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Cruz Wins Wisconsin; Contested GOP Convention?; Sanders Vows to Continue Democratic Contest to the Convention. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired April 7, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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


[00:00:08] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world; I'm Wolf Blitzer and this is live CNN Special Coverage. We're here in the CNN Election Center.

Tonight, the voters of Wisconsin, they have made their decision. For the Republicans, Ted Cruz has won in Wisconsin and a contested convention in Cleveland, in July, looks not only possible, but may even now be probable.

For the Democrats, Bernie Sanders up ending the front-runner, Hillary Clinton. Sanders says his win tonight means the war for the Democratic Presidential Nomination it will be decided at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia. To get there, Sanders needs to beat Clinton by big, big

margins, again and again. Tonight Sanders is calling his win a landslide.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: With our victory tonight in Wisconsin, we have now won seven out of eight of the last caucuses and primaries.

[Cheering and Applause]

SANDERS: And we have won almost all of them with overwhelming landslide numbers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Once again, on the Republican side, Wisconsin picked Ted Cruz and Cruz calls that a turning point, a rallying cry, he says, for the rest of the country to rise up and stop Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX). PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Three weeks ago, the media said Wisconsin was a perfect state for Donald Trump, but the hardworking men and women of Wisconsin stood and campaigned tirelessly to make sure that tonight was a victory for every American.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Sunlen Serfaty is covering the Cruz campaign. She's joining us right now. Sunlen, very excited, very happy folks over there. SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT, via satellite: That's right, Wolf. The Cruz campaign is ecstatic about their performance here tonight in Wisconsin and what's interesting is, Senator Cruz addressed this crowd an hour or two ago. He really tried, it seemed, to make a rhetorical pivot toward the general election in celebrating his win here in Wisconsin. During his speech he never once mentioned either of his republican rivals, Donald Trump or John Kasich by name. Instead mentioning Hillary Clinton, a couple times during his speech and ending his speech point blank with the words Hillary, we are coming for you.

Now, Cruz campaign officials tell me tonight that this is the tone and the message that Senator Cruz will bring to the campaign trail going forward. That starts tomorrow when Senator Cruz campaigns in Donald Trump's hometown turf of New York. He will spend 48 hours in New York, holding events in the Bronx, tomorrow; an event outside of Albany on Thursday.

But while Senator Cruz is now focusing on Donald Trump, the Cruz campaign has been forced to respond to Donald Trump's response tonight, that statement that Donald Trump issued tonight alleging that Senator Cruz is a puppet of the party bosses, is a Trojan Horse trying to steal the nomination. The Cruz campaign basically casting this as Donald Trump just being a sore loser. Aides saying this is just Donald Trump now in full meltdown mode. Wolf?

BLITZER: All right, Sunlen; thanks very much. Sunlen in Milwaukee for us. Let's go to Brianna Keilar right now. She's covering the Bernie Sanders campaign tonight, over in Wyoming. They were obviously thrilled over there as well; Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, via satellite: They were and he was trying to rile people up to get out and caucus for him here in Wyoming on Saturday hoping to add to his string of wins. He is insisting, his campaign, Wolf, is insisting that he has a path to victory and he will prevail. They are citing his recent ability to reduce Hillary Clinton's lead in pledged delegates by about 80 or so delegates.

Of course, it's still a considerable margin between them, more than 200 delegates, but the Sanders campaign says they're going to keep chipping away at that until they have a pledged delegate advantage; and going into the convention, where they will try to convince super delegates to switch their allegiance to Bernie Sanders. They say this is something that will reflect the will of the voters. Of course, the Clinton campaign says that this is something that negates the will of the voters because she's actually received more votes when you look at the overall votes. I did talk to a top aide, Tad Divine, to Bernie Sanders and he said we're not winding down, we are winding up.

Of course, this -- we're learning, Wolf, that the campaign is still concerned about one challenge that Bernie Sanders is facing and that's his appeal to African-American voters. He is still struggling with that. That will be essential in New York. They do believe that they can close the gap, but it's also interesting, Wolf, you heard Bernie Sanders tonight. He was imploring his supporters to have faith. He said ignore what you hear in the corporate [00:05:01] media and he insisted that there is still a path to the White House.

BLITZER: We shall see. Brianna, thanks very much. Brianna's in Laramie, Wyoming. Dana, a lot of excitement for these two big winners tonight.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, and let's break it down a little bit more. I'm here, joined by Mike Shields, the former Chief of Staff for the Republican National Committee and, of course, our own Political Director, David Chalian.

Let's just kind of take a step back and look at where we are on the Republican side, with the delegates. Of course, 1237 to win. As of tonight, right now, Donald Trump has 743. Ted Cruz, 507 and John Kasich 145. If you were back in your old job at the RNC you would be looking at these numbers tonight and thinking what to yourself?

MIKE SHIELDS, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Getting ready. Preparing for potentially an open convention, that is what the RNC's doing. They're preparing themselves. It isn't yet an open convention. Donald Trump or Ted Cruz could still get the numbers they need to win outright, but -

BASH: But it's fair to say it's incredibly -

SHIELDS: It is now unlikely and so, you know, this is where you benefit, for instance, from having chairman who is a three-year chairman of the RNC, former council to the RNC, Reince Priebus. They are getting ready at the RNC to have an open, transparent convention so that everyone can see what's happening and that the delegates get to choose the nominee on the floor of the convention.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: It really seems to me now there are going to be two parallel campaigns -

SHIELDS: That's right.

CHALIAN: -- from this point out. There's going to be one campaign about continuing to win primaries and caucuses and collect delegates from now through June 7th, and then this other full-time, simultaneous campaign that these candidates and their teams have to run, which is preparing

for that open convention and making sure that they understand the process and starting to develop relationships with the human beings that are going to be delegates on the convention floor.

Do you -- we can look at polls and other metrics to see who has the edge in upcoming states in this contest that's going on for primaries and caucuses. Do you look at the campaigns and say somebody is better organized than somebody else for what could be an open convention?

SHIELDS: Yes; I mean, there will be two campaigns and sometimes some of the things you say to win one campaign may hurt you with the other campaign. You are running against the party, and yet you want the party's delegates to support you on the floor and sometimes you might offend them. I think Ted Cruz has, most people recognized, from the beginning has a

better ground organization than almost any of the other campaigns. I think Donald Trump is now trying to catch up and get up to speed on that but, yes, I think Cruz has an advantage right now organizing at the state level; and I think a lot of the people that are delegates are a little bit more organically predisposed to be more Ted Cruz people.

A delegate may be someone who's been in the sort of Tea Party activist, local county part of the party. They're the people that more likely to want to be a delegate and they would start off being a Ted Cruz person more than a Donald Trump person quite often.

BASH: Speaking of Trump, he released a statement tonight that was incredibly tough, mostly on Ted Cruz, but also another shot at the party -

SHIELDS: Yes.

BASH: -- and, you know, he's been kind of doing this, on and off. He did it last week on CNN, to Anderson Cooper, during the CNN Town Hall and then he went to the RNC and they made nice and then he was okay and talked about party unity and then again talked about a third-party challenge, but what do you make of that? Is it just a typical Trump warning sign or is there more to it than that?

SHIELDS: Well I think part of it is, you know, running against the establishment. There's always that message that you're sending out to the voters; but this is a little bit of what we're talking about. I mean, there's sort of two messages here: the party bosses are trying to take this away from me is something that you would say because you don't think that you're going to get 1237. I think if you got 1237, suddenly the process is perfect; we should all live by the rules. This is exactly -- so a lot of times the candidate's position on these things really relates to where they see themselves in the campaign.

BASH: Yes; and you talk about the party bosses. I know we'll have plenty of time to talk about that but we hear from the Republican National Committee over and over again that it's not the bosses, it's the delegates and that nothing will be decided, not even the rules of the rules, the platform, everything, without a majority of the delegates there and they do say it's going to be transparent. Can't wait to put all those cameras in there. Wolf?

BLITZER: Dana, thanks very much. The big winners tonight: Ted Cruz, and Bernie Sanders. They're beating their foes in the Badger State but we're going to take a closer look at what's going on in the Empire State. We're talking about New York, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:12:50] BLITZER: Welcome back to the Election Center. Let's reset.

Big wins tonight on the Republican and the Democratic side. Ted Cruz, the big winner on the republican side. He wins the republican presidential primary. 85-percent of the vote is now in. He's got a significant lead. 48.9-percent to Donald Trump's 34.4-percent. Very disappointing, only 14.2-percent for John Kasich. A win of more than 133,000 votes for Ted Cruz, at least as of now.

On the Democratic side, also impressive win for Bernie Sanders. 88- percent of the vote is in. He's got a lead, 56.2-percent to 43.5- percent. More than 100,000 vote advantage for Bernie Sanders, the big winner on the democratic side.

Let's go over to John king and take a look at my home state of New York state. That's going to be the big contest in two weeks. A lot of delegates at stake. this is where both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hope they will rebound.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Should we switch roles? You want to take over New York?

BLITZER: No, you tell me about New York.

KING: New York is a great state. Of course, one of the interesting things, right there, Buffalo, New York, hometown of the great Wolf Blitzer.

The interesting thing about this is, if you go back from the Republican Primary perspective, we always try to look back, you know, how did it go last time? How did it go two times ago? The race is usually almost over; it's essentially done by the time you get there.

So, let's look at 2012. Mitt Romney, he won in a walk; right? He got the entire state. Let's go back to 2008. John McCain won pretty much in a walk. Mitt Romney did a little better than anybody did in 2012. So it's hard from the republican side, when you look at it, it's hard to game out different parts of the state. Except, we do know this, it's Donald Trump's home state, and so Donald Trump thinks he's going to win and win big at home and make the pain of tonight go away, if you will.

The big key, 95 delegates in New York. Can Donald Trump win 50- percent plus statewide? 50-percent plus in the Congressional districts and win them all? If he wins them all, you know, his math is still tough to get there before the convention, but he would take away the pain of tonight.

On the Democratic side, you know, Hillary Clinton remembers this very well, in a 2008 campaign that didn't go her way, her adopted home state of New York did for her in a big way; then Senator Obama winning just one small county. So, Secretary Clinton is hoping she can do something like this, get the [00:15:01] African-American vote down in the urban areas in New York City and then run it up as she did as a Senator.

Bernie Sanders, of course, says he's going to contest.

So, it's hard to go back and project it to this race except to say Secretary Clinton could look at this and be confident, although Wolf, you've seen her campaigning pretty aggressively there in recent days. So there's clearly a sense of nerves there.

So what does it mean when you come this way? As I mentioned, 95 delegates on the Republican side. Donald Trump is going to end the night - this race is going to end something like this tonight: Ted Cruz closing in, but still not getting it. The key for republicans in New York is to, even if Donald Trump wins, keep him from winning them all; make it a not winner-take-all. So let's say Ted Cruz comes in second. John Kasich comes in third. Ted Cruz would like to take more of those to close the gap, but to keep Donald Trump from winning them all.

If you do that, then Donald Trump's math, you know, it's a win for Donald Trump, but the math still is -- you are likely to have an open or contested convention. Donald Trump has to start winning and winning big there. So watch the polling in New York. Trump's been above 50-percent in some polling. Let's see if the Cruz win in Wisconsin affects the numbers in New York.

On the democratic side, again, a win for Bernie Sanders tonight. He'll get a net gain of 8 or 9 delegates out of Wisconsin. By the time we get the final numbers we'll know that. The big question: can Hillary Clinton rebound here? 291 delegates for the Democrats. If she can win 55-45, she'll say I'm back on track. Senator Sanders would like to have an upset there, Wolf, to say, wow, the democratic race is changing.

BLITZER: Yes; unlike Wisconsin, New York state, on the Democratic Primary, is a closed state. Only registered Democrats can vote. Independents, Republicans they can't vote on the Democratic side. You've got to be a registered democratic, presumably that could help Hillary Clinton. Jake, over to you.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Wolf. I'm back here with my mega-monster panel. I really appreciate it. Ron Brownstein, I want to start with you. Looking ahead, looking forward, what are you anticipating we're going to see in the next few weeks when it comes to victories in these

soon to be primaries?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, look, if you look on the democratic side, Bernie Sanders has really made enormous progress from where he started. He started as a classic, wine-trap candidate, depending almost entirely on young voters and white-collar, white voters. In fact, he has dominated among young voters. He's won voters under 30 in 19 of the 21 states with exit polls, often by enormous margins; but he's gone beyond that and he's become very competitive with those working-class white voters, which is what's allowed him to do as well as he did in the Midwest. I think that points toward a very good sequence of states for him that are coming up, both on the coast, in places like Oregon, but also interior states, like Kentucky and West Virginia and possibly Indiana as well.

The big hill for him though, Jake, is he still has not cracked the diversity of the democratic party. Hillary Clinton wins three- quarters of African-American voters again tonight. The problem he faces is that on the democratic side all of the big states are diverse states. So even though he will probably win most of the remaining states that are voting, the challenge for him remains what it's been since New Hampshire, places like Pennsylvania, New York, California, and New Jersey. She's won every big state except Michigan and that is still the hill he has to get over, even after all this progress he's made and that he consolidated tonight.

TAPPER: Do you think it's likely that neither Sanders nor Clinton will reach the magic number of delegates before the convention?

BROWNSTEIN: He needs to change the dynamic for that to happen; right? I mean, you need a break through in more than one of these big states. They're putting more stock at the end of the line, in New Jersey and California, then they are in New York and Pennsylvania. It's not inconceivable to see a path forward for him in California. The poll is showing him running better there, particularly among Latino and African-Americans voters. The fact is, he has won now white voters in every state outside of the South, except for Iowa and Ohio. So she is really depending on the diversity of the democratic party as her last firewall and I think the question for Sanders, as I said, is what it has always been: can he crack that wall? So far a little bit among Latinos in Illinois and Nevada, but not much anything else.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I recall the calendar from 2008 and Barack Obama faced a similar situation as Hillary Clinton, in that she ran off a series of victories at the end in states like Kentucky and West Virginia and -

BROWNSTEIN: And Indiana.

AXELROD: And Indiana, although that was a narrow race. The question, ultimately, though is, how do you get to the magic number; and she seems to be in a position to get there. It's not going to be pretty. It's not going to be particularly satisfying, but it seems to me she's on a path to get there.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: And you know, on the Republican side, the -- there is no clear path to the magic number.

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

BORGER: And if you look at Donald Trump, who did not do well this evening, he can make up for his loss in Wisconsin because you're coming into New York state, his home state, 95 delegates; you know, it is closed, but the most recent polling we have shows him at 56- percent. Will Cruz's momentum help him? Will Kasich still be the so- called spoiler stay in? He's at 19-percent, you know, in the most recent poll? I mean, you look at all the [00:20:02] states coming up, they're really more for Donald Trump than they are for Ted Cruz. I mean, nothing succeeds like success; so you have to see, but you have to say in the states coming up they're not natural terrain.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And what do we see out of Trump, just in terms of his behavior? We've talked about how he's been behaving over these last couple of weeks and it hasn't done him any favors. He's always really good at changing the subject after a loss. He's apparently going to have some sort of press conference later this week in New York and one in California. So what does he unveil or -

[Cross Talk]

AXELROD: On thing they suggest is they'll have a series of substantive policy speeches. So that will be interesting to see how that - how people receive that from Donald Trump.

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He's going to hammer the New York values comment because here's the thing, we're heading into territory -

TAPPER: Remind people what that is.

MCENANY: Yes; so during the debate we all remember Ted Cruz going after -- trying to court Iowans by saying Donald Trump has New York values. Donald Trump has New York values. So he's heading into a place -- to me that was a micro 47-percent comment. So where Romney dismissed 47-percent of the electorate, we have Ted Cruz essentially dismissing an entire state, saying well they have New York values, they're not part of the Republican party. So you're going to see Donald Trump hammering home --

TAPPER: I think he meant to dismiss an entire city, just to be fair.

MCENANY: A city, but a whole region of the country. You've got New York; you've got New Jersey; you've got Connecticut. You've got a whole region of the country that ascribes to these so-called "New York values."

TAPPER: Right.

MCENANY: If I'm Donald Trump, I'm hitting this message home. This is a man who personally insulted your integrity. You cannot vote for him. So I think we're going to see that hammered, time and time again.

PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Here's another problem for Ted Cruz: one of the reasons that Ted Cruz did so well in Wisconsin is, Wisconsin has a very cohesive battle-tested conservative establishment, forged in those fights over Scott Walker and the unions. There is nothing like that in the states going forward. New York, California, these states have really leaderless republican party. So you don't - the Republican Party establishment is not nearly as strong in these states. They can't give Cruz as much of a boost as they did in Wisconsin.

BROWNSTEIN: Having said that, Peter, just real quick, it is worth noting though how complete the collapse was for Trump tonight. I mean, he lost things he really hasn't lost before. He lost non- college white men in Wisconsin. Ted Cruz did better among voters who were not evangelicals than he's done in any state and Trump lost voters with a college education by almost 20 points. There are a lot of those voters -

[Cross Talk]

BEINART: We've seen that Cruz has been very, very unpopular in the East so far.

AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: But if you're Cruz, are you going to spend a ton of money trying to win New York, which you're not going to win in the general election? I mean, he'll go and have the fight there. He'll try to be competitive, try to pick up some delegates but this isn't the end all, be all state for him.

Listen, it's Donald Trump's home state. What I'm looking for, does Donald Trump win by as big a margin in New York as Ted Cruz won in his home state? I doubt it. All Ted Cruz has to do is be competitive there, be competitive in the other states and stop Trump from getting 1237, and he is very well prepared, I think, for this contested convention, which we all are now accepting is going to happen.

MARY KATHERINE HAM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Here's my question coming out of tonight: since we are moving probably to a contested convention, this is going to take on a lot of strategy, it's going to take on a lot of working each delegate and figuring out how all the rules work in all the states. Donald Trump has not been good at doing that. He had a talk with the RNC this week, discovering that he was not good at doing that, his staff was not good at doing that.

What does his statement tell us tonight that he has learned about Wisconsin, where this was not natural terrain for Cruz and how he's going to move forward? To me, not a lot. It's sort of a casual smear, once again, saying that Cruz is a criminal because he colluded with his Super PAC. There's no evidence of that, and its just sort of peaked. There's not a lot of strategy here. You can change that, but the statements tonight suggest he's the same old Donald Trump.

TAPPER: Donald Trump didn't get the result he wanted tonight out of Wisconsin, so how is the republican front-runner responding? As Mary Katherine just noted, by accusing Ted Cruz of breaking the law. We're going to have much more of our live CNN Special Coverage after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:27:33] BLITZER: The battle for Wisconsin is now done and now the candidates there eyeing New York, The Empire State. I'm Wolf Blitzer, you're watching CNN's special live coverage of the Wisconsin Primary.

On the democratic side, Bernie Sanders is the big winner. Hillary Clinton might be changing it up, her campaign says. Its mission now is to try to "disqualify and defeat Bernie Sanders."

For the Republicans the margin was huge. Tonight's big winner in Wisconsin is Ted Cruz. Now Donald Trump's path to 1237, that's the number of delegates needed to capture the nomination, looks narrower by the minute. Let's go to CNN's Sara Murray.

Sara, we didn't actually see Donald Trump tonight; he put out a statement. He actually accused Ted Cruz of what, breaking the law? Tell our viewers what he said.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICS CORRESPONDENT, via satellite: That's right, Wolf. In this statement Donald Trump had very tough words for Ted Cruz. Let me read you just a part of it. He said, "Not only was he propelled by the anti-Trump Super PAC'S spending countless millions of dollars on false advertising against Mr. Trump, but he was also coordinating with his own Super PAC's, which is illegal, who totally control him. Ted Cruz is a worse than a puppet. He is a Trojan Horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump. We have total confidence that Mr. Trump will go on to win in New York, where he holds a substantial lead in all the polls, and beyond."

And, Wolf, the campaign is turning their attention to New York. Tomorrow Donald Trump will hold a campaign rally here. Later this week he is going to be in California for a press conference. So it's pretty clear that they have their eyes on these two big delegate prizes and still want to try to find a way to get to the 1237 delegates, and hopefully avoid this contested election. Wolf?

BLITZER: New York and California, as you say, the two biggest delegate prizes of this race. Jake, back to you.

TAPPER: Thanks, Wolf. Let's talk about this exactly, what exactly Donald Trump might be referring to, with our panel.

The only thing I can find out and I've asked the Trump campaign for comments, and I have not gotten any word back, is that they have been upset about the fact that in Wisconsin, Ted Cruz would go to rallies and the rallies would be, basically, hosted by a Super PAC that he was not -- that Cruz was not supposed to be coordinating with and it's the "Keep The Promise" PAC. We saw this with other campaigns on the road. Carly Fiorina, for example, would be campaigning and the Super PAC supporting her would be out there running the traps and setting things up, but not necessarily directly campaigning.

So that might be the only thing that - because Hope Hicks, Trump Campaign Spokesperson is quoted in this article. So that might be what he's talking about.

[00:30:07] CARPENTER: But that's the whole problem. You state --

[Cross Talk]

CARPENTER: -- you're committing a crime and no one on your campaign can explain it, and it's up to us to speculate about what crime the campaign may be committing. This is craziness. It really is.

MCENANY: The overarching point of his statement though is not the Super PAC's. He did mention that, and perhaps that's --

TAPPER: That's a pretty big deal though when you say he's a criminal.

MCENANY: To me the bigger point is that the establishment is using Ted Cruz as a Trojan Horse; there's no doubt about it. To me one of the biggest things that came out of Wisconsin tonight was a poll that showed that 56-percent of people that voted said that the person who has the majority delegates going in, or not the majority, who has the greatest number of delegates going in should win the nomination. That's striking. This is a state that voted for Ted Cruz but nevertheless says the popular vote should win at the end of the day.

TAPPER: Let me ask you, what does it mean to say that Ted Cruz is a Trojan Horse for the Republican establishment? What does that mean to you as a Trump supporter?

MCENANY: Ted Cruz is touting the fact that everyone is uniting behind him, that includes the establishment, who he has stood against in Washington, to his credit. Ted Cruz has done that, and that is excellent, but the establishment is lining up behind Ted Cruz in advertising dollars, in momentum. That whole party apparatus in Wisconsin was against Donald Trump because the establishment is neverTrump, which to them now means I have to support and back Cruz to get neverTrump.

HAM: The establishment is larger than I had ever imagined and had subsumed Ted Cruz. I don't get the logic here that once you begin to unify anyone you're now a stooge of the establishment. So I don't know how Trump eventually brings together if that's how -

BEINART: This is the death of the republicans now. The fact that they had to go to Cruz, --

TAPPER: Right.

BEINART: -- a guy who they mostly -

AXELROD: No, that's right.

BEINART: -- who they don't like, and he's much more conservative than they are, is, in fact, that shows how weak the republicans are.

AXELROD: I find myself in the awkward position of explaining Donald Trump and defending him. The -- I -- I agree that the charge of law breaking is -- is out of bounds and kind of crazy, but the fundamental truth is, Ted Cruz has become the instrument of the Party establishment to try and stop Donald Trump. I think that's undeniable. You have person after person who have -- who have legions of quotes about how much they detest Ted Cruz now endorsing him for president. I mean, look at Lindsey Graham's quotes. You could barely spit out the words.

They're gathering around Ted Cruz because he is the instrument by which they can stop Donald Trump.

HAM: But that's a testament to the antiestablishment nature of the entire race, not the fact that Ted Cruz is some secret establishment -

BORGER: Right.

AXELROD: But it's a smart strategy on the part of Donald Trump to try and seize the -

HAM: Exactly.

AXELROD: -- antiestablishment mantle away from Cruz and consolidate the antiestablishment vote. It may not work, but there's some strategic sense to it.

[Cross Talk]

CARPENTER: I mean, look at that statement. It was a (inaudible) of nonsense. I think Sarah Palin wrote it after that disastrous Wisconsin speech. It was a mess. Donald Trump has painted himself into such a corner he has nowhere else to go. He can only be Donald Trump; he has to be. This guy that's outside the box, that doesn't work with others, you can't unify the party being that guy and that's why Cruz is trying to do it.

[Cross Talk]

BORGER: -- he wants to win the convention.

MCENANY: He reached out to Paul Ryan. He's tried to unify the party. Donald Trump has taken a step forward but the establishment has taken -

[Cross Talk]

BEINART: Part of what you do when you start to -- when you become the front-runner is you start to run a more professional campaign. I think one of the things that hurt him so much last week was it showed that he was really amateur hour. I mean, he was winging it, --

TAPPER: Yes, on policy.

BEINART: -- making things up, incredibly stupid stuff, and that's part of what I think hurt him.

BROWNSTEIN: You could really see what David was talking about tonight, just in the results and the exit polls. I mean, Ted Cruz's vote, I think, is increasingly going to be disassociated from Ted Cruz himself and what people thing about Ted Cruz.

TAPPER: You saw that in the results with only 13-percent --

BROWNSTEIN: It is largely a vehicle now for how you feel about Donald Trump. The fact that he won 45-percent of voters who are not evangelicals, after not winning a plurality of them in any state and going way above of what he attracted anywhere else, I think that says to you from here on out, Ted Cruz is mostly a function -- kind of a derivative function of Donald Trump.

BORGER: NeverTrump, he's become the neverTrump movement. This is the man who engineered the government shutdown. There are people who are now supporting him who hated him and he is just a vessel right now for this kind of -

TAPPER: On that note we're going to take a quick break. A commanding win, punctuated by an emotional moment for Ted Cruz. CNN's Special Coverage continues right after this very quick break; stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [00:37:58] TAPPER: Welcome back to CNN's live coverage of the Wisconsin primary. There was a very, very interesting moment during Ted Cruz's acceptance speech. I want to play a little bit of it and then get the reaction from our mega-monster panel. Let's roll that tape.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRUZ: My wife Heidi.

Heidi!

[Cheering and Applause]

[Chanting Heidi, Heidi, Heidi!]

It -- I may be biased. but isn't she going to make an amazing first lady?

[Applause]

We love you, Wisconsin.

[Chanting Heidi, Heidi, Heidi!]

[Applause]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Sometimes a hug is not just a hug. Let's talk about it all with our panel.

Amanda, let me start with you because you know Senator Cruz and you know his wife, Heidi. That was a statement. He was making a statement there. That was not just I love my wife. That was --

CARPENTER: It was genuine too. Listen, Heidi has been through a lot. This campaign went into the gutter; we all saw it. We all experienced it, but none more so than her. Trump tweeted out that nasty picture of her. She had to face a lot and carry her head high in that state, and I think it probably felt really good for both of them to win by taking the high road. So you saw that expressed on stage. I thought it was a great moment.

HAM: I agree with Amanda entirely. I will say -- I'll offer a little bit of [00:40:01] constructive criticism to the Cruz -- the speech writing at the end of these things. You've got this great moment to punctuate this. I say read the lyrics to "We Are the Champions," thank Heidi and move on. They tend to get a little long and I think you could get -

TAPPER: He's a little long -

HAM: Get more bang for your buck; yes.

TAPPER: Although he was helped by the fact that Sanders went much longer than he did. They almost have a contest every election night who can go longer.

You know, I know you're not a fan of the tweet that Donald Trump sent, basically the my wife is hotter than your wife tweet that he sent out, and so I'm not going to ask you to defend it, but doesn't he have anyone around him to say don't send that tweet because all you're going to do is help Ted Cruz? Because at the end of the day a lot of people don't like that.

MCENANY: Yes, well we saw Melania say hey, no retweets and that got a laugh and even Trump has come out and admitted that wasn't a good idea. It was a mistake. He called it a mistake but, you know, look, Melania has been attacked too. There are not two innocent parties in this; there are two guilty parties. She was attacked first. He responded in a poor way. It went down into the gutter; it shouldn't have.

This is the time where we say no spouses. Spouses are out of it. Melania's now on the campaign trail. We see Heidi on the campaign trail. Let's leave it there and make this family-oriented and stay away from the negative.

TAPPER: And now we go to the glass menagerie of New York where everything will be sweetness in life.

BEINART: Let's be honest, the problem is broader than just Heidi Cruz. The problem is the way that Donald Trump talks about women in general. This goes way back. We can go to Megyn Kelly. I mean, there's been incident after incident and David Roof wrote a very good column about this.

We as a society have evolved in terms of the norms. We don't simply talk about women now, most of us, in terms of point scoring among men, right? The value of women is to show how successful we are as a man, but Donald Trump still talks that way. He still talks like he's on the Howard Stern --

MCENANY: That's not fair. That's not fair.

BEINART: -- again and again and again. You can look at the ad they're running against him. The list of things he has said over the years; this will be a huge problem.

MCENANY: The comment you're referring to about points was made 30 years ago. He has a daughter that he's empowered to run part of his company. He has a wife that's very successful. He is not a misogynist or anything like that -

BEINART: Nepotism in your own family is not -

MCENANY: -- is very unfair.

BEINART: Nepotism in your own family is not the same as the way you talk about -

[Cross Talk]

MCENANY: He has a lot of women in his company, outside of his family. So it's unfair to call him a misogynist.

BEINART: Excuse me, the comments he's made have been misogynist down the line.

MCENANY: This whole campaign has been an effort, at first Donald Trump was a racist, then he was a misogynist, then he was Islamophobic. We've called him every name in the book so I'm really looking forward -- I really look forward - Peter, I look forward to the new label you come up with next week. I look forward to that.

BEINART: Well we'll see what Donald Trump does.

TAPPER: Let's just take it to this table for one second. Gloria?

BORGER: I was just going to say something about Ted Cruz actually. That we criticized Ted Cruz because he can be robotic and he -- people don't like him because he's arrogant and all kinds of things, whatever you want to say about him. This was a moment where he clearly felt his family was under fire; his wife was under fire. I'm sure there were a lot of difficult moments between the two of them during this race, particularly in the state of Wisconsin, and it was a genuine moment.

It wasn't Tipper and Al at the convention, and people have talked for years about whether that was planned or not planned; but this was a genuine moment of affection because she had been through a lot.

AXELROD: Can I return to the Trump point for a second?

BORGER: Go ahead.

AXELROD: I just -- honestly, there are all the issues that have been raised, you can debate them. I think the bigger problem is the one that was mentioned earlier which is, he looked like a stumble bum last week.

GLORIA: Yes.

AXELROD: He went from one controversy to another controversy and ultimately races for president are long auditions for the toughest job of the planet and he did not look, last week, like a guy that was prepared to handle it.

TAPPER: Kayleigh, I'll let you have the last word and then we'll take a break.

MCENANY: Despite that he's still 31 points ahead in New York. He's still 18 points ahead of Pennsylvania. He had a rough week. You're exactly right to say that, but nonetheless, he is still leading in the polls and I think we're going to be seeing a much different tune here in two weeks.

TAPPER: Don't go anywhere, Ted Cruz labeling tonight's victory a turning point in the Republican race. Cruz also says he can get the magic number of delegates before the convention in Cleveland; can he? We'll take a look at the math right after this. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[00:48:02] CRUZ: As a result of the people of Wisconsin defying the media, defying the pundits, I am more and more convinced that our campaigned is going to earn the 1237 delegates needed to win the republican nomination --

[Applause]

CRUZ: -- either before Cleveland or at the convention in Cleveland, together, we will win a majority of the delegates and together, we will beat Hillary Clinton in November.

[Cheering and Applause]

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Very, very happy Ted Cruz with his big win in Wisconsin today. Here's where the actual votes stand right now: 94-percent of the vote is in. Cruz with 48.5-percent; Trump 34.9-percent; John Kasich only 14.1-percent. A big, big win for Ted Cruz. He's winning right now, with almost all of the votes 138,000 vote advantage.

On the democratic side, a big win for Bernie Sanders. 96-percent of the vote is in. He's got 56.3-percent. Hillary Clinton 43.4-percent. He's up by 117,000 votes. Bernie Sanders the big democratic winner in Wisconsin.

I want to check in with Mark Preston right now, our CNN Politics Executive Editor. You're taking a look at the all-important delegate count emerging out of Wisconsin; what are you seeing?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITIC EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Ted Cruz got bragging rights tonight with that big victory up in Wisconsin, but he also gained a little bit of ground on Donald Trump. Let's take a quick look at these numbers right here.

So far, as we speak right now, Ted Cruz, Wolf, has picked up 33 delegates. To that point, Donald Trump has only picked up three and John Kasich has been shut out. How did Ted Cruz get to this point? Well, he picked up 18 delegates by winning the state. Overall, the state winner picks up 18 [00:50:02] delegates. Those went to Ted Cruz. He also picked up five of the eight congressional districts, as we talk right now. Each of those congressional districts were worth three delegates each. Again, Donald Trump only picked up one of those districts, and right now it is too close to call in two of those districts. One of those districts, Wolf, is in Madison; that is the state capital, in and around that area. The other part is in the western part of the state.

Let's look at the overall delegate count, if we can, right now. Donald Trump still has a fairly commanding lead. He has 743 delegates. Cruz has 507. John Kasich 145. But as Ted Cruz we heard just say we are either going to get the delegates before we get to Cleveland or when we get to Cleveland. While it will probably be, if you were to win, when he gets to Cleveland because the fact of the matter is, at this point he needs to win 88-percent of the remaining delegates. Donald Trump needs to win 60-percent. Where does that leads us? Wolf, it leads us, probably, to a contested convention in July.

BLITZER: All right, Mark Preston, thanks very much. It also leads us to John King right now. He's taken a very, very close look at this race for the nomination on the republican side and, by all accounts, it's looking increasingly more likely there could be a contested convention in Cleveland.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What do political reporters call that? Christmas in April, to get news that we might have a contested convention? Let's look at the math, and I gave Donald Trump a few more delegates than our official count to begin this scenario. I'm going to be generous to Mr. Trump as we go forward, just to show you the difficulty of his math and the likelihood of that open convention. I give him that because there's some Missouri delegates we haven't officially awarded yet. I give them to Mr. Trump.

So let's just say going forward here that we start with Mr. Trump and we're coming into what should be his neighborhood. I'm going to start

giving him states. Wolf, I'm going to give him New York. I'm going to give him Connecticut. I'm going to stretch this out and give him Rhode Island. I'm going to go throughout and say that Mr. Trump wins New Jersey. I'll say Mr. Trump wins Pennsylvania. I'll give him Maryland and give him Delaware and we can give him West Virginia as well. As we do this - I'm going to leave Indiana we'll leave for a minute; there's debate about that.

Now let's come out to the West. Ted Cruz has done very well out in the West. You can see that here as he's filled in. So let's just say, as we go forward, this could change, but it's just to give you a sense of the difficulty of the math; let's just say Cruz is winning out in these states right here and we'll come down here and we'll go up here. I want to leave California.

At this point I've left California and Indiana. Let me just tap this to get that off. Thank you very much. Look where Trump is there: 993, assuming he did very well here, and we gave him generous delegate allocations there. He could do a little better, he could do a little worse, but just for the sake of the hypothetical now you've got him at 993.

So who wins Indiana? Ted Cruz thinks he'll win it. Let's say for the hypothetical Cruz gets it. We give him all under this scenario, in Indiana. If he got that, but even if you gave it to Donald Trump, go back here, if Donald Trump gets it he gets a little bit closer. The big prize, obviously, California on June 7th. if this one goes to Donald Trump, even if we give him all the delegates, and I give him Indiana, and I was generous to him here, he's just shy.

BLITZER: 1,222, you need 1237. KING: He's just shy. Now, this would be difficult for republicans to say sorry, Mr. Trump; if you got that close. But remember, I just did this in an incredibly generous way. People, anyone whose watching who is a Ted Cruz supporter, probably thinks this is going to go that way instead. It moves him back a little bit. But, under a very generous scenario, Trump comes up just short. If he doesn't perform as well as I just did being generous to him, he still could be high 1100's, could be right around 1200.

The interesting thing this week is more and more republicans saying that even if he's close, even if he's above 12 they will try to stop him at the convention. So we've got a ways to go counting the votes, but I do think we will end tonight saying that an open or contested convention is much more likely.

BLITZER: Yes, that's what it looks like right now. All right, John, thanks very much. Let's go back to Dana and David.

BASH: Thank you, Wolf and John. And David, I mean, look, this is something we have been anticipating as a possibility, even a probability, but the fact is now we have numbers and data to back that up even more so.

Yeah, it's Christmas in April for reporters, but it is -- so much of it is unchartered territory. Yes, there was an open convention 40 years ago, but the whole system was different than it is now.

CHALIAN: This is why both the psychology, the momentum of the contest to come and the mathematics and mastering of the rules, both of these things are going to be really important. Let's just look ahead, Dana. The next contests in April, all of them except one, Rhode Island, are closed contests.

BASH: Right.

CHALIAN: Well, as we saw tonight in the exit polls in Wisconsin, among Republicans, not Independents, Republican, Ted Cruz won Republicans by 20 points.

BASH: And he historically has done much more in closed contests.

CHALIAN: Exactly; and, by the way, Independents, no longer a Donald Trump category; tonight he split them. He underperformed with Independents. He underperformed with the can be bring me the change. These were big qualities. He underperformed with those voters who said they're angry at the [00:55:02] federal government. He split all these categories that used to be his strong suits and now, we're moving into those closed primaries, so Independents won't be as much of an opportunity for him.

BASH: Right.

CHALIAN: And, if indeed the results of Wisconsin impacts the results to come, then Cruz is going to really start saying hey, even though I'm not going to have the delegates, even though we know this is going to a fight, I'm building momentum. I'm heading many the right direction, if indeed Donald Trump heads many the wrong direction.

BASH: Right. You say if, and we have to look at the ifs, --

CHALIAN: You don't know.

BASH: Right; but again, going into tonight, we started, however many hours ago, talking about Wisconsin, before we had the results, about the fact that this may very well be kind of a one-off for Donald Trump and that there is more fertile ground for him going forward, particularly in his home state. We'll see about that, but the fact that -

What I think is interesting and you've been looking at these exit polls, the fact that there wasn't a really stark gender gap that hurt Donald Trump, given all of the bad publicity around his comments on abortion and so forth, is really kind of stunning. I mean, I was in Wisconsin last week in suburban Milwaukee talking just anecdotally to women there, and they were - and this was even before all those comments really were widely spread, I mean, they were much anti-Trump, but it didn't show up, that much. in these polls. So that's certainly a ray of light for the Trump campaign.

CHALIAN: No doubt about that, and remember, we also saw in these exit polls, people decided earlier. There weren't as many late deciders. Perhaps if that was different maybe we would have seen more of a gender gap.

BASH: Yes.

CHALIAN: I think we still have a lot to learn about going forward into these next contests; but you are right, the Trump campaign can really look at that gender gap and say hey, that didn't materialize and my supporters are still much more enthusiastic about me than anybody else's supporters are about them. They're much stickier. They're there; and, if people keep deciding earlier, when he was having better days, you know, then that may be helpful to him too.

BASH: Yes; and, Wolf, as I go back to you, I will tell you that talking to anti-Trump forces, and strategists who are working on the neverTrump movement, they were very clear that they expected to do - hoped to do well tonight, but that going forward in the next few weeks and the next few contests that they do not think that they're going to have as good nights. They're going to think that Donald Trump -- they think that Donald Trump is going to do much better.

BLITZER: The polls show that Donald Trump is doing really well in his home state of New York.

BASH: Right.

BLITZER: We shall see in two weeks and counting. Will the nation follow Wisconsin's lead? Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders are scoring resounding wins tonight. Will their momentum carry them forward, into New York and beyond? We'll have much more of our special coverage right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)