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Senator Marco Rubio will not run for reelection; Sergeant Robert Wilson awarded of Medal of Valor; Anti-Trump rally hit San Diego; 3:30-4p ET

Aired May 27, 2016 - 15:30   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[15:30:00] SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have a con artist as the front-runner in the Republican Party. He runs on this idea of fighting for the little guy. But he has spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy. And every business he has ever run that's gone bankrupt. I mean, this guy bankrupted a casino. How do you bankrupt a casino? And the commander in chief cannot be someone that thinks that nuclear triad is a rock band. If he did not inherit 200 million he would be selling watches in Times Square.

Conservatism is not how loud can you be, how offensive you can be, how many bad words can you say, how many ridiculous things can you say on television?

It is time. The charade is up. This is a con job. Do you have friends thinking of voting for Donald Trump? Friends do not let friends vote for con artists.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Well, nevertheless, Trump now is also softening his tone. He has encouraged Rubio to run for Senate reelection amid pressures from the GOP. Here's what he tweeted. He said poll data shows that Marco Rubio does by far the best in holding on to his Senate seat in Florida. Important to keep the majority. Run Marco!

Let's bring back Ryan Williams, former spokesman of Mitt Romney. And also joining me, CNN political analyst Buck Sexton.

And Ryan, first to you. What is happening here? Because this is quite the turnaround between these two.

RYAN WILLIAMS, FORMER SPOKESMAN OF MITT ROMNEY: Well, this is the natural process after a nominee's been selected to the party. Come together. The former competitors kind of have a truce. This obviously is a little different because it was a pretty brutal primary and tough words exchanged.

KEILAR: Including the small hands thing. We should note that that came because of these gentlemen, right? WILLIAMS: That did happen, yes. But I think that senator Rubio

realizes the voters have spoken. The senator does remain the leader in the party even though he is leaving the Senate and he is no longer a candidate for presidency. And you have to respect the will of the voters. They made a decision. I think the senator respects that and does not want Hillary Clinton to be the next president. She is untrustworthy. She do a bad job. And I think he wants to not stand in the way of defeating her and that is why he is reaching out and it is good to see Donald Trump reaching back and, you know, building a bridge to senator Rubio.

KEILAR: What do you see this as, Buck? Is this Rubio saying to some Republicans who might be might actually be a better choice than Donald Trump? Hey, she is not.

BUCK SEXTON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think what you are seeing is beginning of the breakup that you can expect in what's been called the never Trump movement from a lot of conservatives in the GOP within the conservative base. It is one thing to say that when the primary s going on, but as your previous guest was alluding to it, worth now in a period of consolidation. And so, this is to be expected.

I mean, look. Marco Rubio made some mistakes in his campaign. And I think he is trying to now do what he can to be helpful to the Republican Party. And also I think he has got an eye on to what his future may be. So none of this is even the least bit surprising to me. I think this should be the expectation. The question just remains is how many people that have said they are never Trump, particularly those with large followings among the conservative base and media, writers, pundits, analysts, all the rest, decided they are going to cross over to the never Hillary side of the fences. I'm a recovering Cruz supporter. There are a lot of us out there. A lot of recovering Rubio supporters and there are even some Kasich supporters out there, too, who probably having a tough time with all of this. The fact of the matter is that there is never Hillary. They have to get behind the party's nominee and that means Trump.

KEILAR: You can't be never both. I guess you could if you just didn't want to vote if you are a Republican. That's also a possibility.

SEXTON: There are some -- yes. Some are doing that.

KEILAR: That's right. OK. Listen to more of this interview that Jake did. Pay close attention here to the word maybe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: I have a real good friend I know for a long time who is running for the Senate. I didn't run. I said I wasn't going to. He got into the race. He is a lieutenant governor of Florida. I think he is a strong (INAUDIBLE). He is a strong candidate. He's in the race. I'm not going to -- I think he has put in time and energy to it and he deserves the chance the see where he can take it.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: If you didn't have a friend running, might you reconsider it?

RUBIO: Maybe. I mean.

TAPPER: He is a friend. He is an actual friend, not a politics friend.

RUBIO: Yes. Personal. I have known him since the Dole campaign in '95, '96 as college students. So. And -- but sure. I mean, maybe. I mean, I enjoy my work in the Senate. I always did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: OK. Now just to sort of fill in the gap here on this, Ryan. I want you to talk about this. But Rubio found himself in this somewhat in the unfortunate situation of be enough for reelection in the Senate in 2016. And a lot of times, you know, it is just not customary necessarily to hedge your bets and run for the Senate and run for the presidency at once or maybe not even allowed in some cases here. But when you heard him say maybe there, is that more than just a maybe to you?

WILLIAMS: No. I think that senator Rubio will not be a candidate for the Senate this year as he said all along. I think he - I think many people do want him to run again. He obviously would be a strong favorite to retain that seat. But he made a promise when he run for president that he would not seek the seat in the Senate again. His friend Carlos Lopez, the lieutenant governor of Florida is running. He certainly doesn't want to get in his way. So I don't think this is anything beyond just wishful thinking by some in the Senate leadership who would like see Senator Rubio run again to ensure that Republicans maintain the majority in the United States Senate.

[15:35:01] KEILAR: And Buck, you see speaking of leadership of Republican leadership, the pack that is aligned with the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is behind this idea of Rubio getting back in. Do you think he will or do you agree with Ryan that he probably not going to?

SEXTON: No. I agree with Ryan. I think he is probably not going to. There are certainly some who believe that the original sin if you will of the Rubio presidential campaign was that it was sort of a betrayal of the Bush apparatus and that he wasn't supposed to run. He was supposed to wait his turn. And my understanding is that became quite nasty between those two camps and even on sort of a personal level a sense of betrayal. I don't think you're going to see Rubio break the word on this and go against as he says a personal friend. I think that he is going to sit it out and see where he stands after the presidential election. That's my guess.

But the good news is people have been so wrong so often so far in this election cycle that you can just put predictions out there and people don't remember at this point.

KEILAR: Yes, who knows? We can fact them all but it would take a long time after the fact.

All right. Buck Sexton, Ryan Williams, thank you so much.

And you can catch Jake's entire interview with Marco Rubio. It is a very good one this weekend. It will be on "STATE OF THE UNION." Check it out Sunday morning at 9:00 eastern only on CNN.

And next, it is a dead heat between the Democrats in California. So is Hillary Clinton's camp rethinking her media strategy? Maybe they are even borrowing a page of Trump's playbook. We'll break it down next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:40:52] KEILAR: Bernie Sanders California dream could soon become reality. The California primary just 12 days away now. And a statewide poll shows Sanders deadlocked with Hillary Clinton, just two percentage points separating them right now. That's well within the margin of error in this poll.

California has a whopping 475 delegates up for grabs. Pledge delegates there. And although Clinton needs fewer than 80 to clinch the nomination, the Sanders campaign feels confident he can pull off a sweep.

Clinton may be confident but we will watching on a bit of a shift in her strategy. She is taking a page out of the Trump playbook actually surprising a lot of folks by calling in to not one but two television news shows, this included CNN.

I want to talk about this now with Dylan Byers. He is senior media and politics reporter.

Dylan, is that's what's happening? Do you think that they are rethinking their media strategy and realizing if she can call in and get her message out?

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR REPORTER FOR MEDIA AND POLITICS: Yes. I think there's a lot to that. I think what is going on is she is looking ahead towards the general election. She knows that she is going to come out of the June 7th primary with the delegates that she needs. But she also knows that she needs to tell a story and that story looks a lot better if she wins California. It doesn't look very good if Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee can't pick up a state like California.

So I think that's a calculation there. And then at the same time, she is thinking about the general election and the five or six months ahead. She knows that Donald Trump is a master at sucking up a lot of oxygen sheet. You know, it is not enough for her to just be the non- Donald Trump candidate. She has to think about how she can be out there, how she can be telling her story and sort of driving her own narrative and not just letting every day, every news cycle be about Donald Trump. Going on the shows, doing what he has done, calling in to shows advancing her in agenda, that is going to helps her do that.

KEILAR: And she chose to call in on such an important day where he clinched the nomination hitting that important number of 1,237. So, OK. So she is neck and neck with Bernie Sanders in California but then you look, Dylan, on the national scale. She's really been honing in on Trump. There's two new ads out in California today. The target, who is it? Is it Trump or Sanders?

BYERS: Well, look. It can be both of those things mutually exclusive. On the one hand, she is trying to say, look, I am a champion of liberal causes and many of the same liberal causes that Bernie Sanders is fighting for. But she is also putting herself out there as a champion of immigrants. I mean, a lot of ads, if you look at them, are very much targeted towards both California's immigrant, population, Latino population but also that population at a national level. And that is clearly going against Donald Trump and all of his sort of rhetoric about, you know, building a wall, this sort of anti- immigrant rhetoric.

She can do both of these things at the same time. And I think those ads just like her calling into the shows. It has proven very effective. And you talk about just how important that day was when she called in to the shows, the day that he wrapped up the nomination and got the 1,237 delegates he needed. That, too, straight out of Donald Trump's playbook. When someone else has a story, has news out there and he is driving headlines, what better way to do it than to call in and pull attention away by creating your own headlines.

KEILAR: All right. Dylan Byers, thank you so much. Really appreciate you having with us today from Los Angeles.

Ad next, just in to CNN. We have a dire warning from 100 doctors. They are saying do not let the summer Olympic Games go on as planned. Why they are sounding the alarm next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:48:28] KEILAR: A police officer was inside a store just running an errand when he made the ultimate sacrifice. Sergeant Robert Wilson died shielding others from a spray of bullets. And now CNN's Jessica Schneider has more on this hero who was just (INAUDIBLE) awarded the medal of valor by President Obama.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dedicated officer and loving dad and grandson.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was absolutely incredible what this officer was able to do.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Protected like he was sworn in to do.

SCHNEIDER: On March 5th, 2015, Sergeant Robert Wilson was shot and killed at this GameStop in North Philadelphia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Officer was shot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shot! Give a medic here ASAP!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I say about three, four years old in this picture.

SCHNEIDER: Constance Wilson didn't know what happened to her grandson whom she had race since he was two. But as she races to the hospital, the details of Wilson's actions inside this GameStop began to emerge. Wilson stopped into the store while on patrol to buy a video game for his son's birthday. That's when she says two robbers rushed in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And people in there. And he protected those people. And so he took on two shooters by himself. Yes. He stood his ground to, you know, they took him down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He stepped away so that shots weren't going directly at them. They were going toward him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He saved the people's lives and same time lost his.

SCHNEIDER: And you are proud of him for that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I am. Very proud of Robby.

SCHNEIDER: Sergeant Wilson was awarded the medal of Valor last week at the White House by President Obama.

[15:50:02] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mrs. Constance Wilson, accepting on behalf of Sergeant Wilson III for giving his life to protect innocent civilians. Sergeant Wilson put himself in harm's way during an armed robbery.

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He said, I'm proud of your grandson. I said, I am, too. It is an extraordinary valor (INAUDIBLE) Above and beyond the call of duty.

SCHNEIDER: Jessica Schneider, CNN. Philadelphia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Certainly was above and beyond.

And now more than ever, the world needs heroes. And as we remember our fallen heroes this memorial day weekend, we are encouraging you to tell us about everyday people who right now are doing their best to make a difference. Anderson Cooper explains how.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, AC 360: Tonight, we're recognizing some incredible acts of compassion and kindness.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please join me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Please join me in honoring -- UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In honoring CNN hero.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: CNN hero!

COOPER: This year marks the tenth anniversary of "CNN heroes," celebrating everyday people changing the world. How do we find these extraordinary people? With your help. You can nominate someone right now at CNNheroes.com. Maybe they are caring for children, helping our veterans or protecting the environment. Whatever their cause, nominating a CNN hero is easier than ever. Just go to CNNheroes.com on your laptop, your tablet or your smartphone. Click nominate and fill out the form and tell us what makes your hero extraordinary. And be selective. Those honored as CNN hero are truly dedicating their lives to serving others. When you are finish, click submit. You'll see a message that confirms we received it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean, this is great. Yes.

COOPER: Being recognized as a CNN hero can help the person you admire continue their life-changing work. But it all starts with you. So nominate someone deserving today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:56:25] KEILAR: I want to head to southern California now and specifically San Diego where our Paul Vercammen is standing by. This is the site of the Donald Trump rally, his second event of the day. And give us a sense of what you're seeing there, Paul. We know that up North in Fresno where we has seen a lot of tension between protesters supporting Donald Trump and those who are there protesting against him. What are you seeing?

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we have seems to have fought (ph) a law enforcement has done a great job of ceiling off the various camps. This is obviously the anti-Trump camp. They marched down here at least 400 people in this part right at the edge of the historic gasoline here in San Diego. It's been a peaceful protest. You can bet in due time they will shatter the Trump Pinata. We will give you a sense though over here off to our left. Jordan is going to make a move and excuse the crowds down here, Brianna. You can see those are Trump supporters. And then far off to the left, Donald Trump is going to go inside and speak. And then right into the middle of all of this, and his is why crowd control, et cetera, is so important, you've got the metropolitan transit system walking right by.

So they have done a good job. And if you look over here to the left, you will see San Diego police officers. We have seen sheriff deputies. We have seen mutual aid from places like El Cajon and Chula Vista. Obviously, they are very well equipped and have been forewarned. They have riot gear. They have flexible handcuffs as we've seen throughout some of these protests ready to make arrests if they have to. So far, as we've suggested, it's been a peaceful, demonstration and they have sealed off the Trump protesters. Right over here you can see these are the same street preacher who is got into it with people in Anaheim the other day. But so far, nobody has punched anybody, thankfully. And the demonstration is spirited but it has not turned rowdy, at least not yet, Brianna.

KEILAR: It's interesting that you are seeing some of the same folks that you have seen at some of these other rallies. Of course, Anaheim is a couple of hours drive north there. So this is not exactly next door to San Diego. But I know that what we have been hearing, Paul, from a lot of authorities is that they are studying the tape from Albuquerque where we saw things really get out of hand earlier this week. Is that what folks did there in San Diego?

VERCAMMEN: Absolutely. They compared notes with authorities elsewhere. You'll remember in Anaheim. Lots and lots of various metal barricades. That is going to be part of this. We will go ahead and look back over here again, Brianna.

Look at the line of officers over there in protected mode and look at those metal barricades. And then over here to the right you have the Trump demonstrators sealed off by metal barricades. For the most part, they have done a very good job of keeping these two groups away from each other. They are not in direct proximity. There are little squirmiest or arguments or shouting just like the one to my right. But nobody, as I said, has gone so far as to hit each other or that kind of thing. As you said, some of the same characters.

But they are well-equipped. I mean, out of our view, we saw officers with nonlethal weapons, including the bean bag shooting guns. And of course as we said, there's a lot of officers that you cannot see who are ready to be deployed. I would say hundreds of them - Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Paul Vercammen for us in San Diego, thank you so much.

I do want to send it over now to Jim Sciutto. "The LEAD" starts right now.