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Cruz & Rubio Jockey to Become Alternative to Trump; Shooting Ignites Concerns About Uber's Background Checks; YouTube Sensations on Why Trump is Their Candidate. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired February 23, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:30:38] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: As you know, Christie is out. Bush is out. And as a result, we see people moving to Marco Rubio. Endorsements from elected officials. The endorsements in the form of money from those who support the GOP establishment. All this ahead of the Nevada caucuses today. What impact will they make?

Well, let's take a look at the polls. The latest CNN/ORC poll of Nevada has Trump, 45, Rubio, 19. Will the latest endorsements help today, Super Tuesday? Is this now part of a path to victory for Rubio? We have someone who wants to make the case that it is. On behalf of the senator, Congressman Darrell Issa. He has been a Rubio supporter for many months now and joins us to talk about Rubio's path ahead.

That's - fair disclosure, congressman, you are not new to the band wagon. You have been behind Rubio. What do you believe these endorsements do? Because the plus/minuses is, it shows that he can potentially coalesce the party's interests around his candidacy. The minus is, he's more establishment than ever and that plays right into the strength of Donald Trump.

REP. DARRELL ISSA (R), CALIFORNIA: Well, I've been behind Rubio since we began working together across the dome. This is somebody that I watched from the day he got here do two things, one, make a conservative approach to legislation and to oversight and, two, reach out to all the parties in both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. And that's what we haven't seen in Washington for at least seven years. And it's the reason that I support Marco Rubio.

Your question about a pathway to a majority, I think it's pretty easy to understand. If you look at national polls, essentially Donald Trump is a 30-some percent supported individual. And what you really have, is you really have 65 to 70 percent who want somebody else, the so called establishment. The problem is, they're divided among candidates who can win and candidates who can't win. The old expression in the Republican Party, and I think it still holds true is, you've got to support, you've got to vote for the most conservative candidate that can win.

CUOMO: Well, but here's the thing. I think that it might be simple on that level to understand it. But I think that that assumes some things that may be very much in question. For instance, Trump's not at 30 percent. By most polls he's higher than that. So let's say you need to get closer to about 40. Well, that's fine. You still have 60. But that assumes one path for that 60. There's no reason to believe that Cruz supporters, if he drops out, would go with Rubio. Certainly not at this point. And remember with Trump, you've got over 75 percent of his supporters saying in the new Quinnipiac poll, we are set. We are not looking at anybody else. You don't see any kind of undecided ratio like that with everybody else's support. So there are a lot of ifs going into that. So the numbers are a little iffy and then you have the bigger question for you, congressman, which is, how does Marco Rubio look at Donald Trump in the face and take him on and win?

ISSA: Well, I think he calls out Donald Trump for who he is. He's somebody who didn't invite Marco Rubio to the wedding or Darrell Issa, he invited Hillary Clinton. He views buying politicians as part of his business plan. He views his life as bankruptcy is just fine. If your business succeeds, great. If it doesn't, you cram down your creditors. He certainly understand Two Corinthians but not 2 Corinthians.

There's an awful lot about Donald Trump that when you look at it, you start saying, well, wait a second here, is he even a Republican? Do his actual initiatives support the Republican side or, in fact, the Democratic side? And I'll just give you one and it's an important one. He went out of his way to bash George W. Bush and to make an issue over, we shouldn't be here, we shouldn't be there. Well, you know what? The next president of the United States is going to inherit all the strengths and weaknesses, mistakes and successes of his two predecessors. And the fact is, we are engaged around the world in a fight against ISIS. We are engaged in trying to get the Muslim world to reject extremism, both Shia and Sunni. And Donald Trump wants to just say, well, we're just going to build a wall on that one too. That's not going to work when we actually start narrowing to two or three people, having a real discussion with Donald Trump about whether he has a plan or he just has a bully pulpit. And I mean bully.

[08:35:03] CUOMO: Well, why not? We - but, congressman, people have been saying that from the beginning on Trump. This won't work. This won't work. He's going stay at 15. He's going stay at 20. He's going to stay at 25 and on and on. And it has proven to be untrue. People do see everything he says as an indictment against the enemy and as toughness. And compared to Chris Christie - you know, Chris Christie is like Santa Claus compared to Donald Trump when he's sitting across from Marco Rubio and saying, you know, I hear what you say, Rubio, and it makes me want to punch you in the face. Marco Rubio is going to have to show that he can stand up to him on that level. As petulant as it is, as juvenile as it is, it's what has defined Trump's, you know, tour deforce through your party. Do you believe Rubio can take him strength for strength and win?

ISSA: I do. I do, because what Rubio has - Marco Rubio has going for him is he actually understands the issues. He has taken a lot of time to understand what's wrong in government. And when talk about how you fix government, Marco Rubio's plan for fixing government is transparency. It's accountability. It's actually making not just the Congress know what the executive branch is doing, but what the American - let the American people know it. Something that this administration and even other Republican administrations haven't been for. That's not Donald Trump's style. It's not what he plans to do. Donald

Trump plans to have just as many executive orders, just as many phone calls and a pen as this president. He just thinks that he'll do it better. That's not how you improve government. You improve government by giving the American people a seat at the table again. This's what Marco Rubio is selling and has been selling ever since he got into the Congress. That's not what Donald Trump is selling.

And it's important to understand -

CUOMO: Well -

ISSA: I hear you when you say, it's not 30, it's closer to 40, but it's not closer to 40. It's somewhere in between.

And I'll just give you an example. Probably the most ridiculing candidacy that we've had and it was in 2012 was Todd Aiken running for senator. And he managed not just to bring down the Missouri race, but bring down a number of others. That's not questionable or deniable. He got 36 percent in the primary over the state treasurer who got 30 and another candidate who got 30-some. It was close. He was the wrong candidate. And it wasn't until later that they realized that somebody who was - who wasn't thinking about what they said, who was saying things that were off the wall brought down the party.

Donald Trump could be a national Todd Aiken if our party doesn't coalesce behind a single candidate. We know that. we're still having the discussion about who that single candidate is. But what you have is you have people who have - who have dedicated their life to public service saying, it ain't Donald Trump. Now we just have to figure out who we coalesce behind. If the Republican Party coalesces reasonably soon behind one candidate -

CUOMO: But you know that -

ISSA: And I believe it will be Marco Rubio, Donald Trump will be the 36 percent loser, not the 36 percent winner.

CUOMO: But, you know, it's all about the tone of this particular campaign and a lot of this remains to be seen. You make a compelling case. But here's an example. A piece of evidence, if you will -

ISSA: Sure.

CUOMO: About the state of play within your party right now. Dr. Ben Carson said on a pod cast I believe talking about the sitting president of the United States, Barack Obama, you know, "he's an African-American. He was, you know, raised white. Many of his formative years were spend in Indonesia. So, for him to, you know, claim that, you know, he identifies with the experience of black Americans, I think, is a bit of a stretch." Is this the kind of tactic that your party should endorse in the political pod cast? He didn't say this in the back of a car to a friend, he said it to an open audience.

ISSA: Well, you know, I know the doctor. He spoke before a charity that I'm also involved in. He is a great surgeon, a wonderful human being and he was technically correct in what he said. But, again, this is the reason that political loose talk by people who are just beginning to do it is always a problem in real statesmanship. The fact is that Ben Carson, Dr. Carson, is not really ready to represent America around the world, even though he's a wonderful human being and a brilliant man.

Yes, you can - you can say that when you're a private citizen and you're technically accurate. But when you're running for president, you need to look at what you're running for and not get mired down in petty differences that don't even matter. Barack Obama is not on the ballot. His record is, but he isn't. The fact is that our candidate had to be ready to take on either a socialist or a failed secretary of state. And that's where we're going. That's the reason that Marco Rubio has pivoted from what's wrong with this president to what he would do because the American people want to know how we're going to fix where we are around the world.

And, look, Marco Rubio is the foreign affairs, is the national defense candidate. That has - the polls say it's important, but it hasn't yet dominated the actual voting. It needs to dominate the voting if America is going to understand that domestic policy is about allowing the private sector to earn.

[08:40:17] CUOMO: Right.

ISSA: National policy around the world takes somebody with skill and training, and that's Marco Rubio.

CUOMO: Well, we'll see as the issues start to arise who does better, and we always know what the answer is because it comes out in the voting.

ISSA: It's Marco Rubio.

CUOMO: Congressman Issa, thank you very much. Appreciate having you on NEW DAY.

ISSA: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: I gotcha.

All right, we're going to take a break here. When we come back, we're going to give you the latest on that deadly shooting in Kalamazoo. There's a lot of questions about the company that the man was working for, Uber. He passed a screening test for them. Is that part of what went wrong in this situation? Answers ahead.

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PEREIRA: So there are big questions about Uber's screening process after a Kalamazoo man allegedly shot and killed six people while he was on duty for the company. We're going to bring in Juliette Kayyem. She's a CNN national security analyst and former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and my girl because you get to the heart of these issues for us. Juliette, obviously there's a whole lot of, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, Uber, Uber, Uber -

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes.

PEREIRA: They should have done more. They missed something. They didn't flag him. They should have flagged him. Be you say it's kind of unfair -

[08:45:04] KAYYEM: Yes.

PEREIRA: To so specifically focus on Uber. Why is that?

KAYYEM: I think the Uber issue is a distraction from everything that happened and this tragedy. Uber does a background review. But what we know from the man who killed a lot of people is nothing in his past would have caught him. Whether he worked for the taxi industry, the bus industry or Uber, no background check would have caught him.

But what you are seeing here is basically a distraction from either the gun lobby or a number of others who want to regulate Uber, whether it's the taxi industry or others. And they are sort of coming into this debate as if it is a public safety issue, which it is not.

PEREIRA: Okay. So that's really interesting. We know that there has been this tug of war between the taxi companies and the taxi medallion owners, etc. who feel that their business is getting encroached on by Uber. We understand that -- you know, they have got a dog in the fight.

But look, if I'm sitting at home, I'm watching the headlines, Juliette, I'm a single female and I'm thinking of Ubering to meet my girlfriends for a drink, this is going to give me pause, should it not?

KAYYEM: It shouldn't. I mean actually when you look at the risk factors of either getting into a car, getting into an Uber, or getting into a taxi, they are all relatively negligible. This is a tragedy of which the company itself has, you know, come out and said all the right things.

But the notion that some security apparatus could have caught this guy, whether it was from Uber or from the taxi industry, is just a distraction. What do we know, Michaela? We know he had access lawfully to 12 guns.

PEREIRA: Yeah, let's pull that up. Let's pull up what we do know about this guy.

KAYYEM: I mean, he has access to 12 guns.

PEREIRA: 45 years old, married for 15 years, two kids. He was known to be a gun and car enthusiast. Worked as an insurance adjuster. There was no criminal record and, in fact, was known as a family man.

We should point out, Uber, for their part, is devastated. They did receive, during this whole incident, that those tragic minutes when this all happened, they received several complaints about him that day. But he didn't have a poor rating. He apparently -- I've heard that he had a 4.73 Uber rating, which is very high.

KAYYEM: Yeah that's absolutely right. And that -- I think that is the disconcerting part of this is that there are these people out there. No one is finding them. They are not showing anything that would suggest that they are the person who is going to go out and kill a bunch of people and the commonality between all of them is not Uber, it's not religion, it's not anything. It is guns. And so part of what I'm trying to say here is let's not get distracted by these political debates about whether Uber should be more regulated or -- It is about guns and we don't sort of focus on that.

PEREIRA: Okay, but -- No, I agree. That has to be a conversation as well. But the fact is the company has come under some criticism. They settled two class action lawsuits around background checks. They have had issues in India, etc.

They have a right -- They have to protect their customers, though, do they know?

KAYYEM: Right. They absolutely do. And all of these industries are very committed to -- as both a moral issue but also as a business issue to protecting passengers. I think if you look at the numbers across the board, they are relatively negligible. Each incident is, of course, horrible because we put our trust in organizations like Uber or taxis or wherever. You are not going to get the risk to zero. We have said this in the context of all sorts of violence.

PEREIRA: You're right. You've said it before to us. And you make a good point --

KAYYEM: But let's not --

PEREIRA: Don't get -- Don't let -- Let's not get distracted from the real issue here and hopefully we'll be able to talk about that in coming days. Juliette Kayyem, sorry to cut you short there, darling. Thanks for joining us.

KAYYEM: That's okay.

PEREIRA: Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, Michaela. Meet the sisters taking on the Republican establishment, journalists and anyone else who dares to challenge Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LYNETTE "DIAMOND" HARDAWAY, "STUMP FOR TRUMP" GIRL: You gonna lose a whole damn party.

ROCHELLE "SILK" RICHARDSON, "STUMP FOR TRUMP" GIRL: That's right.

HARDAWAY: Because the Republican Party is going to be obsolete. RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: Leave Donald Trump the hell alone.

RICHARDSON: Leave him alone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Online sensations Diamond and Silk will tell us about stumping for Trump. That's next.

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[08:51:36] HARDAWAY: He gonna put that wall up.

RICHARDSON: Yes he is.

HARDAWAY: He gonna build that wall!

RICHARDSON: He gonna build it!

HARDAWAY: And he gonna build it tall!

RICHARDSON: He gonna build it tall.

HARDAWAY: And it's gonna protect us all!

RICHARDSON: He gonna protect us all!

HARDAWAY: We don't want this country to fall, do we?

RICHARDSON: No, we don't want it to fall.

HARDAWAY: Build that wall, Donald J. Trump!

RICHARDSON: Build that wall!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was Lynette "Diamond" Hardaway and Rochelle "Silk" Richardson, two North Carolina sisters who have become internet sensations stumping for Donald Trump. Diamond and Silk join us now. Hi, ladies.

HARDAWAY: Hello. Hi.

RICHARDSON: Hi. Thanks for having us.

CAMEROTA: Great to have you here on NEW DAY. What do you love so much about Donald Trump?

HARDAWAY: The fact that he wants to secure our border.

RICHARDSON: Yes. HARDAWAY: He wants to work for us as the American people. He wants to

bring back our jobs where we can feed our family and we can thrive again and that is why we love him.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

CAMEROTA: Now you guys do not like it when anyone challenges Donald Trump, including journalists. In fact, you were incensed that Fox's Megyn Kelly asked him a question about how he feels about women at the first Republican -- or at least one of the Republican debates. Let me play your response to that moment. Listen to this.

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HARDAWAY: Low blow! You hit below the belt, Kelly! You hit below the belt, girl! But blow on this.

RICHARDSON: Blow.

HARDAWAY: Leave my man Donald Trump the hell alone!

RICHARDSON: Leave him alone.

HARDAWAY: If you got something to say, you got something you want to tell him, run it by us first!

RICHARDSON: That's right!

HARDAWAY: Run it by me first!

RICHARDSON: That's right!

HARDAWAY: And I'll let you know whether you have permission to come for him.

RICHARDSON: Yes!

HARDAWAY: Don't come for him unless he invites your ass.

RICHARDSON: Yes!

HARDAWAY: Okay? That's all I got to say.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So ladies, let me get this straight. We, as journalists, need to run the questions by you first. What questions are acceptable exactly?

HARDAWAY: Well ask questions that pertains to the American people and how the American people can come up.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: Don't ask nothing about his past. That's inrelevant (ph).

RICHARDSON: Yes.

HARDAWAY: The questions that Megyn Kelly asked was inirrelevant (ph) questions and we don't know why she was asking them.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: That was a time for her to unite our country.

RICHARDSON: Mm-hmm.

HARDAWAY: There was 24 million people watching us.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: But she didn't do that. She divided us by asking dumb questions. Ask relevant questions and that is what she should have done.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

CAMEROTA: So that's interesting. So you only want questions about the issues and where the candidates stand on the issues and we should not bring up anything about their pasts?

HARDAWAY: I want questions about the issues.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: How you gonna bring our jobs back? How you gonna secure our border? How you gonna get this country where it's thriving and where we're united?

RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: Those are the kind of questions that we want.

CAMEROTA: Now you guys are in Vegas right now. And last night Donald Trump had an event in Vegas. Were you there?

HARDAWAY: We were not at the event, but we plan to be at the event tonight, yes.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

CAMEROTA: Okay. There was a protester at the event last night that Donald Trump's people had removed because he was being loud and sort of, you know, disruptive. And afterwards Donald Trump said that he felt that he should be punched in the nose. Let me play for you a moment of this.

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[08:54:56] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Here is a guy throwing punches, nasty as hell, screaming at everything else when we're talking. And you're walking out and we're not allowed -- you know, the guards are very gentle with him. He's walking out like big high-fives, smiling laughing. I'd like to punch him in the face.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Okay. Ladies, is that acceptable?

HARDAWAY: Listen, when you go to a Donald Trump event, sit down and shut up so that you can see what's going on. You know, it is time for our country to unite. This is the United States, not the divided states. And in his event there is unity, so why is that person bringing in divisiveness? So he should have been thrown out!

RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: I wish I was there last night. I would have thrown him out!

RICHARDSON: That's right. And I would have helped you.

HARDAWAY: Yes!

CAMEROTA: You guys have quite the shtick going. I believe you. If anybody crosses you, I bet that you would have thrown them out. What don't you guys like about Ted Cruz or Ben Carson or Marco Rubio?

HARDAWAY: Listen, Ted Cruz is a liar and a cheater. He won't be able to lie his way to that White House.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: Because we see what he's doing. Marco Rubio, he's already been in the Senate. He hasn't done anything for the people.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: He won't even go to work.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

HARDAWAY: So why will we give him the presidency? And I don't want another soft tone spoken president. I want my president's voice to speak volumes.

RICHARDSON: Volumes.

HARDAWAY: I want him not to waiver and not to back down and, baby, that is why we stump for Trump and we are voting for Donald J. Trump!

RICHARDSON: That's right.

CAMEROTA: What was it like when Trump brought you guys up on stage and you looked out at that sea of supporters?

HARDAWAY: It was phenomenal.

RICHARDSON: Amazing.

HARDAWAY: It was phenomenal. We absolutely loved it and we liked the unity. There is unity. He is uniting us all and that is what we love!

RICHARDSON: That's right. And we're only one race.

HARDAWAY: And that is the human race, baby.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

CAMEROTA: All right. Diamond and Silk. Ladies, remember, anyone who has a question for Donald Trump, submit it to them.

RICHARDSON: That's right.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much for being here on NEW DAY. We'll see you on the campaign trail, ladies.

All right. That's it for NEW DAY. "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello continues right after this short break. See you tomorrow.

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