Trump, Cruz Escalate War of Words; Bombs, Three Tickets Split Record Powerball Jackpot
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Brian Stelter, thanks for stopping by again.</s>STELTER: Good to see you.</s>COSTELLO: Appreciate it. The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now. And good morning. I'm Carol Costello, thank you so much for joining me. We begin with a high stakes showdown in the key state of South Carolina tonight for the 2016 Republican candidates will gather for their latest debate. And that debate comes as a war of words between Donald Trump and his newest target Ted Cruz escalates. Joining me now from North Charleston, South Carolina, is CNN's Sara Murray. Good morning.</s>SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. You're right, we are seeing this feud between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz grow even more pitched. Now even though Trump leads in South Carolina, the two are locked in a dead heat in Iowa. And that's why you're seeing this war of words, Donald Trump questioning whether Ted Cruz is even qualified to be president because he was born in Canada. And Ted Cruz essentially going from saying he wouldn't reciprocate these attacks to going after Trump for everything from having New York values to being too cozy with Democrats, to Cruz saying he would be more electable in a general election. Now I think the big question is how this plays out on the debate stage tonight. Donald Trump indicated that his campaign event last night that the citizenship stuff would come up, but it's possible he leaves it up to the debate moderators to sort of do his dirty work for him rather than going directly for Ted Cruz. Now, as for the Cruz camp they are very aware that Donald Trump can be unpredictable. And they tell me that they are preparing for everything, whether it's Trump essentially ignoring them to Trump going full boar against Ted Cruz. The other battle you're going to want to watch is the battle for the establishment lane, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Jeb Bush. These guys are all vying for a win in New Hampshire. And they are going to be going after each other on this stage. So we'll essentially have two different fights potentially going on as each tries to claim the mantle of the most conservative and then the establishment candidate. So a lot to watch tonight, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: All right, Sara Murray reporting live from South Carolina this morning. The bromance as Sara said may be over for Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, we'll see tonight on the debate stage. In debates past Mr. Cruz has refused to attack Mr. Trump, tweeting just last month, quote, "The establishment's only hope Trump and me in a cage match. Sorry to disappoint. Donald Trump is terrific." And as you can see the two men were quite friendly that night. And at previous debates back slapping and handshaking. But that was then and this is now. And in the face of attacks about Cruz's eligibility to be president he's taking the gloves off.</s>SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think he may shift in his new rallies to play "New York, New York" because, you know, Donald comes from New York and he embodies New York values.</s>COSTELLO: Oh. Here to discuss, Republican strategist Cheri Jacobus and columnist for "Above the Law" and Republican strategist Kayleigh McEneny. Welcome to both of you.</s>KAYLEIGH MCENENY, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Good morning.</s>CHERI JACOBUS, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Hi, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: So will we see more of a fight between the two men, Cheri?</s>JACOBUS: You know, I don't think we will. And here's why, Donald Trump can say a lot of things at his rallies that are not true, that are over the top, and that might not slide very well with other people. And I think that he tends to play it relatively safe at the debates. He still tries to please his base, but he's a little bit more careful because he knows everybody else is watching. Not everybody in his audience is a Trump supporter. And he knows that debate moderators may call him on it. I do think that Sara's correct that he'll try and leave it to the moderators, but at some point they have to ask him directly about his comments about Ted Cruz. And he's going to be accountable for that. I think the lower tier candidates will probably go after each other because they're all vying for the spot, you know, to be third or fourth or whatever. But we're going to see a smaller group at this debate. I think the messaging is going to be crisper and clearer. And I think that is going to be incumbent upon each candidate to be very, very good. I expect Rubio to probably remain positive. He does better that way. I think it's going to be apparent that Trump is not quite up on the issues. So all the things that we've seen before will be a bigger spotlight on it. And it will just be seen if somebody is really good, they'll look really good. If they're weak in some area, we're going to see that weakness. Everything will be bigger than it was before.</s>COSTELLO: OK. OK. I want to go back to the Cruz-Trump thing for just a minute, Kayleigh, because Cruz brought up Trump's New York values. And that's code for he was a liberal in the past. I read on Politico this morning that's his new strategy in combating Trump so why wouldn't we hear that tonight?</s>MCENENY: You know, I think we will hear that. But I think it's a flawed strategy on the part of Ted Cruz because there's an easy retort for Donald Trump, and it's this. You know, Ted Cruz has kind of meshed himself in the northeast establishment circuit, places like Princeton, like Harvard Law, like Goldman Sachs. These are not places known for Iowa conservative values. And I'm not faulting Ted Cruz for going to these institutions at all, but if he brings up the New York values, Donald Trump will simply retort with that. And it would be wise, I want to point out, for Ted Cruz not to attack Donald Trump. We've seen every candidate who attacks Donald Trump fall precipitously in the polls be it Carly Fiorina, be it Jeb Bush, who attacked Trump relentlessly. And folks in the establishment were praising him as having a stellar debate performance. But what happened? Just 1 percent of the people who watched the CNN debate thought that Jeb Bush won. So if Ted Cruz attacks, that will be a flawed strategy.</s>COSTELLO: Oh no, no. I hear you, but, Cheri, Ted Cruz has gone down in the polls since Donald Trump started to attack his citizenship, right? And there's nothing to that. And then Ted Cruz has come out and he's hit hard back against Trump. So isn't it the dawn of a new era?</s>JACOBUS: Well, at some point there does have to be a clear cut answer on this. And I think that there is. I think --</s>COSTELLO: There is a clear cut answer on it.</s>JACOBUS: Well, I don't think that Ted Cruz needs to use his debate stage to say, yes, I really am eligible. That should not be how he uses his time. I think that Donald Trump looks bad when he attacks him on it. And you can have that debate on the side. I don't think it's going to help them tonight. And, again, you have to look at this audience. These are people who are not all -- there's a lot of undecided voters out there. So while you've got the candidates that will be trying to appeal to the Iowa voters and the caucus goers as well as the New Hampshire primary voters, you know, there's this national audience as well. But they know very well that there are certain messages that are going to work in certain rooms that you cannot say nationally. And I think they know that with the attacks. With regard -- I'm going to disagree that people go down in the polls because they attack Donald Trump. They only have the courage to attack him when they're already slipping. And what we've seen is a lot of people in the media who have coalesced around Trump for various reasons and I've said this before on CNN and on Twitter and other places I think a lot of the right-wing media folks have coalesced around Trump because they know that this means Hillary and the White House, and that means ratings and book sales. You can't write an anti-Hillary book or sell one if she's in the White House. So it's been very confusing to a lot of Republicans why he's gotten this support, why Trump has not been called on the carpet for things that would do other candidates in.</s>MCENENY: I don't think they're confusing. I think people appreciate Trump's straight talk. You know, we've had Mitt Romney, we've had John McCain. Folks don't want that anymore. People want straight talk. They want honesty. And for better or worse when Donald Trump speaks that's what you get, his honest opinion. And people believe him. They think he's authentic. That's why he's doing well on the polls. I don't think it's confusing.</s>JACOBUS: Well, I disagree. I think that there are many candidates who are authentic and who are straight talkers. And they don't have to be politically correct. And what we see with Donald Trump, it's not about him being politically incorrect. He goes a lot further than that. And I think that we're going to see that crystallized, again, the messaging will be crisper as this debate -- at this debate tonight because there's fewer candidates. We're getting closer now to when people actually go and caucus in Iowa and vote in New Hampshire. I don't think that Donald Trump is Teflon. I've never thought he's Teflon. I've just seen him basically not been responded to because the media has reported on him and covered him differently. He's gotten vastly more media coverage than all of the other candidates combined. And that has resulted in him getting an early boost as well as the fact that there's such a huge field which was very unfortunate. And until that field narrows, Trump still has an edge. I don't think he's going to win Iowa. Then he loses his frontrunner status and he loses his greatest talking point. And then it's a whole new ball game.</s>COSTELLO: OK. I've got to let Kayleigh have the last word.</s>MCENENY: I just think it's naive to think that Donald Trump is succeeding because of media coverage. Plenty of other people get media coverage, they don't succeed. Donald Trump is reaching into the heart of voters and selling a very important message that's reminiscent of that of Ronald Reagan. He wants to make America great again. People believe he can create jobs, people believe he can defeat ISIS. It's a direct contrast to our current president. People are buying it. It's not the media coverage, it's the message.</s>COSTELLO: All right. I got to leave it there.</s>JACOBUS: But studies say otherwise.</s>COSTELLO: I got to leave it -- OK. Cheri Jacobus, Kayleigh McEneny, thanks to both of you.</s>MCENENY: Thanks, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: The big Powerball number turned out to be three. Three lucky tickets will be split for that record $1.5 billion jackpot. And the owners of those tickets, well, their lives will be changed forever. One of those golden tickets was sold at a Chino Hills, California, 7-Eleven, where you didn't need to be a winner to celebrate. That's one happy 7-Eleven man. Hundreds of people flocked to the convenience store when they heard the winning ticket was sold there. Sara Sidner -- this is incredible.</s>SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Isn't it cool? We were so thrilled to see that people were that enthusiastic when they didn't even win. And look at what just went on the wall here, on the door, I should say. Look, they made the front page of the local paper. Jackpot. That's Mr. Farooki with his hands up. And he's not even the store owner. The store owner has been here all night long with his family. He's been cleaning up the store, making sure that everybody can get to what they need even with all the media here and all the onlookers who've been inside and outside of the store. He's literally been cleaning up for the past five hours. He finally went home exhausted after talking to a lot of us. But here's what he had to say. I mean, can you believe this crowd out here? It was really wild. There were dozens of people that just kept coming. And you hear that, they're screaming "Chino Hills," so proud of their community and they say it is very much like a football game on Friday night. Like a "Friday Night Light" celebration. But here's what the owner of this store who's been here 24 years had to say about the fact that he's getting a million dollars just for selling the winning ticket.</s>SIDNER: What do you think about the crowd that just showed up here?</s>BABIR ATWAL, OWNER, 7-11 WHERE WINNING TICKET WAS SOLD: Well, I just love them. And they love me.</s>SIDNER: What is this selling the winning ticket mean for you and your store?</s>ATWAL: It's feeling really, really good. And whoever the lucky person come here, I'm thankful for their purchase.</s>SIDNER: And, Carol, we should mention this, too. People have been coming in. If you look right in there, you can, you know, take your ticket and you scan it to see if you've won. And the lottery officials are saying, hey, make sure you check that ticket. Just because you didn't win the big jackpot, there are still dozens of people who will become millionaires. They'll win either a million, most people a million or $2 million if they've got five out of six. So it's worth checking those tickets because there are plenty of people that never check them. And they never win because they didn't bother to check, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: And you're right about that because my producer, Alexis, checked her tickets and she won $7.</s>SIDNER: Better than nothing, right?</s>COSTELLO: True. I didn't win anything. Sara Sidner, thanks so much. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, FBI director James Comey heads to Philadelphia just after the agency announces the shooting of a police officer being investigated as a terror attack. Plus, a bomb explodes and terrorists launch a brazen attack in the heart of Jakarta. We'll have a live report for you next.