Stock Tumble For Second Straight Day; Rodger Stone Judge: Donald Trump Attacks Are Intimidation; Democrats Brawl In Final Debate Before Super Tuesday
LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: A revitalized field of Democrats putting the pressure on Senator Bernie Sanders. Did they do anything to slow him down ahead of Super Tuesday?</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And it's not if, it's when. The CDC says Coronavirus will spread in the United States. The President appears to be fudging facts on the health crisis in an Election Year. Well, world's matters credibility very important in a crisis. Welcome back to "Early Start." I'm Christine Romans.</s>JARRETT: And I'm Laura Jarrett. 31 minutes past the hour here in New York. It was a wild free-for-all brawl last night at the final Democratic debate before Super Tuesday. Six candidates all are trying to blunt the momentum of front-runner Bernie Sanders in Charleston now just three days before South Carolina's primary. Candidates took aim at each other over socialism, electability, race and the issue you did not see coming a week ago, Cuba.</s>BLOOMBERG: Donald Trump thinks it would be better if he is President, I do not think so. Vladimir Putin thinks that Donald Trump should be President of United States and that's why Russia is helping you get elected so you lose to him.</s>WARREN: I dug in, I did the work and then Bernie's team trashed me for it.</s>BUTTIGIEG: You think the last four years has been chaotic, divisive, toxic, exhausting, imagine spending the better part of 2020 with Bernie Sanders versus Donald Trump.</s>BIDEN: Progressive is getting things done and that's what we got done.</s>SANDERS: I've been hearing my name mentioned a little bit tonight. I wonder why.</s>WARREN: I don't care how much money Mayor Bloomberg has, the core of the Democratic Party will never trust him. At least I didn't have a boss who said to me, kill it the way that Mayor Bloomberg alleged to have said--</s>BLOOMBERG: I've never have said that.</s>WARREN: --you've said to one of his pregnant employees.</s>BLOOMBERG: I never said that and for the record if she was a teacher in New York City she would have never had that problem. We treated our teachers the right way.</s>KLOBUCHAR: Instead of just reviewing everything from the past, let's talk about where we're going to go forward.</s>WARREN: No, the math does not add up.</s>BUTTIGIEG: I think we were talking about math and it doesn't take two hours to do the math.</s>SANDERS: Let's talk about math.</s>BUTTIGIEG: So here's the math. It adds up to four more years of Donald Trump. Kevin McCarthy is Speaker of the House and the inability to get the Senate into Democratic hands. The time has come for us to stop acting like the Presidency is the only office that matters.</s>BIDEN: Bernie, in fact hasn't past much of anything. I'm not out of time, he spoke over time and I'm going to talk. There is the deal.</s>STEYER: I have worked for racial justice completely and that is an absolute unfair statement--</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you Mr. Steyer.</s>KLOBUCHAR: All I know if we spend the next four months tearing our party apart we're going to watch Donald Trump spend the next four years tearing our country apart.</s>BLOOMBERG: The debt is at $20 trillion going up to 21. We just cannot afford some of the stuff people are talking about. Bernie will lose to Donald Trump and Donald Trump and the House and the Senate and some of the Statehouses will all go red and then gerrymandering and appointing judges for the next 20 to 30 years we're going to live with this catastrophe.</s>SANDERS: Mayor Bloomberg has a strong and solid and enthusiastic base of support. Problem is they're all billionaires.</s>BLOOMBERG: You read about the virus what's really happening here is the President fired the pandemic specialists in this country two years ago. So there's nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing.</s>SANDERS: Cuba made progress on education. Yes, I think, really?</s>BUTTIGIEG: I'm not looking forward to a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s and Bernie Sanders with nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s.</s>SANDERS: This conception and you're hearing it here tonight is what the idea some talking about are radical. They're not in one form or another they exist in countries all over the world.</s>BIDEN: China prevents North Korea from launching missile to take them down, and if we don't - why am I stopping? No one else stops.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Okay.</s>BIDEN: That is my Catholic school training.</s>JARRETT: He stopped because it was so chaotic on that stage. Let's talk to CNN Politics Senior Writer Zack Wolf joining us live this morning from Washington. Good morning. I mean the first question the top question of the morning did anybody blunt Bernie's momentum?</s>WOLF: I don't know if they did. Particularly because he's been saying so much of this stuff for so long that if you've been paying any attention, none of its new. I mean, he's been offering praise--</s>JARRETT: But he wasn't a front-runner before and now he's legitimately the front-runner and suddenly it's caught moderates and the establishment by surprise.</s>WOLF: Right. And that's why it is so important that Democrats are reexamining all of these things, putting together all those proposals and seeing you know 50 or $60 trillion over ten years, these things that he's proposes like Medicare for all you know added to free college, added to Green New Deal added to free housing added. To all these other things it would be a dramatic restructuring of the U.S. economy in such a way it is just so fanciful to think that one of these things could get through much less all of them. So it's important that everybody is reexamining all of this, but are Democrats essentially going forward with him because they like him? Is it his base of support that likes him and expecting him not to accomplish any of this stuff? If so, then I'm not sure that last night would stop him at all.</s>JARRETT: Zack, obviously Bloomberg not on the ballot in South Carolina but is on the stage. He took a lot of heat last time. I think - you know he spent a lot of time preparing for this debate. Clearly not a perfect performance but I want to play for you a moment where he's trying to make a joke that doesn't quite come off.</s>WOLF: Oh, God.</s>BLOOMBERG: I really am surprised that all of these, my fellow contestants up here I guess would be the right word for it given nobody pays attention to the clock. I'm surprised they show up because I would have thought after I did such a good job beating them last week that they'd be little bit afraid to do that. All of the new Democrats that came in, put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this President, I got them.</s>JARRETT: He caught himself, he caught himself though but you know at the end of day he still has these huge ad buys. And so even if the debate performance may be he is lacking in some areas. You know does it matter?</s>WOLF: Even during the debate you saw Michael Bloomberg commercials at least on my TV you saw Michael Bloomberg commercials and he looks a lot different in those commercials.</s>JARRET: He sure does.</s>WOLF: He's been there cuddling up next to Barack Obama and saying very inspirational things and he looks a lot different on the debate stage. I don't know ultimately if he's going to be able to - the quality of these debates is not so much in people who watch them from start to finish, it's how they sort of eke out into the either, and is that enough to-- You know we've already seen him, he was ascendant in polls and then after that first debate performance he started to crater a little bit or at least in the ones that have come out since then. He's not on a ballot until Super Tuesday and people are voting right now. So that will be the first test just as it will be I think you know after South Carolina the true test of whether Sanders, this reexamination of him and all the things he promises, you know, if it's going to make any sort of dent in him because otherwise he could walk away with the thing.</s>ROMANS: Were there any missed opportunities last night? I mean, Laura was keeping track 83 minutes until anyone mentioned Coronavirus and it was Michael Bloomberg who brought that up. Two terrible down days in the stock market a President who was saying one thing speaking optimistically about Coronavirus and his CDC much more concerned. Were there missed opportunities here to sort of go after the President?</s>WOLF: They did mention him I think a lot more than they did in the debate last week where he was almost a nonentity and then they were just beating up on each other.</s>WOLF: You heard a lot more Donald Trump is winning because we're arguing with each other kind of thing and then they would go back to arguing with each other. I think part of the problem for Democrats is they are having this identity crisis in do you go with the person who has all of the momentum and the buzz but only about a quarter of the country agrees with him and Bernie Sanders? Or do you try to pick somebody who might appeal to the middle to some of the, you know, disaffected Republicans or moderates who might be afraid of Bernie Sanders quite frankly and the things he's putting forward? Do you pick the excitement or do you pick the safe bet, and that they have clearly not made up their minds in.</s>ROMANS: And there's also this subtext of can there be a Biden reset after South Carolina? A lot of people are talking about that.</s>JARRETT: He needs one. And obviously the endorsement of Congressman Clyburn is expected later today. We'll see who he picks it is widely expected that he would choose Biden. He could use a boost like that, but we will have the wait and see. Zack Wolf, thank you so much.</s>ROMANS: Nice to see you.</s>WOLF: Thank you.</s>ROMANS: All right is the President of the United States risking public health with his optimistic outlook on the Coronavirus?