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Senator Rob Portman Talks Republican Race; Interview with Jeb Bush on Trump, Cruz, Fiorina; Donald Trump Rallies in Indiana; DEA Called into Prince Death Investigation. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired April 28, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:30:31] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. We are awaiting, watching for the Republican presidential front runner, Donald, Trump to start speaking to his supporters in Indiana right now. A live picture of legend coach, Bobby Knight, speaking right now. We will monitor what is going on over there. Once Trump starts speaking, we will listen in to hear what he has to say.

In the meantime, let's get to other Republican presidential news. She has been Ted Cruz's running mate for less than 24 hours but Carly Fiorina is going on the attack against his rivals. During an interview with radio show she said, and I'm quoting her now, "There is somebody in the race who ought to get out. His name is John Kasich. Ted Cruz can and will win this nomination," close quote.

Joining us now is a Kasich supporter, Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman.

Senator, thanks very much for joining us.

You want to react to what Carly Fiorina said? Is it time for John Kasich to drop out?

SEN. ROB PORTMAN, (R), OHIO: First of all, I like Carly, she is a friend. John just came in second in five of the six states on Tuesday. I think he feels like he has momentum and he is working hard in Oregon and New Mexico and the big prize in California on June 7th. He is fired up. He would be the best president. That is why I'm supporting him. He has a terrific record, particularly in Ohio when he turned things around after a disastrous governorship of Ted Strickland. He comes in and fixes the fiscal problems, gets the state back on track in terms of its economy and jobs. We go from 48th in the country in job creation to top-10 in the country and on the way up. John has a real record to talk about. He has the experience to do the job.

BLITZER: He does have a lot of experience. He was a distinguished member of the House of Representatives, chairman of the Budget Committee for many years, on the Armed Services Committee, twice elected, very popular governor in the state of Ohio, a key battleground state. But he has done pretty badly so far. He's only won one state, his home state of Ohio. Cruz won 11 states. Trump won a lot more. Kasich also has three million fewer votes than Cruz, 6.5 million fewer than Trump. At what point does John Kasich decide it's over?

PORTMAN: Well, he also has had a lot of luck in talking to delegates about the second, third, fourth, fifth round whatever it is going to be. So although John has not won as many states, on Tuesday, he came in second in five out of six. He has momentum right now. And the states that are left are states where he fits well. So we'll see what he does in Oregon. I suspect it will be very well. Same with New Mexico and California. So I think John will stay in and should stay in. June 7, to me, is the big date. It is the California primary when you will see a lot of delegates being assigned. But I hope he stays in. He offers not only the best hope for us to win in November, and that is clear from all polling we have seen, but also he would just be the best president.

We are living in dangerous times. We just saw the economic growth numbers, 0.5 percent. We have a weak economy. We have a middle class squeeze that is very real. John knows how to deal with those issues. I think we need him more than ever. I think he will stay in and ultimately prevail.

BLITZER: He did come in second in four of the five contests on Tuesday. He came in third in neighboring Pennsylvania, right next to Ohio. Now he dropped out of the contest in Indiana, right next to Ohio. What does that signal if he can't do better? And when he came in second, he came in a very distant second to Donald Trump. If he can't do well in these states, what gives you hope that he can do well place else?

PORTMAN: I think he is doing well in about Oregon, New Mexico, California. I think he may surprise people in Indiana. I was there on Monday and --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: I thought he made a deal with Cruz not to campaign in Indiana basically give up Indiana and let Cruz try to win?

PORTMAN: Yeah, I think that was supposed to be the deal at one point, but I'm talking to voters, and there are voters that don't like their choices when John is out, so they are planning to vote for him. People want to win this election. They realize the country is heading in the wrong direction. We have to have somebody who can win in November. As we get closer to the actual convention and the process of general election, people focus on that. I'm sure, Wolf, you see that in your own polling. People start to think about how do you win this election. When you look at the polling that I saw today that came out, there was a new big national poll, huge survey, John was one of the three that could beat Hillary Clinton. He beat her handily in terms of the electoral votes. He's well ahead.

[13:35:15] BLITZER: Let's be precise. In Indiana, does Governor Kasich want Indiana Republicans to vote for him on Tuesday?

PORTMAN: You ought to ask him that question directly. I talked to Indiana voters who are going to vote for him regardless of what is being said about an arrangement. And I hope they do. I don't know what the arrangements are going to be back and forth. I heard what you said about Carly earlier. The point is, as we get closer to the reality here, which is a November contest with Hillary Clinton and one Republican, you want to have someone who can win, and help make the changes we need to make to get the changes that need to be made to get this economy moving, to restore America's role in the world. That is John Kasich. He has the experience and record to do it.

BLITZER: One final question. I want your quick reaction to what House Speaker John Boehner said. He is quoted as saying that Ted Cruz, in his words, is "Lucifer in the flesh" and "a miserable SOB." You have worked with Senator Cruz. What is your reaction to what the former speaker said?

PORTMAN: John is my former colleague and a neighbor back in Ohio. But you can tell he is no longer in elected office. I don't know. Ted and I get along fine. I work with everybody in the Senate. I work would Ted. We focus on results. I don't think he would be as effective as John Kasich in terms of bringing people together to solve problems. That's our big challenge now in this country. We don't have the ability to find solutions to big issues, whether debt and deficit or tax reform that everybody knows is needed, fixing regulations or education system. These are things that John has done over his career. He has done it here in Washington and back in Ohio. Finally, we do face this unprecedented threat around the world. You need someone who can bring people together to find the common ground and address those issues. And that's where I think John would be a lot better.

BLITZER: And if there is an open contested convention, but so far he hasn't resonated with a lot of Republicans on the campaign trail, certainly not as effectively as Cruz or Trump. He has a lot of work ahead of him if he stays in this contest.

Senator, thanks very much for joining us.

PORTMAN: Wolf, always great to be on. Thanks for having me.

BLITZER: Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.

That's a key battleground state, Ohio. No Republican has ever been elected president of the United States without carrying Ohio.

Take a look at this. We have live pictures from neighboring Indiana right now. That is Bobby Knight. He is still speaking there. The Indiana basketball legend. He endorsed Donald Trump yesterday. He is introducing Trump today. Moments from now, we will hear what Trump has to say. We'll be right back with that.

Also, Jeb Bush sits down with CNN in his first interview since dropping out of the 2016 contest. His thoughts on a Donald, the Cruz/Fiorina ticket. That is coming up, as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:42:21] BLITZER: The former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, has pretty much remained quietly on the sidelines since dropping out of the presidential race. Bush is now weighing in. He sat down with CNN's Jamie Gangel to share thoughts on Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz's choice of Carly Fiorina as a running mate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEB BUSH, (R), FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR & FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Picking a candidate that is talented, tough. You know, she takes on Trump really well, I think. She takes on Hillary Clinton very well, as well. Someone who has a proven record and who has been vetted as a candidate I thought was a smart move by Ted Cruz.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: You didn't think that Donald Trump was ready to be president. But if he is the nominee, apart from whatever else you think might happen, whether he would beat Hillary or not, will you support him?

BUSH: I don't think he is a serious person.

GANGEL: You haven't changed your mind?

BUSH: No. I have seen nothing, the speech, recent speech about foreign policy was -- I don't know which Donald Trump to believe, the one that read from a teleprompter a speech that was inside the lines or the one that wants to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, or a 45 percent tariff on China or abandoning NATO or saying it would be a smart thing to have Japan and Korea go it alone and build nuclear capability to deal with China. Which Donald Trump is the one expressing these views. There are two of them. I think we need a president with a steady hand. The idea that a president should be unpredictable is not really the way history has been written. The successful presidents have been clear about their vision, have laid out the agenda on foreign policy, and our friends know we have their back, and our enemies fear us, and there's a constancy by American leadership. He is proposing the exact opposite. I don't think that is a serious approach.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: We will have much more of Jamie's exclusive interview later this afternoon, 4:00 p.m. eastern for our domestic viewers on "The Lead" with Jake Tapper.

Right now, I want to listen in little bit to Donald Trump in Indiana.

(CHEERING)

DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: And then I'm watching this morning and Lyin' Ted, Donald Trump loves Obamacare. I love Obamacare. My whole thing is we are going to end it. I said to a few people that were watching, I said do people believe this when he says that? It is terrible. It's terrible. And that's why in the Senator he is known as a liar. Marco Rubio, who is a good guy, called him a liar during the debate. Remember that? He said, you are a liar. I said that is great when another Senator can call a Senator a liar. I said I can do it also. So it's great. So we came up with Lyin' Ted. L-Y-I-N, hyphen. But -- (CHEERING)

[13:45:22] TRUMP: It's true. It's terrible.

And now he is getting creamed in the polls. He lost the last five elections. He was saying I'm the only one that can beat Donald Trump. I have proven it time and time again. I'm saying, please, I'm killing him. And he said, I won seven times. Remember the debate. I said I won 21 times. And he looked.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: I won seven times. It is like unbelievable. He is getting clobbered. He goes to New York last week and they ran him out of the place. You can't run if you can't get like 12 percent in New York. You can't run. You just can't. Too big. It's too important. I think I'm going to win New York. I really do. I mean in the general election.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: And nobody else, honestly, because it is very important that we win. We have to beat Hillary Clinton. Crooked Hillary Clinton. She is crooked.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: You know, no Republican other than me will campaign in New York. They won't campaign. They are not going to do it because they have no chance. Kasich has no chance, zero. And I understand it. And for years and years, they don't go to New York and campaign. They assume that is lost. If somebody ever won New York it totally, with the Electoral College, totally changes the map. I think we will win New York. I really do. I think we are going to win Michigan.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: We are going to win Pennsylvania. We are going to win Florida. We are going to win places. Look how well we did in Florida. We are going to win places that a lot of people say you are not going to win, that you can't win, as a Republican, you can't win.

Michigan is a great example. Nobody else will go to Michigan. I'll be encamped in Michigan because I think we can win it. We will win states nobody thought were winnable as a Republican and we'll do really great.

But I love this. The whole political world it is so evil. It's so evil. You hear about people that you never heard of before. It's just like worse than business. Somebody said, what is the difference between these certain politicians because certain politicians are terrific. I spoke to one today, Senator Corker, who is fantastic. We have a lot of great people. Jeff Sessions, Senator Sessions, he is fantastic. And there are others. And you know once we get to the top it's going to be so magnificent. So magnificent. But you saw what happened. So Cruz had this horrible thing. He came

in third, meaning he came in last in all of these states. He did horrible, came in last in New York. Then we went to Pennsylvania. We went to all of these people. He went and they said don't come here. And he got ridden out of town and he left. I hate to tell you, he came to Indiana. He might as well come to Indiana because you lose those elections. He came to Indiana and starts lying. That is why I wanted to get here fast. I didn't take a big vacation after winning all five by a landslide. Right?

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: Didn't take a lot of time. I didn't want to take too much time because I know you got him back here lying like hell. I said I better get back to Indiana fast. Get me Bobby Knight really fast, please.

But it is true. I won and people said good, you are going to take a day off. New York is a big state. I went to Syracuse. I went to all over, I went all over the place. And it's the same thing. The businesses are being sucked out of our country. If you look at New York, Indiana, Pennsylvania, all of Maryland. I won Maryland. I won them all. They all have one thing in common. No matter where you go, it's like 40 percent, it's like 50 percent, 60 percent. Jobs are gone. And I'm the one that brings up Carrier all the time. This morning, I hear Cruz. He said and Carrier air conditioning -- I have been talking about this company for four months. All of a sudden, he starts talking about Carrier. Carrier is my baby. I want to do the number on Carrier. I want to do it. I don't like what they did.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: Cruz was actually defending them, which is interesting. He said we should really defend. You don't want to defend. When they leave, they let go of 1,400 people to move to Mexico. And you know what, they have to pay a consequence when they do that. They have to pay a consequence.

(CHEERING)

[13:50:00] TRUMP: They have to pay. They want to move. That's fine. They let them go viciously. Almost like "Apprentice," right? 1,400 people. You're fired! Oh, it's pretty rough. They had some mid-level, upper mid-level management guy, and somebody had the cell phone up. Those are dangerous. But they had the cell phone. And I saw it on television. I thought it was terrible. I thought the way he did it was terribly. Basically said we're debt letting everybody go. You're fired. But we're letting everybody go. Moving to Mexico. Oh, thanks a lot. And some people, they are following me.

Is anybody here from Carrier today? Because they're all over the place? Every place I go.

But what happens, so they let them go and Carrier has to know that if they do that -- I'm not only speaking to them. I'm speaking to Nabisco and Ford and hundreds and hundreds of other companies. They have to know there's consequences when you want to leave and fire all these people and you're not just going to go to another country, make your product, sell it across our really weak borders, because our borders will be so strong, folks. Our borders will be so strong.

(CHEERING)

BLITZER: All right. We'll continue to monitor Donald Trump in Indiana. The primary there next Tuesday.

But let's discuss what we just heard, also what we heard from Jeb Bush in that exclusive interview with CNN's Jamie Gangel. Joining us is Donna Brazile, our CNN political commentator; Doug Heye, a CNN political commentator as well, the former Republican National Committee communications director.

Guys, thanks very much.

It realistic, when we says -- he's a New Yorker. If he gets the Republican nomination, and it looks like a strong position to get that Republican nomination, that he could put New York State in play in a general election Hillary Clinton?

DONNA BRAZILE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, the polls suggest that he wouldn't put that in play. The polls suggest that he would lose to Hillary Clinton. And I do believe that it will be competitive, regardless of where the Democrats stand in the Electoral College.

But, you know, right now, Wolf, Donald Trump has to continue to try to appeal to the blue collar whites that he hopes that he can siphon off from the Democrats in the fall. I don't know if the vicious rhetoric he's using, and Jeb Bush alluded to in that interview, allows him to unite the country. But I can tell you, women will not support Donald Trump.

BLITZER: Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, dropped out. Remember Donald Trump used to say low-energy Jeb and all of that. He was pretty blunt in the interview. Your reaction?

DOUG HEYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Like John Boehner, it's good to be liberated from the situations. You can be a little bit more honest than you were before. Trump has a really tough path getting the nomination. They're talking about New York, a difficult state for him. His campaign's saying they could win in Massachusetts and Illinois. That's pure fantasy camp to think a Republican can carry those states. We have struggled there so long. And the negatives Trump has with Hispanics, women. 51 percent of white males, according to the "Washington Post" poll last month, disapprove of Donald Trump, and that's his base.

BLITZER: Doug Heye, Donna Brazile, guys, thank you very much.

Still to come, we're just getting some new details surrounding the death of music legend, Prince. The DEA called into the investigation. Details of that, and more news right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:55:15] BLITZER: One week ago today, the world was shocked by the death of Prince. And now CNN learning new details about what may have caused it. Law enforcement official says Prince was found with prescription painkillers. The county sheriff called in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to assist in the investigation. And they believe the health scare prompting an unscheduled landing of the Prince plane may have been the result of a reaction to pain medication.

For more on this, let's bring in chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, in Rome, right now on assignment for us.

Sanjay, thanks, very much.

We know a week before, a few days before Prince died, he suffered a health scare forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Illinois. What more can you tell us about all of this?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, what investigators are sort of pointed us to is this idea that he was unresponsive on the plane prompting the sort of emergency landing. And that there's some talk that maybe at the time that he was found unresponsive that it was due to some sort of overdose on pain pills. This is not confirmed yet but that's what investigators are sort of looking into specifically.

What we heard at the time, you'll remember, Wolf, was that he had a severe flu-like symptoms for which he was treated. Keep in mind, when making the emergency landing, when we looked at the time line there, he was in the hospital for about three hours only. So, not a very long time. And the question has arisen, was he given a medication as an anecdote to opioids or something like that? Again, this is one of the theories the investigators are working on. They don't know if this is connected to what happened a week later, the following Thursday, when he passed away in the elevator. But they're starting to gather more and more clues and piece it together -- Wolf?

BLITZER: So specifically, Sanjay, what will the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, look into? What will they try to check out?

GUPTA: They're going to try to find out what are the medications? What was he carrying on him? What else was found in his residence? But also, where were these medications coming from? Who were the doctors prescribing the medications? Were those medications prescribed to him? We know, for example, he was walking with a cane, supposedly hip pain. Maybe getting the medications from his doctor. Or was it -- were they not prescribed to him? They look at this and try to figure out how to correlate that with the toxicology reports coming out. With toxicology, you're looking at bodily fluids and trying to figure out what drugs are in the system, how much of those drugs are in the system and how long have they been taken. Sometimes you get an idea of that, as well. Not just the dosing but the length of time, weeks, days, months, that someone may have been taking a particular drug.

BLITZER: We know there's an autopsy and haven't released the results of that autopsy yet. We don't know if he was addicted to painkillers but, in general, Sanjay, how big of a problem is prescription painkiller addiction?

GUPTA: Well, you know, addiction, in and of itself, refers to the fact someone needs to take these substances in a way that's interfering with their lives. They're not going to school or not going to work anymore. It's really impacted their lives. That's different than physical dependence. They can -- a person can have both, but not necessarily. Physical dependence means you start to have physical symptoms when you start taking -- when you stop taking a substance. But one thing to point out, Wolf, even in the absence of addiction or physical dependence, these types of medications, they can be used legitimately, but if they're abused in anyway, meaning someone taken too much, combined with another substance, for example, they can be quite deadly.

I mean, we have done a lot of reporting on this, Wolf, as you know. In the U.S., we take 80 percent of the world's pain pills. We're 5 percent of the world's population. We take 80 percent of the world's pain pills. And we see how many deaths they cause. A person dies on average every 19 minutes because of an accidental opiate overdose. They can be dangerous. And it's not a question of whether one becomes addicted to it or develops a physical dependence to it, these can be dangerous if not used exactly as prescribed.

BLITZER: Sanjay Gupta, on assignment for us in Rome. Sanjay, thank you very much.

That's it for me. To our viewers, thanks very much for watching. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

For our international viewers, "Amanpour" is next.

For our viewers in North America, NEWSROOM with Brooke Baldwin starts right now.

[14:00:11] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Wolf Blitzer. I'll see you in Washington tomorrow.

In the meantime, hi, there. I'm --