better to do? Good question, Bill Clinton, the handle comes with the house. Know anyone interested in in @flotus? What would we call Bill Clinton?

KNOX: That was one of the big debates yesterday, right? Does flotus stand for first lad of the United States? BORGER: I don't know, fogotus, first gentleman of the United States?

KNOX: But really the big question is who is they who gave him a Twitter account?

BORGER: I don't know. I'm sure much to be discussed on Twitter. I'd love to see these presidents tweeting with each other. I think it's a way to expand that very exclusive club, wouldn't you say, Alisyn? What do you think about that?

CAMEROTA: I like flotus. I like they're tweeting. I like that we can eavesdrop on their conversation. But fgotus has a strange ethnic feel to it.

BORGER: Or first dude.

CAMEROTA: I like first mate. That's what I think.

BORGER: First man.

CAMEROTA: That's fine too. So many options really if it comes to that.

BORGER: I'm sure we'll be debating them.

CAMEROTA: All right, Gloria, great to see you.

BORGER: Good to see you.

CAMEROTA: OK, thanks so much. Passengers filing suit now against Amtrak in that deadly derailment. What investigators are learning about this this morning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:40:00]

CUOMO: Welcome back. Another Amtrak employee is suing Amtrak for negligence in the Philadelphia train derailment, four passengers also filing suit alleging serious and disabling injuries. Now, the lawsuits are going to come.

The problem is we still don't know exactly what happened. But investigators are now ruling out gunfire hitting the train. Let's bring in Mary Schiavo, former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation and a CNN transportation analyst.

Lawsuits before we know what happened, why? What makes sense? Mary, certainly for employees tell us why.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: Well, it makes sense because eventually they're going to have to do it anyway. This is a little early with the facts not coming out especially since the complaints what starts a lawsuit have been filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania have also alleged punitive damages. Meaning that's a kind of damages you allege if you say the actors involved were egregious, terrible negligence, broke the law, et cetera so a lot will depend upon what the investigators find about those mysterious marks on the windshield if something did hit the train.

But eventually they're going to have to file suit and this is especially important here because federal law 49 United States code 28103 limits the damages to $200 million. And in this day and age that's not a lot of money. It will be paid by insurance by the way.

CUOMO: Back in the late '90s Congress passed that as somewhat of a favor you could argue to Amtrak and really to itself, right, because Amtrak's run by the government. Employees filing suit sometimes that has to do with money out of pocket because they may not be getting workers comp from Amtrak.

As you say the passengers that's going to happen eventually. Now, you mentioned what hit that front windshield. Some people see this as a distraction. But the investigators we're talking to say, look, that chatter between this engineer and other ones that was heard they say they have multiple sources on that dialogue. What's your take?

SCHIAVO: Well, I think, you know, regardless of how they come up with the evidence and certainly the investigators and I would be and I'm sure the FBI is talking to the other trains that were also believe they were hit and that there's evidence that other trains were hit by something.

[07:45:05] That's highly significant here because the engineer doesn't have the recollection. He can't fill in the gaps right now because of what happened to him in the crash. And so the FBI's going to have to find this out.

And if the train was hit by a rock, it's also going to be important why. Was this a rock thrown by somebody? That's criminal activity. Was this cement falling from a crumbling bridge? Well, that adds another person into the negligence.

So it's very important to determine what that was or if the mark on the windshield occurred during the crash sequence so I think it's a highly important event and could mean the difference in how the outcome of the lawsuit goes. There might be another actor involved.

CUOMO: And certainly it would mean a lot to this engineer, his reputation and his state of mind going forward. Certainly the scrutiny is still on him as this point. And it's interesting we're also hearing from the investigators every time we're like trying to get some information about what's happening, they say don't lose sight though of this overriding issue.

Where is the pressure and accountability on Congress who ultimately oversees Amtrak to make the safety upgrades that they should have had already? Now, under that accountability tell us about the situation right now with who's in charge on the federal level of overseeing this. SCHIAVO: Well, you know, that's an issue that goes on in so many administrations. And that is a lot of key positions are left open or they're filled by acting administrators. Now, many times acting administrators are great, but here federal rail administration is headed by an acting administrator.

When I was in the Department of Transportation I went through half a dozen secretaries and it was kind of a revolving door. In some administrations the average life of a political appointee in the position, not their longevity, but their life in the position is about 18 months. So often you have these positions empty.

It would make sense of course to have a permanent person in the job, who was committed to rail safety, but I will say that in federal rail administration the persons one level down from the open position or the acting administrator right now, the caretaker position, are committed individuals at least from their resume and they've been involved in rail safety for a long time.

So a lot of times the career employees and then the second level employees really can act quite well without a permanent position. And at this point if the president appointed somebody, they would sadly be a lame duck because the place where the administration is they're close to the end.

CUOMO: But here's the big problem, Mary, as you well know, they're fighting over how much -- down in Congress, at the end of the day. But they don't really follow through with the how well part.

So you now have a situation where you should have had this positive train control, it would have stopped this accident, it would have stopped the one we just had in Spiten Dival, these people would not be hurt and dead, but where's the accountability? Who do you go to and say you have to do better?

SCHIAVO: Yes, that's the greatest point of all. Congress is great about passing things and telling the executive branch what to do, but there's very little follow-up.

When I was inspector general, I used to say when the lights are turned off at the end of the hearing, that's the end of Congress's interest. But there are a few committed individuals, but sometimes they just can't command the attention of all of Congress.

But, you know, as we all know Congress is completely immune from their role in things and they can pontificate, but often you don't see a lot of follow-up.

CUOMO: That's the problem though. We're trying to get this to change. We're trying to see PTC gets put places and they don't extend this deadline forever, which we hear is coming.

But every time you go down one of these hallways the door closes at the end of it. You don't know where it's going to lead. The members of Congress that we thought we would find accountable, they're blaming Amtrak. So you go to Amtrak and Amtrak says, I know you want to blame us but by the way we're better on safety than a lot of other rail operators. And you look at it and that does seem true.

So we're not getting anywhere, Mary, that's the frustration. We know you'll help us keep giving us guidance on where to go because it matters too much. Look at these families now. They'll never get these people back and it's something that could have been avoided -- Mich.

PEREIRA: All right, Chris, I think you'll like this. Check this out, pretty soon Starbucks is going to give you a brew and a beat. Spotify teaming up with the coffee giant turning baristas into deejays. How cool is that? We're going to break down the deal.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:52:49]

CAMEROTA: Time for CNN money now. CNN Money correspondent, Alison Kosik, here with some good news.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good news because we are talking about stocks have never been this high. Yesterday, the Dow hit a new record close, and so did the S&P 500, it's third in a row, and we are looking at more momentum today. U.S. stock futures, they are pointing higher right now to a-could-be yet another record day.

However, it could depend on American consumers, that really direct the trade today because earlier this hour, we learned that Walmart disappointed Wall Street with weak sales.

Add deejay to the list of responsibilities for Starbucks baristas. Starbucks is partnering with music streaming service Spotify to create playlist for each location, which means customers can actually have a role in what they hear when they are walking to the store. They can add to the list and actually keep listening after they leave the store.

Here's a bunch of opening for you, Google is looking for a designer for those little cartoon you see on the homepage that we all love celebrating holidays and famous people. All you need is experience with illustration, graphic design, animation, and a serious sense of humor should help as well.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, Alison.

CUOMO: All right, so you heard about what is going on down in Texas. Police are in high alert for more violence as the biker gangs are descending by the hundreds armed to the teeth to Waco. Why police feel they are powerless to stop it, when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:58:37]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were prepared for any threat that comes towards us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Officials warning law enforcement that members of two biker gangs have been, quote, "instructed to arm themselves with weapons and travel to North Texas.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The bond for each of the people who are being arrested, $1 million each.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A mass action lawsuit against Amtrak.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A sharp focus on the engineer and his experience.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His conduct right now is inexplicable.

PAUL: This is what people misunderstand sometimes about my position. I am all for the NSA looking at records.

PEREIRA: A look back at the career late-night legend.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This was my idea and I am not wearing pants.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Tuesday, Mary 19th, 8:00 in the east. Police are on high alert for violence as hundreds of biker gang bangers reportedly armed to the teeth descend on Texas. The Bandidos and the Cross X are headed for war in a community maybe caught in the middle.

CAMEROTA: Sunday's gun battle at Waco left nine bikers left dead. Early indication suggests four were shot by police after they fired on the cops. CNN's Nick Valencia is live for us in Waco, Texas. What have you learned, Nick?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this has certainly shaken up their community, Alisyn, and what police department officials that we've spoken to say this is not unique to Waco, Texas. That biker gangs are all across the United States. It certainly caused shock and panic as the shootout broke out on Sunday.