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EARLY START

Ted Cruz Withholds Endorsement; Trump Adviser Investigated by Secret Service. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired July 21, 2016 - 04:00   ET

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


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CROWD: Get out! Give him the hook! Pull the plug!

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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: So this happened. Chaos in Cleveland. Boos erupting inside the Republican National Convention. Ted Cruz refuses to endorse Donald Trump for president.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And Mary Pat Christie looks confused.

ROMANS: Good morning. Welcome to EARLY START at the CNN Grill. The Republican National Convention here. I'm Christine Romans.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman. It is Thursday, July 21st. It is now 4:00 a.m. in the east.

We have not seen anything like this before.

ROMANS: We have not.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was -- wow, that was some discord. Once in a lifetime moment at the convention, convention strive. The kind of moment that leaves people booing and cheering and gasping and rewriting headlines all at the same time.

Something crazy happened last night. Something funny happening on the way to party unity here at the Republican National Convention. And there he is, Ted Cruz, the rally up to Donald Trump in primaries got a prime speaking slot, and he used it not to support Donald Trump. No endorsement.

And what did he get in return? No love and an awful lot of outrage from the crowd.

Senior political reporter Manu Raju joins us this morning with the night's biggest moment of controversy -- Manu.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: That's right. It was really a surreal moment. This is the first time that Ted Cruz has spoken about Donald Trump and about the campaign since he dropped out of the race in May and he didn't use this moment to talk about Donald Trump really at all.

Only at the top of his speech, he congratulated Donald Trump, but talked about conservative values, to criticize Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But he would not endorse Donald Trump.

It was clear when I was in the convention hall. You heard it on TV. This crowd was going very, very impatient and angry at his refusal to endorse Donald Trump.

Boos and heckling and yelling of "Lyin' Ted", which was, of course, the nickname that Ted -- that Cruz got from Donald Trump in that very bitter primary fight.

[04:00:08] Now, when Ted Cruz said to the supporters that come in the fall, you should vote your conscience, a lot of those delegates (AUDIO GAP)

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SEN. TED CRUZ (R), TEXAS: Stand and speak and vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.

(CROWD CHANTING)

We must make the most of our moment, to fight for freedom, to protect your God-given rights, even if those with whom we don't agree. We will unite the party. We will unite the country by standing together for shared values by standing for liberty.

God bless each and every one of you and God bless the United States of America.

(BOOS)

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RAJU: Now, immediately after that, Heidi Cruz, Ted Cruz's wife, was escorted out security as she was getting heckled herself, and there were concerns possibly for her safety. And a number of Cruz critics and supporters alike questioned whether or not this could hurt him in the future come 2020.

Now, Cruz for his part was unapologetic when he was approached by reporters about his speech. He also said he did what he believed he needed to do.

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REPORTER: Senator, why did you decide not to endorse Donald Trump in the end?

CRUZ: I laid out a very simple standard. We need a president who will defend (INAUDIBLE) be faithful to the Constitution. I hope very much that is who the next president will be.

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RAJU: And, afterwards, Ted Cruz later issuing a fundraising solicitation to his donors about the speech. So, clearly, the fallout will continue. And Ted Cruz does not think he did anything wrong -- guys.

BERMAN: No, that is crystal clear.

All right. Manu, thanks very much. Joining us here to discuss at the CNN Grill, a very special panel. CNN political analyst, Josh Rogin, columnist for "The Washington Post". Also with us is a trio of CNN political commentators, Democratic Maria Cardona, former Ted Cruz communications director Amanda Carpenter, KABC talk radio host John Phillips, a Donald Trump supporter.

Good morning to you all.

So, Amanda, Peter King, Republican congressman from New York. He responded after Ted Cruz did his thing and he told our M.J. Lee that Cruz's refusal to endorse Trump was disgraceful and disqualifying and that blank hole doesn't do Cruz justice. So, you can put him in the no call.

AMANDA CARPENTR, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is funny, we would see Peter King pop up on CNN a lot. And we'll be in the Cruz office would be like, how long is it going to take before he gets to bashing Ted Cruz? And it's usually less than 10 seconds and that went on for years.

So, Peter King, I'm not surprised at all. This is -- Ted Cruz knew what he was doing. He certainly knew there was going to be blowback in that audience. This is a convention of people that just dominated Donald Trump. But he is speaking to a lot of people who weren't in the room.

I was calling it the no-show convention for quite sometime because you had so many Republicans who just simply opted not to come. I mean, former presidents, governors, senators, congressmen. They just didn't show up because Donald Trump is driving them out of the party.

ROMANS: Well, Ted Cruz's strategy was to show up and diss the nominee.

CARPENTER: Yes. Well, this something to be said for it, because this isn't about Donald Trump the candidate. The Republican Party is not Donald Trump. I mean, thank goodness. It should be about values and the constitutional freedom. And that's what Ted Cruz showed up there to remind people to give them some hope if you're worried about Donald Trump.

ROMANS: Donald Trump did react via tweet. Very rare and unusual for Donald Trump, but this is what he said about Ted Cruz. He said, "Wow, Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, didn't honor the pledge." The pledge they all signed early on to support the nominee.

"I saw his speech two hours early. Let him speak anyway. No big deal."

John, if he really saw the speech early, why would he let him go on? What's the strategy from Trump camp I wonder?

JOHN PHILLIPS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Because now, he owes Ted Cruz absolutely nothing. I know Ted Cruz likes to go out and say, oh, Ronald Reagan is my idol. Ronald Reagan is the politician I emulate.

Well, by looking at that speech, I think the person his idol is, is Kanye West, because he went to someone else's party and he was a living, breathing, droning train wreck on live television. I think that Taylor Swift looked at that and said, "I can relate."

BERMAN: You are playing three dimensional chess and we're playing checkers.

(LAUGHTER)

CARPENTER: I'm thinking about how Donald Trump and Taylor Swift, and I'm very confused.

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[04:05:05] BERMAN: So, Paul Manafort, a big Taylor Swift fan, had this to say why he let Ted Cruz speak.

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PAUL MANAFORT, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Mr. Trump felt he finished second, he should have a big slot. And he did it. I mean, Donald Trump was try to unify the part and he's done that. I think notwithstanding what Senator Cruz said tonight, the party came together. Donald Trump made the offer to speak without conditions. The senator may have been more politically smart.

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BERMAN: Josh, I was with the focus group of undecided voters here, and they were confused by what happened. I suppose my question is, does anyone win here?

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: So, I think what -- I mean, we'll see who wins. But I think the calculation here that Ted Cruz is making, that he believes Donald Trump is going to lose, OK? He would not have done this if he thinks Trump is going to beat Hillary Clinton. He clearly made a decision, Donald Trump is going to lose, OK, what's my next move. And this is when he came up with, OK?

So, when you look at Donald Trump losing, if he loses in November, and remember Ted Cruz has to run for Senate in 2018. Then he's going to run for president in 2020, he's got two runs. And he is thinking, OK, should I be the next Donald Trump or if Donald Trump goes down in flames, and a lot of people think he will, then maybe I should be the anti-Trump.

So, he went with the latter calculation. Now, Ted Cruz is setting himself up for 2018 and 2020 to be the antidote to Trump. So, when they do the autopsy of 2016, the Republican Party looks at what went wrong, if Donald Trump loses, we don't know, and they're going to say, OK, well, let's do the opposite of everything that Trump did. Ted Cruz will say I was. There I called it.

ROMANS: I see John Kasich and Ted Cruz. I see faces lining up already.

MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: This is a replay of the primaries. I think also a foresight into what happened when Donald Trump loses.

(LAUGHTER)

CARDONA: When. But I'd say this. In the short run, Donald Trump clearly wins. That tweet and the interview magnanimous actually, right? And it does make Ted Cruz like, you know, he came in and this was not his own party and he trashed the place. So, certainly not Miss Manners.

But Ted Cruz was never Miss Manners. And I do believe there is a contingent of the Republican Party which is bigger than what we know. They don't want to be vociferous about it that believes Donald Trump is going to be a disaster for the party. That he doesn't represent true Republican values. And I think ultimately, in the long run, they can look to Ted Cruz and say, OK, here is somebody who stood up for what he believed in for the sake for the long-term viability of the party.

BERMAN: Amanda Carpenters, 4:07 a.m., you're amongst friends here, so you can be --

CARPENTER: I'm amazed. She's making the case.

BERMAN: Hillary Clinton supporter here --

CARDONA: I think this is delicious.

BERMAN: What I really want to know is did you honestly think the blowback would be as loud as it is right now?

CARPENTER: I expected some boos. I never thought Cruz would endorse Trump. They're not just compatible philosophically and that's far more than the petty insults that went down. But also Trump never sought forgiveness which is kind of a big deal. But the blowback in there --

BERMAN: But we saw on the floor and the aftermath --

CARPENTER: I don't know. We have to see how it plays out. If I were Cruz, I would have cut off the speech early and not stood there and took it. He took it for so long which is really incredible.

ROMANS: We have video of Heidi Cruz wearing yellow being rushed out of there. The aftermath was ugly. CARPENTER: Well, here's the thing, throughout this convention, pro-

Cruz people, never Trump, whatever you want to call them, have been facing a lot of aggression and hostility from Trump delegates on the floor. Cruz in doing this speech, it wasn't about him, it was also about standing up for the people who have taken a lot of harassment from the Trump campaign, from the RNC, we had the delegate rule on the floor on Monday.

There's a lot of that going on there. It's not just Cruz. There are other people in the room and just knowing him and working for him, he wants to stand up for them, too.

ROMANS: Where's your party unity? Were we supposed to talking about unifying the Republican Party this week? We talked about everything but for the past.

PHILLIPS: And I think we'll get to that with Trump's speech.

But I think what you saw last night with Ted Cruz was frustration. Go back in time at the beginning of the campaign. He was the guy that refused to criticize Donald Trump because he thought Donald Trump would fizzle out very quickly. He thought he had appeal among certain working class voters that would then fall into the Cruz camp, and that he and Trump would be allies to the convention.

It didn't work out that way. Ted Cruz ended up being the loser. I just think he just can't fathom how this happened.

ROGIN: Yes. The problem is he can never be the head of the anti- Trump movement because they hate him too.

[04:10:03] BERMAN: All right, guys. There is a lot more to discuss.

The Ted Cruz speech last night overshadowed another Trump campaign scandal, that would be the speech-gate issue from the first night. Well, we now have an explanation for how Melania Trump managed to deliver part of the Michelle Obama speech. Does that explanation make sense? That's next.

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ROMANS: New information this morning on Melania Trump's speech, the speech she gave the other night and just how those passages lifted from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech wound up in Melania's address. Now, a writer for the Trump organization basically confessing here saying she put them there which raises even more questions this morning.

Our panel is back. Josh Rogin, Maria Cardona, Amanda Carpenter and John Phillips.

I want to put up what this woman Meredith McIver wrote.

[04:15:02] She's a Trump staff person -- staff writer for the Trump organization, not the Trump campaign. We're going to show exactly what she says about where that came from. John, you got it in front of you?

BERMAN: Yes.

ROMANS: OK, read it.

BERMAN: "We discussed many people who inspired her. A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama. Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama's speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became in the final speech. I apologize for the confusion and hysteria my mistake caused." Thus ends the reading.

ROMANS: Thus ends the reading.

So, here's what's interesting to me. This is a staff writer for the Trump organization, not for the campaign, which is interesting. An also she says these were passages originally read to her by Melania Trump.

What do you make of that? You have written speeches before.

CARPENTER: Yes, it is sloppy work. The speechwriter recorded it and kept it as dictated to her in the speech and Melania didn't recognize it or didn't care it was kept in the same format when she delivered it. I mean, you know, it clears a lot of leeway for a lot of people who don't do this professionally. But at the same time, they took so long to come out with the truth. They made staffers lie on their behalf, which is really despicable and they kept the story going.

This should have been the explanation from the start. It's not a big deal. She's not going to be sued for plagiarism. But the price that she's now paid in the public eye and her inability to being an effective surrogate for her husband is deeply problematic.

ROMANS: I did not see her last night.

BERMAN: I did not see her last night.

John Phillips, Trump supporter, do you wish they had cleaned this up more quickly than they had?

PHILLIPS: Well, it's to my understanding, an original draft that was written by speechwriters with the campaign. They gave it to Melania. She didn't like it. She went to this woman and they pretty much did their own thing. And they probably did it at the 11th hour and they drew it together at the last minute, and that's how you ended up with this problem.

ROMANS: If your guy and his team handle a snafu, how are we going to handle, oh, like peace in the Middle East?

PHILLIPS: Well, this is the wife. This is not the guy.

CARDONA: This is the guy.

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CARPENTER: She was speaking on his behalf as a character witness at this convention to become the Republican presidential nominee. And, gosh, if you can't handle your wife's speech, that's a big one.

CARDONA: This is on him. It's on her.

BERMAN: Two days after, they were out here spinning it wasn't plagiarizing.

ROGIN: The big problem for the working reporters is the willingness to lie to the press, right? They do it without thinking about it. For them lying to the press is like talking.

Can you imagine what that is like if that was the White House? I mean, we know that public officials lie to reporters, but usually they are ashamed of it. When they are caught, they are at least apologetic. The Trump campaign is lying all day long.

What does that mean? They don't feel a fiduciary responsibility to be honest to the media because they don't respect the media. That's a bigger story to me than Melania Trump.

CARDONA: Let's take it one step further, because yes, you know, the media is important. But who is the media talking to? Voters. This is the campaign who thinks that American voters are imbeciles. And American voters need to understand that. Every time they go out there and lie, it's like, you know, they think they are jedis and performing a Jedi mind trick. No. You know, they try to make us believe --

ROMANS: One thing that's fascinating with the Trump supporter is they hate the media.

BERMAN: Let's talk about the voters and what they will see tonight, Amanda Carpenter. They're going to see Donald Trump deliver his speech tonight. I think the bar, I suppose is lower and higher. At a certain point, this convention has been so unusual, that if there is no scandal, he succeeds.

But on the other hand, he's got to give a pretty good speech to leave here to be able to say that Cleveland was successful.

CARPENTER: Yes. I mean, this convention has been plagued with turmoil. Donald Trump might think that's a good thing. He thinks there's no such thing as bad publicity.

But at the same time, he is now the Republican presidential nominee. I think he's going to be tempted in the convention hall where people are rabid Trump supporters just treat it like just another rally where he is unscripted and undisciplined. Excuse me, no clear message and rambles on.

ROMANS: You think so?

CARPENTER: If he doesn't do that and actually has a clear, constructive speech, people will probably be impressed. I think he will be tempted to go into lying Ted.

BERMAN: Is it option B there?

PHILLIPS: I think the country does not feel safe right now. He needs to go out there and n needs to prove, he needs to convince people that he will keep the country safe. He will keep you safe from foreign actors, he'll keep you safe from people trying to shoot police officers. He'll keep you safe from the economy collapsing.

If he can sell that argument, it will be a success.

ROMANS: Will there be a fog machine? That's what I want to know.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Secret Service investigating one of Trump's big supporters? Why? The supporter said Hillary Clinton should be stopped. We'll discuss, next.

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[04:24:26] BERMAN: The Secret Service confirms it is investigating one of Donald Trump's supporters for saying Hillary Clinton should be shot for treason on a firing line. Al Baldasaro is a New Hampshire state representative and a Trump delegate at the Republican National Convention.

He is someone who has worked hard for Donald Trump in New Hampshire, serves as the veterans advisor, serves on the advisory coalition on the Veterans for Trump.

The comments he made Wednesday afternoon in an interview with "The Daily Beast".

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AL BALDASARO, CO-CHAIRMAN OF DONALD TRUMP'S NATIONAL VETERANS COALITION: Hillary Clinton, to me, is the Jane Fonda of the Vietnam. She is a disgrace for the lies that she told those mothers about their children that got killed over there in Benghazi.

[04:25:08] Hillary Clinton should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.

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ROMANS: Those comments being investigated now by the Secret Service.

Donald Trump spent nearly $50 million of his own money on his campaign and he's keeping his word not to pay himself back from donations. New numbers, brand new numbers released overnight showed Trump raised $21.4 million for his campaign in June. He loaned himself another $2 million, but has officially forgiven the $47 million in loans he gave to his campaign during a primary season.

Trump is holding $20 million in cash for July. The most money he has had in the bank so far this election season. But Hillary Clinton has much higher totals for June. She hauled in $35.3 million over the month. Her campaign now has a $44 million cash pile for July.

Check out the difference in spending. Clinton burned through $34.4 million in June. Trump spent $7.8 million over that span.

BERMAN: Trump supporters will tell you that he only spent that much and he is within the margin of error.

ROMANS: That's right.

BERMAN: Interesting to see.

All right. Intrigue and drama at the Republican convention. Ted Cruz gets a prime speaking spot, but does not endorse Donald Trump. This happened several hours ago and this place is still buzzing. We'll discuss next.

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